Autumn Statement Distributional Analysis, Universal Credit and ESA

Debate between James Cartlidge and Tommy Sheppard

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

One of the beneficial consequences of the recent change in Government personnel is that we are no longer subjected on a daily basis to the phrase “long-term economic plan.” We know of course from recent press reports that that is because the Government do not really have an economic plan at present, and many of the pre-existing problems in our economy are now exacerbated considerably by the decision to leave the EU. We also know, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) said, that it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. The Institute for Fiscal Studies reports that pretty much every forecaster says things are going to get extremely challenging. Six months ago we could have got $1.50 for £1; today, we would be lucky to get $1.25. As those changes feed through, we are going to see a rise in prices and in inflation.

Yet at the same time we have had practically no real-terms growth in wages over the last 10 years, and that is likely to continue. Although there has been a blip in 2016 as a result of the increase in the national minimum wage, it is likely to be just that; we are not likely to see sustained growth in wages, so revenues are not going to increase as a result of increasing wages. This will present the Government with an even more challenging problem; they will be facing rising costs, and revenues not keeping pace with them, and they are going to have to take some difficult decisions.

[James Cartlidge]

The point about the currency has been made several times now. I campaigned for remain, but in terms of the cost of living, which is obviously key to this debate about poverty and living standards, the hon. Gentleman must surely recognise that our country’s economy is unbalanced and there is significant benefit from a lower pound. We need to export more if we are to have sustainable growth.

[Tommy Sheppard]

The Government are faced with a big challenge, and I think how they manage the necessary deficit in the years ahead will be the measure of this Government. The Prime Minister has talked about just-managing families; we will have to see whether or not we have a Government who, as they have to make the necessary cuts and adjustments to their plans, are prepared to protect the most vulnerable and disadvantaged. It is said that the mark of a civilised society is how it treats the worst-off and the most vulnerable; we will see in next week’s autumn statement whether the Government really believe that.

The Government have a bit of form on this question. Just last week there was a report from a United Nations committee which put the Government in the dock for the way in which their policies affect disabled people in our society. It is not the first such report; there have been many others, yet the reaction from the Government was to dismiss this out of hand in a fairly cavalier manner and say that the criticisms were unfounded. Well, these reports cannot all be wrong, and we need a better approach from the Government to these reports if disabled people in our community are going to feel with any confidence that their concerns are taken seriously.

I do not have a lot of time, but I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about the cuts to employment and support allowance. Perhaps over 500,000 people will be affected by them, including over 60,000 in Scotland and over 1,300 in my constituency. It has been said that the cut of £30 a week in this benefit, bringing it into line with jobseeker’s allowance, is being introduced to make sure that there are no incentives to be on the higher rate. Not a single one of us in this Chamber could live on £109 a week, but let us take the Government argument at face value. It is not an incentive, and the argument that it is fails to recognise the very real costs that people in this category have as a result of their illness or disability.

Over 1,300 of my constituents will be affected by this, as I have said, and I want to read into the record the testimony of two of them. The first is Dean Reilly, a single father of three children. Four years ago he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and had to leave his job at British Gas. Dean is currently in the work-related activity group of ESA and gets the £30 a week. He tells me in his correspondence that this money means he has more security, independence and confidence. It helps to mitigate some of the extra costs he incurs because of his health condition, and it helps to compensate for the fact that his condition prevents him from being able to function normally. One of the symptoms of his condition is that he often suffers from fatigue which can develop without warning. If this happens when he is out of the house, he has either to rely on friends or to pick up a taxi, which can be very expensive.

Dean also uses oxygen therapy to help to alleviate the symptoms of his condition and he attends the MS therapy centre in Leith twice a week and makes the suggested donation of £13 on each visit. That is what he spends his £30 a week on, and he believes that were he not to get it, his quality of life would be significantly affected. In fact, it could be even worse. Dean works a few hours a week, as he is allowed to, at the local Nike shop. He feels that if he was not getting this extra money and support, he would not be able to continue that employment, so would face a double whammy in terms of loss of income.

The second person I want to mention is Lauren Stonebanks. She wrote a long letter to me, but I will only read out a couple of the points it makes. She says the money

“helps with increased bills because I find it so hard to leave the house. Most people spend a chunk of time at work or school or university but I’m often stuck in my own house using my own gas and electricity. It also gets used on a takeaway or very, very convenient food if I am too exhausted from fighting my illness to cook. Other times it might cover a taxi if I need to get home as quickly as possible because I’ve become too unwell to be outside the house.”

She also says:

“In my personal experience, losing this money won’t incentivise me to return to work. It will demoralise me and make me feel like I’m completely worthless. £30 a week is nothing to MPs but everything to someone as ill as me…I already struggle with finances because of my condition. Financial insecurity and welfare reform wreak havoc on my mental wellbeing.”

The Minister will probably say that existing claimants like Lauren will not be affected by this change, but most of the people receiving this benefit are not doing so on a permanent basis. The whole purpose of it is to get them back into employment so that they can stand on their own two feet. If this change goes through, many people will take employment, and if it does not work out for them because of their condition, they will have to go back on ESA, at which point they will lose money.

For anyone who has a mental health condition or who suffers from stress and anxiety, making it difficult for them to go to work, what sort of additional pressure will be put upon them when they have to ask themselves, “If I take this job and it doesn’t work out, I could lose a third of my income and be much worse off?” That is a horrible position in which to put people, and I appeal to Members on both sides of the House to come together and support the motions today and tomorrow, and to ask the Government to reconsider, to postpone the changes, to stop digging and to have a think and change their mind.

Student Maintenance Grants

Debate between James Cartlidge and Tommy Sheppard

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

I went to Aberdeen University in 1977. I was the first member of my extended family to go to university, and I was able to do so because the tuition was free and I got a full maintenance grant. If it had not been for the Wilson Governments of the 1960s, I would not have had the opportunities I have had in my life. I can understand people from privileged backgrounds protecting privilege, but what really sticks in my throat is that those who have climbed that ladder of opportunity themselves are now determined to kick it away from other students. That is a disgrace.

We should be in no doubt that these decisions will have layers of consequences. On an individual level, they will result in lives less fulfilled and opportunities forgone. On a community level, people will see this pathway out of poverty being barricaded before their eyes. Most of all, the effects will be felt on a national level. How many surgeons, architects, doctors and writers will not emerge because of the denial of this opportunity?

Let us make no mistake: this is an attack on the poor. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), who is no longer in his place, asked whether poor people could not simply take out loans. Well of course they can, and, by the way, they are more used to doing so than many Conservative Members are. But the real question is this: is it fair that people from the poorest backgrounds should have to take on more debt to get the same opportunities as their counterparts in well-off families? That is iniquitous, and we should not tolerate it.

The Government seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that students are all rich, and that they benefit from their education so much that it is okay to charge them whatever they want to. That is not the case. A small minority do extremely well and become rich—

[James Cartlidge]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tommy Sheppard]

I have been told not to take an intervention.

A small minority do become rich, and if the Government want them to pay, they should introduce a progressive taxation system whereby people pay more when they start to earn those high wages. Instead, of course, they are cutting taxes for the highest earners in our communities. Nowhere is this thrown into sharper relief than in the situation of nurses and midwives. The abolition of grants for nurses and midwives will not only penalise the people who want to contribute to our national health service but undermine our NHS itself. Not for the first time, I am so pleased that in Scotland we have a Scottish Government who stand between the young people in that country and the mal intent of this Government here. We will not abolish grants for nurses or midwives. We will maintain maintenance grants. Most of all, we will keep tuition free and we will make sure that people are not saddled with the debts they are saddled with in this country. If ever there was a case for a measure not applying and not being certified, it is this, because I have more than 2,000 constituents directly affected and it is unfair that my vote will be disregarded.

Trade Union Bill

Debate between James Cartlidge and Tommy Sheppard

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

I thought it was fair to give way to the hon. Gentleman, given that I had mentioned him a couple of times, but the best person to take those points forward is the Minister. On that point, I am happy to conclude.

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

On Second Reading, I asked a question to which I have had no answer to date. Quite simply, what problem is this proposed legislation designed to solve? What calamity do we have in our land in the field of industrial relations that means that the Government of the day must prioritise this legislation? I cannot find any. The average worker in the United Kingdom goes on strike for one day every 15 years. It is therefore ridiculous that this matter should be the priority of the Government.

I believe that the only reason the Bill is before us, with so few Government Members listening to the debate, is purely ideological. I do not say that all Members or all strands of the Conservative party are against trade unions, but there most definitely is a strand that is very unempathetic to trade unions and that sees the ability of people to combine together in the workforce to prosecute their interests as an impediment on the rights of employers to make their profits and run their enterprises as they see fit. There is a hostile attitude to trade unions. That, unfortunately for the working people of this country, is the strand within the Tory party that is in the ascendency and in the driving seat in respect of this legislation.

It is a great irony, is it not, that to introduce this legislation, the Conservative party will have to have an unprecedented degree of state interference in the affairs of private enterprise? There will have to be state regulation of trade unions that is more akin to a totalitarian than a democratic regime.

I support the SNP amendments that would require consent from the local and devolved authorities in the United Kingdom for the provisions of the Bill to be implemented. In parallel with this discussion, we have been having a debate on the Scotland Bill about the competences and authorities that should go to the Scottish Parliament. In fact, we argued that this entire area should be devolved to the Scottish Parliament simply because it would mean that proposals such as this Bill would never see the light of day. However, we know that there is not a majority in this House for devolving these powers and I want it to be clear that we are not arguing for that today.

What we are arguing for goes to the heart of the debate in this country about who runs public services. It has been the will of this Parliament that many of our public services should be devolved to local and devolved administrations. It is therefore not right for this Parliament to hinder the ability of the managers of those services to deliver them by interfering and setting requirements on the most important resource that is available to them: the workforce. Just because the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) has a problem managing relations on the London underground, the rest of country should not have to suffer.

A series of amendments seek consent on each of the major provisions in the Bill. I will speak about some of those measures, but I will try not to repeat what has already been said by my hon. Friends, much of which I completely agree with. A number of mechanisms in the Bill are designed to make it harder for a trade union to win a ballot to go on strike—let us be clear about that objective. However, Conservative Members are mistaken if they think that that will make a problem go away.

It seems that among the authors of this Bill there is great ignorance about the process of managing industry. Often, if a concern or dispute arises among the workforce, and members go to their trade union and the union decides to do something, that can be a way of resolving a dispute or problem to the benefit of the industry or service concerned. The additional measures in the Bill will make it harder for unions to go on strike, but that will let problems fester and dysfunction continue, which will not benefit the trade, industry or service in which the dispute is taking place. When a union eventually passes those hurdles and gets a mandate for a strike, that strike will be bigger, longer and more vicious than it ought to have been had the matter been attended to at an earlier stage. I contend that measures that the Government think are about making it harder for unions to take strike action will have a deleterious effect on industrial relations and make it harder for the management of public or private services to deliver and get the consent of their workforce.

Given the way that the issue is being discussed, it seems that Conservative Members conceive of facility time as some sort of stipend whereby union officials spend all day organising strike action and trying to bring industry to its knees. It is nothing of the kind, and if those Members had worked in a public service for one day, they would understand that often, union stewards and officials play an extremely constructive role at local level in the delivery of that industry or service. In many ways, their role can be described as that of a welfare officer, and officials often help out individual employees who may have problems with management or at work, but who may also just have personal problems that are affecting their work.