Oral Answers to Questions
Jamie Stone Excerpts(1 week, 5 days ago)
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Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
Emma Reynolds
We have seen a 152% increase in pension credit claims since late July, with over 74,000 pension credit claims up to mid-September. We know that many local authorities and, indeed, Members of this House—including me last Thursday—are helping pensioners on low incomes to ascertain whether they are due pension credit.
Jamie Stone
There will be people who are eligible for pension credit living in very remote areas, where connectivity is less than great. It is an appalling thought that they might miss out on what they are due. May I suggest to the Department that the way to reach out to those people might be through a database, followed by a mailshot?
Emma Reynolds
In addition to merging housing benefit and pension credit, which will help some of the people whom the hon. Gentleman has in mind, the Secretary of State and I have asked the Department to look at what can be done to make the application form simpler. The Department will report back to us by the end of the month, and we will update the House in due course.
Carer’s Allowance
Jamie Stone Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I will be brief. I support the motion and everything that has been said today, and I look forward to the Government’s response.
As many people know—including perhaps you, Madam Deputy Speaker—I am an unpaid carer for my wife Flora. With the salary that I receive as an MP, I can afford to do that. I care for my wife because I love her. She has been disabled for 25 years. I will talk about one aspect of the support that we get. When I am here in Westminster, a wonderful team of professional carers go and see my wife every morning, look after her and see what needs to be done. They are fantastic people, and I owe them such a big debt.
This is where I might try the patience of the House slightly, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I want to mention an aspect that is not helping those carers: the remuneration that they receive for mileage. In Scotland, carers get 61p per mile for the first 3,500 miles, and after 3,500 miles, they get 25p per mile. That is not good news given the vastness of my constituency—half the size of Wales, they tell me—and the mileage that carers have to cover. A lot of those wonderful people are saying, “Enough is enough,” packing up and calling it a day. In north-west Sutherland and Wester Ross in particular, we have an ageing population that desperately needs that kind of support, but carers are just giving up and going. It is not because they do not care for the people they are helping, but because they simply cannot afford it. The cost of running their cars is far greater than what they receive for the vast mileages involved.
Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)
My husband is a full-time carer for his mother, who has had three strokes. By looking after people in their homes and saving lives long term, carers make very large savings for the NHS. Given how much carers save the NHS in long-term out-of-hospital care provision, we should, as a cross-party endeavour, reconsider the compensation for mileage.
Jamie Stone
The hon. Lady makes a very wise point that demonstrates the interconnected nature of unpaid carers and professional carers, because the best solutions come when they work together.
I will conclude with this: we have a problem. It is perhaps not pertinent to the Minister who is before us today, but I hope that the Treasury will consider the issue of remuneration rates for mileages, perhaps with the Scottish Government. Those rates have not been revisited since 2011, and since then, we have had about 40% inflation. We can see what is wrong; let us sort the problem.