Oral Answers to Questions

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

1. What contribution his Department has made to the cross-government review of employment law.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

As part of the cross-government review of employment-related law we have implemented a number of easements for employers’ automatic enrolment following independent review, which will save small employers about £90 million a year, including increasing the earnings level at which automatic enrolment applies, introducing a simpler way for employers to check their existing pension schemes meet the required standards and introducing an optional waiting period of up to three months.

[Julian Smith]

The Secretary of State’s Department is responsible for a huge amount of employment law. May I urge him to work closely with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on its review to ensure that the Government make a cross-departmental effort to free small businesses up to take on staff?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend definitely may. We are working closely with BIS in all it tries to do and my Department is doing quite a lot to help small employers. We listened carefully on auto-enrolment, we made a change to give a little more time and that helped small businesses enormously.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

2. What steps he is taking to address incentivised transfers out of defined-benefit pension schemes.

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[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

12. When he plans to publish proposals for supporting childcare through universal credit.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

I made a commitment to provide more detail during the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill and am still on track to do so in time for its scrutiny in the Lords. We are considering the advice and suggestions raised in productive discussions held with MPs, peers and lobby groups, along with recent written responses submitted by attendees. It is going very well and we are learning a lot from those responses.

[Jessica Morden]

Will the Minister guarantee that the Government’s stated aim that universal credit will always pay will be in place for all families where child care costs are taken into account?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

That is absolutely our intention. That is why we are listening carefully to what people have proposed. The whole point about child care is that it should be there to support particularly women going into work who have caring responsibilities. We are reviewing this to make sure that that continues to be the case under universal credit. That is the whole point about the consultation. In other words, where we may be wrong, we can get that corrected and make sure that we come forward with a really good package in time for the debates in the other place.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

What is now the Government’s policy on the benefit cap in universal credit? The Secretary of State has told us that the policy is not changing, but press reports from Liberal Democrat sources contradict that by saying that the issue is far from settled and that the cap might not apply to existing benefit recipients. Then, last week, the Minister with responsibility for employment confirmed in a letter to me that “easements” are indeed being considered for existing recipients. So was the Secretary of State mistaken, and is the policy changing or not?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The policy is not changing. The right hon. Gentleman should have written to me and my colleague at the same time, and we would both have given exactly the same answer. We have always said that in the course of the cap, we will look at any difficult cases. [Hon. Members: “Ah!”] We have always said that. One would always do that in a transition, just as we are doing with housing benefit. I remind the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues that the cap will come in at a gross level of £35,000 a year. I would very much like to know what their position is on the cap, because so far we have heard absolutely nothing about whether they support it or are opposed to it. Perhaps they will tell us now. Most people out there are in favour of it.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

13. Whether the mobility component of the personal independence payment will be available to people living in residential care.

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[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

I wish to take this opportunity to thank the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) for the tremendous work on early intervention that he has delivered to us. The report highlights the vital importance of early intervention for the prospects of today’s children as well as outlining recommendations for making early intervention happen through growth on the social investment market.

[Annette Brooke]

What assistance should Jobcentre Plus staff be giving to people with dyslexia, and what monitoring does the Department carry out to ensure that such people are not discriminated against?

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[Mr Byrne]

This was a piece of analysis with enormous implications for the way in which the policy was implemented. This piece of work was so important that it was sent to the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Secretary of State. What was it that was so important about that analysis that it was not given to the Minister actually putting the legislation through this House? Will he now ensure that the analysis is produced before the House of Lords reaches the relevant debate?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The right hon. Gentleman has written to me about this point and I have written back—but there is nothing like re-exercising the exchange—so he will know that the figures to which he refers were internal, not verified and out of date. Since then, as I have said to him, the DCLG and my Department agreed the impact assessment that the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) stood on at the time of the Welfare Reform Bill and which we still stand on today. We should bear in mind the fact that—I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware of this—there are huge behavioural changes involved. The whole idea behind the cap—we still have no idea whether the Opposition support it or are against it—is that we believe that capping those benefits at gross £35,000 a year is reasonable. Instead of trying to dance on the head of a pin, perhaps he would like to give some leadership and tell us whether his side actually supports the cap.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

T2. Following the decision by the Payments Council not to phase out personal cheques, may I ask my hon. Friend whether he intends to change his Department’s plan to phase out payments of benefits and pensions by cheques, which is causing concern to blind and visually impaired people?

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[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

T6. Does the Secretary of State accept the analysis of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that, with child benefit being frozen and child care support through the tax credit system being cut by 10%, families with children will need to earn 20% more this year than last to meet the soaring costs of child care? What will he do about universal credit to ensure that lone parents, in particular, do not face an unacceptable financial burden because of his changes?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The whole purpose is to ensure that lone parents have an opportunity to get back to work and to support themselves through work. The hon. Gentleman referred to the work of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. We do not always accept everything that comes forward; there are often analyses that we do not accept. He will understand that from his time in government. As far as we are concerned, reducing to five the age of a lone parent’s child at which the lone parent goes back to work—following the Labour party’s age reduction to seven—is the right thing to do. Getting lone parents to take control of their lives through work has to be good for them.

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

T5. In April I held a successful jobs fair in Reading, with nearly 2,000 people in attendance and 40 companies offering 1,500 jobs. I will be repeating it in September. What specific improvements in the service offered to them will my unemployed constituents get from the Work programme?

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[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

T8. The overall cap on benefit will result in some larger families living in expensive rented accommodation through no fault of their own being expected to live on £100 a week. May I suggest to the Secretary of State that the solution to that problem is to have two completely separate caps—one for housing benefit and one for the rest of benefits—so that families will not be left in poverty simply because of which part of the country they live in?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The purpose of the cap is not to make people homeless or put them in difficult situations; the purpose is to try to restore the balance, so that when people enter work they do not suddenly have to lose their house because, owing to the withdrawal of housing benefit, they can no longer afford to pay for it. It is not a kindness to leave somebody in a house that they cannot afford and then put them through all that difficulty when they go to work. We are certainly looking at all those transition issues, and we will discuss them further with my hon. Friend.

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

During his last outing at DWP questions the Pensions Minister undertook to respond to me imminently about Sure Start maternity grant for parents of multiples. Can he tell me how imminent is “imminent”?