Oral Answers to Questions
George Hollingbery Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
It is a very good thing that we are out of the euro—I am very happy about that. As far as credit is to be given, as the hon. Gentleman knows, I have been opposed to entry into the euro and my party was, under my leadership, absolutely opposed and continues to be so, and I am very pleased about that. May I finish by reminding the House of what even those in Europe say when they look at us? The OECD said of the UK that
“the performance of the labour market has been remarkable!”
That is the point: the rest of Europe says the UK has done better on employment and unemployment than anybody else, and that is down to the Government, thanks to their long-term economic plan. We have got it right; they have got it wrong.
George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)
9. What progress he has made on the “Not Just For Boys” campaign.
The Minister for Employment (Esther McVey)
With record employment and vacancy levels, the “Not Just For Boys” campaign is intended to encourage young girls and women to consider a career in an industry where they are traditionally under-represented. After just under a month, some of the UK’s and the world’s leading businesses are on board, as are schools, business women, companies such as BT, Microsoft and Diageo and organisations including Opportunity Now, the Construction Industry Training Board and Be Onsite. I could continue, but for the sake of brevity, I will sit down.
George Hollingbery
A recent OECD report made it clear that gender differences among high-performing students remain stubbornly high in science, technology, engineering and maths—the STEM subjects. In 2012, only 12% of women entering university chose to study in science-related fields, compared with 39% of men, with all that that entails for women’s long-term job security and levels of pay. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this simply underlines how incredibly important it is that campaigns such as her “Not Just For Boys” campaign should succeed?
Esther McVey
I do indeed agree with my hon. Friend. The campaign came about after we looked at where the jobs were going to be over the next decade. There will be 12 million jobs in fields such as IT, engineering and manufacturing, yet only 7% of girls were going into those subjects, so we knew that we had to do more—hence the campaign. Businesses came on board, as did women wanting to be role models. The Department for Education should also take some credit here, because there are now 10,000 more girls studying STEM subjects at A-level than there were in 2010.
Universal Credit
George Hollingbery Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
I would have thought that the hon. Lady, who sits on the Work and Pensions Committee, would be attracted to the idea of trying to land the programme safely and securely. On the one hand she says that she agrees with it, but on the other hand she attacks it for not being fast enough. My view is that it should be expanded and delivered on a safe scale. Of course, the majority of cases will have been simpler ones because we have started with singles, but over the next few months we will see more complicated cases as we roll out to families. The north-west will be fully family when we start rolling out nationally. I am waiting for the hon. Lady to say one day, perhaps in a few years’ time, “You know, they did a jolly good job, because this has benefitted everybody, particularly those on low income.”
George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)
Given the huge importance of universal credit and the scale of the programme, has my right hon. Friend had any confirmation from the Labour party as to whether it actually supports universal credit, as opposed to vaguely supporting it in principle?
Mr Duncan Smith
The answer is that I have not, but my hon. Friend probably reached that conclusion after the earlier statement made by the hon. Member for Leeds West, which was really miserable. That is Labour’s position: its Members hate the idea that we are doing this securely and safely. They say that they support it in principle, but attack everything to do with it and never miss a chance to tell everybody how terrible it is when, in actual fact, if they visited and talked to claimants rather than just dash out of the office, they would find that those who are on universal credit think it is the best thing that has happened and it is helping them enormously.
DWP: Performance
George Hollingbery Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)
The motion before the House is wide-ranging, and I will concentrate on three fairly niche areas in some detail. The motion notes that the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) recently commented in the Work and Pensions Committee on work capability assessment throughput, but it fails to note what officials then said about that issue before the Committee. Those officials told the Committee that the Department has hugely improved performance. What does that mean? They said that a month has been taken off the front end of the application process for WCA, which has been reduced from 92 days to 60 days. Clearly, that is not good enough yet, but it is a huge important improvement at the front end. Once the WCA decision has been made, the further decision has also been reduced by a month: from 42 days to 12 or 14 days. Considerable changes have been going on in the Department that are beneficial to applicants.
We also know that the number of benefit decision appeals fell by 79% to just over 30,000 between January and March this year, compared with the same time last year. Why? It is because mandatory reconsideration put itself into the mix and ensured that fewer such applications go to appeal. I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) will say that some of that is to do with legal aid, and I suspect she may be right. However, the load on the costly appeals process is also reducing, so it seems that the Department has an exemplary track record, within itself and its own machinations, of reacting positively to the changes to WCA.
Where is the delay occurring? The answer has to be, with Atos. To understand that, we must look at where the WCA came from. The WCA was introduced in 2008, and within that legislation five annual assessments were put into the mix. We have now had four of those—three from Harrington and one from Paul Litchfield—and it is clear that the design, scope and outcomes from the WCA were wholly inadequate from the beginning. Large numbers of improvements were recommended. Those of the three Harrington reviews and Paul Litchfield have largely been not just accepted by the Government but implemented, but in short, Atos’s capacity does not match the increase in quality demanded. That is because the original contract and the price the Government paid for it is simply not enough to allow it to do the job that Parliament, quite rightly, demands.
George Hollingbery
No, I will not, because we all have a limited speaking time.
I think the Minister was right to end the Atos contract and re-let it because it seems that Atos did not have the capacity to do what it needed to do. It is somewhat ironic that the Opposition motion should seek to emphasise something that was caused entirely by actions taken by Labour when in government and that this Government are taking huge steps to improve, and which Opposition Back Benchers have—quite reasonably and vociferously—demanded. I believe that that improvement, which we all want, has made it more difficult for Atos to pursue what it is supposed to pursue.
George Hollingbery
No. I have already made it clear that I am not going to give way. The risk register is also identified in the motion—[Interruption.] I notice that my time now seems to be infinite, which is absolutely splendid—[Interruption.] The clock has now dropped down to three minutes. I should have said nothing.
The motion demands a publication of the risk register held by the Department. That is hardly a new argument, and in the short time I have been in this House it has been made many times about a similar document held by the national health service. Let me quote the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham)—the shadow Health Secretary—from 23 March 2007 when he was asked whether he would release the NHS risk register:
“Putting the risk register in the public domain would be likely to reduce the detail and utility of its contents. This would inhibit the free and frank exchange of views about significant risks and their management, and inhibit the provision of advice to Ministers. We cannot therefore agree to place a copy of the current version of the register in the Library.”—[Official Report, 23 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 1192W.]
That was then, as now, very sensible advice.
Do we really think it a good idea for the Government to make public all their plans for the management of every conceivable risk that they might encounter in any particular programme? Surely we cannot. As the right hon. Member for Leigh pointed out, it is essential that Ministers and officials can have free and frank exchanges behind closed doors on the risks to their Department. If they are inhibited from doing so in any way, they are most likely not to consider those risks in a free and frank way, and we will not have the benefit of the exercise in the first place. It is a preposterous proposition. All officials and all Ministers need a place where they can talk safely about what might happen to their Departments in extremis.
Finally, I have some facts and figures on the Work programme—I am sorry, but it is hard to avoid statistics in the argument. Some 300,000 long-term unemployed people have found lasting work using the Work programme. There has been an increase of 44,000 people in jobs in the past three months alone. Long-term unemployment has fallen by 108,000 in the past year, which is the largest fall in 16 years. Some 296,000 people have so far found lasting work, which is up from 132,000 a year earlier. The vast majority of those who find sustained employment remain in work beyond the six-month point or, for the hardest-to-help, the three-month point. More than 274,000 participants have gone on to find work beyond those points.
Performance has continually improved, with all contracts meeting the minimum performance levels in the third year of the programme. In the most recent cohort, nearly 28% were placed in a sustained job, up from 22% of those who joined at the beginning of the programme. Out of any group, young people proportionately have secured the largest number of sustainable jobs—71,640 have done so since the programme began. In short, the Work programme is truly working for those participating in it, and I shall certainly not support the motion.
Welfare Reform (Sick and Disabled People)
George Hollingbery Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have prepared a shorter version of my remarks, so I hope Members will forgive me if there is not as much detail as I might like to have given.
The motion before the House
“calls on the Government to end with immediate effect the work capability assessment”
and if I may, I would like to look at the WCA in some detail.
It is a simple fact of government that policies designed to deal with the general often struggle with the specific. Despite the need for a clear structured process to assess whether someone qualifies for a benefit, I acknowledge that no responsible Government can approach something like the WCA as if it is some sort of industrial quality control test. This is not a question that can always be answered with a simple yes or no because decisions taken have a clear effect on people’s lives, and reaching the wrong decision can be devastating. However, the Government have not approached the test that way.
The test was created in 2008 by the previous Labour Government, as incapacity benefit was designed to be replaced by the employment and support allowance. The coalition Government have carried that programme forward, including the key commitment that the WCA testing regime needed annual review and improvement for at least the first five years of its life. There have been four such reviews: three under Professor Harrington and the latest under Dr Paul Litchfield, which was published in December. Of Professor Harrington’s cumulative 49 recommendations, 35 were accepted in full and a further 10 in principle. Of the 35 accepted, 29 have been fully implemented and three partially implemented. A further three are still in progress. Of the 10 accepted in principle, five have been fully implemented, two partially implemented and three are in progress. We are making progress on improving the WCA.
On 12 December, the evidence-based review of the WCA was published. It compared the results produced by the WCA and those of an alternative designed by a consortium of experts and disability representative organisations, with a panel of experts reviewing each case. Many cases were looked at more than once. The report makes for interesting reading and two conclusions jump out: the WCA creates a much more consistent result than the proposed alternative; and the WCA is significantly more likely to accord with the judgment produced by the expert panel reviewing each case than with the proposed alternative.
The conclusions are important because they tell us how the WCA should work as a whole. We know that it is pretty much impossible to find a single general test that fits all eventualities. What we have is a system with an appeal mechanism that clearly anticipates that the WCA, even with Department for Work and Pensions staff interpretation and other evidence overlaid, will not always produce perfect results. That is why there will be a considerable number of successful appeals. That is exactly how the system should work, and it does.
The review of WCA found that the expert panel judged that about 26% of all cases presented were borderline, even with full access to information. If that is the case, we would expect an appeal process, which after all consists of expert opinion, to alter some decisions. They do so at a rate that is very similar to the rate the panel found as borderline in the review process. That should surprise nobody.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman is making some interesting comments. I have been very concerned about the effect of the WCA on people with mental health problems, which are particularly badly assessed, and have taken people to see the Minister. Did the study look at mental health issues, which are particularly hard to assess with a single snapshot?
George Hollingbery
Indeed it did. The expert panel that sat to adjudicate on every single one of those test cases took the advice of mental health experts. A number of mental health specialists are now provided with specialist training in the testing regime. I think the figure is 30, but that is off the top of my head and it may be as many as 60.
In the fourth report, Dr Litchfield largely endorses the position I outline. He says:
“Any ‘test’ is necessarily a trade-off of many factors and the WCA appears to be a reasonable and pragmatic tool.”
There remain those who call for its abolition, but suggestions for what to replace it with are rarely forthcoming. No test is ever perfect, but the WCA has been designed with considerable rigour and is subject to a process of continuous improvement.
I hope that hon. Members will forgive this slightly tortuous journey through the WCA, but it is very important to show just how much trouble and care has been taken to design and improve it. It is not perfect and it will not always produce fair and just results, but that is what the appeals process is for and there to catch. That it is necessary to have some sort of objective test to help decision makers seems to me to be undeniable. Hence I cannot support the motion’s call for the abolition of the WCA.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is giving a very technical analysis of the WCA. My constituent, Mr McArdle, who runs the Black Triangle campaigning group, has on his website and Facebook page a whole list of human stories about how the WCA acts in practice. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would mind looking at that after his speech today to get some of the human side, because it is not just about a technical analysis of how these things work.
George Hollingbery
I hope the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that in prefacing my remarks I made it clear that this cannot be a mechanistic process, like some sort of quality control process. It has to involve the human. I acknowledge that there are many cases where results have been, shall we say, questionable—there is no doubt about that. Nevertheless, that it is necessary to have such a test is, I think, undeniable: the Government cannot, will-nilly, go judging entitlement to benefits without any test of any sort. Yes, it is difficult to make the case that I am making without sounding dry and technocratic—I take his point absolutely.
In the time remaining, I would like to draw the House’s attention to some real outcomes produced by my local providers, which I hope the hon. Gentleman will take as a human face of what can be a reasonably successful programme. My local providers are the Shaw Trust in Portsmouth and A4e in Southampton, which is run by a team led by George Gallop. I hope that we can all celebrate some of the results of their work.
Alex, aged 20, was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and found it almost impossible to settle down to any kind of work. A4e’s relationship with Harsco, a large building services company, was crucial in enabling Alex to train for a certificate under the construction skills certification scheme, and to become a scaffolder. Alex said:
“I felt like nobody would ever employ me. I didn’t even know what 1 was doing wrong…it is the kind of job that sets you up for life and I love it. If 1 look at how my life has changed in the last year I can’t believe it”.
Daniel, aged 19, was homeless and unable to look after his young family because he suffered from depression. He was one of the first young people to enter Radian Housing’s “proving talent” programme, delivered by A4e in Southampton. He came through the scheme, and now has a permanent job in technical services with Radian. He said:
“it feels amazing to be back on track, in employment providing for my family and feeling good about myself.”
Sandra, aged 45, was a proud working mum of two, trapped in a wheelchair. Because of ill health, she was made unemployed and became dependent on employment and support allowance. At first she resented being referred to the Work programme, but her advisers and trainers helped to motivate her, and to give her the confidence and skills that she needed in order to return to work. She said:
“Now I think about what I can do, instead of what I can’t”.
David broke his back in an accident in 1997, and received incapacity benefit for more than 15 years. At an ESA work-focused interview in December 2012, he was asked when he had last had a good laugh and when he had last smiled. He replied that what had saved his life was a passion for his reptile collection. David and his wife have now signed off from ESA, and have set up their own business in a shop in Copnor road, Portsmouth, selling and boarding exotic pets.
To me, those are inspiring stories of people afflicted by disability and sickness who, with the right help from the right people at the right time, have managed to find their way back into employment, and, in so doing, have rediscovered their sense of self-confidence and self-worth. Of course there is much more to do and many improvements can be made to the system, but surely those are outcomes that we should all celebrate.
Is all rosy in the garden? Of course not. There are still many challenges, and many changes are required. There are still too many people who do not find permanent employment. There are many whose benefit applications and assessments take far too long to process, and who are left without an income in the meantime. As has already been said, the transition from disability living allowance to personal independence payments is proving to be a challenge. For all that, however, the evidence that I see on my visits suggests that many of our fellow citizens are being given a new lease of life by the Government’s approach to welfare, and the central assumption that there is nothing compassionate about—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The hon. Gentleman’s time is up.
Housing Benefit
George Hollingbery Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)
It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford), with whom I have sparred on a number of occasions on similar issues.
We need to pose ourselves a question: what is dealing with the spare room subsidy about? Is it about reducing the housing benefit bill? Yes, of course it is. The Government propose a £500 million saving, which is important. Let us not delude ourselves, however. We face a structural problem with housing: there is too little of it, and what there is of it is too expensive. The only way meaningfully to reduce the housing benefit bill is to increase the supply of housing hugely—something that we all know will not happen overnight. It did not happen on the watch of the previous Government, but it is happening at least in part on this Government’s watch. Although an important saving is being made, reducing the housing benefit bill is not the principal thrust of the reductions in spare room subsidy.
Jonathan Edwards
May I take up that point, which is raised in the Government amendment? Notwithstanding the bedroom tax, the cap on benefit and the annual real-terms reduction in the uprating of benefit, the Office for Budget Responsibility still predicts that the housing benefit bill will rise. This is a failed policy.
George Hollingbery
What the hon. Gentleman says demonstrates that, as I have just pointed out, what we need is a massive increase in the amount of housing that is built. That was a failure on the part of the last Government, and it has not been easy for this Government to rectify it during the current recession. I believe that we are doing a great deal to try to rectify it, but the real answer is to build a very large number of new houses. That cannot be done in an instant, which is why the housing benefit bill is almost bound to rise in the short term.
This is, in my view, a policy about behavioural change and about the chronic underuse of publicly owned housing assets. Those who live in social housing have no incentive to downsize, because they have tenancies for life. I understand the motivation behind that: as has already been pointed out today, these are not just tenancies, but homes. However, the position is not sustainable given such a limited supply of stock. The Government have, of course, taken action to end tenancies for life, but that will take a very long time to feed through the system. Meanwhile, there are vast numbers of people on housing waiting lists and large numbers living in overcrowded homes, while 1 million or more dwellings have an extra bedroom. That cannot be right.
George Hollingbery
I will, but by doing so I shall take time away from Opposition speakers.
Katy Clark
Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that that there is a complete mismatch between the types of homes that are available and what the Government want people to do? In North Ayrshire, for example, 2,260 council tenants are affected by the policy, but only 59 tenants in under-occupied properties have been able to move since April.
George Hollingbery
The point is well made. I entirely accept that there is indeed a mismatch in many parts of the country. However, it is not impossible for people to move between local authority areas. That happens in the private sector, and there is no good reason why it cannot happen in the public sector. Certainly, it is more difficult, but there is no reason why it should not happen.
I recently visited a young family in Wickham, which is in my constituency. The couple had one child and another on the way. There was one bedroom upstairs, with a small bathroom, a kitchen-sitting room-dining area downstairs, and that was it. The child was living in a cot in the sitting room. Just yards away were two and three-bedroom homes under-occupied by lifetime tenants.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. I must apologise to the hon. Gentleman. The clock is wrong, and I should warn him that he does not have five minutes and four seconds left; he has only four minutes and one second.
George Hollingbery
Thank you for that warning, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The situation that I have described cannot be right, either in terms of the use of resources or in terms of plain fairness. According to the switching site HomeSwapper, those who have successfully moved as a consequence of these changes often say that their understanding of the unfairness of the situation was a significant part of their motivation. However, it is also important to note that the potential reduction in housing benefit payments was what made them actually do something about it.
The unfairness is, of course, only exacerbated by the rules governing the private rented sector, under which only the space that is needed is paid for. That has been referred to at length this afternoon. Presumably, if the principle of ensuring the right number of bedrooms is unfair in social housing, it is also unfair in private housing. That point too has already been made. The motion
“calls on the Government to end these deductions with immediate effect”.
I can only imagine that the Opposition will propose similar changes in the private sector, as the same principle applies. If so, how much will it cost, and if not, why not?
It is clear that the Opposition’s thinking on this matter has been, to say the least, inconsistent. In 2011, I was a member of the Committee that considered the Bill that became the Welfare Reform Act 2012. We had a long discussion, and a number of amendments were tabled to clause 68, which established the principle of the spare room subsidy reduction. All the points that were made were salient, the amendments—most of which were tabled by the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), who is no longer in the Chamber—were perfectly sensible, and, in large part, the Government have introduced provisions to deal with them. Interestingly, however, no Division was called on a stand part motion, and no attempt was made to remove the clause on Report. I am a novice in these matters, but my interpretation of what happened is that the Opposition accepted the principle. If that is not the case, I should like to hear why it is not.
The Opposition’s difficulty with welfare reform as a whole is clear. Recently, the hon. Member for Westminster North, who very ably took large parts of the Welfare Reform Bill through Committee, including clause 68, was reported as saying that the Opposition had not won the public debate on welfare, and it appears that she is right. Ipsos MORI carried out a survey of 2,000 people in late August this year from which it concluded that:
“By a margin of 3 to 1, the majority of the British public believe that the benefits system in Britain is too generous.”
Interestingly, it also revealed that the public broadly supported the Government’s position on the spare room subsidy.
Back in April, Peter Watt, former general secretary of the Labour party, wrote on the “Labour Uncut” website:
“I don’t know what Labour’s position on welfare reform is”,
and added,
“Labour has in the past also talked tough on welfare and that it would like to reduce welfare bills. The problem is that it is currently fighting a battle in which it is opposing the government’s attempts to achieve this. So Labour appears confused.”
Today, in this motion, we see yet another example of this confusion.
It must be right, at a time of acute overcrowding co-existing with a great deal of under-occupancy in the social housing sector, for the Government to take action to encourage change. A broad policy of this sort will inevitably throw up real-life difficulties when applied in the particular, but the Government have been very careful to deal with as many of them as possible and have made many exceptions to the general rule. They have also made substantial amounts of money available through discretionary housing payment to ease the transition for those who are affected.
Furthermore, evidence shows that over 10% of those who have been affected by the change so far have come off benefits entirely, which must surely be welcomed by all. Change of this sort is never easy to implement, but that does not mean it is not fair in principle and that it is not necessary. In this case, it is both, and I will certainly vote for the Government’s amendment this evening.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
The Opposition are proud to have called this debate. The testimony we have heard from right hon. and hon. Members from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has shown again why this policy is both a moral and a practical failure. It is cruel, unworkable and perverse. It is not reducing overcrowding and it is not saving money as intended. It is causing fear and misery, and it is time it was scrapped.
I want to respond to as many of the points that have been raised as possible. I appreciate that many of my right hon. and hon. Friends who wanted to participate this afternoon have not been able to do so. One or two of them have notified me of their concerns and I hope to be able to raise them.
Let me start with an issue that was raised repeatedly by Government Members, who made comparisons with the private rented sector and said that the situation there is appropriate for the social sector. A whole raft of arguments against that position were made by my Opposition colleagues. My hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) pointed out that the social market is a very different market with very different rental structures from those in the private sector. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) pointed out that we allocate social housing predominantly on the basis of need, not market forces.
My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) pointed out that there is a significant difference between this Government’s implementation of the bedroom tax and Labour’s implementation of the local housing allowance. The local housing allowance was not implemented retrospectively and people were not trapped. My right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire), who was a Minister at the time so she ought to know, pointed out that it never became our policy in the social rented sector.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark) was right to say—this was also highlighted by Government Members—that our aspiration for social housing is very different from theirs. We see it as fulfilling a role of offering high-quality, stable accommodation to strengthen families and communities. We cannot understand why a Government who proclaim their commitment to a big society would not agree with us on that.
The hon. Members for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery) and for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) suggested that the policy is popular with the public and pointed to the recently published Ipsos MORI poll. I suggest that hon. Members look a little more closely at the poll, because it shows that the public become more sceptical about the policy the more they know about it. The public are not in favour of the policy if there is no alternative home for people to move to or if it means that people cannot meet basic living costs, which they cannot. As the Real Life Reform research is beginning to show, the policy is causing human misery and leading to arrears and debt, to mental health problems and stress, and to families cutting back on fuel and food.
George Hollingbery
Having looked at the poll this afternoon, I think I am right in saying that the hon. Lady may have a point on the issue of requiring people to move out of the area in which they live, but that there was an approval of more than 45%—I think it was 48%—for expecting people to move within the area in which they live. Is that correct?
Kate Green
That may be the case, but as my Opposition colleagues have repeatedly shown, in many areas there is a mismatch of suitable properties for people to move into. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to acknowledge, as we have said, that expecting people to move up and down the country would not command the same popular support.
As many of my colleagues have pointed out, the policy is especially cruel towards those affected, including 220,000 families with children, lone parents and separated families and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) has said, those fleeing domestic violence. As my hon. Friend the Member for Halton has said, some pensioner couples will be affected under universal credit if they are not both over state pension age. Most crucially, two thirds of those affected are disabled—420,000 disabled people are affected by the bedroom tax.
Contrary to what Government Members appeared to believe at the beginning of the debate, not all disabled people are protected from this policy. Adults with an overnight carer are protected, but children who need an overnight carer are not. Children with medium and high-level care needs will now be protected—following the Government conceding that they need to take action in light of the Burnip and Gorry cases—but children with higher rate mobility needs are not protected, contrary to the advice of the Social Security Advisory Committee, let alone there being protection for all disabled children.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) pointed out, and many colleagues reinforced, there is no protection for a couple if they are unable as a result of health or disability to share a bed or bedroom. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) highlighted to me the case of her constituents, Mr and Mrs Wilkes, who have been particularly harshly hit by this measure.
There is no protection if someone needs extra space for equipment or because they have had their home adapted, as was the case for the Rutherford family who were required to install a hoist, wider doors and a wet room for their 13-year-old son, Warren, yet are not protected from the bedroom tax. Mr Randall from Basildon has been told by his council that it will not move him to a smaller property as it has not been and cannot be adapted, yet he is being hit by the bedroom tax in his current property on which adaptations have been made.
Oral Answers to Questions
George Hollingbery Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Hoban
I disagree with the hon. Lady’s presumption that they are being let down. I have ensured that each provider has an action plan. We have also set up a “best practice group” to share information about what is working well, and to ensure that each provider gives the best possible service to this important group of people.
George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)
A couple of weeks ago I met George Gallop of A4e, who runs the Work programme in Southampton. He introduced me to two young people whose lives had been utterly transformed by the programme. It was truly inspirational. Does the Minister agree that we should be celebrating such successes, and spreading the techniques employed by Mr Gallop more widely around the country?
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend is right. One important thing that we can all do is visit Work programme providers in order to understand what they are doing. I have been doing that since I took over this job in September. It is clear that lives are being transformed, and that people who might otherwise have been out of work for years are gaining employment as a consequence of the programme. We need to learn from what is successful, and spread best practice throughout the country.
Oral Answers to Questions
George Hollingbery Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Hoban
What the work capability assessment does is assess people’s ability to work. It is a review of their capability and functionality, not a diagnostic assessment. That is why the assessment takes place. Of course, it is right that claimants bring along medical evidence, but it must be read in conjunction with the Atos assessment. Decisions about eligibility for employment and support allowance are made by DWP staff, not Atos.
George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)
T4. The Government have made it clear that although they are keen that most people should be able to deal with the direct payment of housing benefit, that will not be appropriate for all. Will my right hon. Friend reassure the House, and those outside who are concerned about women’s refuges and their futures, that direct payment may be waived in those circumstances?
Disability Benefits and Social Care
George Hollingbery Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Byrne
I invite the hon. Gentleman to intervene on me again when I talk about Remploy in more detail—[Interruption.] No, Remploy forms an important part of our motion, and it is right that we should have an informed debate on the matter. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I will let him have his say at that stage.
We believe that disability living allowance needs reform, and that an independent assessment is needed. We also believe, however, that the assessment should be designed first, and that the savings should be calculated afterwards. This Government have set an arbitrary, top-down financial cut, and they are now scrambling around trying to figure out what kind of assessment will deliver that cut. So little thought has gone into this that disabled people now face being tested for employment and support allowance, DLA and social care, as well as for a raft of other benefits. The testing alone will cost the taxpayer £710 million.
Surely we should be thinking harder about this. Surely we should be trying to determine what is the right assessment for DLA and ESA—which are different benefits—and asking how we can bring them together in a way that would be more convenient for disabled people and that would help them to secure the support that they need to live an independent life. Such a reform would save money. Indeed, when I was at the Treasury, my civil servants costed it and determined that it would save £350 million by 2015.
To this bleak picture we must, I am afraid, add more. Cuts to social care and to housing benefit will make the situation worse, £1 billion has now been cut from local council budgets for social care since this Government took office, and Ministers are still dragging their feet over long-term reform. Meanwhile, 1 million unpaid carers have given up work or reduced their hours, and four in 10 have fallen into debt, thanks to a system that does not work and is set to get worse.
George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)
I seem to recall that the Government announced some time ago that £3 billion would be transferred from national health service budgets to the social services sector each year. Is that correct, or is my recollection wrong?
Mr Byrne
The cut is from the Department for Communities and Local Government’s own figures. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the study published by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, he will see the reality of what is hitting social care services up and down the country and the vulnerable people they support.
The great tragedy of this story is that there might be some kind of explanation if this were all part of a grand master-plan to get disabled people back to work.
Mr Byrne
Let me deal with my hon. Friend’s intervention by listing a series of practical measures and steps that I think that the Government could and should now take.
First, why do the Government not honour every letter of the Sayce report? Why do they not honour the recommendations of Liz Sayce that factories should have six months in which to develop a business plan and two years before a subsidy is withdrawn, that the viability of Remploy factories should be decided by an independent panel of business and enterprise experts—with trade union involvement—rather than by unilateral action from the DWP, and that expert entrepreneurial and business support should be provided to develop the businesses into independent enterprises? Each of those recommendations needs to be implemented.
Secondly—here I come to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas)—the full 90-day timetable for consultation should be re-started, given that the terms were radically changed halfway through the process.
Thirdly—this is relevant to the points that have been made about procurement—may I ask what steps the Secretary of State has taken to draw together local authorities, as well as central Government Departments, to ensure that any extra work that can be put in a Remploy factory is put in a Remploy factory? Surely we should be exhausting all those opportunities before we move on.
Fourthly, we should take a more flexible approach to each and every factory. The fact is that some factories will need more support in order to continue, while others will need less. And fifthly, we should review the subsidy per worker offered to Remploy workers, given that it may be different from the subsidy that is available under Work Choice.
If the Secretary of State is in any doubt about what these factories do, I will go and do a day’s work in a Remploy factory, and I hope that he will join me. I think that we should invite the Sunday Express as well, for good measure.
George Hollingbery
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for being so generous with his time.
The subsidies involved in the two separate programmes, the Access to Work programme and the social model and Remploy, are not just different but wildly different. The average subsidy per person in Remploy is £25,000 a year, whereas the average subsidy in the support programme is £2,900 a year. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it would be much better for the money from Remploy to be redeployed in the Access to Work programme?
Mr Byrne
Where are the jobs that those people are going to go into? When factories are closing in constituencies where the average number of people chasing each job is twice the national average and the Work programme is failing disabled people, we have a problem that needs to be solved. We need practical steps to manage Remploy’s future.
Labour Members feel passionate about this subject. We are proud of the progress that we made for disabled people when we were in government. We appointed the first ever Minister for Disabled People, and we introduced the Disability Discrimination Act 2005, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Supporting People, the new deal for disabled people, new strategies for disabled children, Valuing People, and the Equality Act. Poverty in disabled households fell by a fifth in the last three years of our Government.
We succeeded because we believed in co-producing policy with disabled people. It is a disgrace that Kaliya Franklin, Sue Marsh and the authors of the Spartacus report had to use freedom of information requests to draw out of the Government that the DWP’s response to the DLA consultation was so misleading. It is also a disgrace that the Government have dropped from their business plan the goal of securing equality for disabled people. They should now set about changing course. They should begin by introducing a combined, cross-governmental assessment of the impact of their reforms. I congratulate Scope on producing a “starter for 10” this week.
Labour Members believe that rights should be made a reality for disabled people. We will campaign for that justice throughout this Parliament and beyond, and I hope that the House will express its support by backing our motion this afternoon.
Maria Miller
If the hon. Lady lets me finish my reply to the last intervention, that would be helpful. We must ensure that across the board we recognise that for many people who are not in employment, mental health problems are the primary cause. We need much broader understanding of how to ensure that we help people with mental health problems to get into work, whether that is through the Work programme or the work capability assessment.
Maria Miller
I will give way to my hon. Friend, then to the hon. Lady, then I really must move on.
George Hollingbery
The Minister might be about to come on to the subject of carers—I imagine that she might wind up on that point—but will she confirm two points? Will she confirm first that households in receipt of DLA, and therefore afterwards PIP, will not be subject to the benefits cap and, secondly, that carer’s allowance will be awarded outwith universal credit?
Maria Miller
My hon. Friend is right to pick up on those details, because such details make a real difference to family life.
George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)
I wish to speak briefly about four issues, the first of which is Remploy. Only 46% of disabled people are in employment, compared with 76% of non-disabled people, so there is a huge problem that must be addressed, but I think we have to ask ourselves whether an organisation that employs 2,800 people, compared with the 40,000 currently looked after by Access to Work, is the right answer to the question being asked. Furthermore, Remploy’s latest report, for 2010-11, shows that the DWP spent £68.3 million supporting Remploy that year, which equates to £25,000 a head, as I mentioned earlier, and that is £5 million more than in 2009-10, and more than 20% of the total budget available to help disabled people back into work. With the average cost of an Access to Work award at £2,900, as I also mentioned earlier, surely this differential is not sustainable.
We have already heard that Labour announced the closure of 29 Remploy facilities in 2008. I think it knew then, as I think it knows now, that this model is essentially unsustainable. The real issue is that money is much better spent on access to employment and the social model, as has been recommended by not only the Sayce review but many mainstream disability groups. We have to acknowledge that a scheme designed to help disabled ex-servicemen after the second world war is no longer fit for purpose in the modern environment.
What is so surprising about the motion is that it does not seem to recognise that the Government are simply continuing work that the previous Administration put in train, in addition to protecting the £320 million budget for specialist disability employment support.
Turning briefly to the work capability assessment, again we need to recognise some facts. WCA was introduced in 2007 as part of the Welfare Reform Act 2007 under John Hutton. It was then implemented over the following four years by three further Secretaries of State: the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain), James Purnell and, finally, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). In fact, in the previous nine years there had been eight different Secretaries of States for Work and Pensions, which does not suggest the greatest grip on the portfolio. None of those four Secretaries of State since WCA was introduced sought to change it. There were internal reviews in November 2007 and October 2009, but the Government did not implement them, although the current Government have done so.
Professor Harrington has been commissioned to advise on changing WCA. I am going to quote from the foreword to his second review, published in November last year:
“Even without Incapacity Benefit reassessment, the changes I proposed to the WCA system would have presented a big challenge… DWP rapidly adopted my proposals as policy and DWP Operations set about the necessary changes with energy and commitment. Atos, who are contracted to DWP for their part of the WCA, fulfilled their contractual requirements.
I have seen these improvements in the day-to-day running of both DWP Operations and Atos. This has taken time and some observers have told me that they have seen no change. I advise patience. The process of improvement is happening, but is not yet in evidence everywhere. It will take time to have the desired impact and the year three Review will closely monitor the impact of the changes and ensure there is continuing progress in improving the assessment.”
It is a clear, long-term commitment to making WCA work, and the observations from within say it is the right process. Again, we see that the Government are carrying on with a programme introduced by the previous Government and succeeding in improving the outcomes from it.
What about the replacement of disability living allowance with the personal independence payment? DLA was introduced 20 years ago and the world has changed enormously since. A great deal of credit has to go to the Opposition for some of those changes. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 secured rights for disabled people, which were strengthened greatly by the Equality Act 2010 and a good deal of legislation and effort from the Opposition when they were in office. However, much has been changed in the past 20 years, including attitudes. The materials, machines and many other facilities available to disabled people have improved markedly, but DLA has not changed, and undoubtedly that is a mistake. It needs to change.
There is no objective way of assessing entitlement, no systematic reviews and there are significant over and under-payments. More than 70% of the DLA caseload has an indefinite award. PIP will be fairer and more objective, will deliver more consistent benefits and will be sustainable for the future. Support will be focused on those with the greatest need and a higher proportion of individuals will receive the highest rates under PIP than under DLA. It is odd that even the motion before us recognises that change to DLA is required, so what exactly are we supposed to be debating? I am increasingly puzzled.
Finally, I will say a word or two on carers. I acknowledge the enormous contribution that they make to our society. They are an absolutely vital part of the machinery that keeps this country ticking, and the Government recognise that. As I mentioned in an intervention, carer’s allowance will remain outside the assessment of universal credit. There will also be a carers element within universal credit which will not require the carer to be entitled to carer’s allowance. That is a welcome change. The Government have said that any carer who has regular and substantial caring responsibilities will be entitled to the extra carer amount.
The Labour party has not opposed the change to universal credit or, as far as I know, suggested any changes to the measures that apply to carers within it, so once again I find myself somewhat puzzled by the words of the motion. I am afraid that as I sit and sum all this up in my mind, I reach one inescapable conclusion: the motion is not so much something to be debated but a press release in search of an audience.
Oral Answers to Questions
George Hollingbery Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)
1. When he plans to bring forward his proposals for a single-tier state pension.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will answer this question together with Questions 6 and 20.
I can confirm that, as was announced by the Chancellor in his Budget, we will present further details about the single-tier state pension in a White Paper later in the spring. Final decisions on the detailed implementation of the policy will be made in the next spending review.
George Hollingbery
A number of my constituents have contacted me expressing concern about the transition between the old and new systems—in particular, a Mr Theo Stellakis, whose questions the Minister has answered on a number of occasions. Can the Minister tell us how the transition will affect two people, one reaching the age of 65—or reaching pensionable age—on the day before the changes are implemented, and the other doing so the day after?
Steve Webb
I recall corresponding with Mr Stellakis on a number of occasions. What concerns him is the idea of a cliff edge before and after 2016. Let me clarify the position. When people receive state pensions of less than the full amount because they were contracted out, as I believe the hon. Gentleman’s constituent was, we will continue to take account of that after 2016, so there will not be the cliff edge that he envisages. We will have to phase out the arrangement over time, but in 2016 we will continue to take account of past contracting out.
Work Experience
George Hollingbery Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Jones
I thank my hon. Friend, who, as a fellow Warwickshire MP, knows the importance of getting young people in our area into work. He is absolutely right that we must encourage employers, and ensure that they are not frightened of the vocal minority who seem to put political ideology before young people. Hon. Members on both sides of the House should support the Work Experience programme. It is not a panacea for the whole youth employment issue, and is probably applicable to only a small cohort of people who are difficult to get into work. We should all support the programme, and back employers to the hilt in supporting it.
No matter how unskilled—I have said that I am worried about using that word—a role may be, new staff cannot be brought into a business, whether or not they are doing work experience, without providing training. Some young people will pick up that training more quickly than others, but regardless of that, people must be trained. All employers will say that. So they must invest time, provide training, perhaps buy a uniform, and generally invest in that young person, who may be a member of staff for only a few weeks.
George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)
Does the issue not go even deeper than that? The House should celebrate the fact that some companies are a force for social good. They do not just make profits for the shareholder, but provide an enormous amount of employment across the piece, and ensure that this country is put on a sound financial footing. We should celebrate that.
Mr Jones
As ever, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. When I go out and speak to businesses in my constituency, I detect that people are becoming alive to the issue of youth unemployment, and that there is a real will in businesses to try to give young people opportunities, whether through the apprenticeship route, work experience or other parts of the Government’s Work programme. We should embrace the good will in businesses throughout the country and ensure that we fully support them, not demean them or try to make out to the public that they are trying to get something for nothing. At the end of the day, we rely greatly on the good will out there, and we must not spoil or stymie that. If we start to go down that route, we will defeat the object. Given some of the ideologies expressed, however, it seems that some people are willing to see that happen just because the current Government may not be of the same colour as them, and that seems pretty disgraceful.
Sheila Gilmore
Even if the Minister tells me that that is the case, I would not necessarily always accept everything previous Governments have done, because such provisions are not helping us in any respect to create additional jobs. The worry about firms taking successive people to do work experience without payment is that they may be reducing their other employees’ opportunities to do paid work—through additional hours, for example. We need reassurance that that is not happening, and if we do not get it, we will have some queries.
George Hollingbery
When I looked into the success of the future jobs fund, there was much trumpeting of 50% placements and costs per placement being reasonable. However, the cost per placement was about £3,000 to £5,000, while the figure under the work experience scheme is £200 to £300. Does the hon. Lady not agree that it was somewhat perverse for 80% of the placements under the future jobs fund to be in the public sector? Looking around the piece, that would hardly save the Government money in the long run.
Sheila Gilmore
My understanding regarding those public sector jobs is that there was, in part, a difficulty over whether the measures would constitute state aid if they were carried out in some other way. It is regrettable if that became an obstacle, because the future jobs fund was a good model and gave people good-quality work experience. I hope that the Government will consider returning to it in the future.
It is not my position or that of any Opposition Member that work experience is simply not to be done. However, we want people to have work experience that genuinely improves their employability; if it does not, it has to be questioned.