Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill
Debate between Graham P Jones and Sheila Gilmore(10 years ago)
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Graham Jones
My hon. Friend is making an important point about the retention of skills and the need to develop people to improve the economy. If there is a dislocation or distance between an employer and an employee, or if their relationship is fragmented, it is hardly conducive to building up people’s skills and the capacity of the economy.
Sheila Gilmore
That is an important point, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South said, one reason why we are not getting in the tax take we should is the huge amount of insecure short-hours employment. That is not helpful to the economy and the community. It is not just the people on those contracts who are affected.
Graham Jones
My hon. Friend is making the important point that Britain’s productivity is poor and is not helped by zero-hours or part-time contracts, which dislocate people from the workplace and from opportunities to acquire better skills.
Sheila Gilmore
And of course that feeds directly into the fact that the Government’s deficit is rising again in this financial year. That is primarily because the tax take has not been as expected, which is a serious problem. A lot of people have been told that they have to make great sacrifices so that the Government can close the deficit, but now they are told that nothing is really improving, or at least it is certainly not improving as fast as they were promised.
It is also disappointing that, when the law on zero-hours contracts is to be changed, a clear enforcement mechanism is not being built into the Bill. A lot of people do not know much about their contract of employment—and that is if they even see one, because many people do not get much chance to see a contract even when they have started a job. People need to get good information about the content of their contract and the rights that they have. We all have people coming to our surgeries for assistance and saying, “I didn’t realise that these were my terms and conditions of employment.” They might only realise when something goes wrong.
To think that people will understand that a certain clause in their contract is unlawful assumes a degree of understanding and information that a lot of people do not have, especially when they are just glad to get any job at all. They think, “That’s great, I’ve got the job”, but they do not necessarily inquire at that stage about all the problems they might face. It seems strange not to make it easier for people at least to enforce the small change that the Government are offering.
DWP: Performance
Debate between Graham P Jones and Sheila Gilmore(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
Some of the aspirations of the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) are indeed shared across the House. The problem is that for all those cheery words, many of the policies that the Government have put in place are not working. That is a fact and that is the purpose of this debate, not necessarily to reprise the entire debate on the Welfare Reform Bill, on the Committee of which the hon. Lady and I both sat. Many of the things that we said at the time were wrong and would not work have come to pass.
On Saturday morning I spoke to a constituent who cares for her daughter who has severe learning disabilities. She said to me, “My daughter is 25. She’s not going to get better. She’s not going to change, so why is she constantly being reassessed for employment and support allowance? What is all that about?”
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
Picking up on the point that my hon. Friend is making, I know a young girl, Nieve Evans, who has cerebral palsy, which of course is an incurable disease. She is four years old and is on the highest rate of DLA. Her parents are forced to fill in forms continually, and those documents are endlessly long. Every time they have to apply for the highest rate of DLA for her, and she will never improve. Is this the type of welfare state we want?
Sheila Gilmore
The issue that I want to raise is not just the stress caused to my constituent and her mother, but the extra expense and time involved. In debate after debate, I and others have suggested that one of the simple changes that could be made, which would be humane and would save money, is not to carry out constant reassessment. Even that minor change has not been accepted by Minister after Minister who has been responsible for people with disabilities.
The Minister for disabled people now admits that there is a backlog of 700,000 people awaiting ESA assessments. That comes as no surprise to us, because our constituents have been telling us for the past few months that the delays have been getting longer and longer. All these things—ESA, PIP and universal credit—seem to follow a pattern. First, Ministers deny that there is a problem, arguing that the Opposition, voluntary groups and advice agencies are scaremongering. Eventually an announcement is made that some changes are necessary because the benefit is not quite working out, but that is accompanied by a reassurance that everything will be fine very soon.
In 2011 the Government ignored concerns about how ESA was working out and rolled out the migration from incapacity benefit, despite the Select Committee’s concern about capacity. Simultaneously the Minister told us that Atos was being asked to make savings. I wonder whether some of those savings are in part the cause of the further capacity problems. Last year we heard that there was a slight glitch and Atos was being asked to improve its reporting. Within months, Atos was out of the door, so the problem was much more serious than we were told at that time.
Ministers want to blame anybody but themselves for this situation. Suddenly Atos is the bad guy, after years of being defended whenever Opposition Members dared to criticise it. The current Minister for disabled people has occasionally tried to claim that Atos was allowed to take the original contract knowing that it could not make it viable, so it was therefore the Labour Government’s fault. If that was the case, why did one of his predecessors tell the Select Committee in 2011 that there was room for cost savings? Why did the Government roll it out if they had concerns about the nature of the contract?
More recently, the Minister for disabled people has tried to blame the previous Government for the current backlog of 700,000, suggesting that it was somehow inherited in 2010. If there was any truth in that, why go ahead with the roll-out? Why did his predecessor say in March 2012 that there was a small backlog caused by some improvements that followed the Harrington report, but that it was on track to be cleared by the summer of 2012? He was not aware of any huge backlog inherited from the previous Government; he is just trying to avoid any responsibility for what is happening.
Crucially—this is fundamentally important—we have a system that is not only really hurting many of the people going through it, but is not succeeding, even on the Government’s own terms. The number of people in receipt of either incapacity benefit, as some people still are, or ESA has not fallen by anything like as much as we might expect, given the number who have apparently been found fit for work, who no longer get ESA on a contributory basis and who fall out of ESA altogether. The numbers just do not add up, and that is probably one of the major reasons why the savings are not adding up either.
Why is that important? What is actually happening to people? When we ask the DWP, it says that it does not know because it does not track what is happening to people. I think that many people are being found fit for work but are nowhere near finding work. The Work programme is failing people with disabilities, and sooner or later—in a few months or perhaps a year—they reapply for ESA. The numbers are not falling in the way the Government are trying to claim. That suggests that the system is failing even on its own terms. It is not making the savings, but it is making life very hard for individuals. It is time to look at it all again and quickly make some changes, some of which are quite straightforward, in order to bring savings and improve many people’s experience.
Passport Office (Delays)
Debate between Graham P Jones and Sheila Gilmore(10 years, 5 months ago)
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James Brokenshire
I will not give way for now. I would like to make some progress and put some points on the record. I will then be happy to give way to hon. Members.
This year the surge began much earlier and was sustained more than normal; an indication that, as the economy is improving, more people are understandably planning to travel abroad. I can assure the House that this high demand was identified by HMPO early this year. As a result, it has put in place a system of measures to deal with it and to see that people receive their passports in good time. A number of steps have been taken, including existing passport examination and customer service staff working seven days a week to process the higher number of applications. Non-operational staff have been re-deployed to support examination and customer service functions, whilst ensuring that the necessary security checks are still properly undertaken. I recognise the issues raised about fraud and counter-fraud and I can assure the House that those security checks are still being undertaken.
Additional staff have been deployed to work on HMPO’s parliamentary and diplomatic helpline for Members who wish to raise cases on behalf of their constituents. I heard the point raised by the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe) about the response he received. I shall take that away and investigate further as it is important that Members receive timely responses for their constituents.