Oral Answers to Questions

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

1. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of his Department's innovation fund projects in helping disadvantaged young people.

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

The innovation fund is a £30 million investment testing cutting-edge projects to improve the employment prospects of our most disadvantaged 14 to 24-year-olds. So far the fund is working well: 6,000 young people are being helped, and recent statistics show 1,800 positive outcomes—each an improvement such as better school attendance, improved skills, qualifications or a move into work—which are being measured for future expansion.

[Mark Garnier]

I know my right hon. Friend recognises the importance of financial education and financial literacy in schools. Can he repeat his support for financial education to start in primary schools and will he reassure the House that he recognises the need for his Department to work closely with the Department for Education to deliver this important measure?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I can confirm that a strong passion of mine—and certainly one of the DWP’s—is to get financial education literacy into the national curriculum. I hope that view would be shared on both sides of the House. Clearly, people coming out of the education system need at some point to understand what interest rates are, for example—otherwise they will get ripped off by unscrupulous lenders. The national curriculum is published in its final form for first teaching in the autumn of September 2014. The Department for Education and ourselves are consulting on including financial education in it, and I believe that we are likely to get that, so I can say an honest “yes” to my hon. Friend.

[Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Daily Record recently alleged that Youth Contract wage incentives are being handed out to people already in work—just to give the illusion that the funds are being used. What investigation has the right hon. Gentleman made of that report?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

This is not directly related to the innovation fund, which is about testing programmes so that extra skills, quality and money can eventually be put in. However, I am aware of what the hon. Lady says, as is the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban) who is looking into it and will ensure that action is taken. If the allegation is true, we will act; if not, it will simply be a scurrilous report.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

2. What assessment he has made of the use of electronic correspondence by the Child Support Agency.

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[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

4. What contribution his Department has made to strengthening the social investment market.

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

Social investment involves taking a new approach to the tackling of our most entrenched social problems, thus enabling investors to have a positive impact on society and make a return that guarantees more long-term investment. After initiating the scheme, the Government, along with Sir Ronnie Cohen and others, launched Big Society Capital, which is the world’s first institution of its kind, and established the Early Intervention Foundation. My Department has set up 10 social impact bonds, taking the total in the country to 13. We are improving the concept, and we are now a world leader in the field.

[Damian Hinds]

Will my right hon. Friend seek to maximise the involvement of retail investors in the social investment market? Does he agree that the new social investment tax relief has great potential to unlock new funding to finance valuable local projects and help to turn lives around?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will certainly try to encourage precisely those people to invest. The aim is eventually to establish a proven project which delivers a social return, thus encouraging both trusts and private sector investors, as well as local authorities, to supply guaranteed funds to organisations that would otherwise have no funding. We think that the potential market is enormous. The Americans, among others, have said that they are grateful for our leadership in this regard, and the G8 was very keen on hearing from us.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that social investment could be channelled through local regional banks and expanded credit unions, which are surely the best-placed organisations and the closest to their local communities?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

All those are options. We have put in extra investment in credit unions—some £35 million—to try to increase their scope and to bring them together again. My hon. Friend is right. Local is what this is all about. It is about giving projects in the local area, with local authorities, a chance to obtain reasonable, long-term investment to deliver life-changing results. It is interesting that, at the G8 conference—this is the most important thing—many of the countries said that this is the way for them to go, too. This country has led on this area, thanks to the coalition.

[Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)]

5. How many people who worked in Northern Ireland and paid national insurance contributions while aged 14 or 15 between 1947 and 1957, which did not count towards their qualifying years for a full basic state pension, fall two years or less short of the years needed to qualify for such a pension.

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[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

12. What his plans are for reducing absolute child poverty.

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

The hon. Gentleman asks a really important question about absolute poverty. The threshold has been rebased this year under a new baseline. That changes the way it is reported. Those changes result from a reclassification and do not represent a real change in children’s circumstances. However, low-income and material deprivation is static or marginally improved.

The hon. Gentleman asks about what we are doing. There are a number of programmes through bringing in universal credit to help the poorest to some of the Work programme and the troubled families programme—I will go through more detail with him if he wants—as well as the pupil premium, and early intervention and education. There is a raft of work to try to change the lives of those likely to be on low incomes.

[Mr Sheerman]

I know the Secretary of State to be thoughtful man, and quite a caring man as well, but is he not concerned that Maggie Atkinson, the Children’s Commissioner, only as recently as last week said that the recent reforms of welfare benefit had put another 600,000 children into real poverty?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I like to think that on both sides of the House the objective is to reduce child poverty. That is our stated objective; I think it was the stated objective of the Labour Government.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

It has gone up.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I hear from a Labour Front Bencher, “It has gone up.” Actually, relative poverty has fallen by 300,000 since the start of this Parliament. Before Labour Front Benchers intervene again, I should say that while the hon. Gentleman’s question is thoughtful, their interjection is not. The reality is that throughout the past 10 years they talked about relative poverty as the measure, not absolute poverty, so they ought to be slightly careful. It has fallen under this Government.

The real point is that we are in a difficult time; there is no question about it. Just the other day, we saw that the Office for National Statistics has revised its figure on the scale of the collapse in 2009 down to 7%, which is a dramatic fall. We will drive all those programmes that I mentioned to the hon. Gentleman, and the change—we hope—to the measurement is about getting real help to real people.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

Is it not the case that in the past, enormous sums were spent on moving people just over the relative poverty threshold without addressing any of the causes of poverty? Will my right hon. Friend reassure the House that he will change that?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Yes. The important point to make is that from 2004 to 2010, the last Government spent £171 billion on tax credits alone, but relative poverty rose in that period, and absolute poverty was absolutely static, falling only at the end, when inflation crashed below zero because the economy crashed with it.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

This multi-millionaire Secretary of State, with his stately home lifestyle, has never gone hungry in his life, but for some children in poverty, the free school dinner is the only square meal in the day. Ministers still refuse to set out their plans for the future of the free school dinner under universal credit, and there are rumours of a new cut-off for families earning more than £135 a week. Will he end the uncertainty for 168,000 families and tell us when he will set out his plans?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We have always said that we stand by the existence of free school meals, and I stand by that now. As we bring in universal credit, we will make it very clear how this will work—and work well. I do not need any lectures from the hon. Gentleman. He may accuse us, but it was not us who crashed the economy and forced lots—thousands—of people into poverty. That was a direct result of his Government’s incompetence. This Government are doing more to get people back to work, more to get them out of poverty, and more to help them through family breakdown than his Government ever did, so I do not need lectures from an empty barrel like him.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

13. What recent estimate he has made of the number of women in work.

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[Mr Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab)]

T2. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

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

Today I welcomed the announcement in the spending review that we will reinvest more than £350 million a year in extra support to help people move into work. Through up-front work search, more intensive work preparation, weekly signing on and mandatory English language courses, we are ensuring that those who need the most help get it, giving them the best possible chance of finding work.

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[Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State tell the House whether he thinks the bedroom tax is proving a runaway success?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is proving a success, because what it is doing—[Laughter.] No. What it is doing is finally shining a light on the previous Government’s failure to sort out the mess in social housing, with the housing benefit bill doubling in 10 years and set to rise by another £5 billion. I never hear from the right hon. Gentleman, or anyone else on the Labour Benches, about their failure, because they left so many people—a quarter of a million—in overcrowded accommodation and a waiting list that had grown to 1.5 million. When he gets up, perhaps he would like to tell us: is he going to reverse this policy or not?

[Mr Byrne]

If the Secretary of State thinks that the bedroom tax has been a success, he is living on a different planet. Back in 2011 the pensions Minister told the House that the bedroom tax would solve overcrowding, but this morning we heard on the BBC that there are houses lying empty from Teesside to Merseyside. They are not overcrowded; they are empty. Councils up and down the country are saying that arrears are up by 300%, and military families are saying that they have been lied to and cheated. When is the Secretary of State going to realise that this policy costs more than it saves and that this Government should be taxing mansions, not bedrooms?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Let me tell the right hon. Gentleman something about empty homes. The previous Government left a huge amount of empty homes when they left office. There are now around 710,000 empty homes, which is 73,000 below the peak in 2008, which was under them. There are now 259,000 long-term empty homes, which is down 20,000 since they left office. The reality is this: the Labour party left a shambles, and never once did the people living in overcrowded accommodation hear anything from the Labour party about them. They are having to suffer while we subsidise to nearly £1 billion people living in houses with spare rooms. Perhaps he can say whether he, if he ever got into office again, would reverse that. Why does he not stop moaning about it?

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

T4. I would like to thank the Under- Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), for her productive meeting last week with representatives from the Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford. Does she share my view that the best way to achieve efficiencies in the residential training programme is to encourage disability employment advisers to make more referrals to that very successful scheme?

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

T5. Last year the parents of 47,009 children living abroad received child benefit totalling £55 million. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to fulfil the promise he made on 30 May to fight every step of the way to resolve that issue?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, that is an existing problem. The European Union insists that family benefits are paid at the highest level, depending on which country the recipient is in. Someone coming to the UK to work from, say, Poland would still get their family benefit paid to them, but if it is lower than family benefits over here, the top-up amount will go back to their families. I believe that is iniquitous, and I am not alone. I have had a series of discussions with others from Holland, Denmark and Germany, and there is a genuine consensus—it is growing dramatically—that it is wrong and that we need to change it, so we are engaging with the Commission on a plan to change it.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

T6. A high percentage of employment and support allowance claims have been won on appeal because the claimant produced evidence that had not previously been made available. What can the Department do to encourage all relevant documents to be provided from the outset to save unnecessary costs and emotional stress?

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[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

T9. The number of people accessing emergency food aid from Liverpool’s central food bank in my constituency has jumped by 70% over the past year. The chief cause of this is delays in them receiving their social security support. What assessment has the Secretary of State made of how many more people will be forced to turn to food banks and payday lenders by his Government’s proposal to extend the wait for jobseeker’s allowance?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The story that the cause is an increase in waits is not true; in fact, waits have fallen and have improved by 4% since 2009-10. The Trussell Trust’s director of UK food banks has set out the real reason behind most of this:

“The growth in volunteers and awareness about the fact you can get this help if you need it helps explain the growth this year.”

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

T10. Can the Minister share with the House what steps she has taken to deliver a cross-government disability strategy?

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[Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

What assistance can my right hon. Friend offer my constituent who, anxious not to be a burden on anyone, took a zero-hours contract? Although he generally works for significantly fewer than 16 hours, on the odd occasion that he does work for more than 16 hours his department suggests that he makes a new claim when cancelling the old one. How can that be right?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I recognise that this is an issue. Some 200,000 people are employed on zero-hours contracts, which is just less than 1% of all workers. The current benefit system deals with claimants on zero-hours contracts, but universal credit will mean that they will not have to re-sign on. Personally, I think there should be far fewer zero-hours contracts. We are trying to work with employers and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to persuade those who have a genuine long-term job to get off zero-hours contracts and get a proper contract of work.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

The pensions Minister’s answer a couple of minutes ago on discretionary housing payments was quite frankly absurd, because he knows full well that the bedroom tax was not in operation in the last financial year.

To return to the question of impact, local authorities throughout the country, including my own, now find that arrears are going up because people cannot afford the bedroom tax that is being imposed on them. What does the Minister expect local authorities to do about this, because it is affecting their overall budgets as well?

[Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

Benefit tourism can be deterred if greater conditionality is introduced into the UK benefit system. Will the Secretary of State tell us whether or not our European partners will allow us to do that?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I believe they will. I think that a large number of countries in the European Union are concerned that, while they want people to travel for work—as do we—through free movement, they do not want people to pick and choose which benefit system they want to be a part of when they are out of work. We have had recent conversations with Germans and others, and we are all moving together towards an eventual proposal to get the European Commission to work with us to change this.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

Distributional analysis of the Government’s spending review shows that 20% of people on the lowest incomes—namely pensioners, the disabled, the unemployed and those in low-paid work who depend most on DWP support—are paying a disproportionate price as a result of the austerity cuts. Are Ministers not ashamed that they are asking the poorest to pay the highest price?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is this Government who have protected pensioners more than any other Government: we introduced the triple lock and their incomes have risen faster and further than for a long time, particularly compared with when that lot in the Labour party were in office. The reality is that we are protecting pensioners far better than any recent Government.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Paul Stewart was paralysed from the waist down and told that he would never walk again after a snowboarding accident. Through sheer willpower and determination he has defied the odds and next month he will undertake his IronSpine Challenge of a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile cycle, a 26.2 mile walk and a cliff-face climb to raise money for spinal research. Does the Minister agree that Paul is a tremendous inspiration to others who suffer such life-changing disabilities?

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[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

When the benefit cap, which will develop strong work incentives, is rolled out to Plymouth, will my right hon. Friend be able to tell me how many people will be encouraged to get a job, rather than depend on benefits?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Yes.

[Mr Speaker]

We are grateful for that.