Housing Benefit

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

In powerful speeches from the Front and Back Benches, we have heard arguments against the bedroom tax, all of which were predicted and laid out by the Government in their impact statement. The impact statement made it clear that if this policy worked, in so far as it allowed people to downsize and their properties to be occupied by other social tenants, it would not save money, and that savings would come about only if the policy did not work. Contrary to the statements from some Government Members, those two objectives are mutually incompatible.

The impact statement showed that an estimated one in three of those affected would go into arrears. The Government knew that arrears were the likely consequence of this policy, and that is what we have seen. What we have not heard is another truth, which is that two thirds of those people affected by the bedroom tax are also affected by the Government’s cuts in council tax benefit. Out of their very low incomes of £75 or £105 a week they are having to make a contribution of £14, or in some cases £20-plus, for their bedroom tax and their council tax.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Is not one of the big problems the lack of accommodation? It is ridiculous to try to move people from large to small accommodation when we do not have it. Will that not contribute to the housing bubble?

[Ms Buck]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was about to make that point. The impact assessment also told us—as has been mentioned already this afternoon—that the distribution of properties across the country does not match the two objectives of downsizing and dealing with overcrowding. In the north-west, in Yorkshire, 43% of social tenants are affected by the bedroom tax, and I think the figure is worse in Wales. That is more than double the rate for London, yet it is London that has the most serious problem of overcrowding: one in six properties is overcrowded. So the policy is predicated not just on people moving from one property to another in their neighbourhood or community, which might have some sense to it, but on people moving from one part of the country to another, from one end of the country to another. Frankly, that is not how people live. People are not sticks of wood. People are not crates of dry goods that can be put in a container and taken from London to Liverpool or Wales, because that is how the distribution of property suits their needs.

Capping Welfare Spending

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Westminster Hall

[Charlie Elphicke]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, which is certainly a topic for debate, so I hope that the Minister will address it when he responds. The Government have sent a positive social signal that work is a force for social good. Capping the amount of benefit that any one family can receive is right and has been met with great approval in my constituency. My constituents raised the issue time and again.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate and for giving way. At the beginning of his speech, he mentioned that the current Government had inherited debt from the previous Government. I remind him that after 18 years of the Conservative party being in power, that previous Labour Government found in ’97 that, for every pound levied in tax, 50p went to pay off debt. They eliminated a lot of inherited debt, but that is not my main point. When I was a Member under previous Conservative Governments, people were trapped in housing estates. The hon. Gentleman wants to call it the system that we inherited or whatever, but whatever system we bring in, there are going to be people trapped in certain estates—they used to be called Thatcher’s children.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that interesting intervention, but I cannot agree with him. When the current Government came to office, the interest bill was the same as the entire education budget—I think that I am right in saying that. It was a very substantial amount. That is not a great showcase for fine administration of the public finances. It is well understood that the country’s debt was entirely out of control. I take his important point about social mobility and helping people to get out of the traps of poverty. Universal credit will make work pay, incentivise work and encourage people to do well, and that lies at the heart of much what the Government are doing. I approve of that approach. We need to build in incentives, by on the one hand limiting the amount of benefit and on the other hand encouraging work and making it pay.

Disabled People

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course the employment rate among people with a mental health condition is the lowest of all; it is a disgrace and it needs to change. At the moment, however, we do not have a system that actually assesses people’s needs at the same time as we assess what benefits they should be entitled to. There is a complete disconnection at the heart of the system. The point we want to make to the Secretary of State gently this afternoon is that he presides over one of the great Departments of state; about 100,000 civil servants work for him. If this country can organise an Olympic games, help put rockets into space and organise complex armed conflict abroad, he ought to be able to work out a cumulative impact assessment of the changes affecting disabled people.

The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Fareham, who has been forced to answer this debate, has, curiously enough, told the House the following:

“The Government regularly produces analysis of the cumulative impact of all coalition changes…The publication of cumulative impacts is a coalition initiative”.—[Official Report, 5 July 2013; Vol. 565, c. 862W.]

Labour Members welcome that. So can we please have a cumulative impact assessment of the changes hitting disabled people?

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, historically, the Government party has always been against the welfare state? Successive Conservative Governments have tried to weaken the welfare state by making statements that are not really helpful to those who need it.

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that, and, worst of all, what he describes comes with a nasty and divisive politics to boot.

If the Secretary of State needs any help with this job of producing cumulative impact assessments, plenty is on hand, as luck would have it. Let me read out the list of people who have half done the job for him: Demos, in its “Destination Unknown” pamphlet; Inclusion Scotland; the Campaign For a Fair Society; the Children’s Commissioner; Contact A Family; and The Hardest Hit. All those organisations have been able to produce cumulative impact assessments, and I am sure that if the Secretary of State asked them nicely, they would lend him a hand.

We believe that there must be vital reform in social security in the future, but that there must be a different way of organising reform. Someone in our country registers with the DWP as disabled every three minutes. The morality of this debate is very simple: disability is an issue that could affect any of us and is therefore something that affects us all. We should be learning from reform such as that pioneered by the Australian Labor party through comprehensive disability insurance, where one personal plan sets out a plan of action for benefits, back-to-work support, social care and help from the national health service and where one partnership comes together to deliver it.

I do not know how often the Secretary of State speaks to his opposite number in the Department of Health, but his right hon. Friend is taking through the other place a Care Bill that creates a definition of well-being that includes the idea that someone should be able to go to work and to get training and an education. The DWP is then missing from the rest of the Bill. The local authority and the NHS are obliged to talk to each other, but where is the DWP? Why is it not coming together with local councils and the NHS to deliver change? We should create a “tell us once” approach to collecting information and, crucially, we should transform back-to-work support by giving people the right to take that support in the form of a personal budget. I know the Secretary of State is still evaluating the “right to control” pilots in Barnsley and elsewhere and we look forward to his bringing forward the conclusions from that work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hoban]

We already co-operate in those areas. We work closely with local authorities and the Department of Health. We do not need a duty of care to enable us to take that approach; we can do that very well at the moment.

We all know that the cost of care is a huge concern for the elderly and for disabled people, and that is why the spending round provides £335 million to local authorities in 2015-16 to prepare for the delivery of the capped costs system from April 2016 and a universal offer of deferred payment agreements from April 2015. That investment begins a programme of reforms to social care funding in England which will mean that no one faces unlimited care costs or is forced to sell their home in their lifetime to pay for residential care.

We want disabled children to have the best possible start in life. The pupil premium is increasing in real terms. That will disproportionately benefit disabled children and young people, and the Government will continue to reform services for those with special educational needs.

It is hard for people to feel included in society if they are excluded from getting around. Railway funding makes provision for the industry to invest up to £100 million from 2014 to 2019 in measures to provide easier access for older and disabled passengers and those with small children. That list of the priorities announced in the spending review demonstrates that any cumulative impact assessment is about not just one area of Government policy, because there is a whole range of ways in which we are taking measures to help disabled people to improve their lives.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Coming back to the £3 billion extra that the Minister mentioned, how will that be distributed, bearing in mind that Coventry city council has to make £28 million in cuts over the next four years? How will he distribute the money to deliver care?

[Mr Hoban]

The hon. Gentleman knows very well that funding formulas are in place to ensure that the money is allocated. There is an obligation on local authorities not only to make a contribution towards tackling the deficit that we inherited from the previous Government, but to look innovatively at how they deliver services and ensure that we get value for money.

Remploy

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

As far as I am concerned, Remploy was one strand of social services to help people with disabilities and give them dignity. More specifically, however, what is the Minister going to do to help Remploy in Coventry to develop a social enterprise there? It is facing problems with the acquisition of the land. Will she meet me, along with one or two of my colleagues, to discuss that?

[Esther McVey]

I will indeed meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss that. I should add that that is one of the automotive businesses, and it has attracted considerable interest because it is a viable business. KPMG is currently working on that with Remploy, and I will table a written statement shortly about what will happen there. The hon. Gentleman is right, however, that this is about dignity and supporting disabled people, and that is what we are doing.

Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Bill

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ian Lavery]

People have received sanctions for a range of reasons. The Government should not overrule a Court of Appeal ruling and introduce retrospective legislation against people just because they have received sanctions. I am sure the Minister is not suggesting that people who have, for whatever reason, received a sanction, should under no circumstances claim some sort of subsistence, even if the courts have agreed in a ruling that they should receive it.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend has come across such cases, but I have come across a number of people who have gone for a number of jobs, and been told, when they go back to claim JSA, that they are not trying hard enough. What an attitude in the 21st century!

[Ian Lavery]

I fully understand my hon. Friend’s point. As I have said to the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), every MP has received many representations with regard to the wide and various workfare schemes.

The impact assessment states:

“If the Department cannot make these retrospective changes, then further reductions in benefits might be required in order to find the money to repay the sanctions.”

That is blackmail of the highest order—I make no apology for the strength of my feeling on that. If people are due finances, they should get them, particularly following a court ruling, but the Government are saying, “If we pay these people, we might have to cut benefits for other people as a result because that is where we have to find the money.” That is emotional blackmail. It is totally and utterly bang out of order. They are trying to set people who are looking for work and on benefits against each other. That is absolutely unacceptable.

To conclude, I have some questions for the Minister to answer in his winding-up speech. Is it right that claimants face financial penalties for failing to participate in schemes when the possibility of those penalties had not been properly explained to them? Is it right that the Government can flout the will of Parliament, which had clearly expressed its wish to have some oversight of the schemes, especially given that the schemes that were designed and imposed on claimants without an opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny do not appear to be working?

Is it true that the DWP continued to issue letters to claimants that did not explain things properly even after the High Court had stated that the letters were inadequate?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Brown]

I can only wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. Members of the public expect better from the shops, facilities and services we use. We expect people to be paid, and that point has been made this afternoon. All we are asking is for a real choice of a real job with a real wage. That is the decent thing to do, and there can be no doubt whatever about that.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Some of the newer Members might not realise this, but under the last Conservative Government, people in Coventry were being paid £1 an hour. I remember raising the matter with Ministers at the time. We are going back to those days.

[Mr Brown]

My hon. Friend and I are of an age to remember when people were being paid pitifully poor wages, but thankfully—I will come to this in a minute—we introduced the national minimum wage when in government.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who has left the Chamber, was absolutely correct to make the point that the sanctions being imposed were wholly unfair, verging on the criminal. A number of us heard yesterday about someone who was asked to report to the jobcentre and sign on as unemployed at 9.30 on a Tuesday morning. At the same time, they were asked to turn up at a new training organisation at 9.30. They went to the jobcentre and said, “Look, I can’t come at 9:30 on Tuesday morning. I’m reporting to a new trainer,” but was told, “No, you need to come here, otherwise you’ll face sanctions. You’ll need to get a letter from your new trainer.” When they went to the trainer and said, “You’ll need to provide me with a letter that allows me to avoid signing on,” they were told, “We don’t provide letters.” So individuals are being trapped and end up being sanctioned. There is no fairness in that sort of system.

I want to touch on the £130 million that my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck spoke about. This is the bit that really concerns me. Tomorrow, we will hear more from the Chancellor, and I am sure that Labour’s play will be for growth. As my hon. Friend pointed out, when we give money to the poorest, they go out and spend it, and it flows into and washes about in the local economy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend will celebrate, as I did on international women’s day, the fact that there are record numbers of women in work and that the number of women unemployed has fallen by 29,000 over the past year. We need to do more to get women in work, and universal credit will help, but it is important also to celebrate the flexibility of the labour market, which enables more and more people to work part time to meet their responsibilities.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

T9. Why is the Secretary of State disregarding research by the National Housing Federation which shows that the discretionary fund to provide help with the bedroom tax is £100 million short of what is required?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We are not. We listen to councils and everybody else who talks to us about these things, and ensure that we adjust accordingly. In reality, more than £280 million is going in discretionary payments direct to councils over two years to resolve these issues. That is more than ever before and I believe it is enough. We are asking councils to make sensible judgments that benefit the maximum number of people—tenants and those on housing benefit—in their areas.

Housing Benefit (Under-occupancy Penalty)

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ann McKechin]

My hon. Friend describes the problem. I represent a seat in Glasgow where all the social rented properties are in the hands of housing associations. Many of them are very small and unfortunately do not have the capacity or resources that even a local council has, and some of the smaller local authorities will be very hard pressed to cope.

In reply to my question, the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland assured me that he had met local authorities and housing associations in Scotland and discussed their concerns about credit ratings, and that they were “satisfied”. Funnily enough, the following week the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, which represents all the local authorities in Scotland, and the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations wrote to the Minister to set out a slightly different view. The SFHA wrote:

“With respect, this does not address the issue of the credit rating of associations. Indeed I am not aware of any government impact assessment of credit rating of associations but if it does, I would welcome access to it.”

Does the Minister have an impact assessment he can share with us? The SFHA continued:

“We remain very concerned about under-occupation issues, not least given the escalation in rhetoric about non-payment of the ‘bedroom tax’, so called purposely to resonate with the Poll Tax, a debacle which left councils with a trail of debts only now being resolved even in your own constituency.”

If that seems harsh, the letter from the president of COSLA reflected utter astonishment at the Minister’s response to my question. He wrote:

“While I do meet the Secretary of State for Scotland from time to time, I can’t recall the last time we had an opportunity to discuss my concerns over welfare reform with any DWP Government Ministers….

There was a hastily arranged meeting on 22nd November…which we understand the Scottish DWP office invited a selected number of council leaders to attend. Few were able to do so, and COSLA was not represented although an officer was present to observe and take notes….

Those notes, and feedback…confirm that David Freud informed the meeting of the steps DWP are taking in response to a variety of concerns that were raised. These were felt to be inadequate, considerable dissatisfaction remained, and David Freud gave an undertaking to return to Scotland to discuss the matters further”,

but, funnily enough,

“This meeting has still not been confirmed.”

Perhaps the Minister who winds up the debate can confirm when his noble colleague Lord Freud intends to meet local authorities in Scotland to discuss with them what they can do to meet the impact of this change, which is to happen in just a matter of weeks.

The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan suggested some changes that could happen in Scotland. Unfortunately, I think her colleagues in the Scottish Government have pressed the standard pause button, saying, “We need to wait until the sun starts to shine and we have independence”, but of course that depends on a referendum and we are still waiting for the date of that. The plain fact, to which the hon. Lady alluded, is that we do not have time on our side and people cannot wait. We need to start a serious debate now on how we can resolve these issues.

The coalition talks about the ever rising cost of housing benefit over the last 10 years. Yes, it is a problem that we are subsidising landlords when rentals are increasing at well above rates of inflation, yet the Government have made not one suggestion or proposal to address that or the systematic failures in the housing market as a whole. I believe there has been a permanent change—a major distortion—in the housing market since the banking crisis in 2007. We will not simply see a bounce-back to the position in 2005-06 at some undetermined point in the calendar, so I have some suggestions on how to deal with housing as a whole, not just the issue of people on housing benefit.

Other Members have commented correctly on the need to build more housing, both in the social rented and private sectors. How much land in Scotland, or the UK, is held by building companies as part of their land banks? It is estimated that perhaps 250,000 houses with planning permission are still to be built. Has there been an audit of where those properties are? Can we levy unused plots of land to provide a stimulus to build, because in many cases builders are just waiting to get more money for the land on which they sit? Can we control private rentals? The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan rightly commented that rental levels in the private sector in Scotland, as in many other parts of the United Kingdom, are in excess of those in the social rented sector. According to Shelter Scotland, the taxpayer would on average pay more than £100 extra in local housing allowance each month if someone in Edinburgh moved from the social rented sector to the private sector, and the same would apply in Glasgow and Inverness; in Aberdeen—one part of the United Kingdom enjoying something of an economic boom—an extra £200 would be paid per month. The hon. Lady was incorrect, however, to state that increases in rentals were a phenomenon only in Greater London. There is a shortage of housing, and people cannot afford to buy a house or provide a deposit, so they are moving into the private rented sector, pushing rentals ever upwards.

In a speech last month, the Leader of the Opposition referred to reform of the law on residential leases, which should also be considered in Scotland, where the law is distinct but not that much different. The law was last altered in the early 1980s, to create short-term assured tenancies, which have become the absolute norm—the default—for all private residential domestic tenancies. Although there is clearly a market for short-term assured tenancies, they are not suitable for an increasing number of people who are looking for security and stability and to put down roots in a local community.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend recall that many years ago there were rent officers, who regulated rents in the private sector? Is that a possibility that could be pursued?

[Ann McKechin]

My hon. Friend refers to regulated rents. I am afraid that I am not an expert on the law of leases in England, but in Scotland long-term secured rentals are still subject to regulated rents. Very few of those remain in the United Kingdom—the average age of the residents in such cases is probably 85 plus—because frankly they were not attractive to the market at the time when the law was changed. In urban communities—the situation is worst in London, but it is an issue in areas such as Glasgow as well—transience is increasing, as people move house at ever more regular intervals, not through choice or for job reasons but because their landlord thinks he can find another tenant who is prepared to pay a higher rental. The only way to stabilise the market and get rentals back down is to improve regulation, and that is why the law needs to change. The Scottish Government should start an urgent debate about that. There is no reason why Scotland cannot lead the way in the reform of leases.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Mulholland]

As the hon. Gentleman has clearly heard, it is the former. I hope that is clear.

The simple reality is that the social housing sector has an exemption in this regard that the private rented sector does not have. It is important to remember that in April 2008, when I sat on the Opposition side of the House, the previous Labour Government introduced the local housing allowance. I was a member of the Work and Pensions Committee at the time and know that it was not an entirely controversial measure, as Opposition Members will remember. We scrutinised it and raised concerns, but the then Labour Government were absolutely clear that local housing allowance would and should depend not only on the maximum rent allowed for properties in the area, but specifically on the number of rooms a tenant needed.

Again, the principle behind bringing this measure into the social housing sector is reasonable, and it would be helpful if the Opposition at least acknowledged that and said that they wish to assist and encourage people who are over-occupying and have more bedrooms than their family need to seek alternative accommodation in order to free up those properties. We all know from our huge case loads that that is needed. We can blame the previous Government and the Government before them for simply not building enough and for the absurdity of allowing the right to buy a council house without then building more to replace them. Those are things that this Government have committed finally to addressing.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

The previous Labour Government, like Governments before them, always had difficulty with the issue that the hon. Gentleman has just mentioned, but the difference is that what his Front Benchers are proposing is a benefit cut.

[Greg Mulholland]

I am not quite sure what relevance that adds to the point I was making. Again, the hon. Gentleman’s Front Benchers were committed to benefit cuts in their 2010 manifesto, which they seem conveniently to have forgotten.

As I have said, I do not believe that the Government currently have the policy right. I have told the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), and other Ministers and colleagues that I believe that other exemptions should be included. Let us remind ourselves who the current exemptions are for: those of pensionable age; those in local housing shared ownership; those in temporary housing; the recently bereaved, who have protection for 52 weeks; and those who are provided with overnight care by an unpaid carer. I firmly believe that there should be other exemptions, as I said when the Bill was going through the House. We were unsuccessful in achieving any of our proposed amendments, which is why I did not support the Bill at the time. I made it clear that I could not support the policy as it stood then, and I cannot support it as it stands now.

Let me explain the other exemptions that I believe should be included. First, if it is deemed that two partners have to sleep in separate rooms for medical reasons or because of a disability, clearly they should be exempt. Similarly, if a child with a disability is deemed to require a separate room, they, too, should be exempt. Social housing plays a different role in the housing mix and is there, in particular, to support families in that situation who also have a low income. Of course, that would help with the current issue over the Court of Appeal ruling. The easiest thing for the Government to do would be to accept those exemptions.

State Pension Reform

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

Yes, the new system is designed to treat people as people, rather than as dependants. It removes the distinction between employee and self-employed, contracted in and contracted out. Given that these boundaries are somewhat permeable—people might be self-employed one year and part time the next and so on—this will streamline the system and make it easier for people to build up the 35 years they need.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Somebody mentioned the 75p increase earlier. The reason for that was that the previous Conservative Government broke the link and then it was related to prices, so let us be clear about that. Secondly, the problem with pensions actually started when the previous Conservative Government, in terms of industry, gave incentives to people to opt out of SERPS and into private schemes—that is how we got ourselves into this mess today. How many people will lose out under these proposals?

[Steve Webb]

We are publishing later this week, along with the Bill, a detailed impact assessment of the changes over a series of decades. In the White Paper we have published today, the hon. Gentleman will see a chart that shows that, for I think at least 35 to 40 years, a majority of people affected by the changes will gain rather than lose.

Welfare Reform (Disabled People and Carers)

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

I am happy to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope.

Today’s debate, I hope, will categorically highlight the unfairness of the Government’s welfare reform agenda on disabled people, their carers and families. I urge the Department for Work and Pensions, in collaboration with the Minister for disabled people, the hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), to conduct a cumulative impact assessment on the real-term effects of welfare reform on some of the most vulnerable people in our society. I was urged by a number of groups to try to secure today’s debate. The importance of the debate and the issues within it is reflected by the number of hon. Members present this afternoon. I am gratified, and I thank my hon. Friends for coming along to support this debate.

The Chancellor and the Prime Minister have repeatedly lectured us about the need for fairness and said that we are all in this together. However, as I hope to demonstrate conclusively in this debate, it is not the richest, most powerful or most able in our society who will pay the price of the Government’s calculation and uncaring disregard, but the least able, most vulnerable and least powerful—the disabled.

I am sure that hon. Members will have read, or at least heard of, the report, “The Tipping Point”, by the Hardest Hit campaign, which concluded:

“Many disabled people feel that they are living on the edge, and that the loss of even a small amount of income could tip their already complex lives into greater dependence and insecurity.”

This summer, the Hardest Hit coalition surveyed more than 4,500 disabled people on their views and experiences of the welfare and social care systems. It also conducted a series of 50 in-depth interviews with disabled people and a poll of more than 350 independent welfare advisers. From the study, it discovered that disabled people and their families are struggling to make ends meet and feel increasingly nervous about the future. The Government need to act urgently to arrest the slide of disabled people into entrenched isolation and poverty.

Disabled people have experienced a massive drop in income—about £500 million—since the emergency Budget of 2010. Recent reports have shown that just in the past year, cuts for typical disabled households ranged from £200 to just over £2,000. The latest estimates suggest that disabled people will experience £9 billion of cuts over the lifetime of this Parliament—half the total cuts to the welfare budget.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend touch on the fact that many people who are permanently disabled now have to go through assessment schemes, which cause a lot of anxiety in their families? At the end of the day, there is a long wait to see what those results are and, more importantly, what the effects will be on those people and their families.

[Ian Mearns]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I will reflect on that entirely. Added to the ordinary stresses of life for disabled people and their families, the mental anguish of not knowing the future is piling pressure on to many family circles.

I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber will have heard of Pat’s petition, which closed last month. The petition was signed by 62,693 people, calling on the Government to

“stop and review the cuts to benefits and services which are falling disproportionately on disabled people, their carers and families”.

To appreciate fully the widespread concerns and understand why a cumulative impact assessment is essential, it is vital to look at the specific elements of welfare reform that are affecting disabled people, their carers and families. First, the introduction of universal credit, which will replace six income-based benefits and tax credits for people of working age with a new single benefit, will result in 2 million households seeing a drop in their income, with disabled people being among those worst affected. The Department’s own equality impact assessment from November 2011 predicted that disabled households would lose £37 a week, compared with non-disabled households, which would lose £26 a week. Quite honestly, it almost feels that the malice knows no bounds, as the Government are targeting even disabled children—they are halving support for those children from £52 to £26.

Remploy Factories

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bain]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend highlights precisely the complete lack of logic in the proposals, at this time when the disabled, young people and people in long-term unemployment are encountering the toughest employment conditions in decades.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

We have Remploy in Coventry, and it is one of the most profitable organisations there are. It has contracts with Jaguar and Ford, and if a factory can get such contracts and drive hard bargains it is doing very well. The tragedy, which anyone who has met these people from Remploy knows, is that within days they were sacked, and some of them will never work again. The Coventry plant operates like a normal factory as, I am sure, do others. It is amazing. They have their own representation. What is being done is short-sighted and, more importantly, it shows the true face of this Government.

[Mr Bain]

Indeed, and the Government should be looking at the application of procurement rules, striving every sinew within the Cabinet Office, the Treasury, the Scotland Office, the Northern Ireland Executive and the Welsh Assembly Government to ensure that good industries such as these have the accessibility to public service contracts that would give them a good long-term future. That is one of the things that I will be asking for later.

The Minister, perhaps inadvertently, revealed the real picture when I last secured a debate on the topic in this Chamber: of the 1,021 disabled workers sacked by Remploy and this Government in their closure programme of this year, a mere 35 have found other work. Will she be able to update us on the most recent figures when she winds up?

[Mr Bain]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.

Those 35 people are not in jobs of equivalent pay and skills to the ones they had with Remploy; they are the only 35 people who have got any work at all. Additionally, the Work programme is placing only 2.5% of long-term jobless people in my constituency, and less than 4% across the country, into sustained work.

To have any chance of producing a solution to the crisis, the Minister must recognise the true problem: the economy is too weak and long-term unemployment is soaring. Some 1,320 people in my constituency alone are long-term jobless. Vulnerable groups such as the young and the disabled are suffering the most. The OECD has shown that a disabled person is twice as likely to be unemployed as a non-disabled person. It is clear from the figures so far that the Minister’s plans for Remploy workers, and for the disabled as a whole, are not working.

The reality is that the longer someone is out of work, the lower their chances are of finding another job. So instead of doing nothing, the Minister should be redoubling her efforts to help disabled people in long-term unemployment get jobs now. It is unacceptable to plough on with a failed strategy that simply consigns sacked Remploy workers to near certain long-term unemployment, and crushing poverty, as a result.

In the spirit of constructive engagement, I offer the Minister a plan out of the hardship that the closure programme is inflicting on disabled workers across the country. First, given the ways in which I have shown it is increasingly hard for the disabled to find new work, the Minister should announce today a moratorium on any further factory closures in phases 1 and 2 to lift the threat from 18 other Remploy factories in communities such as Clydebank, Cowdenbeath, Dundee, Stirling and Leven, as well as in Springburn.

Secondly, I ask the Minister to convene an urgent working group, to report by the end of the year, composed of officials from her Department, the Scottish Government, Glasgow city council, Scottish Enterprise, trade unions and other representatives of the disability and local business communities to help locally elected politicians draw up plans to save the Springburn factory.

Thirdly, I ask the Minister to engage specifically with the Scottish Government to build on the commitments made by Minister Fergus Ewing in Holyrood last Thursday to introduce a proper strategy to support Remploy staff in Scotland and those who have already lost their jobs but not found new work, as the Welsh Assembly Government and the Northern Ireland Executive have already done.

Fourthly, the Minister should ask ministerial colleagues to review the application of public procurement rules, particularly the application of article 19, and to draw up plans for how supported employment workplaces can more effectively win Government contracts and secure their long-term futures. The Springburn factory makes high-quality wheelchairs for the NHS, but it has no long-term relationship with the NHS in Scotland or with Government agencies at UK level.

Finally, given the disastrous conduct of the tendering process in relation to the Springburn factory, the Minister should order an inquiry into what went wrong, why the process collapsed and how the hopes of workers were raised last month only to be so cruelly dashed by her letter of a few weeks ago. In particular, she needs to provide answers to questions being posed by workers at the factory and by one of Scotland’s major newspapers.

Last Wednesday, the Daily Record reported that Remploy Healthcare entered a deal with R Healthcare, otherwise known as R Link, in July 2011 to take over the “front end” of the business, including

“the sales, marketing and distribution of Remploy’s healthcare products.”

There are many people who believe that that contract may have endangered the probity of the tendering process for the sale of the Remploy Springburn factory. Workers at the factory believe that the contract, which was not made public at the time, sealed their fate as long ago as last year.

Will the Minister tell the Chamber why there has been such a lack of transparency on the existence of those contracts? How can she ensure that this tendering process and future tendering processes will operate on a level playing field for other potential buyers of the Springburn factory and any others? She will be aware of the concerns of Greentyre and other potential bidders—they felt excluded from the tendering process because of the link with R Healthcare. Why were the contracts kept secret only until the decision to close the factory was announced? Why has her Department refused my freedom of information requests on those contracts? The reply refusing the request was sent on the same morning as the confirmation that the factory would close. Does she really believe it reflects well on her Department that R Healthcare is planning to keep Remploy’s wheelchair order book, and to benefit from the business that will be released thereby, after dumping all the workers and closing the factory?

The Minister will remember from when we debated the issue previously that if the factory had been sold, the workers would have benefited from the protection of the TUPE regulations. If any workers are taken on by Haven, R Link’s subcontractor, they will not benefit from the protection of TUPE, which is the difference. If workers are fortunate enough to be re-engaged, they might be hired on markedly poorer terms and conditions. Such asset stripping should not be worthy of contracts issued under the aegis of her Department.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

What my hon. Friend has revealed is nothing short of scandalous. Having said that, will he include the affected factories in Coventry and the rest of the UK in his proposals to the Minister?

[Mr Bain]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend is entirely right that, given the scale of the disaster being faced by people in the disabled community, the only answer is for there to be a moratorium so that this incompetent Government can produce a strategy for disabled employment that actually works.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

The commercial process, which was robust and has been carried through, will not be reopened. As I explained, however, there is an opportunity now for people to come forward with their best and final offers, as with Aberdeen and Wigan. Equally, should Greentyre—as mentioned by the hon. Gentleman—wish to come forward, it may bid for the factory. That is what we are looking for and what we are doing with other factories.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned article 19. Previous modernisation plans assumed a 130% increase in the Government procurement rules under article 19 but, in reality, that did not happen. Article 19 allows the use of sheltered employment to deliver services, but it has to be done in the context of value for money. If use of article 19 does not deliver value for money, it is not valid.

I hope that I have answered all the hon. Gentleman’s questions.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Will the Minister give way?

[Esther McVey]

We have a couple of minutes left, so I will take the intervention.

[Mr Cunningham]

Can the Minister publish the figures on people who have been made redundant from Remploy and found employment?

[Esther McVey]

I believe those figures are in the public domain. If they are not or if the hon. Gentleman needs clarity about them, I can provide them or break them down by factory.

If there are no more interventions or requests, I will come to a close. I know that the process will be long and that we are all passionate about the issue because we all want to see the best solution and conclusion possible but, as I have said in the past, all channels of communication are open. Not only do I meet with MPs, trade unions and MSPs, but I also work with ex-employees of Remploy.