Personal Independence Payments

Debate between Esther McVey and Vince Cable

Monday 4th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

I can tell my hon. Friend that the expenditure has continued to go up and will go up every year until 2022; it has increased from 2010. For PIP, DLA and attendance allowance alone, expenditure is £5.4 billion higher than it was in 2010. There will be future announcements on the continuous improvements for PIP, but I can say now that we want to introduce video recording—that is key—and when we do we will start with pilots to make sure it is right. We want a modern benefit that looks after and reaches out to disabled people and gives them the money they should be getting.

[Sir Vince Cable (Twickenham) (LD)]

The Secretary of State has acknowledged that the new benefits are available for a wider range of conditions, including neurological conditions and mental illness. What steps is she taking to ensure that the assessors are fully competent to make these judgments on the wider range of conditions?

[Ms McVey]

We provide consistent training and updating and have mental health champions in place. Of course we constantly review what we do and constantly support our assessors; that is what is needed going forward.

Directors’ Pay

Debate between Esther McVey and Vince Cable

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I have seen the work of the existing High Pay Commission, which I think is a voluntary body and which has made some good suggestions, many of which we have taken on board. If the community of investors, think-tanks and others were to come together to examine top pay, I would look with great interest at what it suggested.

[Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)]

I welcome the Government’s announcements on executive pay, especially after a decade of runaway executive pay. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is imperative that board members understand that what they do has to be in the interests of not only employees, stakeholders and shareholders but above all else the long-term sustainability and well-being of the business, operating by ethical means?

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right—that is what the corporate stewardship code is all about. That initiative goes hand in hand with the others we are taking to ensure that companies operate on a long-term basis. British business has been undermined for far too long by short-term decision making, and we are trying to move it in the opposite direction.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Esther McVey and Vince Cable

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

Of course we have discussed those issues extensively with the Ministry of Defence, and if the hon. Lady actually reads the statement, she will see that it is absolutely clear that in defence, as in other areas, public procurement will operate on a strategic, long-term basis, not as it did under the last Government when narrow contractual arrangements involved purchases off the peg.

[Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)]

Will the Minister support me in establishing a pilot scheme on Wirral bringing female business role models into schools and thereby working towards the coalition’s intention of practical, real-life role models?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Esther McVey and Vince Cable

Thursday 8th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)]

8. What assessment he has made of the effect of the regional growth fund on private sector investment.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

In April we announced that the regional growth fund would conditionally support 50 projects, amounting to £450 million of Government investment and leveraging an estimated £2.7 billion of private sector investment. In October we announced that 126 projects would receive conditional funding of £950 million, leveraging an estimated £6 billion of private sector investment.

[Esther McVey]

I welcome the regional growth fund, in rounds 1 and 2 of which, companies on Merseyside, including Stobart, Pilkington, Liverpool Vision and Trinity Mirror, have done very well. Wirral Investment Network, a business network for smaller companies, wants to know by what routes it can apply to the regional growth fund.

[Vince Cable]

Our estimate is that roughly a third of all regional growth fund money is going to SMEs, and there are several routes through which it goes. First, there are packets of SME loans, one of which was in Liverpool, while another is in Plymouth. Indeed, I saw that one a couple of weeks ago, and it is going extraordinarily well. There are specifically tailored schemes—for example, the RBS-HSBC scheme linked to asset finance—and programme bids, as in Manchester, all of which are targeted at SMEs.