Housing Benefit (Under-occupancy Penalty)

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I am going to make some more progress, but I shall be happy to respond further later.

We have engaged actively with a range of advice organisations, including the Chartered Institute of Housing, to develop guidance for social landlords. We have already encountered many examples of social landlords working with tenants to prepare for this change. However, we recognise that certain individuals will face problems, which is why—on top of the £20 million in DHPs that local authorities already receive—we have allocated an extra £30 million. As I have said, a total of £50 million will be available to them to help people who are affected by this policy. I have already mentioned two groups whom they can help: disabled people living in significantly adapted accommodation, and foster carers, including those who need to retain an extra room when they are between fostering placements. I believe that authorities will be able to help about 5,000 foster carers, and about 35,000 wheelchair users living in adapted housing.

There has been some discussion about the position of disabled people. The definition of disability used in our impact assessment is a self-assessment based on a household survey. It should be borne in mind that fewer than a third of the people affected by the policy are receiving disability living allowance. We have also touched on the position of service personnel, and I think that I have reassured the House about that.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The Minister has said that he is considering the rural element of discretionary housing benefit. Last week the BBC reported that the Secretary of State had instructed officials to look into the definition of disability, and the way in which the bedroom tax would be applied to disability. Is the Minister saying that the Secretary of State was wrong and that no instruction has been given to officials, or is he countermanding what the Secretary of State said last week?

[Steve Webb]

Not at all. I am not sure whether the hon. Lady was listening, but I said earlier that we kept this and all other policies under constant review, and that, in particular, we were considering whether the use of the DHP to target vulnerable groups—which is what I think the whole House wants us to do—was being effective in protecting the people whom we all want to protect. We are continuing to work on that, to ensure that we are achieving what we want to achieve.

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[Jessica Morden]

My hon. Friend is right. This is a retrospective hit on people who have lived in their houses for decades.

[Helen Goodman]

The local housing allowance, whether it is for a one-bedroom, two-bedroom or three-bedroom property, is paid at higher rates than housing benefit in the social sector.

[Jessica Morden]

My hon. Friend is right that private rent is higher. I will come to that point later.

Although Monmouthshire Housing Association is getting £121,000 in discretionary housing payments, it forecasts that its rent arrears will be about £225,000. The Government have set a budget without knowing whether it will be sufficient and are hiding behind it when asked difficult questions. That is as callous as the bedroom tax itself.

If there is no social housing and a person cannot afford to stay in their home, renting privately might be the only option. However, it is an expensive one. Given that the stated aim of the policy is to save money, the policy clearly has no logic. Although the Government do not seem to care about the human impact of the policy, they might at least look at this issue. A cursory look at the property in my area illustrates the point. The policy is more expensive, even with a reduced local housing allowance. In the Bron Afon study, every single property in Torfaen is more expensive than housing association properties.

Not only will the policy cost more money; the impact on families cannot be overestimated. It is a profound change that will have profound effects. People will have to move away from family members who provide child care, there will be no help for those who foster and the disabled will be hit yet again.

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[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) and to have listened to this debate. When the nationalists have an Opposition day, it is always a reassurance to those of us who are Unionists, because by their presence in the Chamber they show how much better off we are together than separate. I should like to thank them for their contribution to our parliamentary democracy and hope that they will stay with us for ever.

I am pleased to be able to speak in support of the Government’s position, which is fair, measured and just. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) put it rightly when he said that we have to think about our constituents who want social housing because they have a family and need an extra bedroom, but whom we cannot help because there is a house being lived in by one person, who has too many rooms, and there is no pressure on that person to move. We hear a lot from Opposition Members about fairness for one side of the equation, but nothing about fairness for the other side, which is avoided and cast aside. When housing is controlled by the state, we must be fair to everybody, whichever side of the equation they are on. There are those who have large families, live in small accommodation, or are living in the private rented sector, and cannot get into social housing or council housing because of the problem of under-occupancy, which, we have discovered from the Government, amounts to 1 million bedrooms. Just think how many of our constituents could have better housing if only those bedrooms were freed up.

The Government’s position is also measured, because they have put in discretionary powers to look after people who will be in particularly difficult circumstances. Discretion is very important; the Government have got that spot on. If we were to say that every house that had been adapted in any way for a disabled person were to be exempt, we would find that a property with a little ramp, or one handrail, was suddenly exempt, and the whole policy would be removed. By applying discretion, however, we get the overwhelming majority of the benefit of the policy, without putting a heavy burden on that small number of people who genuinely ought to be exempt and protected. The same applies to the £5 million that has been made available to families who foster. If fostering had a general exemption, everybody in receipt of social housing benefit would suddenly go off to the council and say that they wanted to be on the fostering lists, so that they would not have to give up their extra bedroom, but would then refuse any child who was sent to them. If broad exemptions are used, people will try to fit the categories of exemption provided, whereas using discretion ensures that people must bring forward a reasonable case to encourage those who have the discretion to accept that they ought to be allowed to receive the extra funding to maintain their current position.

The Government’s position is also just, because we must ask ourselves what benefits are for. Are they there to allow people perpetually to remain in dependence on the state—

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman displays a total ignorance of this policy area, and I am sorry about that. First, the bedroom tax applies to people who are in work as well as to those who are out of work. Secondly, it applies to people on benefits who cannot work.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, but even if people cannot work, they can take in a lodger, and can get £20 coming in without any effect on their benefit, so they can be better off, because the average that would be lost for one room is £14. The Government have a policy that makes people who are not in work potentially better off, and those who are in work can also be better off, because they will similarly be able to take in lodgers, but they might be able to move to cheaper housing, which they can afford to pay for themselves, rather than being dependent on the state.

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[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I would be very happy to take in a lodger myself. Indeed, in my earlier life I had lodgers in my house, which helped to pay the bills.

[Helen Goodman]

Would the hon. Gentleman care to share with the House, and with the nation, how large his house is and how many spare bedrooms he has? We are talking about asking women in their 50s, who are suffering from chronic conditions and living in two-bedroom flats, to take in strange men. Is that realistic?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady. It had not been my intention to tell anecdotes about my personal circumstances, but my house in London has four bedrooms with seven people living in it, three adults and four children, so I think that I meet the requirements for maximum occupancy and would not be expected to give up a single room. I am grateful to her for allowing me to illustrate my relatively straitened circumstances, which I had not expected to be able to do.

It is perfectly reasonable for people to live in a house or flat that is suitable for the number of occupants and to ask for that when paying out benefits. Indeed, it is morally right to do so, because every benefit that is paid is money that has come from a taxpayer this year or, through borrowing, will come from a taxpayer in future years.

People pay taxes on very, very low earnings. Even benefit recipients have to pay value added tax, but people click into national insurance at £107 a week of earnings. Are we really saying to those on low earnings, “You must subsidise for ever people who live in houses that are too big for them as their children grow and go and they find eventually that they are the only person there”? Will that same house be funded for ever on the backs of hard-pressed taxpayers, when in fact there is a perfectly reasonable and sensitive way of dealing with the situation that does not throw them out but gives them choice in the form of the ability to decide for themselves what steps they will take to see whether it is possible for them to live there or whether they are willing to move? Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people in this country move house every year, and they do so because their life circumstances have changed. They do not expect the state to say, “We won’t let you move” or “We will prevent you from moving.”

That flexibility is useful. It allows people to move to where there is employment. It allows our hon. Friends the nationalists to move to London so that they can represent their constituents in this great, illustrious Parliament. It is the essential part of ensuring that our economy has a free flow of labour around the country so that people can, in the words of Norman Tebbit, move to where the jobs are. If we have an entirely static housing market we will find that we reduce employment opportunities, undermine growth in the economy, and, worst of all, create deep unfairness for people in large families who can find no social housing and put a burden on the backs of the poorest taxpayers. We should be proud of this Government—proud of a Lib Dem Minister, of all things—for doing what is right, what is noble and what is just.

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[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I had to leave the Chamber earlier to help to launch a document on the links between speech, language and communication needs and social disadvantage. I mention that because one of the document’s key findings is relevant to the debate. When children in the top 25% of cognitive ability from working class backgrounds are tested at the age of 22 months and compared with children in the bottom 25% of cognitive ability from upper middle class backgrounds, we see that the upper middle class children will have overtaken the working class children by the age of 10. That is a result of speech, language and communication issues. I suggest that the dislocation of working class families and communities that these housing benefit changes will cause, through the eviction of parents because their children have grown up, is another example of the targeting of working class people who could do so much better in life and add so much more in terms of tax revenues and so on. They are the ones who will be hit the hardest.

[Helen Goodman]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, based on the speeches we have heard from the Government Benches today, we do not have a selection of people from the middle classes who have overtaken the working classes?

[Geraint Davies]

That is certainly the case. It is disappointing and illuminating that the Government Benches are almost empty this afternoon. Government Members simply do not care about a group of people who they believe will not vote. They see them as people who have failed in life and who will not vote—only 65% to 70% of people vote—so they think that they can treat them like cattle, and that is what they are doing.

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[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I was so shocked when I read what my constituents wrote to me about the implications for them of the bedroom tax, and about how little they would have left to live on, that I decided during the week of the recent recess to see if I could survive on £18 a week, which is what they will be left with to buy their food after 1 April. That figure of £18 is entirely based on the experiences of my constituents, in particular women on employment and support allowance who are about the same age as me, but who had to stop working owing to chronic health conditions, perhaps after 20 years of working life. Out of their £71.70, they have to find £10 for electricity, £20 for heating—gas or coal—£6 for water rates, £4 for bus fares in the case of those who live in villages and have to get to the main town, and £10 for the bedroom tax, which left them with £23 for weekly living expenses.

That £23 has to cover more than food, of course. We did a calculation, and set aside £5 for all the non-food things everyone has to buy—soap, washing powder, washing-up liquid, toothpaste, loo paper—plus a small amount in order to save £50 a year for clothes or a pair of trainers, or in case the iron breaks. That leaves £18.

I therefore took up the challenge of trying to live on £18, and I want to tell Members what it is like. It is extremely unpleasant. I had porridge for breakfast every morning, as I usually do, but I make my porridge with milk; now I was making it with water. I had to eat the same food over and over and over again. Single people are hit particularly hard, because cheap food comes in big packs. I made a stew at the beginning of the week, and I ate the same food four nights a week. I had pasta twice a week. I had baked potatoes. I had eggs on six occasions. It was completely impossible to have meat or fish; that was out of the question. It was also impossible to have five portions of fruit and vegetables a week.

I therefore also have a message for the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), who is responsible for public health. She was criticising people on low incomes for obesity. Of course people on low incomes are more likely to have that problem; they have to fill up on toast and biscuits.

I found myself waking up in the middle of the night absolutely ravenous, having to make cups of tea and eat biscuits. I had a headache for five days in that week, and I was completely lethargic and exhausted by 4 pm. Some people are on jobseeker’s allowance and are looking for a job. Looking for a job is a job in itself; it takes time and energy. The people whom DWP Ministers want to do workfare are being expected to work 30 hours a week, yet they are not going to have enough to eat properly.

Most shocking of all was the fact that come Sunday I ran out of food—there was literally nothing left to eat that night. If Ministers are happy with the notion that 660,000 of our fellow citizens are literally not going to have enough to eat by the end of the week, all I can say is that I pity them because they have no pity and no conception of what they are going to do to the people in our constituencies who will be faced with this bedroom tax.

The Minister has been very free and easy in talking about all these wonderful alternatives, such as the fact that people can move. In my constituency more than 1,000 people will be affected by the bedroom tax, but there are fewer than 100 smaller properties to which they could move. In my constituency, it is not possible for all these people to increase the number of hours they work, as seven people are chasing every job; people are in part-time work because they cannot get full-time work. Government Members have shown their complete ignorance of the benefits system by saying, “You just have to work a couple of hours a week on the minimum wage.” Of course that is not true, because these people would get then into the tapers and the disregards, and their benefits would be cut or they might find themselves paying tax. The numbers simply do not add up.

Of course some individuals or couples have properties that are larger than they need, but the so-called under-occupancy is in one part of the country and the overcrowding is in another. It simply is not credible to suggest that all the large, over-occupying families in London will move up to Durham, particularly given that the unemployment rate there is more than 9%. What would they be moving to? What would they be moving for?

I made a video diary of my week, so I got a lot of feedback from people affected by this policy. Interestingly, they said, “Yes, this is the reality of our lives. We are not able to survive properly now and things are going to get worse to the tune of £10 a week from 1 April.” In 2006, I did the same experiment under the previous Labour Government, living on benefits to see what life was like for young people on the lowest rate of income support. I found that difficult, but there was enough money to get through the whole week. I wish to point out to the Minister that we have reached a new low, because the £21 that people had in 2006 is equivalent to £28 now, and that should be compared with the £18 with which people are going to be expected to feed themselves.

The Minister has made much, too, of the discretionary housing benefits, which many hon. Members have questioned. In County Durham, £5 million of income will be taken out of people’s pockets and out of the local economy. The size of the discretionary fund is half a million pounds, so once again there is a huge gap between actual need and the resources being given to people to deal with it.

Many hon. Members have pointed out the unfairness of the policy for people who are disabled and need to sleep separately, be they adults or children; people who have children in the Army; foster carers; and separated parents. This policy is a fundamental attack on the poorest people in this country. People are going to lose between £500 and £1,000 over the course of next year, through no fault of their own. But the really disgusting thing is that on the same day that the bedroom tax is being introduced millionaires are being given a tax cut that will be worth £1,000—not over the year as a whole, but every single week.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I have known the hon. Gentleman for a long time, and the reality is that none of these decisions is taken lightly by this Government—indeed, any Government. I remind him, however, about all those people who, because of the mess in which the previous Government left the finances, have found themselves out of work or with incomes falling. When he talks about vulnerable people, it is this Government who have increased the pension and made it better for some of the most vulnerable people in society.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Under the current rules, citizens from some eastern European countries are entitled to housing benefit and working tax credit, but not to income-related jobseeker’s allowance. Will the Secretary of State set out for the House what the position of these people will be once universal credit, which will wrap all the benefits up together, has been introduced?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is our intention to try to ensure that under universal credit the loose access to benefits that has been enjoyed by far too many people coming into this country who have no right to them will actually be limited. I will be able to brief the House much better on that as and when we complete the rules on it.

Housing Benefit Entitlement

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Phil Wilson]

It is very distressing, and the point that my hon. Friend raises again about the lack of one-bedroom properties will be starkly set out in the next part of my speech.

Livin, which used to be called Sedgefield Borough Homes, has about 8,500 properties, and about 1,609 of those households will be affected by the bedroom tax: 1,365 households are under-occupied by one bedroom and the remainder are under-occupied by two bedrooms. Livin only has 204 available one-bedroom properties. East Durham Homes—another housing association, which covers the communities of Wingate, Wheatley Hill, Thornley and Deaf Hill in my constituency—has said that it would take seven years for it to re-house all the tenants affected by the bedroom tax. For Livin, the period required to re-house affected tenants would be much longer. Both East Durham Homes and Livin estimate that the bedroom tax would mean that the 2,977 of their households that would be affected would have to find almost £1.8 million from elsewhere to go towards paying the rent on their existing homes, or the people in those households would have to go into arrears or move out, but there are not enough one-bedroom properties.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

My constituency, which is a neighbouring constituency to that of my hon. Friend, is similarly affected. There is another housing association in my constituency, Dale and Valley Homes, and there are a further 875 people affected in this way. Some of those individuals are being pushed to live on as little as £23 a week. Does he not think that that is utterly disgraceful?

[Phil Wilson]

At the beginning of the 21st century, it obviously is. Bishop Auckland, the constituency that my hon. Friend represents, shares some of the statistics regarding Livin, because it covers both our constituencies, and it is concerned because of the proposal that its rent arrears could double from 4% to 8% in the future. In a briefing note prepared by Livin, it said:

“Rent arrears will increase, affecting cash flow, which could mean that the loan facility made available to Livin for improvements and development of the housing stock may be required to fund administration. This could only be considered as a temporary position and Livin would need to readjust its spending to avoid borrowing for ongoing day to day costs.”

I said earlier that the impact of these new rules would be arbitrary on families and communities. Here are a couple of examples. The DWP’s equality impact assessment shows that 66% of claimants who will be affected by the bedroom tax are disabled. Although recipients of disability living allowance are exempt from the overall benefit cap, the DWP has chosen not to exempt them from the bedroom tax.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms]

Those people will lose council tax benefit, and if they are paying rent, they will lose housing benefit. Citizens Advice is right that the effect of the change in the threshold on people in low-income work is very low indeed.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Thirteen pence a week.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend says that the change is 13p week, which is a derisory amount.

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[Charlie Elphicke]

I will in a moment.

It is also unfair on those people who are not in work, because they have no incentive to go and seek work. We need to provide that incentive, not because we want to attack people who are unemployed but because we want to give them every incentive to get work, realise their potential and take the opportunity to do really well in life and be a great success.

[Helen Goodman]

In that case, why does the Bill apply to statutory maternity and paternity leave, adoption leave and sick pay—all those things that are provided for people exactly when they cannot possibly go to work?

[Charlie Elphicke]

As the hon. Lady knows, the principal part of clause 1, which we are discussing, deals with out-of-work benefits. As she also knows, the policy of the Opposition—that uprating should continue according to inflation—and their opposition to this Bill would cost £3.5 billion. Money is tight in this country today. The reason for that is that she and her party drove our economy off a cliff, overspending for years and displaying fiscal incontinence that was unparalleled in this country in the last century.

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[Mr Redwood]

That is where I hope, again, we can try to build a little more agreement. We need to work to avoid that kind of problem.

[Helen Goodman]

rose—

[Mr Redwood]

Let me deal with one intervention and then, of course, I will give way to another.

If we can work to try to prevent that kind of problem from happening again, we might make a bit more progress. My right hon. and hon. Friends have a couple of policies that try to do that. First, they are rightly taking many low-paid people out of tax altogether. I believe in tax cuts for everyone. I do not just want tax cuts for the rich; I want tax cuts for those on middle incomes and low incomes, particularly those at the lower end. The idea of the tax cut for the rich is to get more money out of them; all we are trying to do is get back closer to Labour’s very successful 40% rate, which it kept for almost all the time it was in office. I noticed that its 40% rate collected considerably more revenue than the 50% it bequeathed to the incoming Government, and so it was rather foolish to put in a rate that did not work in taking money off the rich. We are trying to get back to the earlier rate.

[Helen Goodman]

rose—

[Mr Redwood]

I now give way to the hon. Lady, who will now be duly aroused again.

[Helen Goodman]

The right hon. Gentleman clearly did not read the background papers published with the Budget in March, which showed, incontrovertibly, that the amount of money lost by the cut in the top rate of tax from 50% to 45% was £2.5 billion. As he well knows, the only reason why the Government have got cover is because people have been shuffling their income around from one year to another.

[Mr Redwood]

The hon. Lady has chosen the wrong Member to accuse of not reading the Budget papers properly; I am normally accused by my right hon. Friends of reading them too closely. If she read on through those Budget papers, she would see that that top rate led to an almost 10% reduction in the amount of top-level income tax coming in, which is a very foolish position to get into when we need all the money we can get. My right hon. and hon. Friends are very sensible to try to correct that, in order to get more money off the rich. We need more money off them and less money off people at the other end of the income scale. The way to take less money off people at the other end of that scale is to take them out of tax altogether, and good progress is being made in that regard.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who has not stayed for the rest of the debate but who wisely said that it was more sensible to let people keep the money they earn at the low income levels rather than taking it off them through an expensive tax system and then giving it back through an expensive benefits system; by definition, they get back less overall, because we have to charge them a handling charge, as the rich will not pay all the money we need—they pay only quite a bit of it—and so we also have to tax the poor in order to give them benefits, and that can be silly.

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[Andrew George]

I agree with that point and congratulate in particular the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb) on advocating that for many years. He must be pleased. Indeed, I am pleased for him and it is appropriate that that policy is being rolled out. I hope that it will help to iron out the difficulties faced by a lot of people. Having said that, let us see whether it addresses those issues, as I hope it will, when it is rolled out.

If we look back at the principles set out by the Chancellor in the first emergency Budget, we will see that we were clearly told that we were all in it together, that those with the broadest shoulders would bear the greatest burden and that the vulnerable would be protected. Those are the principles against which we must measure the Government. We all have different views on where the lines should be drawn with regard to achieving those objectives, and that is where we get into specifics such as those in the Bill.

It would be a kamikaze mission for me to begin a debate—I am only seven minutes into my speech—by asking my hon. Friend the Minister, for whom I have the highest respect this: what on earth does he know about benefits? He is highly regarded in that sphere. He is respected considerably by people and, indeed, by his political opponents—and rightly so—for what he has achieved. I think we would have ended up with something a great deal worse had he not been in his position.

[Helen Goodman]

Before the hon. Gentleman began on his paean of praise for the Minister, I thought he was making a very good case about the situation in west Cornwall and the difficulties faced by people on the margins of the labour market. That being so, when it comes to the vote will he and his colleagues who tabled amendment 10 vote against clause stand part?

[Andrew George]

I am sure that my right hon. and hon. Friends will make up their own minds on that issue. I do not speak for them, but I have made it clear that I will vote against the Bill as it stands, because I do not think it addresses the fundamental concerns that I have enunciated elsewhere.

To return to congratulating my hon. Friend the Minister on his achievements, my beloved coalition colleagues may not like what I am about to say—[Hon. Members: “Don’t say it!”] Having listened to what has been articulated by those in the Conservative party in recent months, we have to acknowledge what would have happened had my hon. Friend and, indeed, the Liberal Democrats not been in the coalition Government. First, we have to question whether we would have had the increase in the personal tax allowance, on which I congratulate the coalition Government. The Conservatives made it quite clear that they wished not only to freeze benefits altogether but to do so for six years, so we would not even be getting a 1% rise. There would have been a wider impact on pensioners and the disabled, which would have been significant. Child benefit would have been constrained, as well as being cut from families with more than two children.

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Thinking back to the awful events that the Prime Minister was describing in this House a few hours ago before this debate, if the Ministry of Defence ever committed itself to a course of action without some sense of a contingency there would be great criticism from across the political spectrum. As drafted—which is why the amendment is so important—the Bill will commit the Government, and beyond what can be the lifetime of this Government and this Parliament, to a course of action for which there is no contingency. That is not a social, political or economic blank cheque that those of us who put our name to this amendment, and who will vote for it, wish to extend.

[Helen Goodman]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy), who made some telling points about the problems with the Bill.

I rise to speak in support of amendment 12, moved by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms). The proposals to cut the real income of the poorest are ugly and unjust. I am pleased that the Secretary of State is in his place on the Front Bench. He frequently parades his Christian beliefs, so I shall begin by quoting from the Churches Regional Commission report, “Am I My Brother’s Keeper?”, which states that the switch in indexation

“represents an on-going erosion…effectively ratcheting up poverty long into the future.”

By 2015, the effect of 1% indexation compared with indexation in line with the CPI to a person on JSA or ESA will be a loss of £156 a year; that is a 4% cut in real terms for those least able to afford it. If the Office for Budget Responsibility’s inflation forecast is wrong, the situation could be even worse.

As we consider the Bill we need to look across at all the changes that the Government are making—we cannot look at this measure in isolation. To see the impact it will have on people, we need to look across the board. I now receive a lot of correspondence from constituents on ESA, who are particularly badly hit. I want to tell the House about one person. Her £66 a week rent is paid by housing benefit. In April, her benefit will go up to £71.70. Out of that, she pays £10 a week for electricity, and £6 a week for water rates. Like many of my constituents, she still uses coal for heating, and three bags of coal—just to inform the Minister, because I do not suppose he is up with coal prices—will cost her £19.50 a week. Her return bus fare to the town—she lives in a village—is £4 a week, and her bedroom tax is £9.24 a week. All of that will leave her with £22.96 for food, cleaning, all household goods and clothes. I submit that even the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) could not live on £22.96 a week. If he actually considered the sums of money that ordinary people will be expected to live on, he would understand the outrage we on this side of the House feel at the continuous erosion of the social security net.

[Richard Graham]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way after her passionate outburst. Yes, of course I share her concern about people on not very much money. My issue with the speech made by the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) was his assumption that we were talking about people earning £35,000 a year. I do not think he understands that the average wage in my constituency is less than £25,000. We are talking about young nurses—people whose salaries are capped and who are seeing people on benefits get significantly larger increases. That is the issue at stake this evening.

[Helen Goodman]

I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman evidently does not understand the Bill. He evidently does not understand that people on those low wages will also lose out through the cuts to working tax credits and housing benefit. In fact, the whole point about the Government’s strategic, political mistake is that more people in work will lose out from the Bill than those who do not work. Furthermore—if he will allow me to do a little more arithmetic for him—a person currently on ESA will get a 70p increase in April, but a person earning £25,000 and receiving a 1% increase will get a £5 a week increase. Can he not understand that 70p is quite a lot less than £5?

[Richard Graham]

rose—

[Helen Goodman]

I am not going to give way to the hon. Gentleman again, because other Members want to speak.

I want to address the Minister. When, in the previous Parliament, we introduced the Bill that became the Child Poverty Act 2010, he gave a great deal of evidence from the Family Budgeting Unit in York and the people at Loughborough about the minimum income standard—the minimum income guarantee. He said that what the Labour Government were doing was absolutely shameful and that benefits were not high enough. Now, however, we see that he is prepared to cut benefits in a way that we never did. The testimony to the great success of this Government’s benefit policy is the expansion in the number of food banks: in Durham last year, the food bank fed 4,455 people, of whom 1,390 were children. That is utterly shameful. To demonstrate that it is not possible to live on £22.96 a week, I am going to try to do so during the February recess. Neither I nor, I believe, any other hon. Member seriously believes that they could live on £22.96 a week. We have to look at this in context.

The Bill is unjust because it is simply not fair in the treatment of people in work and those out of work, and the treatment of people on high incomes and people on low incomes. When the dole was introduced in 1912, it was approximately a fifth of average earnings, and so it stayed until 1979, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) said. By 1989, it was 15.8% of average earnings; by 1997, according to the House of Commons Library, it was 13.2%; and by 2015, it will be 11.1%. It is absolutely clear that the Government are trying to take it back to the very lowest point at the very bottom of the recession, irrespective of the impact on people’s normal standards of living. Everything the Prime Minister has said about those with the broadest shoulders bearing the biggest burden is seen to be utterly empty and fallacious when the Government introduce such a Bill.

There has been an ugly attempt to divide the poor between the “deserving” and the “undeserving”—taking us back to the 19th century—between sheep and goats, between strivers and shirkers, and between with those with their curtains closed and those with their curtains open. In my constituency, if people’s curtains are closed at 9 o’clock in the morning, it is probably because they are on nights and they are trying to catch up with their sleep. The Churches Regional Commission states that

“of all the words to describe those who depend on welfare, “feckless” has to be the one that rankles most.”

This attempt to divide has failed, however, on the factual ground that two thirds of those affected by the Bill are in work. The housing benefit and tax credit changes will affect far more people.

The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), who unfortunately is no longer present, tried to tell us that these changes will improve work incentives. As the noble Lord Freud said in the other House,

“there is an inevitable trade-off between the level of benefits and incentives to work. Raising benefit levels would undoubtedly hamper the work-incentive”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 13 October 2011; Vol. 730, c. GC498.]

Obviously, that is setting to one side the fact that in order to work harder the poor must be made poorer, but the rich can be made richer.

Let us look at the impact of the changes and the context. In my constituency, 7,200 people will lose out as a result of the Bill, by an average of £500; that will take £3.5 million out of the local economy. If the International Monetary Fund is correct, the second round effect will be even greater, at £4.5 million, so the net upshot is an £8 million loss to the economy of my constituency. It is no wonder shops are closing and small business are folding. That is absolutely illogical, and it goes against what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said about the need to let the fiscal stabilisers work.

[Andrew Bridgen]

The hon. Lady talks of her concern for the poor, and it is shared by right hon. and hon. Members on the Government Benches. The problem is that every time her party gets into office, its policies create more of them. Can she explain why the number of adults out of work for more than 24 months doubled in Labour’s last term in office?

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman]

Yes, I can. It is absolutely obvious: we were in the middle of a very deep recession, which the hon. Gentleman seems conveniently to have forgotten. Of course the number of unemployed people has gone up, but the previous Labour Government helped all sorts of other people back into work—365,000 lone parents, for example. If he would care to look at a map of where incapacity benefit and ESA claimants live, he will see that it looks like a map charting the industrial revolution in the 18th century. Those benefit costs clearly reflect the overhanging legacy of the decline of heavy industry. It is totally unreasonable and unfair to punish the people who happened to work in heavy industry.

Once again, we come to the issue of unemployment. We in the north-east have the highest rate of unemployment in the entire country—9.9%. We have seven people chasing every job vacancy. Whether the gap between the increase for a person on £25,000 a year and the increase for a person on JSA is £4.30 or £4.20 will make no material difference to people’s capability or willingness to find a job, which is why we need a completely different approach to job creation. My constituents want to go back to work.

[Richard Graham]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Helen Goodman]

No, I will not. The hon. Gentleman will have a chance to make his own speech. Many hon. Members have given way to him in the course of the debate.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has broken another promise he made in 2011. He said:

“I also want to protect… those who, through no fault of their own, have lost jobs and are trying to find work”.—[Official Report, 29 November 2011; Vol. 536, c. 802.]

He is patently failing to protect those people. By definition, people on statutory sick pay, statutory maternity pay, statutory paternity pay or statutory adoption pay are not going out to work, but they, too, are seeing their incomes fall, and that is at a time when they have new children coming into the family and need more support.

[Mr Marcus Jones]

The hon. Lady talks about the difficult decisions the Government are having to make, but she does not acknowledge the fact that from the time the Government came into office to 2016, the child element of working tax credit will actually go up by £470 in cash terms.

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but the point I am trying to make is that we have to look at the cumulative impact of all the changes. If he looks at the tax and benefits micro-simulation model produced by Her Majesty’s Treasury, he will see that everybody in the bottom half of the distribution is a loser, but those people between 50% and 80% in the distribution are gainers. Therefore, he can understand that although the change to child tax credit—we will discuss it under the next group of amendments—might be very welcome, it is not doing the business because of the severity of the Government’s other reductions.

The hon. Gentleman has raised the issue of child poverty, and there is one specific question I wish to ask the Minister and that I hope—

[Steve Webb]

rose—

[Helen Goodman]

Let me ask the question before trying to answer it. We have heard that the IFS has estimated that by 2015 the number of children in relative poverty will increase by 400,000. Furthermore, the Bill will push another 200,000 children into relative poverty. The Minister knows that we had four measures in the Child Poverty Act 2010. What will be the increase over the life of this Parliament in the number of children living in absolute poverty?

[Steve Webb]

I will respond very fully on the issue of child poverty, which a number of hon. Members have raised. I wanted to ask the hon. Lady about the point she made about incapacity benefit. She said that if we look across Britain, we will see that incapacity benefit is highest in all the industrial heartlands. I hesitate to bring her back to the Bill, but is she aware that we are actually proposing to increase the main rate of incapacity benefit fully in line with inflation?

[Helen Goodman]

Yes, but the hon. Gentleman knows that his own impact assessment demonstrates that the Government’s claim that they would protect all people with disabilities is not accurate. I am disappointed that he did not answer my question about child poverty. I do not know whether that is because he does not know the answer or because he is ashamed of it. Perhaps he can explain when he winds up the debate.

[Mr Reid]

I want to speak in support of amendment 10, to which I am a signatory. It is important to set the debate in context. In 2010, the Government inherited an economic mess from the previous Government, including a huge budget deficit, which is why difficult decisions have to be taken. It is important to remind the Committee that just before the previous Government left office, for every £3 they raised, they were spending £4, so borrowing was going up and up. It was interesting to listen to the opening remarks of the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms). There was a lot of sound and fury, but little actual policy. In fact, Labour’s amendment would replace the 1% in the Bill with a blank space. Labour does not seem to have any policy at all. His remarks seemed to indicate that the policy, whatever it is, would cost a lot. I think that Labour’s policy of borrow and spend is still in place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bain]

I would welcome any measures from any tier of Government that would increase the level of training and skills provided to my constituents and those in other Scottish constituencies. I have to say to the hon. Lady, however, that I have two major colleges in my constituency—North Glasgow college and John Wheatley college—which have seen staggering levels of cuts introduced by the Scottish Government. That is driving more young people in my constituency into unemployment and creating the very figures that allow those on the Treasury Bench to produce measures such as those in clause 1.

Even in constituencies such as mine, it is still the case that people move in and out of unemployment. The calculated framing of this debate by the Government, based on the fabricated and manufactured premise that there is a monolithic army of the permanently idle, unwilling even to open their curtains, and defrauding the system, wilfully ignores that fact. Fraud in the benefit system is only 0.7%, and many unemployed people, including many of my constituents, are struggling hugely on just £71.40 a week. Unemployment benefit as a proportion of average income has fallen from 22% in 1979 to a mere 15% now, so the argument from those on the Treasury Bench that unemployment benefit is somehow unaffordable and that it cannot continue into the decades to come is simply a false premise to put to the Committee tonight.

[Helen Goodman]

Would my hon. Friend like to point out to Government Members that, in the days when jobseeker’s allowance and its predecessors represented a higher proportion of earnings than now, we also had lower unemployment?

[Mr Bain]

That is absolutely right. We also had lower levels of long-term unemployment than we have now. As I and other Members have pointed out, high levels of long-term unemployment decrease the earnings potential of the people afflicted by that social evil.

Only today, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published a survey of poverty in Scotland which revealed that a baby boy born in the richest 10% of Scottish neighbourhoods has a life expectancy 14 years higher than that of a baby boy born in the poorest 10% of such neighbourhoods. Having a 4% real-terms cut in unemployment and other out-of-work benefits of the sort contained in clause 1 is going to make those figures in Scotland even worse. I urge the Government to think again, to accept amendment 12 and to reduce the terrible social damage that will be caused if this measure becomes law.

I hope that, at this eleventh hour, the Government will decide to make policy on the basis of evidence, rather than reintroduce some Victorian distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor. I urge them to think again about the impact that clause 1 will have, ensuring that 90% of those in out-of-work benefits will, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, be an average of £215 a year worse off. They should consider the effect that will have not just on high streets in our towns, villages and cities but on the local shop. They should think about the amount of economic demand that will be taken out of local communities, the jobs that will go as a result of the passing of this measure in this form tonight.

The Government ignore the inconvenient truth that out-of-work benefits constitute just 3% of the welfare budget, and that outside of pensions, most welfare spending ensures that work pays for many of our citizens. Nearly three in 10 of my constituents earn less than the living wage of £7.45 an hour. Although introducing a living wage in those parts of the economy where it will work would save money in lower tax credit costs, we, like many other countries, need a strong tax credit system to reduce imbalances within the labour market that would otherwise cause unacceptable levels of inequality. The simple truth is that most poverty in Britain today is among the working poor. It is mainly the working poor who are losing out as a result of these measures. They will be the biggest victims if this iniquitous Bill were to become law, with a real-terms 4% cut in their living standards.

In Scotland, as a result of these measures, some 261,000 working families, nearly one in five, would lose an average of £259 a year by 2015—the antithesis of work paying for those 261,000. About 70% of the tax credit cuts will affect working families in Scotland. The median wage in my constituency is less than £17,600 a year, and many thousands of people will be savagely hurt by clause 1, as Citizens Advice outlined in its submission. A couple on just £13,000 with two children will lose nearly 5% of their income as a result of this Bill, completely overwhelming any benefit from increasing personal tax allowances, which is worth just 13p a week to them.

This debate is not just about the measure before us; it is a debate about the values of this Government and the priorities of our society. This Bill impoverishes the poor, without reducing the deficit; it makes inequality worse, adding 200,000 to the child poverty figures, leaving 1 million more children in poverty by 2020. This clause is a provision that will cause enormous hardship to some of the poorest people in society, and it will devastate economic demand in constituencies such as mine. I urge the Committee to endorse amendment 12 and to vote against clause 1.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

It is not only fair, but common sense. The Labour cash merry-go-round, when Labour was taxing people with very low earnings and then handing back the money in the form of benefits, did not provide a sustainable model. The measures that we have introduced have been far more effective in reducing—[Interruption.] I wish I could share the joke, but I have more important matters with which to deal.

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman can share the joke. I was just wondering whether he was going to tell the House that the banking collapse had been caused by working tax credit.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I have my own ideas about the banking collapse, which I am happy to share with the hon. Lady—although not, perhaps, tonight.

The financial crisis, which we all remember, devastated everyone. Even today, the United Kingdom economy is 3% smaller than it was in 2008. I cannot speak for everyone in the country, but the vast majority of people are much less well-off than they were in those days. What has happened to benefits since then? According to the figures that we have heard, they have increased by 20% while the earnings of people in work have risen by 10%. That is not fair.

Labour Members have talked of fairness. For instance, the hon. Member for Chesterfield argued eloquently that 1% on £70 a week was very different from 1% on £35,000 a year. However, it is not the people on £35,000 a year about whom we are worried; it is the people on very low incomes. People in my constituency who do night shifts at Heathrow come to me and ask “Why did out-of-work benefits rise by 5% last year? I earn £11,000 a year if I am lucky and work 20 hours a week, but I was not given such a big increase.” That is the sort of fairness that we are talking about. This is a really important issue, which Opposition Members have not addressed in any way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Webb]

I will not give way; I would like to respond to what has been said in the past four hours before taking further interventions.

A number of my hon. Friends asked perfectly reasonably about why we needed to set out in legislation exactly where we were going. We all want our constituents to continue to enjoy, for example, the low mortgage rates that are absolutely crucial to their standard of living. We all know that for those of our constituents in the position of owning their own homes, the mortgage is their biggest single outgoing by a long way. It is vital, therefore, that we keep interest rates under control.

[Helen Goodman]

Not at the moment, it’s not.

[Steve Webb]

But that is kind of the point—not at the moment, because we have kept interest rates under control.

Why is that necessary? Let me share what the International Monetary Fund’s “World Economic Outlook” said as recently as October 2012:

“To anchor market expectations, policymakers need to specify adequately detailed medium-term plans for lowering debt ratios, which must be backed by binding legislation”.

That is the important point. Were we to go year by year, seeing how it went, we would not have the credibility of deficit reduction to which all of us who signed up to the coalition agreement are committed.

Likewise, the OECD’s economic outlook said:

“The government’s fiscal policy stance and strong institutions have secured the confidence of financial markets, as evidenced by the near record-low government bond yields.”

In other words, this is for a purpose—the purpose of tackling the vast, sprawling deficit. To give a sense of scale, my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) was absolutely right when he said that in the final year of the previous Labour Government, for every £3 raised in tax, £4 was spent. What did that add up to? We are talking about a Bill and related measures that will eventually save about £3 billion a year. Labour was borrowing £3 billion a week, so we would need, say, 50 of these Bills to tackle just one year of Labour borrowing. That is the scale of the situation. When Labour Members airily take the moral high ground and pretend that there is a free lunch to be had—that we do not have to do this or make all the other cuts, but that somehow the deficit will disappear—we need to remind people that these are Labour cuts tackling Labour’s deficit.

People should not just take my word for it regarding the need to include social security as part of deficit reduction. Clearly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) said, this is not comfortable stuff, and it is not something that any of us take any pleasure in. However, the IFS has said this about why social security is part of the mix:

“When cutting public spending dramatically to help reduce an unsustainable budget deficit”—

that is the IFS’s language, not mine—

“it is almost inevitable that spending on benefits and tax credits—which account for 30% of the government’s total budget—will be targeted.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Webb]

It is, I suppose, possible that had Labour won the last election the eurozone crisis might never have happened, and I grant it is possible that world commodity prices might not have gone up. It is possible that all sorts of things might have happened, but in the real world we live in a global economy. Of course things have been more difficult than we expected. That is why we must tackle the situation, not just borrow more money.

Let me offer my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives further reassurance about what will happens if inflation rises—an important issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute. Our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change is actively seeking to ensure, for example, that low-income constituents get the best energy tariff they can, rather than what they currently pay. Evidence shows that the people most likely to shop around, switch and be online are not on the whole the most vulnerable customers, so we are ensuring that the most vulnerable customers, who may not take advantage of those lower tariffs, get access to them. I believe that will make a real difference.

More broadly, my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives asks what would happen if inflation ran away, but the Government would not sit idly by and watch—we have various measures available to us to respond to that. The OBR’s forecast for CPI is lower for 2015 than it is now. It is, of course, a forecast, but we will not simply let inflation rip. If we do not commit now to firm targets on where we are going, the OBR will not sign them off, they will not appear in our spending plans and the market will not believe us. If the market does not believe us, interest rates will go up as will the mortgages of our constituents who will have less spending power—where?—in the local economy, which is exactly where everybody has said they want to see demand. There is a knock-on effect from all those things, and the failure of the Labour party to suggest an alternative is shocking.

Let me respond to one or two other points raised during the debate. The hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) made a point about percentages being meaningless, but as I have said, from a £200 billion budget those percentages make a great deal of difference. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham made some powerful points. He said that we need to keep inflation down—I have given some examples of how we want to do that—and mentioned the need to get jobs going, which we agree with.

The Labour party seems to be saying that if we adopt its policies, somehow the jobs would flow, but what have we heard about that today? Funnily enough, we have heard almost nothing about the whizzo scheme that was so good when Labour tried it in office as a pilot that it never actually saw it through. Somehow the scheme is supposed to find £3.5 billion of savings, but that is fantasy land. It was a fig leaf rushed out over Christmas so that Labour had something to say because it realised it was on the wrong side of the argument.

There has been some discussion of child poverty and it is important to address that issue in the final few minutes of the debate. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that when looking at a Government’s impact on child poverty, we should look at their policies in the round. Clearly, the single biggest thing that we will do to tackle child poverty is the universal credit introduced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. That is designed to make work pay and to take children and adults out of poverty. As soon as we are able to bring it in—starting later this year, which is a great achievement—we will start to see its impact.

I was asked for predictions about child poverty, but let me point out the paradox that we have published a set of figures that relate to this Government. Those figures show not a rise in child poverty but a fall of 300,000 according to the measure of child poverty that is the key target of the Child Poverty Act 2010. We have not gone round television studios saying, “Aren’t we great, we’ve got child poverty down?”, because the main reason child poverty fell was a recession that meant average incomes fell. It would have been absurd for us to trumpet a triumph on child poverty when children were apparently lifted out of poverty because incomes had fallen. That is perverse.

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) asked what the figures will be at the end of the Parliament. For a start, there has been a 300,000 improvement, for which we will not claim any credit, and the universal credit policy will help. Of course, taking money off benefits moves things in the other direction, but overall we are moving things in the right direction, not the wrong one.

[Helen Goodman]

As the Minister knows very well, my question was this: what are his figures on absolute poverty?

[Steve Webb]

The hon. Lady will know perfectly well that the Labour Government never forecast poverty rates. She was a Work and Pensions Minister with—if I remember rightly—responsibility for child poverty, and never once forecast poverty rates, but in opposition she suddenly believes that this Government should do so. We will publish the annual figures that show the effects of all our policies and the state of the economy. That is what the public want to see.

Another question that resonates with my hon. Friends in the Liberal Democrats is why we are taking money off poor people and giving it to rich people. That is a summary of what was said. I worked for the IFS for nine years and have the highest regard for it, but, to be clear, when the IFS does its numbers, it does not count almost all the taxes on the rich we have introduced—it cannot, because it uses household surveys, to which the rich do not, on the whole, reply at all, partly because they are too busy salting their money away in Swiss bank accounts. [Interruption.] Not any more—we have tackled Swiss bank accounts to the tune of several billion pounds. We have increased the main rate of capital gains tax to 28%, which is a substantial increase.

The Labour party focuses on the wages of millionaires as if millionaires are those who earn a £1 million wage. However, millionaires on the whole are folk who have capital gains and properties. They pay stamp duty. They try to avoid paying tax, but we have been cracking down on that, and there is a further clampdown on pension tax relief. The vast majority of those gains for the Government are not counted in the IFS figures. The overall impact is that we are taking far more from the rich than Labour ever would have done. I can therefore assure my right hon. and hon. Friends that this is not a question of taking money from the poor when we could take it from the rich. Even the Budget that reduced the higher rate of tax from 50% to 45% raised many times more in other measures. As we have heard during the course of the debate, the 45p rate, which Opposition Members tell us they find morally repugnant, is 5% more than the Labour Government levied in 13 years.

Amendment 12 would create a vacuum instead of a policy. It would give us no credibility in the financial markets and drive up interest rates when we want to keep them low. Amendment 7 would reinstate the RPI, which even the official statistician says is not up to international standards, and cost £2.5 billion a year compared with the Government’s plans. I have no doubt that amendment 10, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives, is well-intended, but unfortunately it would tie the Government in to an above-inflation increase in 2015-16. The Liberal Democrats would not choose that as a priority, but I can assure him that the Bill, on top of the decisions the Government have made to prioritise the poor, will mean that benefits will rise in line with earnings over the period since the financial crisis. My hon. Friend wants that through his amendment, and that is what we will deliver through the Bill.

I therefore urge the Committee to reject the amendments and support the Bill.

Atos Work Capability Assessments

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) on securing this very important debate.

Over 5,000 of my constituents are on incapacity benefit or employment and support allowance and they are facing this terrible system. I should like to give a few examples. Mr H, a double-leg amputee, was told to undertake an 80-mile round trip for his work capability assessment. Mr W, who has serious mental health problems, had a panic attack and was physically sick during his WCA but was told he was fit for work. His wife believes that he is being victimised by Atos. Mrs D, a district nurse who broke her back at work, was told that she is fit for work. Mrs M, who was treated for cancer in July 2010, was deemed fit for work before the results of the operation came through. Her appeal will not take place until next month. Mr E, who is one of the people the RNIB is worried about, had been completely blind for 16 years and forced to give up work, but was told by Atos that he was fit for work.

As the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), has said, we need fundamental reform of the system, including the descriptors. There are problems with the descriptors not only for mental health but for physical health, in every category. I will read out the conditions that have a score of 9, which means that people with all these conditions are deemed capable of going to work. A person who

“Cannot mount or descend two steps unaided by another person even with the support of a handrail”

is deemed fit for work; a person who

“Cannot, for the majority of the time, remain at a work station, either…standing unassisted by another person…or…sitting…for more than 30 minutes, before needing to move away in order to avoid significant discomfort or exhaustion”

—fit for work; a person who

“Cannot pick up and move a one litre carton full of liquid”

—fit for work; a person who

“Cannot use a pencil or pen to make a meaningful mark”

—fit for work; a person who

“cannot use a suitable keyboard or mouse”

—fit for work; a person

“Unable to navigate around unfamiliar surrounding, without being accompanied by another person, due to sensory impairment”

—fit for work; a person

“At risk of loss of control leading to extensive evacuation of the bowel and/or voiding of the bladder, sufficient to require cleaning and a change in clothing, not able to reach a toilet quickly”

—fit for work. And only scoring 6, a person who

“At least once a month, has an involuntary episode of lost or altered consciousness resulting in significantly disrupted awareness or concentration”

—also fit for work. As the RNIB points out, it is possible for a person to have an epileptic fit once a fortnight and be deemed fit for work. As it happens, Mr Deputy Speaker, my husband suffers from epilepsy, and last time he had an epileptic fit he had the headache and the hangover for several days, so the notion that anybody can do a job if they experience this once a fortnight is completely absurd.

Also supposedly fit for work is someone who

“Cannot learn anything beyond a simple task, such as setting an alarm clock”,

or whose

“Reduced awareness of everyday hazards leads to a significant risk of…injury to self or others; or…damage to property or possessions such that they frequently require supervision”.

The situation is not even safe for their colleagues, but somehow they are deemed fit for work. The same applies to someone who

“Cannot cope with minor planned change”,

such as a change to lunchtime, or a person who

“Is unable to get to a specified place with which they are familiar, without being accompanied by another person.”

A person in the following category is also deemed fit for work if:

“Engagement in social contact with someone unfamiliar to the claimant is always precluded due to difficulty relating to others or significant distress experienced by the individual.”

This is a cynical exercise and Ministers know it. In the current situation, none of those people are ever going to find work. It is a cruel and demeaning system and it should be changed now.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)]

I also congratulate the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) on securing this helpful debate. It gives me the opportunity to address some of the concerns expressed on both sides of the House about this process.

“For too long, too many long-term sick and disabled people have been written off by the welfare system to a life of dependency, entirely reliant on benefit and devoid of experience of the labour market.”—[Official Report, 9 January 2007; Vol. 455, c. 246.]

Those were not my words, but the words of the right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy) when he was employment Minister on Third Reading of the Welfare Reform Bill in January 2007. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) was a DWP Minister at the tail end of the previous Government, so I am sure she made her concerns known at that time to her ministerial colleagues—or perhaps not. This measure was introduced by the previous Government. The argument of the right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire was right then, and it is right now.

[Helen Goodman]

Government Members are constantly asking Opposition Members to say sorry. Actually, about the way this has run, I am sorry.

[Mr Hoban]

I welcome the hon. Lady’s candour. It would be good if more of her colleagues expressed similar candour.

One aspect of the Welfare Reform Act 2007 that has been referred to frequently throughout the debate is the establishment of the independent annual review. The last three have been undertaken by Professor Harrington, a distinguished occupational physician. What evidence has he put forward? In his first report, he stated that he did

“not believe that the system is broken or beyond repair”.

In his second report, he noted that the WCA had

“noticeably changed for the better”,

and in his third report, he said that

“real progress has been made”

and stressed that

things are beginning to change positively in the best interests of the individual.”

It is important not to lose sight of that.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is interesting that the hon. Lady raises that point, because under the Labour Government, tax credits absolutely boomed. In 2005, there were increases of 58%. Overall, there were 340% increases in tax credits, 70% of which goes to child tax credits. The hon. Lady says that tax credits should continue to rise, but she can make that argument in due course.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State admit that the social security budget is going up on his watch because unemployment is rising faster than his colleague expected?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Never let a good fact get in the way of a good argument. Unemployment is falling, youth unemployment is falling, more women are in work than ever on her watch, and long-term unemployment is flattening out. The reality, therefore, is that we have better employment figures—there are 1 million new private sector jobs, which outweighs the public sector jobs we have had to get rid of. The reality is that the rate of unemployment, at 7.8%, is better than the EU average and better, almost for the first time, than the United States of America.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

For the 4G auction, we have put in place a 98% coverage obligation. Getting broadband to the village of Denton will, of course, be part of the Kent rural broadband programme, so it will be a matter for my hon. Friend to discuss with his county council.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The Government chose to abandon Labour’s target of universal broadband access by 2012, and last week Ofcom published figures that showed that 10% of the population— 5 million people—have no access to broadband whatever. The problem is especially bad in rural areas, where access is 50% worse than in urban areas. In north Lincolnshire, only one person in five has access to broadband, and in Ceredigion the proportion is one person in four. Whatever happened to the party of the countryside?

[Mr Vaizey]

We did not abandon Labour’s pledge; Labour’s pledge was unaffordable and it was unclear how it was going to be paid for. We have put in place a much better pledge—to deliver superfast broadband—and we have among the highest penetration of internet access in the world.

Atos Healthcare

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Chris Grayling]

If people can make a return to work, even if it is a different form of work from what they were able to do before their health condition arose, that is better for them than spending the rest of their life on benefits. That is the principle that we are working towards.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

rose—

[Chris Grayling]

I will briefly give way once, but that is all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman]

If the Minister has read the current descriptors, will he explain what kind of work a person could do when their engaging in social contact with someone unfamiliar is always precluded due to difficulty relating to others? There are those who have reduced awareness of everyday hazards, which means that they face significant risk of injury to themselves or others, and those who are at risk of loss of control leading to extensive evacuation of their bowel and bladder. What work can these people do?

[Chris Grayling]

Let me pick up on that point straight off. It is all well and good for Opposition Members to stand up and rail about the system, but it is a system that was created by Labour four years ago when they were in government, and it is a system that we have consistently tried to improve.

Let me be absolutely clear. I put it on record that this is not a financial exercise. There are no targets attached to the reassessment of people on incapacity benefit—[Interruption.] The assessment that is in place for new claimants for employment and support allowance—

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I am pleased to give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that a White Paper is under active preparation and will be produced.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

3. What his policy is on the application of the work capability test to people with cancer; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

We are committed to supporting people who are diagnosed with cancer in the most sensitive, fair and appropriate way. We are currently analysing responses from our informal consultation on the effects of cancer treatment and will publish a consultation response later in the summer. However, we have already put in place changes that have increased the range of cancer patients who receive ongoing unconditional support.

[Helen Goodman]

My constituent was treated for breast cancer in July 2010. She was deemed fit for work by Atos before the post-op results were received. The tribunal found in her favour and awarded her employment and support allowance in January 2012. However, her ESA entitlement was stopped in April because of the introduction of the Government’s 365 day rule. She was reassessed in May 2012 and found fit for work again. Her employer has held her job open but cannot re-employ her until she is deemed fit for work by her doctor. This is obviously extremely bad for her health. Will the Minister agree to meet me about this case?

[Chris Grayling]

It is obviously very difficult to talk about an individual case, and I am afraid that I make it a matter of policy that Ministers do not become involved in individual cases. What I would say is that it is extremely important that we provide support for all cancer sufferers who can potentially return to work to do so at the earliest opportunity. That is much better for them than being stuck at home on benefits.

Disability Benefits and Social Care

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I will not deny the fact that a number of factories were closed under Labour, but that was part of a reform programme that saw £500 million added in support for the future of Remploy. The point for the House this afternoon is this: the time given to help Remploy factories figure out a future is too short.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree with my constituent Christine Tyleman who wrote on behalf of the workers at the Spennymoor Remploy factory:

“I would be lost if I was not working. You cannot live on fresh air”?

In my constituency, the ratio is 9:1 of jobseekers to vacancies. Does my right hon. Friend agree that my constituent is completely realistic in her assessment of her situation?

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. For many Remploy workers, their place of work is more than simply a job; it is a community and it is vital to their life and well-being. In a community like my hon. Friend’s, where nine people are chasing every job, these people deserve real answers about a sustainable future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Miller]

The right hon. Gentleman knows exactly what I meant: our very clear commitment is to work at ensuring that those factories can be set free from Government control. That is absolutely what we are doing. We are spending a great deal of time—we started in March—on the process for expressions of interest. We have received more than 60 such expressions in respect of factories throughout the country—I believe we have now received about 65—many of which have gone forward to business plans. We hope that many more will go forward successfully. That is my aim, and it is why we are taking time to do this and taking the time to talk to Labour Members about this issue.

Labour Members need to wake up to what is happening in their constituencies. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) intervened during the speech by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill, and I should gently remind her that although there are, importantly, 41 disabled people working in the factory in her constituency, many, many more are not receiving that support. Yet, through employment services, we were able to support more than 500 individuals into mainstream employment, not into segregated factories. So I would rather take the £740,000 loss on the factory in her constituency last year and use the money to support the individuals in that factory into mainstream employment, so that we can actually have the sort of world that my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys has been talking about.

[Helen Goodman]

rose—

[Maria Miller]

Could the hon. Lady—

[Helen Goodman]

The Minister was talking about my constituency so it would be reasonable if she were to give way. She talks about the other disabled people in my constituency. They comprise 5,320 people on employment and support allowance and incapacity benefit, and 650 people who are labelled “disabled”. Does she think those people are pleased with the cuts in benefits she is imposing?

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Lady will know that they will be pleased that they have a Government who have protected the specialist disability employment budget—£320 million—and we want to make sure that it is working better for more people. We estimate that we could support an extra 8,000 people into employment if we were to use the money in a more compelling way. None of this reform was the sort of reform that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill was looking at.

Let us also consider the work capability assessment, as Labour Members raised it. They will know that we inherited the programme from the right hon. Gentleman, but it was a harder, harsher and tougher process than the one we have now put in place. Since taking office, this Government have brought in Professor Harrington to renew these arrangements. Furthermore, we have listened to and implemented all the recommendations made in his independent review. The changes softened the system—