In-work Poverty

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered in-work poverty.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. Before I start, I want to pass on our best wishes, from all sides of the House, to the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies), who I am sorry to hear has covid. I am sure that her colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley), will do an admirable job in her place.

Work should always be a pathway and route out of poverty. The fact that the phrase “in-work poverty” even exists is a damning indictment of successive Conservative Government policies over the past 12 years. The Government are clearly making life harder for working people, as I will illustrate with a number of examples. I am conscious that a large number of Members want to participate in this important debate, so I will truncate my remarks, but I want to illustrate my argument with some examples from a number of sectors.

Clearly, one of the issues is the increase in taxes and national insurance, which is in direct contravention of a commitment that the Conservatives made in their last general election manifesto. We are also having to deal with the problem of the huge increases in energy prices that the Government, via Ofgem, have allowed to take place. Members may recall that I had a question for the Prime Minister last Wednesday in order to contrast the position of the French Government, who have capped energy price rises at 4%, with that of our Government, who have capped energy price rises at an incredible 54%. That has had a huge impact on people who are in work.

Fuel poverty, food poverty, energy poverty, housing poverty and child poverty are all measures of economic failure, and they are all on the increase. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, one in eight workers are struggling to make ends meet. If work guaranteed a decent standard of living, the UK would be going through a golden age of prosperity. Instead, the Conservative party has delivered successive year-on-year policies of austerity over a decade. The social security safety net has given way, after a decade of wear and tear.

Without the most basic protection, a decade of pay cuts and wage stagnation has left working families ill prepared. Many have no savings at all, and people certainly have far less resilience to cope with the current cost of living crisis. In the workplace, we have seen employment rights deliberately weakened, a dramatic increase in the number of zero-hours contracts, and an expansion of the gig economy, with a growing proportion of working people in insecure employment.

I also want to mention the appalling employment practices. Poor employment practices, such as fire and rehire, are rife, even with very profitable and long-established companies, some of which are household names. Despite recent and repeated assurances from Ministers at the Dispatch Box—often condemning the practice—they have done nothing to outlaw the practice of fire and rehire by rogue employers. The Government have disregarded the interests of working people and dismissed the private Member’s Bill brought forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner).

The key workers we all clapped for and honoured during lockdown are bearing the brunt of our low-wage, poverty-pay economy. Figures produced by the TUC reveal that 43% of north-east key workers—over 173,000 people —earn below £10 an hour. Personally, I do not think that £15 an hour is an unreasonable ask in this day and age.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

I thank my honourable comrade for giving way. Is he as surprised as I am at a recent article, published by The Herald newspaper and The Ferret website, showing that 20% of jobs advertised on the Department for Work and Pensions website paid under the national minimum wage rate of £9.50? The Department really needs to launch an inquiry into why that is the case.

[Grahame Morris]

Absolutely. It should concern us all when the DWP is advertising jobs that fall below the minimum standard and even the limited protections afforded to working people.

We know that even a modest increase in the minimum wage to £10 an hour would transform the lives of key workers, including one in three care workers—so many of us applaud care workers for their contribution, particularly during the pandemic—and 173,000 childcare workers. It would raise the incomes of over half a million people.

Workers across the country are struggling to feed their families and heat their homes. I will give some examples, including one I received from the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers. Like many of us, I have met the cleaners employed by the Churchill Group who are fighting for a real living wage of £15 an hour. I will also highlight the fact that the GMB trade union is campaigning against real-terms pay cuts for nearly 150,000 ASDA staff, and the ongoing University and College Union strike in the university sector. The pattern is the same: terms, conditions, wages and pension rights are being eroded; workers who try to negotiate are blocked, ignored and blamed; while well-paid directors shrug their shoulders with uninterest, often while picking up huge bonuses.

The workers who kept our supermarket shelves stacked during the pandemic are now struggling to feed their own families. I was shown a survey by the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union, which was very illuminating; it was conducted by the union of its members, who are in the food sector. It found that between February and March 2021, 40% of those surveyed had eaten less than they should have eaten because they did not have sufficient cash; 35% had eaten less than they should have to ensure that other members of their household got a meal; and 21% relied on goods and contributions from family and friends to make ends meet. These are people who are in work—shift workers who supplied the country with bread during the pandemic.

I will also highlight the excellent Right to Food Campaign, which was mentioned in this very Chamber yesterday. The campaign was set up and promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne), and it has been endorsed by my own union, Unite. It seeks to make the Government responsible for addressing the raging income inequalities and the broken benefit system that have pushed so many people into a spiral of poverty.

I saw a quote on social media just before this debate and thought how relevant it is to what we are discussing, because we are talking about the cost of living crisis. The country has more than enough resources and more than enough money to keep everyone warm, housed, free from hunger and properly clothed; in fact, the country has enough wealth to do that a hundred times over. So it is not really a cost of living crisis; what we have is an inequality crisis.

I think the Government should scrap some of the provisions that currently apply to those in receipt of universal credit. Let us not forget that a substantial number of those in receipt of universal credit are in work—they are the working poor. The five-week wait before they can receive a penny is a major contributing factor to the huge increase in the number of people having to turn to food banks.

We need to start putting people before profits. Sadly—it is lamentable, really—poverty has become the norm in Britain; it has become normalised. Yards away from where we are having this debate, homeless people are freezing on the streets and sleeping rough for want of a home. Children go hungry. We see Members of Parliament, particularly Members of the Conservative party, posing for photographs at food banks, and I think the irony must be lost on them that those food banks exist only because of the policies that this Government have promoted.

To return to energy prices, the French Government have capped cost rises at 4%, Germany has cut tariffs and Spain has introduced a windfall tax on the energy companies. But here in Britain, standing charges are doubling and the energy price cap will see energy bills rise by 54%—that is £700 more on average—for our families. Peterlee is the biggest town in my constituency, and EDF, one of the big six energy companies, has many customers there. It is interesting to contrast what is happening in Peterlee with what is happening in Paris. Will the Minister explain why French state-owned EDF can cap cost increases at 4% in Paris while my constituents in Peterlee face a 54% increase in their bills?

Tax rises are exacerbating the cost of living crisis as many in our nation struggle with rising prices. I happened to meet a farmer last weekend, and we chatted about a number of issues. He grows oilseed rape and wheat, and he said that the price of wheat is doubling, and that the price of fertiliser is doubling as well, which will cost him an extra £10,000 a year. He reliably informed me that the cost of wheat, which was £150 a tonne, is now £300 a tonne. That will filter through into dramatic increases in food costs for staples such as bread. The prices of many basic staples, including margarine, tomatoes and apples have increased by as much as 45% in the past year.

Figures from the Trussell Trust and the Independent Food Aid Network show that more than 3 million food bank parcels were distributed in 2020-21. I tried to get the figures for the food banks operating in my constituency —at the community centre in Dawdon and at the East Durham Trust in Peterlee—but they are not part of the Trussell Trust, so the excellent work that they do is not included in those statistics, meaning that the figure is even bigger.

Average petrol and diesel prices are £1.61 and £1.73 per litre respectively, but regional public transport is expensive and unreliable after a decade of neglect, meaning that families have no alternative to protect against increasing fuel costs. The energy cap is up at 54%, and further increases are in the pipeline. The Conservative party once promised to be the “greenest government ever”, but the Public Accounts Committee recently described the green homes grant as a “slam dunk fail”.

House prices are rising beyond the reach of first-time buyers; sky-high rental costs leave little at the end of the month for deposits and savings; and we as a country have abandoned council housing, which is quite disgraceful—that social housing delivered low-cost homes for the post-war generation.

Nelson Mandela said:

“poverty…is man-made and can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings… Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life… While poverty persists, there is no true freedom.”

Once again, we see that poverty is a political choice. It is a Conservative political choice, and one that this Government should be ashamed of.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

It is a delight to see you in the Chair, Ms Rees. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) for securing the debate.

If anything proves how broken the current economic model is, it is the extent of in-work poverty—it does just that. I have listened carefully to the remarks from Government Members. You would not think, Ms Rees, that they have been in power for 12 years. The hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) talks about work being the best route out of poverty. Are cleaners not entitled to a decent wage? Are security staff who keep our hospital staff and patients safe not entitled to a dignified life? Are care workers not entitled to the decency of a wage that they can live on? Are the shopworkers who we applauded not entitled to be able to make ends meet? Or have people got to leave those jobs and get “better” ones? What an indictment it is on this Government that they say such a thing.

It is a fact that one in six working families is now in poverty—a record high. It puts paid to all the Tories’ boasts of job creation when the jobs that they are creating still confine people to destitution. The latest employment figures, published by the ONS yesterday, show that real wages dropped by 1.5% over the past year. That is the worst fall in real pay for eight years.

This is clearly a situation that the Government are actively pursuing. The motion they passed last month—effectively cutting pensions and social security payments by 3% to 4% in real terms—along with their slashing of the universal credit uplift, the rise of the energy price cap and the increase in national insurance contributions all point to the simple conclusion that this Government are knowingly pushing more and more families into circumstances where they have to choose between staying warm and putting food on the table.

Just as with the coalition Government’s austerity programme after the financial crash, we hear from this Tory Government that it is those in most need who will have to bear the biggest brunt of the fallout of the covid crisis, and now the illegal and atrocious Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Government’s argument is that the cost of living crisis is a sacrifice that must be made to oppose Putin’s actions—it is nonsense and must be called out. Poverty is a political choice, and the Government are choosing for that sacrifice to be made by working people instead of the wealthy. In fact, despite the ongoing crises, billionaires have never had it so good.

[Grahame Morris]

Would my hon. Friend comment on the level of profits being generated by the energy distribution companies for gas and electricity, and what alternatives there are in windfall taxes on those companies?

[Andy McDonald]

My hon. Friend makes a pertinent point. Those transmission companies are enjoying a scandalous rise in profits; if ever a case was made for public ownership of the transmission of energy, that is it. The time is absolutely now.

There are also a number of longstanding factors that have caused the spiralling levels of in-work poverty. Above all is the fact that the so-called national living wage of £8.91 an hour is significantly below a wage that people can actually survive on. I have said it time and again: we need to raise the minimum wage to a level that allows people to live fully flourishing lives, not just get by. The planned rise to £9.50 an hour next month simply will not cut it. In the midst of a cost of living crisis, with inflation soaring, the national minimum wage is nothing but a poverty wage. The time is right for a £15 an hour minimum wage—in fact, it is way overdue.

Different categories of workers are going to work with different types of employment rights. We need to consolidate those categories into a single status of worker so that people have the same full employment rights from day one. I am pleased to have introduced to this House the Status of Workers Bill, which was guided through the other place by my noble Friend Lord Hendy. I implore the Minister to allow the Bill the necessary time to pass through this House, so that it can make the fundamental change to workers’ rights that could do so much to turn the tide of in-work poverty.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see a friend of the worker in the Chair, Ms Rees. I thank my good friend and comrade the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) for making an excellent speech to kick off the debate. The contributions—with the possible exception of one—have been very impressive indeed.

I want to make a number of points. First, in-work poverty and inadequate living standards remain the norm for far too many people on these islands. We urge the UK Government to look at the minimum wage rates in the country. They need to not only amend the definition of a worker, but go further by strengthening protection for workers.

The UK is experiencing the highest levels of in-work poverty this century, which disproportionately impacts groups facing high living costs, such as lone parents—the majority of whom are women—disabled people and people with caring responsibilities. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation report that was mentioned earlier shows that around two thirds—the actual figure is 68%—of working-age adults in poverty in the UK live in a household where at least one adult is in work. The figure has never been higher since records began in 1996, so we now have the highest ever levels of in-work poverty. For too many people, low-paid jobs offer no opportunities to progress to better work and better wages, and far too many people are in insecure work with unpredictable hours and incomes, which is something that I want to touch on. That is, of course, in stark contrast to the situation in Scotland.

[Grahame Morris]

The hon. Member is making some excellent points, but I wonder what impact the Government’s decision to close jobcentres will have on constituencies such as mine and perhaps 60 others. What impact will that have on alleviating in-work poverty and on encouraging people who are out of work into paid employment?

[Chris Stephens]

It will increase in-work poverty. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the Government tried to close half the jobcentres in the city of Glasgow. People there are having to spend more money and go further in order to get to a jobcentre to see whether they can get better work.

As we have a Minister from the Department for Work and Pensions in front of us, I want to point out that a number of people claiming universal credit are in work. We have a situation—the Minister responded to a written question on this issue—whereby half of DWP claimants have their universal credit claims deducted. I would argue that that is a poverty tax. In some cases, £60 a month is taken away from someone’s universal credit claim. Universal credit is supposed to be a subsistence benefit that is paid at a rate that people can live on. If we take £60 a month away from them, people have to choose whether to heat or eat. That really needs to end. Advances need to be replaced by an up-front grant or a starter payment, as we argued on the Work and Pensions Committee. The recovery of tax credits needs to be at a lower level, and I would say that debts of more than six years should be written off entirely. There are a number of lawyers in the Chamber and they know that if I try to sue them for a debt that is over six years old, a sheriff in a Scottish court would write that off and absolve the debt.

I also want the Minister to respond to a point that I made earlier during my intervention on the hon. Member for Easington. In the jobs advertisements on the DWP website, 31% of full-time jobs and 50% of parti-time jobs pay less than the real living wage of £9.90 an hour. Some 20% are advertised as paying less than the national living wage of £9.50. I will give three examples: Burger King pays £6 an hour, Pizza Express £6.56 an hour, and Farmfoods £6.66 an hour. None of the adverts clarifies wage rates for different ages, and all the companies have made substantial profits in the last year or two, so increasing the wage rates and asking them to pay more certainly would not harm those businesses all that much. I am talking about multinational companies, and I would like to know what the DWP is going to do about the adverts. Will it refer itself to the national minimum wage compliance unit, which has a number of vacancies? Perhaps we can advertise those jobs on the DWP website.

I want to touch on what my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) said about discrimination in the national minimum wage rates, because he is absolutely right. There is a nonsensical argument that somehow young people are not active participants in the labour market. If Burger King has a 17-year-old next to a 37-year-old and they are both flipping hamburgers, they are equal participants in the labour market and should be paid the same rate for doing the same work. That is what I call equal pay. The equal pay legislation always encourages people to get the same rate for the same job, the same work.

What would happen if we increased wages? People would spend money. A false argument is also made about public sector pay—that somehow it takes money out of the economy. But that is not how it works. When people get a wage increase, they do not put it in a shoebox and hide it under bed; they go out and spend it in the economy. It means that they can afford things that they could not afford before, so they spend more on food and other items.

To touch on the contribution of the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald)—I support his Bill and I know that he supports my Workers (Definition and Rights) Bill—there needs to be a definition of “worker”, so that we can strengthen workers’ rights. For four years the Government have been sitting on the Taylor report, which sought to address the issues, but at the last Queen’s Speech we were told that it was no longer a priority for them. That is scandalous. We need to take a real look at protection for workers and at eliminating zero-hours and other unfair contracts.

Employers are currently able to text four people to say, “The first one here gets the shift.” That has to end. People phone taxis and run out of the house to get there first, spending money as they do so, only to end up as the runner-up and get nothing. That is completely and utterly scandalous. I have included that in my Bill, because we need to address it. We also need to look at flexible working and at strengthening parental, neonatal and miscarriage leave for workers.

SNP MPs have consistently sought to strengthen workers’ rights and have promoted Bills to do so. I commend the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union for its Right to Food campaign. I will welcome that in Glasgow, because it has identified Glasgow South West as one of the constituencies in which it wants to do work. There is much that the Government need to do to address in-work poverty, before it gets even worse.

--- Later in debate ---

[Grahame Morris]

I thank everyone who has participated in the debate. I particularly thank the Minister for his courteous responses to the points put by Labour Members, and I thank the hon. Members for Darlington (Peter Gibson) and for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer), who made some excellent points. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey), for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) and for Wirral South (Alison McGovern). I also thank the hon. Members for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill), for Glasgow East (David Linden), for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens).

Some really good points have been put forward as a critique of existing policies in relation to a raft of things that I hope the Minister has taken note of. We look forward to such issues being addressed in the spring statement.

I conclude by saying that there are young people across this country subsisting on poverty pay with little hope or prospect of home ownership or a decent pension. They are crippled by student debt and long for a standard of living above the breadline. We look to the Government to come up with policies to address that. If the Minister and his colleagues cannot, there are people willing and waiting to take up that challenge.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered in-work poverty.

Regional Inequalities: Child Poverty

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq; thank you very much for calling me early in the debate. I congratulate my good and hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) on securing this important debate. I also thank the North East Child Poverty Commission, which does really vital work and is committed to ending child poverty in the north-east, for providing me with a briefing ahead of the debate.

On the latest data, from 2019 to 2020, the north-east had the UK’s second-highest rate of child poverty, with an average of 37% of all babies, children and young people in our region growing up in poverty, compared with a UK average of 31%. However, I take issue with a point raised by the hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson), who said that there are limited levers and avenues for Government to address these issues. There is a dramatic example today, in relation to social security. There is a statutory instrument on a deferred Division, and the Government have decided that, even though the forecast suggests that inflation will be 7%, they will limit the increase in social security benefits to 3.1%. Clearly, that will have a negative impact on some of the poorest people in our society; it will increase levels of child poverty.

There are also huge regional disparities and variations, but even within our own region there are huge disparities and variations. In my constituency, in the east of County Durham—the same county represented by the hon. Member for Darlington—the average figure for child poverty is in excess of 40%. Nine of the 11 electoral wards in my constituency have child poverty levels above 40%, and 10 of the 11 wards are above the County Durham average. The level in the Blackhall Rocks ward is 48.2%, and in Blackhall Colliery it is 44.2%. The county average is 25.8%. There are 33 electoral wards, out of 63 in the whole county, with a higher proportion of children living in relative poverty than the county’s average. In those circumstances one might expect that Government policy would be to direct resources, following the rhetoric of the levelling-up agenda, to the areas in greatest need, identified as having the highest levels of child poverty, in terms of children in receipt of free school meals and other established measures, but sadly that is not the case. Resources seem to be distributed on the basis of competitions. On the established consensus of using scarce resources to meet the greatest need, I am afraid the Government have broken with that long-standing tradition.

Universal Credit and Working Tax Credit

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

We have before us today a simple motion, and I am a simple kind of guy, so I am going to be quite straightforward in indicating that I will be supporting it. It is supported by a majority of people in this country: my union, Unite, carried out a survey indicating just that. There is, however, a wider debate to be had, though not today, about values and principles. Are we a society that is accepting of homeless people freezing to death on our streets? Are we a society that is accepting of millions of people being reliant on food banks for their next meal? Are we, as a society, prepared to accept that one in three children are receiving holiday hunger hampers in the form of food parcels?

Almost 6 million families are dependent on universal credit, and 40% of them are in work; they are in receipt of in-work benefits. Government Members are accusing Opposition MPs of being partisan, but sadly, the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society only seem to concern the Conservative leadership when they risk bad headlines. Government Members—and that includes the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions—must know the poverty and hardship that will be caused by failing to uprate universal credit.

At the outset of coronavirus, anticipating millions of new universal credit claimants, the Government announced a 12-month £20-a-week uplift. This was not an altruistic gift; it was a political calculation. The Minister said that he welcomed today’s debate. Frankly, I do not expect the Government to change their position today, because the Government will welcome three months of uncertainty and arguing against retaining the uplift. If they were to concede today, the Opposition would have more time to focus on the national scandal of the Government’s covid response. The Government are too busy making political calculations affecting the lives of more than 10,000 people in my constituency of Easington who are in receipt of universal credit.

I expect the Government will U-turn on universal credit, but it will not be today or next week. The Prime Minister should stop playing politics with people’s lives and start governing in the national interest for the good of the country. He should U-turn today, consolidate the uplift and give some security to the millions of people who have been let down by this Government.

The Future of Work

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) on securing the debate. I recognise that there could be no more important subject to discuss in this place. I am pleased that we are able to have this discussion. I will range more widely than our immediate situation, but I will end with a word on where we are and what Government might do.

I will start with a quick scan of what has happened since the last recession. We may be entering a different recession that is happening because demand is being choked off in the economy. The 2008 recession was caused because credit was suddenly cut off and that recession ended quite quickly because the Government and the Bank of England pumped credit into economy. That kept the banks afloat, and through them businesses were able to borrow and stagger on.

The crucial issue is that the great bulk of the money that entered the economy after 2008 fed not into people’s incomes, but into their assets, or the assets of those people who had them. We had 10 years of growth until this year, which is a modern record, but we also had the lowest wage growth for 200 years. Median incomes before covid were still lower than in 2008.

We have had a jobs miracle over the last decade, but these were not jobs as we used to think of them. Two thirds were precarious. I do not mean to criticise the Governments since 2008 that took these steps because things would have been far worse if those steps had not been taken, but we need a different way out of this recession, if we can find one. Most of all, we need to build a better economy that is fit for the times.

The future of work is in large part a debate about automation. I recognise the truth of the claim, that in past times technology has not destroyed jobs but created them, but I do not think that is going to happen this time around to any significant degree. For a start, the new industries that tech is creating are not labour intensive. Some 50 years ago the world’s most valuable company, the telecom firm AT&T, employed 750,000 people. Today’s telecom giant, Google, which is worth about the same as AT&T in today’s money, employs only 55,000 people—less than a tenth of AT&T’s workforce.

Crucially, previous tech revolutions replaced manual labour, which allowed human beings to build new cognitive innovations that created jobs. This time we are seeing cognitive tasks taken over by the machines, not just with clerical work but with projects from design to law and others.

There is a dystopian future, which the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire helped to paint. In that future, inequalities of wealth will get greater. People with assets will get richer and those with the right skills will get more successful. Those without those skills and assets will fight over the low-paid jobs that remain. As Daniel Susskind has shown in his book, “A World Without Work,” many people will find themselves locked out of those jobs by their skills, their attitude or their location.

As the hon. Lady said, this year has accelerated trends that were already under way. The principal victims economically of lockdown have been those in the insecure jobs that have boomed in recent years.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making some important points, but would he accept that there is no inevitability about this, and there is a role for Government? Yes, we need to identify potential growth areas that offer high-skill and high-wage jobs, but we should not simply abdicate from those areas where traditionally we have had a lead, for example in highly-skilled engineering at Rolls-Royce in Derby, and allow those jobs to be offshored, so we lose that potential forever more.

[Danny Kruger]

I agree that there is an important role for Government, both in cushioning the effects of change and in helping to nudge change in the direction where it will be the most beneficial for us all. We cannot stand in the way of what technology is doing to the world of work, but we can definitely make it a more comfortable experience for our people. I agree with that. I shall come to what the Government might do in a moment.

Although there has been an acceleration of many of the dangerous and destructive trends of recent years through the lockdown, we have also had a glimpse of a different future. I was going to say that the danger is having millions of people in forced unemployment, with all the harm that entails. The hon. Member for East Renfrewshire raised the prospect of universal basic income, but I do not believe that we as a species are ready for permanent idleness.

[Danny Kruger]

It may be that we are quibbling over terms, and I recognise and accept that there is a role for Government in subsidising some wages. My concern is that there is danger in the idea that it is possible for Government to provide all the income for all the people, so that they do not have to work—which is, of course, the end result of the proposal for universal basic income.

[Grahame Morris]

No, it is not.

[Danny Kruger]

I think it is dangerous to suggest that it is possible for Government to subsidise all the incomes of all the people. We are fundamentally producers, not consumers. I also think that UBI would lead to inflation, as the income that was passed to people would simply lead into higher costs, so we would need a better management than that.

I have spoken of a dystopian future, but there is also a positive vision. The lockdown has given us a glimpse of that different future for some people. In the future more people will work from home. Fewer people will work at all, in the common sense of the word, for a remote boss in a big corporation or organisation. More of our time will be spent with our families and helping our neighbours, and new resources of care and creativity will be summoned from each of us. The Government might directly subsidise some incomes, but in the future that we want that will not be money for nothing; it will be linked to productive, pro-social creative activity. Of course, that is what we saw for some people during the lockdown. We need it for everyone.

As the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire said, there is a benign scenario in which automation frees up human beings to serve each other, while the machines serve the machine. Let the robots manage the logistics, and we can do what human beings are uniquely capable of, because if there is really nothing in the ordinary way of human work that machines could not do, what is the point of humans? What shall we do in the future? Happily, the answer is obvious. Humans should do what humans are good at—namely the activities of care and creativity.

We are good at looking after each other. Everyone knows from their own lives the foundational need for and value of human help when we are weak, at the start and end of life and at moments of illness or trauma in between. That giving of care might possibly be physically possible for some automation of the near future, but it is unthinkable that we would ever want our children to be nursed by a machine, or a robot to hold our hand as we die. In the new age that we are entering, care will be demanded more than ever, because our societies are ageing. McKinsey reports that by 2030 there will be at least 300 million more people aged 65 and over than there are now. Globally, the number of jobs related to healthcare and social care could grow by 50 million by 2030.

Automation is helping that trend. The duties of hospitality, in retail, cafés, shops, banks and hotels—those are the jobs that human beings are good at. We notice that automation is helping that. Richard Sargeant has written that after the introduction of ATMs—cash machines—the number of bank tellers in the economy rose, because ATMs made the banks more efficient and allowed the tellers, the human staff, to focus on the more complex human role of customer support. If we are good at care, hospitality and customer service, we are also good at creativity. I am talking about art and design, digital innovation, horticulture, philosophy, place making, sport, entertainment and education. We have to use the emergence from the shadow of covid to build back better. That means consciously orienting our economy and our education and skills systems towards those functions of care and creativity. That will require and help to create, as we saw in the lockdown, a more local, family-friendly and environmentally responsible society.

Let me finish on where we are now and the immediate priorities. We recently had a great bust-up in the House on the issue of children in families on low incomes and how they are to be fed in the holidays. We finally reached the right place on that, but I do not deny the role that pressure from Parliament and the media played in getting us there. We got the right result, which is a system whereby alongside more cash for families, which will be delivered in a targeted way through councils, we are enabling more support to be provided through communities. That is the model that we need overall. Yes, people need more cash, and we should consider whether the universal credit uplift should be continued or more flexibly targeted. However, more than money, what we all need is people around us, and that is why I am so passionate about civil society and its role. On welfare, yes to generous universal credit, but I want to put in a word for universal support. The original corollary in the design of universal credit was civil society organisations getting alongside people who were unemployed to support them and their families.

Kickstart is a tremendous programme that the Government have introduced to help young people get into employment at this time. Already 20,000 new placements have been created and 300,000 are due over the coming year. What it enables is more than just a job, which might only be temporary anyway. Crucially, it provides the real social support that young people need to develop the skills, care and creativity that they and the economy need. I urge employers—not just small ones, but large ones as well—to make use of the gateway arrangement, which helps employers to recruit and train young people and to develop the skills that will make them prosper. The future jobs fund, which was a similar programme introduced in 2008, had quite a high drop-out rate, and we need to prevent that.

The activity holiday programme, universal support to help people with employment and beyond, and the gateway system for the kickstart programme are a vision for a better future, so I will end on that point.

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[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) on securing this important debate, and I compliment her on her speech and for acknowledging the important role that the trade unions must play in planning ahead for the world of work. Perhaps the subtitle for this debate on the future of work should be “Building Back Better”. I am firmly convinced that there must be a role for Government in building back better; it cannot simply be left to the markets or a matter of nudging. When it comes to many of the employment practices that we have seen arising from the pandemic, notably fire-and-rehire, the Government must intervene and stop that happening.

I am sure that everyone in this room would agree that whatever the future of work looks like, trade unionism must be at the heart of it if we are to see well-paid, highly skilled and secure jobs not just for ourselves, but for our children and our children’s children. I have been a member of a trade union, and indeed of the Labour party, since I was 16, so an awfully long time now. In fact, I think it is since I was 15—I may have lied about my age.

It would be remiss of me, as chair of Unite the union’s parliamentary group—[Interruption.] Thank you, comrades. It would be remiss of me not to refer to the strike action that Unite members are being forced to take at the Barnoldswick factory, birthplace of the jet engine, where Rolls-Royce is cutting 350 highly skilled jobs and moving the work offshore. It is fair to say that workers at Barnoldswick are cutting-edge, world-beating—quite simply, the best in the business. Those are surely exactly the sorts of jobs that we need to keep, create and encourage, yet Rolls-Royce—sadly, the Government seem to be standing idly by—is sending them abroad, to Singapore, and ironically to a factory that the Barnoldswick workforce helped to set up. They had been given promises that doing so would never put the home site at risk, but that has turned out to be a gross betrayal of loyal staff by Rolls-Royce management.

It is no wonder that Rolls-Royce workers are striking to save the jobs. They are doing so not just for themselves and their families, but for future generations and for their community. The strike, which was completely avoidable, is now set to continue until Christmas eve and quite possibly beyond that. It is not a pleasant experience to be on the picket line at this time of year, when it is cold and dark, but their cause is just.

The workers will not back down, and neither will their union. The jobs are simply too valuable, not just for the workers and their community but for the whole economy. It is a battle—the battle for Barnoldswick—and they must not lose it, because let us be clear that once the jobs go, they will be gone for good. It is an open secret that these 350 redundancies, on top of the 500 that have already taken place over the last two years, would almost certainly spell the end of that historic site. With only about 150 workers left, the site will simply become unviable. It is not overstating the case to say that that would be nothing less than ripping the heart out of the community. It would be an appalling legacy for the iconic Rolls-Royce brand.

The Government should not be sitting on their hands. People should bear it in mind that Rolls-Royce is doing all that while benefiting from billions of pounds of taxpayer support—support that is meant to be keeping jobs in industry going during the pandemic. It gets worse, because specifically the company is set to receive another £50 million of Government funding for producing a new component for the world-beating UltraFan engine, Rolls-Royce’s next generation of green jet engines. But that must be completed by Christmas for the company to get the money. I am told that Rolls-Royce is currently lobbying the Government to give it an extension to that deadline, and Rolls-Royce is blaming covid for the delay, but that simply is not the case; it is the strike that is preventing Rolls-Royce from meeting the deadline. The workers of Barnoldswick assure me that if the dispute were resolved tomorrow or even today, they could produce that part by Christmas, and only the Barnoldswick workers can make the component, so let us be absolutely clear about that. No other factory and no other workforce in the world have the skills to do that, because if it were possible elsewhere, believe me, we can be absolutely certain that Rolls-Royce would be sending that work there. It is ultra-high-end engineering, and it needs the world-beating engineers at Barnoldswick to deliver the goods.

The Government have a very easy way to end this dispute. The have the power to end it tomorrow if they want to. They can simply refuse to extend the deadline for Rolls-Royce, which would mean that it had to get back to the negotiations, take the job cuts off the table and commit to a viable future for Barnoldswick.

In my capacity of the chair of the Unite the union parliamentary group, I have written to the Rolls-Royce chief executive, Mr Warren East, asking him to take a leaf out of the book of the Barnoldswick workers and show some loyalty to Barnoldswick, the community and the iconic Rolls-Royce brand itself. If Rolls-Royce cares about its bottom line—we can all be sure that it does—that should force it back to the table, but time is running out. I want to take this opportunity to express my solidarity with the Rolls-Royce strikers. I once again offer my full support to them in this historic battle for that historic site, and I hope that other Members will offer their support and solidarity too.

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[Mims Davies]

I was coming on to the interventions that we need to make. At DWP, I have introduced a new sub-brand for our jobcentres: “jobs, community, progression”. It feeds into my passion to shape the future of the labour market, to deal with its structural problems and to reflect the breadth of what we do in our jobcentres, so that people understand that they are there for the reskilling and upskilling of individuals.

That is a key priority for us in the next decade and it is applicable not only to individuals displaced by the pandemic. As the hon. Gentleman suggested, it is also to deal with a structural problem in the labour market, to make sure that the occupational skills base matches what is needed in the labour market, so that people are not left behind and we match businesses’ needs. We recognise that this approach cuts across Government departmental boundaries, but we also recognise that collective action is vital when it comes to jobseekers being able to adapt to changes in the workplace.

[Grahame Morris]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mims Davies]

No; if I may, I will make some progress.

My Department is leading a cross-Government steering group, with key responsibilities in terms of gathering evidence to inform the right decision making. We have touched on the issue of skills this afternoon. There will be £3 billion, when the skills fund is Barnettised, to have a national skills fund to help adults to get the key skills for the economy of the future.

Also, as a part of wider Government work, I am working with the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Industrial Strategy to ensure that all our DWP claimants have the skills sought by local employers, so that there is a clear link between the local labour market and employers.

The hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), the Opposition spokesperson, asked for a plan for jobs. We have one—a £30 billion plan for jobs for every part of the country, and for every business, so that businesses can have the confidence through the furlough scheme to retain and retrain staff, and also to be able to hire people by working with DWP and across Government.

We are doing that through the Kickstart scheme, which my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes referred to. This is an incredibly important job creation scheme. It is a £2 billion project that runs through to December next year, so that our young people have the opportunity to get on the employment ladder.

We have our expanded youth offer, including new youth hubs that will bring together all the options that our young people need; sector-based work academy programmes; Job Entry Targeted Support, which will also launch in Scotland in January, is a brand new and targeted support scheme that is already rolling out in England and Wales; we will boost our flexible support fund; and our work coaches are paramount. Conditionality was mentioned earlier. Our work coaches are more empowered than ever to focus on a claimant’s needs and on the challenges they face, to ensure that we have a clear link between our claimants and our work coaches, so that we can support our claimants. We have tailored programmes to help people’s individual circumstances more than ever to make sure that they can get a job and, more importantly, progress in the labour market. The economic outcome will be difficult, but as it becomes clearer, we are targeting our support at the right people and the right areas.

Oral Answers to Questions

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Justin Tomlinson)]

When it is safe to do so, I would love to visit and see the work of RCS. I pay tribute to the great work it is doing in its community. We understand the role of good mental wellbeing and helping individuals into the job market, and in Wales we have provided £1.3 million to test the new individual placement and support. We also provide contracted employment support programmes specifically tailored to disabled people and people with long-term health conditions, as well as administering the Access to Work scheme and the Disability Confident campaign.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

Will the Minister confirm that senior management in the Department for Work and Pensions are suggesting that an additional 31,000 staff are needed to cope with increased universal credit claims? We have heard from Ministers that this week they are reopening jobcentres and reintroducing conditionality and sanctions, at a time when the Department has nowhere near the required number of staff available. Surely this action will heap stress and suffering on claimants and staff alike, so what measures will the Minister introduce to avoid this chaos?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)]

I thank everyone who works in our jobcentres. Our Secretary of State has committed to doubling the number of work coaches. We take an individual focus on our claimants, and we will take a place-based approach to helping people into work. We are actively working with our operations to ensure that this is done safely so that people can get back into work.

Oral Answers to Questions

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Will Quince)]

Advances are an important tool to help the most vulnerable claimants receive the money they need to live on. As part of the application process, proposed repayments and advance payment are explained. All claimants are advised to request a level of advance that is manageable when considering the repayments required.

We have announced that from October 2021 the repayment period will extend to 16 months, but I am very sympathetic to extending it further and am looking at that in detail.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

T6. Evidence from Macmillan Cancer Support shows the availability of home visits for people suffering from cancer and claiming universal credit varies considerably across the country, with some waiting up to a year. Even before the advent of coronavirus, people with cancer should not really have attended a jobcentre if they were undergoing chemotherapy and were at risk of infection. What advice will the Minister give on that? Will he publish the figures on the availability of home visits for universal credit across the country?

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank the hon. Member for raising this issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), who is the Minister with responsibility for welfare delivery, and I regularly meet and work with Macmillan, which is a brilliant organisation. I am disappointed to hear that it feels it is proving too difficult for some claimants to access a home visit. We will take up that matter and look into it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris); I am very grateful to him for proffering me a very effective throat remedy on Thursday.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

2. What recent assessment her Department has made of the (a) accuracy and (b) efficiency of contracted-out health assessments for (i) employment and support allowance and (ii) personal independence payments.

[The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Justin Tomlinson)]

We are committed to ensuring that individuals receive high-quality assessments as part of the suite of evidence that decision makers can use to decide entitlement. Providers are closely monitored against a range of measures, including through independent audit, to improve the accuracy of the advice they provide to decision makers. We continually look to improve the efficiency of the assessment process by working closely with providers.

[Grahame Morris]

I listened intently to the Minister’s response, but my constituent has a series of complex and debilitating medical conditions and had been in receipt of disability benefit since 1994. At 60, when she had expected to retire, the Department for Work and Pensions declared her fit for work. Given that 74% of fit-for-work decisions were overturned on appeal in 2018-19, what confidence can the Minister give my constituent that there is equality and consistency of decisions on work capability assessments and, indeed, that the decision-making process is correct?

[Justin Tomlinson]

We strive to get the right decision first time, but we have to do much more to speed up the appeal process in the minority of cases where that does not happen. That is why we launched a series of pilots in the spring of mandatory reconsideration centres for both personal independent payment and work capability assessment, to ensure that we proactively gather the additional written and oral evidence that is often presented at the end of the independent appeal process, speeding up the process of ensuring that people get the right decision quickly.

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[Will Quince]

I humbly suggest that few Members in the Chamber have raised child and infant mortality more than I have. I take the issue incredibly seriously and I have read that report. No one in government wants to see poverty rising. Wages have outpaced inflation for 18 months, and there are more people in work than ever before. We know that children in households in which no one works are about five times more likely to be in poverty than those in households in which all adults work. Our welfare reforms are incentivising work and supporting working families.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

It is a pleasure to be in the Chamber as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, leading a fantastic Department that serves people from the Shetlands to the Scilly Isles, with more than 20 million customers across the country. In my short time in this role, I have already witnessed at first hand the inspiring and incredible work of civil servants throughout the country, and they are benefiting as well in seeing our employment rate continuing at a joint record high and an unemployment rate at its lowest since the ’70s. There is more to do, however, and I will keep focusing on improving the payment of universal credit and ensuring that we support everyone in society.

[Grahame Morris]

I am grateful for the Secretary of State’s sunny disposition in outlining her priorities, but the retirement plans of millions of women born in the 1950s are in ruins because of a decision by the previous Conservative-Lib Dem coalition Government to accelerate the increases in the state pension age. Last week, a decision in the High Court made it clear that only a political decision could deliver a just solution for these women, so will the Government now give the WASPI women dignity in retirement? Some 197 MPs have signed early-day motion 63 calling for justice for the WASPI women and for this historic injustice to be put right.

[Dr Coffey]

The High Court set out quite clearly that successive Governments had taken a measured approach in recognising the inequality in the state pension age and the need to increase the state pension age. Indeed, it was the Pensions Act 2007 that started the trigger going beyond 65. It is important to recognise that and the efforts made to communicate it, but I can assure the House that, as the hon. Gentleman will be aware, there are record numbers of women in employment. We will continue to support them in fulfilling their careers.

Universal Credit and Debt

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Sir Henry. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George) for securing this debate, and for her excellent speech setting out the issues. In the time I have, it is not possible to repeat the arguments, but it is clear from the experiences hon. Members have related, from all parts of the United Kingdom, that universal credit is not working.

The Trussell Trust is heavily involved in this debate, and it supports the points put by my hon. Friend, particularly regarding the five-week wait. This subject comes up frequently. In both Houses in the past year, there have been 1,858 references, 70 debates, seven written statements and two Divisions on universal credit, yet we do not seem to be any further forward.

The overwhelming majority of experiences quoted in debates and put forward in questions about universal credit are negative. There is no doubt that it is increasing hardship. The Government must recognise the problems being caused. It has been suggested that it is a flexible and personalised system offering unprecedented support, but that is clearly not the case. We need firm action from Ministers, not just assurances about mitigating the worst effects.

In the few seconds remaining, I ask the Minister whether he thinks it is reasonable, when people are facing such dreadful financial hardship, for the Department to spend over £23 million advertising universal credit in a single newspaper, the Metro? I feel that is a shocking waste of money. [Interruption.] I have received a written parliamentary answer from the Department showing that it is true. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on that.

Universal Credit: Managed Migration

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

Payment timeliness may be one of the issues to which the hon. Lady refers. The position has improved. When people cannot receive their full payments at the end of the first period, it is often because we have been unable to obtain verification because no information on housing or childcare costs has been provided, but support is available in the system. If there are individual cases in which the hon. Lady thinks that things have not gone well, she should come and talk to me: I would be very happy to have that discussion.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

Yesterday, during DWP questions, the hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) said that he struggled with online applications, which caused some mirth on the Government Benches. May I pursue the question asked by the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine)? I tabled some written questions about the number of requests for face-to-face assessment interviews. I was told that since March 2015 there had been 144,000, of which only 308 had been home consultations. Can the Minister explain why so few people have been offered home assessments? If he cannot do so, will he conduct an investigation in the Department to find out why so many sick and disabled people are being denied such assessments?

[Alok Sharma]

There are a number of ways in which people can claim universal credit. There is, of course, the online process, and help with that can be provided in jobcentres. There is also the Freephone telephone line, and people can also have appointees. As the hon. Gentleman has said, there are home visits, but, again, I would be happy to discuss the issue with him.

State Pension: Women born in the 1950s

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Alex Burghart]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his lengthy intervention. I am making my own speech and will make my points in the way that I wish to make them, although I am grateful to him for telling me how I should speak.

The major demographic change needed to be addressed. A girl born in 1951 was expected to live to 81, and a boy to 77. By this year, the Office for National Statistics cohort figures showed an increase of more than 10 years for newborn girls and more than 12 years for boys, to 92 and 89 respectively.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), who secured the debate, has indicated that it is not about life expectancy. With due respect, can I mention an issue raised with me by my county council, which is healthy active life expectancy? In many of the constituencies that Opposition Members represent, healthy active life expectancy is considerably shorter than elsewhere. It is 10 years shorter in County Durham than in parts of the south and south-east. Surely we should be relieving the burden on women who are subject to such discrimination and injustice.

[Alex Burghart]

The hon. Gentleman makes a genuinely interesting point about healthy life expectancy, the figures on which should feature more largely in the debate than they often do. I acknowledge that point.

When Lloyd George first brought in the state pension in the Old Age Pensions Act 1908, it was at 70, when life expectancy was considerably lower.

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[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I thank you, Mr Bone, for calling me to speak, and my friend the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) for securing this important and timely debate. It is absolutely essential to keep this issue on the agenda, as it affects every single constituency. Though not as many of my constituents are affected by the change as those of the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Seely), nevertheless 4,542 women in Easington are, and I owe it to them to keep fighting until the Government give them the justice that they deserve.

I want to mention my late constituent, Val Roberts. I have referred to her before. She was a determined campaigner in the interests of WASPI women. As I mentioned in a previous debate, she was left with no alternative but to sell her home and move into private rented accommodation. Sadly, Valerie has passed away, and that has redoubled my determination to see that others receive their due state pension.

We have debated this issue many times in the main Chamber and here in the Westminster Hall Chamber. I pay tribute to the WASPI women for their incredibly active campaign over the years and in particular over the past few months. Early-day motion 63 has been signed by 196 right hon. and hon. Members, including Conservative Members—notably the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley)—and others present such as my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) and the hon. Members for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), while numerous others have also pushed the campaign forward. An e-petition laid before Parliament attracted well over 100,000 signatures, and support for the campaign continues to grow.

My recollection of a previous Westminster Hall debate is that it was so oversubscribed—as this one would have been today but for the Brexit statement in the main Chamber—that Members were sitting on the window ledges, as those who were at the debate will recall. This is a live political issue that will not go away.

[Dr Drew]

Does my hon. Friend agree that part of the reason why the WASPI women are so frustrated is that the Government will not engage with the matter? I do not expect them just to give the money over, but it is time for the Government to have a proper discussion with the representatives of WASPI to see whether there is a way forward. At the moment, there does not appear to be. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is the Government’s fault?

[Grahame Morris]

Absolutely. I could not have put it better myself. I hope, however, that the Minister will come up with some positive solutions to address this terrible injustice.

We have heard that 3.8 million women are affected, many of whom will be driven into poverty and reliance on food banks. That is a disgrace in one of the wealthiest nations on earth. Although the report by Philip Alston, the United Nations expert, has not been greeted with enormous acclaim by Department for Work and Pensions Ministers, we should look at what he says. He talked to various campaign groups, including the Women Against State Pension Inequality. He says that certain women, including the WASPI group, have been affected disproportionately by recent changes in policy, particularly those in relation to the pension age. Philip Alston’s statement on extreme poverty and human rights in the UK showed that in the four years to 2016-17 the number of pensioners living in poverty had risen by 300,000, or 16%. That is despite assurances from the Government that measures such as the triple lock guarantee would ensure that pensioner poverty was a thing of the past.

I mentioned this in an intervention, but it is an important point, which I hope the Minister will address. This is not just about variations in life expectancy—Ministers keep telling us that people are living longer, so in order to make pensions affordable the state retirement age has to be adjusted. There are huge regional variations not only in life expectancy, but in the amount of time that a retired person can expect to live a healthy and active lifestyle. That, too, should be factored into the Government’s calculations.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

Two, three, four or five times the number of WASPI women watching in this room are outside. I pay tribute to them for coming to Westminster, and it is a great shame, as you remarked earlier, Mr Bone, that we could not have had a bigger venue to accommodate them.

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[Grahame Morris]

Absolutely. I applaud the campaigners; they have pressed their case and put pressure Members of Parliament to come up with solutions. I also salute my hon. Friend, who will be addressing a meeting in his constituency on this issue on Saturday.

[Chris Stephens]

Surely we should consider not just life expectancy but work life expectancy. I suggest that is different. In many cases, women do physically taxing work; there is a huge difference between what someone can be expected to do in their working life and their life as a whole.

[Grahame Morris]

That is a relevant point. I hope the Minister and his advisers are noting the contributions being made, because they should be all factored into the calculations.

Women are particularly affected by poverty. Reductions in social care services translate into increased burdens on primary care givers, and that burden falls on women disproportionately. Various reports have indicated that, not least a report last year by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which warned that half a million more people would live in poverty if the Government maintained their existing benefits freeze. The Government have room for manoeuvre and some flexibility. They could have used the windfall to end the benefits freeze a year earlier than planned. Instead, they chose to change income tax thresholds in a way that will help those who are better off and to do nothing to help those in greatest need and in poverty. The poor could easily have been spared from the worst effects of poverty, if the political will had existed.

There are things that the Minister and the Government can do immediately. We are unnecessarily making many women of the 1950s generation rely on food banks; some are being forced to sell their homes and rely on the benefits system. That is degrading for women who have worked all their lives, often in very demanding occupations. If the Minister is looking for suggestions to make an immediate start, he could announce that the winter fuel allowance, which can be worth up to £300, will be paid immediately. If the Government were to give the WASPI women that payment, they would be able to have some level of comfort during the cold winter weather. Many in my region in the north-east will have to choose between heating and eating.

We must recognise the injustice faced by these women, because there have been so many missed opportunities to put their position right. I have no doubt that the Pensions Act 2011 accelerated the changes—many Members mentioned that. The former Pensions Minister Steve Webb, who is quoted extensively, said that he wrote to the WASPI women on behalf of the coalition Government after those changes. He said that he not only informed them about the one-year change in pension age, set out in the 2011 Act, but informed them—many for the first time—about an earlier change that meant that some women’s state pension retirement age was being extended by six years.

I was incredibly disappointed that the Budget did not offer any form of help or relief for the WASPI women. I acknowledge that some Conservative Members made representations to the Chancellor in all sincerity, and I was disappointed that neither he nor the Prime Minister responded sympathetically to them. I understand the Prime Minister is a WASPI woman; I would be curious to know from the Minister whether she received notification from the Department for Work and Pensions about the changes in her pension.

The Government must understand that this is a time-sensitive issue. We are willing to work cross-party to find a solution. If the Government are unable to do that, they will let down a whole generation of women who are being denied a fair deal on their state pension. In my constituency, 4,500 women are affected. The campaign is looking for justice, not just warm words.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) on securing this debate and thank all individual hon. Members for their forthright and impassioned contributions.

The background is well known. The change, announced in 1993, was made for a number of different reasons, notably equality legislation and various cases in the European courts. At the same time, life expectancy and pressures on state spending were being considered. The reality of the present situation is that the number of people receiving a state pension is expected to grow by one third over the next 25 years, and by 2034 there will be more than twice as many people over 100 as there are now. The old age dependency ratio is projected to rise significantly over the next 20-odd years.

Following the passing of the Pensions Act 1995, the actual and projected growth in the pensioner population continued faster than anticipated, due to increasing longevity. As a result, the then Labour Government decided that a state pension age fixed at 65 was not affordable or sustainable. The Pensions Act 2007 was introduced, increasing state pension ages to 66, 67 and 68 years. The coalition Government, as has been explained today, set out further changes in the Pensions Act 2011, which accelerated the equalisation of women’s state pension age and brought forward the increase in men and women’s state pension age to 66, so that it would be completed by 2020. The Pensions Act 2014 then brought forward the increase in state pension age to 67 by eight years, so that it would be completed by 2028, and introduced regular reviews of the state pension age, the first of which was the Cridland review of 2017, to ensure that the system remains fair, sustainable and affordable for taxpayers on an ongoing basis.

There has been much discussion about life expectancy, which I will touch on briefly at this stage. The reality is that since the second world war there have been dramatic transformations in NHS care, in the quality of healthcare generally and in the nature of healthy lifestyles. Cohort life expectancy projections have also been transformed in that time, rising by more than 10 years for individual men and women. By 2018 those figures had increased by more than 10 years for newly born girls and by more than 12 years for boys, to 92 and 89 respectively. It remains the case that women live significantly longer than men. [Official Report, 17 December 2018, Vol. 651, c. 4MC.]

[Grahame Morris]

I wonder whether the Minister might address the issue I raised about not just life expectancy, but the anticipation of a healthy and active lifespan after retirement. Many of my constituents have worked in quite demanding occupations and are physically not capable of further work, which the Minister has previously suggested they should take advantage of. They really need to access their state pension.

[Guy Opperman]

I was going to come to that, but I will turn to that point now. I will deal first with general life expectancy and then with the point on healthy life expectancy.

On general life expectancy, I was going to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), who is no longer in his place; I know we all have other commitments in other bits of the House today. The Office for National Statistics releases period life expectancy by local area of the UK, but not by individual parliamentary constituency. Life expectancy at birth in Glasgow is 73 years for men and 78 years for women, and it has increased by four years for men and more than two years for women since 2001 to 2003; it has increased in every area of the UK over the same period. Cohort life expectancy at birth in Scotland is currently 87 for men and 90 for women, and cohort life expectancy at age 65 in Scotland is currently 19 years for men and 21 years for women.

I turn to healthy life expectancy. The latest ONS statistics show that 65-year-olds in the UK are expected to live over half their remaining life in good health, at 11.2 years for women and 10.4 years for men. Healthy life expectancy as a whole has increased over recent decades, and healthy life expectancy at age 65 as a proportion of total life expectancy has been relatively stable since the year 2000. I apologise that I do not have the data for the specific area of the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), but I am happy to write to him on the specifics. I know his constituency very well; it is down the road from mine. In Scotland, healthy life expectancy at age 65 has increased in recent years. I believe that addresses that point.

I stand here defending not only the Conservative Government but the coalition Government and the Labour Government who were in power for 13 years, as well as the nine different Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions and 11 Pensions Ministers over that time, some of whom are still serving in this House today: the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman); the Deputy Speaker, the right hon. Member for Doncaster Central (Dame Rosie Winterton); and the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper); and various other Members such as the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), all of whom supported the policy changes that took place because of the increase in life expectancy.