Personal Independence Payments

James Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Westminster Hall

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

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this debate, and I am sure that we will continue to discuss this issue during the course of the day.

What can double or treble delays is the delay upon delay in the appeal procedure. I know of the case of someone who first applied for PIP back in September 2013. She was refused it in the first instance. She was then successful at the first-tier appeal, but the Department has not yet decided whether or not to appeal to the next tier up; because of various delays and errors, that decision has not yet been reached. So, 13 months after first applying, she is still facing nobody knows how many months of delay, and that kind of thing is causing people much tension and pressure, is it not?

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions must be brief.

[Mr Clarke]

I know why my hon. Friend feels so passionate, and the experience that he has shared with us is reflected in the views expressed in the report that I am asking the House to consider.

Another example I can give is of an individual who has serious health issues and who last year was diagnosed with throat cancer. He has been waiting for an appointment with Atos to be assessed for PIP. Due to the length of time that his processing is taking, he is now in a great deal of financial difficulty, with rent and council tax arrears of almost £2,600, despite his wife working full-time.

As we all know, PIP is an important passport to many other benefits, such as carer’s allowance, disability premiums, the mobility scheme, concessionary travel schemes, etc. It is indeed a lifeline for people who could not afford to leave the house otherwise and it is a vital part of their personal finances. It cannot be right that many of them face ruin and destitution while they are waiting for their claim to be processed.

This extreme financial hardship has caused a number of individuals to rely on handouts from friends and food banks, and on the accumulation of debt to an unsustainable degree. I know of an individual who has been waiting for an assessment since November 2013, but now his income has been so reduced that he cannot travel to appointments; if he pays for transport, he cannot top up his electricity meter. He has post-traumatic stress disorder and his current situation is resulting in his becoming more withdrawn and reluctant to request help. His mental health is deteriorating as a result. He has worked his entire life and in his 50s is a first-time claimant.

In Coatbridge, which is in my constituency, on 1 April there were 82 PIP applications for daily living claims and 160 mobility claims. I checked with Coatbridge CAB this morning and discovered that all these claims are lying in the in-tray of Atos or DWP and not being brought to a conclusion. I also clarified the position of the CAB in Bellshill, which is also in my constituency. It is handling a PIP claim that has been pending for 10 months.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) tells me that there are similar problems in his city, and on that point I will give way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. If I may say so, I am pleased that we have here so many Coatbridge-born Members of Parliament, including my hon. Friends the Members for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) and for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham). Not least you, Mr Gray, have close associations with Coatbridge—

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. The right hon. Gentleman knows well that my father was born and brought up in Coatbridge and that my grandfather was a butcher in Coatbridge, but that need not imply any sort of sympathy with his case.

[Mr Clarke]

Mr Gray, I do not think that anybody would confuse your neutrality in this debate with the opinions that you rightly express when you have the opportunity.

Mencap, when giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, asked that the reassessments of people currently claiming disability living allowance be stopped until the huge delays in assessing people’s PIP applications were dealt with. The Select Committee on Work and Pensions, chaired admirably by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), released a report in March 2014 entitled “Monitoring the performance of the Department for Work and Pensions in 2012-13”. It found that the current level of service offered to PIP claimants and the length of time that disabled people had to wait to find out whether they were eligible was “unacceptable”. Statistics published by the DWP on 11 February 2014 showed that 229,700 new claims had been submitted up to the end of December 2013, but that only 43,800 decisions had been made. Noting that some claims were taking six months or more to process, the Committee called for “urgent action” on the current “unacceptable service” provided to PIP claimants. While some of the reports were published several months ago, the situation has hardly changed. Statistics released by the DWP in September show that, of the 529,400 cases registered for PIP between April 2013 and the end of July 2014, just over 206,000 had been processed and awarded, declined or withdrawn. That means that just under 40% of cases registered for PIP have been cleared in 16 months, which is a wholly avoidable disaster for claimants.

The problem is not exclusively Scottish. The Government, through the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, are gambling that the British public are suffering from austerity measures and that they have little interest in how people with disabilities are being treated. The Government are wrong, and their standing in the eyes of the public is suffering. People with disabilities have families and friends, and the British people are profoundly fair. In any event, it is morally repugnant for the coalition Government to mistreat vulnerable people as a result of a bureaucratic logjam that they have created and for which they must accept responsibility. In other words, it is a United Kingdom Government problem.

I have congratulated Citizens Advice on its report, but it would be remiss of me not to highlight and promote the outstanding work of local government and their partners, which engage closely with vulnerable people. In my constituency, for example, North Lanarkshire council has recognised the plight of vulnerable people and has impressively put substantial additional resources into tackling their welfare issues, providing even more welfare rights officers. No praise is too high for the marvellous work that they do.

Disability Hate Crime

James Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mike Crockart]

I absolutely agree. In fact, the hon. Lady’s intervention feeds very nicely into my next point. Twenty years ago, when I was going through basic training as a police officer, racial incidents were going through the self-same process. When someone was the target of a racial incident and did not necessarily feel that it was one, the fact that someone else had witnessed the incident was sufficient to make it a racial incident. That was the test that I was taught to use 20 years ago. I have to admit that at the time it felt excessive, but it was only thus that such crimes and incidents became generally unacceptable. In that way, there was a move to general agreement that much of the racist language of the ’70s and ’80s, which was tolerated by the silent majority, was derisive and abusive. Such a move is required in attitudes to disability hate crime, and is massively overdue. I trust that the Minister will be able to assure us that the amendments that the Government have now promised to table in the Lords will go further and build on the experience in Scotland, affording a similar level of protection in England and Wales.

The announcement from the Government signals recognition, welcome to us all, of the need to tackle those despicable crimes. It is also heartening for me to help push forward the agenda that my predecessor in Edinburgh West worked on in the previous Parliament. Responding to a parliamentary question tabled by my predecessor, John Barrett, in April 2008, the then Home Office Minister, the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) said:

“The Home Office is responsible for the police recorded statistics. Statistics are collected on the number of racially or religiously aggravated offences but no information is available on those offences which are specifically ‘disability hate’ crimes.”—[Official Report, 29 April 2008; Vol. 475, c. 330W.]

I welcome what the Government have already done, specifically the coalition commitment to improve the recording of such crimes. Since April 2011, all police forces now report hate crimes centrally. Published data from the Association of Chief Police Officers show increases in the number of disability hate crimes reported in 2010—a 21.3% increase on the recorded figures in 2009. This must be one of the few areas where we can welcome a large increase in reported crime, as it shows that the push for people to report the crimes is having an effect.

I await the promised hate crime action plan and the Government response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission inquiry, but it is positive that the issue is finally receiving the attention that it deserves, although of course it is a shame that this or any Government have to tackle it at all. Such horrific cases as the killings of Brent Martin, Steven Hoskin or Fiona Pilkington should assault our consciousness as a decent society and daily remind us how serious the situation can become if left unchecked. As the Equality and Human Rights Commission noted in its “Hidden in plain sight” inquiry, we need to look at preventive strategies alongside any legislative changes, ensuring that we nip in the bud such attitudes and behaviours before they escalate. We also need to address the wider geographical, social and economic factors, identified in the Commission’s research, that can leave disabled people and others at greater risk.

A change of attitude in this country is vital. After all, it is not disabled people who create their oppression, it is others. As previously said, and as Sir Ken Macdonald so eloquently argued in one of his final speeches as Director of Public Prosecutions, we must overcome a prevailing assumption that disabled people’s intrinsic vulnerability explains the risk that they face, an assumption unsupported by evidence. At best, that had led to protectionism, constraining rather than expanding the individual freedom and opportunity that greater safety and security should provide. Only by extending the same expectations of safety and security to disabled people as to everyone else can we truly address the deficits in our current approach and wake up to the need to act. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments on those points as well.

I am a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. We are currently finishing an inquiry into independent living, which has looked at various aspects such as access to welfare, housing and employment and the differences in provision between different local authorities and nations. We have even had the Minister along recently to answer various questions about Government policy. However, I now realise that we have omitted investigation of a basic element. A constituent part of ensuring access to independent living is laid out in article 3 of the universal declaration of human rights:

“Everyone has the right to life, liberty and”—

crucially—“security of person.” What is clear from many of the dreadful examples that we have heard today is that that security is put at risk daily by the criminal acts of a few, which are unfortunately tolerated by many more.

As a member of the JCHR, I have also taken note of the EHRC’s endorsement of the mechanisms of the Human Rights Act 1998, which it says are essential for the protection of human rights in the United Kingdom. The EHRC also argues that the existing law is well crafted to balance Britain’s international obligations with its constitutional conventions. In particular, the existing Act preserves parliamentary sovereignty and the role of British judges in interpreting the legislation, and has allowed many people to exercise their basic rights without the time and expense of taking a case to the European Court of Human Rights. I hope that the Minister can reassure me and other members of the Joint Committee that any revision of the Human Rights Act will not change that crucial lifeline for those who are disabled.

In conclusion, I welcome the issue finally receiving the attention it deserves. I await further concrete steps by the Government to deal with this hidden crime.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. I intend to call the Front Benchers at 10.40. Therefore, I call Mr Stephen Lloyd, assuming that he can constrain himself to that time.

Youth Unemployment (Mitcham and Morden)

James Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I am delighted to have been given the chance to speak in Westminster Hall, but I am sorry about the circumstances that led to my asking for this debate.

In my constituency of Mitcham and Morden, which the Minister will know well, the number of unemployed jobseeker’s allowance claimants has reached 2,776. From the moment when I was elected in 1997, it looked as though unemployment had slipped off the agenda, because it fell during my first 12 years as a Member. In April 1997, weeks before I was elected, the unemployment rate in Mitcham and Morden was 5.4%. Even in April 2009, at the height of the recession, it was only 3.7%. However, it is now back up to 5.2%.

The effect of unemployment is perhaps greatest on our young people. If they cannot get work early in life and learn the discipline of the workplace, it becomes harder to find work. For older people, gaps in a CV can make life difficult when applying for jobs, but for young people it is much worse. After a decade during which we invested enormously in education, exam grades have risen and young people’s aspirations are high, but their aspirations cannot be met.

Nationally, unemployment among 16 to 24-year-olds has risen to 895,000. In Mitcham and Morden, the unemployment rate for the under-24s has shot up to 11.6% in the past year. Today, only 39 constituencies have a worse ratio of vacancies to JSA claimants than in my constituency. In May, our local jobcentre had only 124 jobs.

The scarcity of jobs has made life more difficult for young people looking for work. They have the disadvantage of lacking experience. We must not allow a return to the 1980s, when a whole generation of young people lost out and many drifted into a life of benefit dependency, which affected not only them but their children. We still feel the social effects of that period of long-term unemployment.

For many communities, the jobs have returned, but on some estates a culture of worklessness has taken hold. A generation on, we are still dealing with the consequences of young people having been unemployed in the 1980s—I say, never again. In the 1980s, youth unemployment continued to rise for four years after the recession was over. I want to stop another generation of young people in Mitcham and Morden having to go through that.

When the coalition Government were elected, their first steps were like a war against young people: they increased student fees; they abolished the education maintenance allowance; and they slashed the future jobs fund. It is true that youth unemployment across the country rose as a direct consequence of the recession, but a year ago it started to fall, and many believed that the future jobs fund was helping unemployed young people to gain opportunities that would help them into work.

Just over a year ago, however, the Prime Minister described the future jobs fund as a “good scheme”, and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson said that

“more help is needed for young people, not less.”

It is baffling that the fund has been scrapped. Last summer, I met a group of young people who had enrolled through the future jobs fund and who were getting good work experience at a local charity, the Commonside community development trust. I wanted to hear about their experience.

There were nine youngsters on the scheme—one dropped out, but the others had a better time. They were given a range of things to do, from helping to run a community centre to dealing with older people in the lunch club and undertaking basic admin duties. I am told that, a year on, four are now in work, and three have gone back into education. I see one of those young people regularly at my advice surgery every Friday—not, I hasten to add, because he needs to see me about problems, but because he has a full-time job on the ground floor of the same council building. His name is Kyle Bryant, and he believes that the future jobs fund helped him to get his current job. It certainly showed that he was willing, and his experience there gave him a better CV.

I take this opportunity to congratulate Kyle and his fellow graduates of Commonside’s future jobs fund programme. They did the right thing by helping out a worthwhile local charity, and getting some good experience, and many are now reaping the rewards. I am sure that other hon. Members have similar tales, but for me, meeting young people like Kyle brought home just how difficult it is for young people who cannot find work to get the necessary experience without extra help. Now that the future jobs fund has been scrapped, the opportunity to gain good experience is even harder to come by.

Internships have been seen as a way to get ahead. However, the Deputy Prime Minister rightly criticised the way in which internships often favour those who already have good connections. Indeed, he has used privileged access, through his family, to secure top-notch work experience. However, that is not an option for many in Mitcham and Morden. We tend not to have many people with connections to top jobs in the public sector, let alone to senior bankers or business people. I therefore wondered what sort of role I might play.

In some respects, Members of Parliament are the hub of their community. We have no real power on our own and we do not have access to public funds, but we know our constituencies and the people and businesses that make them tick. I therefore decided to facilitate a work experience programme in Mitcham and Morden for our unemployed young people. The idea came after chatting with the Stranks of Strank Roofing, a successful local firm that I know through the charities that it supports and through its sponsorship of our local football team, AFC Wimbledon. I hope, Mr Gray, that you will not stop me congratulating the team on getting into the Football League after only nine years.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

They are no longer unemployed.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

They were not unemployed before, but they are now in the full-time league.

Irene and Paul Strank told me that they wanted to help young people who could not find work, but that they found Government schemes a little too prescriptive and bureaucratic. For instance, the new Government work experience scheme that began in January requires employers to sign service level agreements, complete health and safety questionnaires, and to receive visits from the jobcentre. Those requirements often put off people such as the Stranks.

Anyone who has offered work experience to schoolchildren—many Members do so, including me—will know what a hassle it can be. I perfectly understand why employers are reluctant to participate in Government schemes. However, the Stranks were sure that other firms would feel the same as they did and would want to train young people—if they were any good, there might be a job at the end of it—but without the hassle, the form-filling or the sense of being monitored by the authorities.

I therefore decided to contact every local business and voluntary group in Mitcham and Morden, and a few others just outside our borders, to see whether they would offer work experience for a couple of months to unemployed youngsters from my constituency. Thanks to Anna in my office and some amazing volunteers from my local Labour party, particularly Ross Garrod, who has been trying to build up a new set of skills after leaving university, I have been able to convince nearly 40 organisations to take on at least one young person.

These organisations cover a wide spectrum, and include many organisations that I thought would not have wanted to become involved. Indeed, the Minister will know some of the organisations at first hand; they include the premium hotel Cannizaro House and Cosmopolitan, the women’s magazine—although he probably knows less about the latter. The youngsters have opportunities from retail to tyre fitting, and from schools to legal firms. The Elective Orthopaedic Centre has offered two placements for people thinking about applying to medical school, but who have no medical contacts in their families. That is extremely exciting for the people in my constituency. Shelley Engineering, a local architectural metal work company, is a family firm that employs 20 people. It said that it is desperately looking for the right young person, and if it finds one it will happily award an apprenticeship. In short, there is something for a wide range of abilities and interests.

I also contacted all the companies that infamously auctioned internships to raise funds for the Conservative party. I explained that not everyone in Mitcham and Morden could afford to bid thousands of pounds for the sorts of privileged opportunities that seemed to be available to Conservative sponsors. I said that, as work experience with them was so prestigious, it would be nice if they were to spread the opportunities around. Unfortunately—perhaps it was not a great surprise—those firms would not join in. I imagine that the kind of people who would auction their best openings to raise money for the Tories would want to restrict them to privileged people like themselves. That only served to convince me more of the need to press ahead with creating opportunities for my young constituents.

After I received promises of up to 50 placements, I put together a brochure and sent it to every household in Mitcham and Morden that included someone under the age of 25. I would like to thank Rob Geleit, a Labour party member from Epsom with design skills, for laying out the brochure, the Communication Workers Union for agreeing to print it and Asda for agreeing to post it. I would also like to thank Liz Sherwood, a local Labour party member, who has taken early retirement from Camden council, for agreeing to act as mentor for both the young people and the businesses. A couple of weekends ago, she met more than 23 potential applicants and helped them write letters and e-mails to potential employers. It was a heart-warming experience to see the mums who came in with children who had learning difficulties and the women in their 40s who came for a hand to get a work experience job.

I also thank my local jobcentre for its advice and its willingness to give this project a go. I must confess that a couple of years ago I called a debate here to complain about how unhelpful it was, so I was nervous about how it would respond to me this time. I was concerned that it would insist on a level of bureaucracy that would put off potential providers, or that it would tell our young people that if they went on a placement they would lose their benefits. Nothing could have been further from the truth, and the jobcentre has been amazingly accommodating—perhaps that is because our work experience scheme is so much more flexible than the Government’s. Obviously, even while young people are on their placements, they can still be looking for work and be available to start at a moment’s notice, and no organisation wants to be seen as a bad boss.

The jobcentre has not had the reputation for being the most enterprising organisation. However, any such criticism could not have been further from the truth. Ailsa Evans, in particular, was both helpful and flexible. Each work experience placement can last anything from eight to 12 weeks and cover a range of hours. In essence, I have been a facilitator between organisations and young people, but they come to their own arrangements, and Ms Evans has been happy with that.

The brochures have now been delivered and there have been hundreds of applications. Most organisations have told me that they have had a positive response. Merton chamber of commerce, for instance, has had more than 40 applications. Several placements have already begun, and later this year I plan to host a party for everyone who has taken part—host organisations and young people.

There has been a buzz about the scheme that has taken me by surprise. One potential applicant, Sambavi, applied for one of the medical positions. It is not the sort of opportunity that often arises for people from places such as Mitcham, where he lives. He said:

“Thank you for your Work Experience booklet. I have been spending the past 4 weeks trying to find work experience that is suitable for Medicine...I received your letter and booklet, earlier today, and I am very thankful.”

On the whole, the potential employers have also found the process worthwhile. Jeffrey Ward, the General Manager at Cannizaro House hotel said, “It’s great.” Nilmini Roelens of Roelens Solicitors said:

“We hope to accommodate at least two or three applicants over the summer and to provide the young people concerned with what I hope will be valuable insight into the work at a firm of solicitors. It may be that, from the two or three people we will have met, we can consider at least one for a longer term position at some point in the future.”

We have also had positive e-mails from Merton adult college, St Mark’s family centre, the Vine furniture project and the Ursuline high school.

The reason why I asked for this debate today is that I want to encourage more MPs to take a similar approach, especially in areas such as Mitcham and Morden, where youth unemployment is high and where there are few people who can find opportunities through their daddies or who can afford to enter auctions to support political parties. I recognise that many Members will need help on this, and I hope that the Department for Work and Pensions will be able to offer it.

It is a terrible mistake to have ended the future jobs fund and to have taken away opportunities for people like Kyle in Mitcham and Morden and elsewhere. I am concerned that any new scheme will be so bureaucratic and inflexible that few organisations will want to participate. I understand that Jobcentre Plus will run the scheme. Rather than being hands-off facilitators as I am, jobcentres will hold lists of potential employers and send work experience people to them.

From this summer, it will be mandatory for jobseekers to take placements, so even those who do not want a placement will be placed. I do not think that many people will want to take on an unwilling conscript for work experience. Moreover, as the work experience that is being foisted upon jobseekers could be for as little as just two weeks on the new Government programme, it is hard to see what anyone will get out of it.

In my own experience, such short placements often create more work than they save. An employer spends two weeks showing someone how to do a job, but by the time the jobseeker has learned how to do it, they have left. Then the employer themselves has all their own work to catch up on. Worst of all, though, the new Government programme suffers from exactly the same pitfalls of bureaucracy and inflexibility that the Stranks complained about. Participating employers will have to fill out service level agreements and health and safety questionnaires, and there will be visits from Jobcentre Plus-appointed employer advisers. Firms also have to provide a dedicated mentor or supervisor. As a result, small firms, which make up the majority of employers in my constituency, are unlikely to want to participate, and the quality of work is also likely to be compromised. Those that want to participate will very much be in a minority. We need high quality organisations, big and small, offering a variety of opportunities to young people who want to find an internship, but who cannot afford it or do not have the right connections.

I am not saying that my scheme is perfect. It is not an alternative to investment in jobs or to the economic growth that we need to create jobs. Of course my party believes the coalition’s cuts are too soon and too hard, and that that will endanger jobs and growth. None the less, I hope that my model of flexibility, with MPs or other community leaders acting as a hub for local organisations and local people, will be looked at and learned from. I hope that this debate has been helpful for the Minister.

Pensions Bill [Lords]

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I wish to make a few points, then I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman again. I think I have been reasonably generous, and I plan to continue to be.

As I said earlier, if we delayed the change as the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) suggests, it would cost us something in the order of £10 billion. That would be an unfair financial burden, and it would be borne disproportionately by the next generation. In a country in which 11 million of us will live to be 100, we simply cannot go on paying the state pension at an age that was set early in the last century. We have to face up to that, and to the cost and affordability of state pensions, in all the changes that we make.

If the last Government had managed to get re-elected they would be facing much the same decisions. I recognise the need to implement the change fairly and manage the transition smoothly. I hear the specific concern about a relatively small number of women, and I have said that I will consider it. I say to my colleagues that I am willing to work to get the transition right, and we will. Some have called for us to delay the date of equalisation of the pension age, but I wish to be clear again that this matter is the challenge of our generation, and we must face it. That is why we are committed to the state pension age being equalised in 2018 and rising to 66 in 2020. That policy is enshrined in the Bill.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is being fair and sensible in his approach, and we admire his determination in introducing the Bill. I accept the cost of widening the transition period for the 2.5 million women involved, but will he give particular consideration to the small group of 33,000 women born in March 1954, on whom the change will bear down disproportionately harshly? Surely there is a way of finding a transition method that takes account of that small group of women.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I repeat that the Bill that we have presented on Second Reading will retain the dates that we announced, but as I said earlier, I will quite happily discuss transitional announcements with anyone who wants to do so. I do not rule out discussions, but we plan to press ahead with the dates that I set out at the beginning of the process.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 14th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

If the hon. Gentleman looks at the process of raising the state pension age to 66, he will find that early in 2020, the age will still be 65 and some months. It will not start to rise to 66 until April of that year.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

Although I welcome the equalisation of the pension ages, does the Minister agree that a small group of women born, like me, in the middle months of 1954—a vintage year—will be affected disproportionately by the way in which it is being phased in? Will he look again to see what can be done to help that group of women?

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is right that of the 2.6 million women who are affected, 33,000 were born in the vintage months that he describes. That group will have to delay for up to two years before they receive their state pension. One reassurance I can offer is that those women—and indeed he, should he find himself in that situation—will be eligible to apply for jobseeker’s allowance or employment and support allowance, so they will not be left destitute.

Housing Benefit

James Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. Five Members will be trying to catch my eye in the 20 to 25 minutes that we have available. It would be helpful if those giving speeches tried to keep their contributions as short as possible.