Alternative Measures to GDP

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential merits of use of alternative measures to GDP within Government.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec, and an honour to introduce this debate on what I believe is a very important subject: alternative measures to GDP. Gross domestic product is still the predominant metric that we use to measure whether Governments are succeeding. I want to suggest today that it is not just an imperfect measure but the wrong one. Before we can agree on a better measure, it might first be helpful to ask what we are measuring for. That means asking a more fundamental question: “What is Government actually for?”

My thoughts on that are that Governments exist to do five things in particular that individuals, families and markets are not able to realistically do on their own. First, to keep people safe, from crime, from conflict and from harm. Secondly, to provide common rules and fairness, the laws, rights and frameworks that stop power being abused. Thirdly, to provide public goods: clean air, clean water, flood protection and infrastructure, the things that markets cannot easily deliver because they are not profitable. Fourthly, to support stability and reduce risk through things such as healthcare and social security, the safety net that helps people to cope with illness, unemployment and old age. Fifthly, and finally, to represent our collective choices about the future, things such as how we balance growth with nature, freedom with fairness, and short-term need with long-term resilience.

To sum up, Governments exist to do together what we cannot do alone. In a democracy, they must do so accountably, so we need an appropriate way of measuring their success.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for a very commendable speech in setting out what we are trying to achieve. She rightly highlights that, while GDP measures the monetary value of goods and services, it fails to capture critical aspects of life, such as environmental sustainability, income distribution and health. However, it is also a well-established measurement. Does the hon. Lady agree that the Government must ensure that we do not see a new measure that allows failures to be hidden by new definitions?

[Dr Savage]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I absolutely agree with, and will elaborate on, his points about what GDP fails to measure and how it must be complemented by other metrics.

So the crucial question is: if those five things are indeed what Governments are for, how well—or not—does GDP measure whether Governments are succeeding?

Pension Schemes Bill

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 15th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Torsten Bell]

Let me start by thanking Members of both Houses for their careful scrutiny of the Bill before us today. I thank Members of the other place for their amendments, which we are considering today; in particular, I thank Baroness Sherlock and Lord Katz for their steering of the Bill in recent months.

This is a complex Bill, but it is one with a simple goal: higher returns for pension savers. As I noted on Second Reading, this is a particular responsibility of this House, because it is legislative action, in the form of auto-enrolment, that has got Britain back into the habit of workplace pension savings. We must ensure that those savings deliver, overcoming the challenges of a system that is too fragmented and where there is insufficient focus on how hard people’s savings work to support them in retirement.

A complex Bill means something else: amendments. As is normal, the Government brought forward changes in the other place that we today ask this House to endorse. The vast majority of them are technical, ensuring that the legislation works as intended. Of the more substantive changes, I will highlight three.

First, the Government tabled amendments in the other place that will help to ensure that superfunds will not be forced to wind up when they still provide a high level of security to their members. Secondly, on the Atomic Weapons Establishment pension scheme, we are reflecting the reality that since 2021, AWE has been wholly owned by the Ministry of Defence. Its closely defined benefit pension scheme is backed by a Crown guarantee. These Government amendments therefore move it on to the same basis as other central Government pension schemes; the accrued rights of members are of course fully protected. Finally, on the value for money measures, the Government amendments provide for provisions to be commenced via regulations, to allow decisions about the introduction of elements of the VFM framework to reflect detailed design work and consultation.

Peers in the other place have, as always, provided useful scrutiny of the Bill, so let me turn to doing justice to their amendments. First, there are the Lords amendments to the local government pension scheme. Lords amendment 1 understandably tries to introduce an explicit prohibition on regulations about investment in specific assets or asset classes, or about the location of investments. That is duplicative, because a 2020 Supreme Court ruling effectively means that LGPS regulations cannot provide such direction without a specific basis from Parliament, and there are no new provisions in the Bill that would allow it to be provided.

Lords amendments 5 and 6 relate to worries about excessive prudence in the valuations of the local government pension scheme. I recognise the intent behind these Lords amendments, given the importance of those valuations for decisions about contribution levels, and I can offer hon. Members some reassurance on that front. The 2025 valuations look set to see the average employer contribution rate in England and Wales reduce by slightly less than 5% on average, which is a substantial reduction. Lords amendment 5 would introduce specific benchmarks for the next valuation in 2028, but the right way to learn lessons from this valuation is via the statutory review by the Government Actuary’s Department, which will begin shortly.

Lords amendment 6 focuses not on the LGPS valuations themselves, but on facilitating employers seeking interim reviews between valuations. I have heard calls for that from several Members over the last few months. However, the Government have already committed to consulting on regulations governing interim contribution reviews, reflecting the requirement in the Public Service Pensions Act 2013 to consult on changes to regulations—something that this Lords amendment would breach.

Let me turn to small pots. I am pleased to see that there remains a strong consensus on the need to act here, given the costs to individuals and to the pension system as a whole of the proliferation of small pots. This is an area where work begun under the Conservatives. Lords amendment 13 probes the case for extending the dormancy period for automatic consolidation from 12 months to 36 months. I recognise the intent, but that would be a mistake. It would significantly prolong the period during which a pot remains both small and dormant, with members facing multiple sets of charges and the wider scheme membership continuing to subsidise scheme losses on such pots, which might total around £50 million per year.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I declare an interest as a pensioner. The pensioners who come to me are a wee tad unsure about what is on offer for them. They are perhaps confused, because they get advice from people here to move in one direction, and then somebody else will give them advice to move in another direction. What can the Minister and the Government do to provide the correct support and advice to people who are hesitant or unsure about what to do with their pension pots at a time when it is really important? We have seen many scams, and we hear about much happening in relation to this issue. I want to ensure that pensioners in particular have the opportunity to get the advice that they need very much.

[Torsten Bell]

As always, the hon. Member asks an excellent question. For people who are currently still working, it is important to keep the simple advice at the front of their mind that people should be saving towards their pension. In almost all circumstances, saving is the right thing to do, and we have strong tax incentives in the system to encourage people to do that. We should ensure that that message is heard loud and clear, and I am sure that he makes that clear to his constituents.

On the harder question of how those approaching retirement decide to use their pot, it is often right to take advice, and obviously the Money and Pensions Service exists to provide that. Others choose to take it from other sources, not least from their providers themselves. The hon. Gentleman is right; we are leaving too much pressure on individuals to manage those decisions alone. That is why the default pensions parts of the Bill, which I think have cross-party support, are important in simplifying that journey for people. People can do what they want, but they will not end up with a bad outcome just because they are faced with a confusing situation in front of them. The onus will be on trustees and providers of pensions to navigate that for those individuals.

Let me come back to small pots. I will make one specific point, which was raised in the other place, regarding worries about those who are taking career breaks, particularly for maternity leave, and have a dormant pot for a period of time. I want to reassure the House that paid maternity leave obviously sees contributions into pension pots continue, rather than those pots becoming dormant, and there is the most important wider safeguard, which is the ability for anyone to opt out of their pot being consolidated. That safeguard covers exactly this kind of eventuality, even though it would be only a very small number of cases.

--- Later in debate ---

[Torsten Bell]

I have just explained to the hon. Member why he should be worried. He is happy to carry on with the status quo; we are not.

We are going to set this out in two ways. First, we will specify on the face of the Bill that regulations under the reserve power cannot require more than 10% of assets to be held in qualifying assets overall or more than 5% in the UK—exactly matching the Mansion House commitments. Secondly, our amendments require any regulations to implement the reserve power to be entirely neutral between asset classes, spelling out that a future Government who took a different view from this one could not use the power to direct investments into hand-picked asset classes.

The existing safeguards in the Bill also remain: the time limit, the reporting requirements, the affirmative procedure, and—most importantly—the savers’ interest test that allows pension schemes not to deliver against the reserve power requirements where it is not in savers’ interests to do so.

[Jim Shannon]

I have just been sent a question from a person back home, which I will ask directly as it has been put to me. Can the Minister confirm that the Government’s revised investment powers would never be used to direct capital away from Northern Ireland infrastructure and small business in favour of national priority projects? That is the question I have been asked, and I need to ask it of the Minister.

[Torsten Bell]

If I have understood the hon. Member’s question, we are ruling out the ability for the power to be used for any purpose other than for the broad private asset class. That would include questions of specific asset classes, but it would also include questions of geography. I hope that gives him the reassurance he is looking for.

It is also in the interests of savers to tackle the UK’s fragmented pensions landscape. Scale matters: it reduces costs, opens up a wider range of investment strategies and enables more active asset ownership. Those arguments, I think, have cross-party consensus, and they lie behind the measures in the Bill to require pension schemes to operate at scale in the years ahead. Unfortunately, that policy objective, motivated by a desire to ensure that savers get the best returns, would be undermined by Lords amendments 26 and 37, which seek to create more exemptions from the scale requirements for small schemes. They would do so in a way that would create ongoing uncertainty for years as schemes, regulators and likely courts debate whether or not the conditions for such exemptions have been met, a process that itself would impose significant costs on savers. Both regulators have expressed their concern that, as a result, these amendments would be inoperable.

I do, however, recognise the case that has been made, in this House and in the other place, for the importance of both competition and innovation in the market. That is what lies behind the pragmatic approach we have taken to achieving scale: not only have we set a pragmatic £25 billion starting point, but smaller schemes will be given time to reach that point, with the transition pathway lasting until 2035. The new entrant pathway will also provide a route for truly new and innovative disruptors to enter the market. This supports the policy intent of Lords amendments 35 and 43, which require the Secretary of State to have regard to innovation and competition when making regulations that support scale. Those amendments are, however, largely duplicative, given that the Bill already sets out that regulations made under the clauses in chapter 4 must take into account the conclusions of the review of non-scale default arrangements, and that review will consider innovation and competition.

Turning from private to public pension schemes, Lords amendments 77 and 85 seek a review of the long-term affordability of public service pension schemes, a matter that I am sure many Members are interested in. The content of the proposed review, however, overlaps almost entirely with existing mechanisms through which public service pension details are reported, not least the Office for Budget Responsibility and its reports and the whole of Government accounts. Reflecting major reforms over recent years, those mechanisms provide important reassurance that the cost of public sector pensions as a share of GDP is set to fall significantly in the years ahead.

Lords amendments 78 and 86 deal with the Pension Protection Fund and the potential for that fund to discharge its existing liabilities to members through a lump sum payment. I understand the sentiments of those in the other place who brought forward those amendments, in recognition of the absence of pre-1997 increases in PPF compensation, but the amendments would not achieve their intended objective of changing the level of compensation to which members are entitled. Instead, the Government are acting to improve the PPF safety net, with the Bill providing for prospective pre-1997 indexation of compensation for members whose former schemes provided for those increases.

Turning back to today’s savers, we all want to see more engagement with pension savings. I am an optimist on this front: as DC pots grow, so will engagement with those savings. Lords amendment 79 seeks to support that engagement from the perspective of providers, instigating a review of marketing and member communication rules, but instead of another review, the Government favour acting to make it easier for pension schemes to give high-quality support to their members. That is the purpose of the new targeted support regime, allowing schemes—for example—to suggest appropriate contribution and drawdown rates. In developing that policy, we have considered the interaction with the direct marketing rules contained in the privacy and electronic communications regulations. As a result, the Government have committed to take forward secondary legislation to amend those regulations, and we will also return to this issue as we develop default pension regulations through consultation later this year.

I close by thanking peers for their scrutiny of the Bill, and for the discussions I have had with many of them about it. I have endeavoured to do justice to the amendments retuned to us, and particularly to the motivations behind them. In aggregate, despite the divisions that the Lobbies of the House and of the other place exist to facilitate, we all want to see a flourishing pensions system that delivers for savers. This Bill will play a major part in making that happen, supporting a landscape of bigger, better pension schemes that are focused on the returns they deliver for members and, ultimately, the comfortable and hopefully long retirements that we all want our constituents to enjoy.

Access to Work Scheme

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 15th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[David Chadwick]

The hon. Member is right to focus on retention, which is an equally important part of the scheme.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing this debate to the Chamber. He is right to underline the issues for people who are disabled and want to get into work. Many employers wish to ensure that those people have the opportunity, but they are unable to expedite the system, through no fault of theirs. They want to employ people, but they cannot because the Government are falling short. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there has to be a better arrangement and better co-operation in relation to not just those who want to work, but those who want to give them jobs?

[David Chadwick]

Yes. The hon. Member is right to mention how everyone can benefit from people getting back into work—both employers and disabled people looking for work can benefit—but the system is not enabling that to happen. Self-employed individuals, in particular, are losing their businesses, and employers—in particular smaller employers—are being left with costs and uncertainty. A scheme designed to support work is, in its current state, preventing it.

Alongside the delays, there are growing concerns about how the scheme operates in practice. My constituents report being forced to reapply from scratch at renewal, even when nothing has changed. We know that we have the technology to deal with that problem. They face long reconsideration processes, struggle to contact caseworkers and in some instances cannot even access the system properly, because of their needs. This does not sound like a system working with people; it feels like one that they are having to fight to get through.

There are also serious concerns about funding decisions. I have been made aware of cases in which support has been cut significantly, not because needs have changed, but because funding is benchmarked against generic regional job market rates, which will punish people living longer, particularly in Wales, where we have lower than average salaries. That misunderstands the entire purpose of the scheme.

We are seeing a convergence of problems: delays getting into the system, barriers to navigating it and reductions in support once people are in it. The result is clear: people are being kept out of work because the Government’s system is not working for them. That creates a fundamental contradiction: the Government want more disabled people in work, and disabled people have plenty to offer, but encouragement without support does not represent opportunity.

When Access to Work fails, people fall out of employment, businesses miss out on talent, and more people are pushed into economic inactivity. At a time when we must indeed focus on growth, we should be strengthening the system, not allowing it to fall behind. We need urgent steps to tackle the backlog. We need a system that is faster, clearer and accessible. We need funding decisions that reflect the reality of specialist support.

Ultimately, this is about whether disabled people can participate equally in working life. Many disabled people are desperate to work, but they are being let down by this scheme, which has helped so many people over the years. I urge the Minister to recognise the urgency of the issue and set out how the Government will act.

Carer’s Allowance Overpayments

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 14th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of Carer’s Allowance overpayments.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I thank Members for joining me here in Westminster Hall. I have committed my career to securing better care and support for older people and their family carers, and I continue that work here in Parliament as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on carers.

This year marks a significant milestone for carers: it has been 50 years since carer’s allowance was first introduced. It was known originally as the invalid care allowance, and it was the first benefit to recognise the financial sacrifices of unpaid carers. It has made a huge difference, providing vital financial support to those who give 35 hours or more per week in unpaid care. I am proud that it was a Labour Government that introduced carer’s allowance back in 1976, and I am just as proud that this Labour Government and Chancellor increased the earnings threshold from £151 to £196 per week—the largest increase since the benefit was introduced—and again this month to £204 per week, as promised. The world has changed a lot since Harold Wilson was Prime Minister, but some things remain the same, and Labour is still putting its money where its mouth is and standing up for carers.

Supporting carers should be a moral mission of any Government. There are 5.8 million unpaid carers in the UK, and the economic value of their contribution is some £184 billion per year, which is more than the entire NHS budget in England. However, despite the value that carers bring to our society, we often fail to value them. According to Carers UK, 1.2 million unpaid carers in the UK live in poverty, and around half of carers cut back on essentials in 2025.

There is a multitude of reasons for carer poverty. Many carers give up paid work, but many juggle paid work and unpaid care, often reducing their hours, harming their careers and impoverishing themselves. It is for all those reasons that the carer’s allowance overpayment scandal is hard to stomach.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for bringing this subject forward. Does she not agree that the amount of money the Government have saved from the unpaid labour of carers is astronomical, and that unless the Department can prove that there was a deliberate overclaim, discretion must be available? These people, whose lives are dedicated to the care of others, do not need the stress of paying a penalty for a mistake and thereby being treated as a criminal.

[Anna Dixon]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that the impact of the overpayments on carers is terrible, and I am going to share the story of someone who was affected. I am sure others have heard similar shocking stories. As many as one in five unpaid carers who claim carer’s allowance and work part time were hit with overpayments. Thousands of carers have been left with huge debts and the fear of financial ruin.

Helen cares for her son Robin. He was born with a heart condition, respiratory vulnerabilities, developmental delay, mobility issues and Down’s syndrome. Helen gave up work as a teacher to support Robin and she relied on carer’s allowance. She also received some royalties for online resources that she had created as an education provider. She was paid those every six months, but the Department for Work and Pensions considered them as monthly earnings. It stopped her carer’s allowance and informed her that she had incurred overpayments going back over four years. She was charged more than £2,000 and told to pay back £50 a week. In her words,

“there was no care of how we would live or survive. It took me three very long years to repay the debt. It hung over like a great shadow, the letters, the fear of what could come. We were devastated by the department’s actions. Carers just don’t have bank balances that can stretch and withstand such pressures…you are so vulnerable…it shouldn’t be this difficult”.

As I have said, Helen’s is not an isolated case; thousands of carers are in this position, not as a result of failure on their part to report to and notify the DWP, but owing to a failure of Government. This scandal is a stain on the record of the British state.

I therefore commend this Labour Government for asking Liz Sayce to conduct an independent review of carer’s allowance overpayments. She made it clear that overpayments were caused

“not by widespread individual error by carers in reporting their earnings but by systemic issues preventing them from fulfilling their responsibility to report.”

I welcome the fact that the Government have accepted the vast majority of her recommendations and set aside £75 million to implement them.

Among other things, the review called on the Government to reform the earnings averaging processes and guidance, as well as that for allowable expenses, so that there is clarity, transparency and predictability, and it called for a thorough reassessment of cases to right the wrongs and deliver redress. It called for creative short-term solutions to address the cliff-edge crisis, while the DWP works on a longer-term plan. That is vital. If someone earns one penny over the earnings limit, they have to pay back the whole weekly carer’s allowance. The Sayce review found that although the earnings limit cliff edge does not itself cause overpayments, it dramatically increases their scale and impact, negatively affecting people’s health, finances, wellbeing and opportunities to work. Will the Minister update us on progress on the introduction of a taper system?

Liz Sayce recommended a whole range of other reforms, from upgrading computer systems to using more empathetic language, improving the join-up between types of benefits and simplifying the system. I thank her and her team for completing this crucial task. I urge the Minister to implement the recommendations with urgency and to set out the timeline for doing so.

Turning to those affected, I welcome yesterday’s announcement that the Government have launched an audit of more than 200,000 carer’s allowance cases affected by unclear Government guidance that was in place between 2015 and 2025. The cases will be reviewed, and debts potentially reduced, cancelled or refunded for some 25,000 unpaid carers. That is excellent news and I am sure the Minister will say more. However, I believe that there are several categories of people who have been adversely affected whose cases remain outstanding. The DWP appears to be accepting responsibility only for those affected by the unlawful guidance on average earnings and not for the lack of clear guidance on expenses deductions.

Will the Minister ensure, as the audit begins, that the DWP fully addresses all aspects of maladministration? First, there should be consideration of cases in which the DWP held information regarding expenses but did not act on it or make corrections for many years. Secondly, I urge him to ensure that cases in which data has been “lost” by the DWP are dealt with as Liz Sayce recommended, and treated as cases of official error unless the DWP can prove otherwise. Thirdly, in the cases of those affected by the failure to adjust universal credit correctly, Sayce recommended that the DWP should pay UC arrears. I would be grateful if the Minister addressed whether the audit will include reviews for those missing groups.

National Insurance Contributions (Employer Pensions Contributions) Bill

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 23rd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Torsten Bell]

I welcome the opportunity to consider the Lords amendments to the Bill. I thank Members of both Houses for their careful scrutiny of it, and I particularly thank the Financial Secretary, Lord Livermore, for leading the Bill so expertly through the other place. Before addressing the amendments directly and explaining the Government’s decision not to support them—I know that will be shocking—I turn briefly to the need for these reforms.

As the Chancellor set out at the Budget, we are taking action to make the tax system fairer and fit for the 21st century. That requires us to keep the effectiveness and value for money of the £500 billion of tax reliefs under review, and it is especially important to do so when costs are expected to increase significantly. The cost of national insurance contributions relief on salary sacrifice into pension schemes was due to almost treble, from £2.8 billion in 2017 to £8 billion by 2031, without reform, which would be equivalent to the cost of the Royal Air Force. This is not only an expensive tax relief, but one with a very uneven impact. The majority of employers do not offer salary sacrifice at all. The vast majority of salary sacrifice contributions are made by higher and additional-rate taxpayers. Salary sacrifice is unavailable entirely to those earning at or near the national living wage, or to the UK’s 4.4 million self-employed workers, and we know that both groups are more likely to be under-saving for retirement.

On this basis, the status quo is indefensible. Change was inevitable, but we have chosen to take a pragmatic approach, with no change until 2029, and a £2,000 cap to allow pension contributions via salary sacrifice to continue.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Minister for bringing this Bill forward. He brings a good story to the House, but sometimes these decisions give rise to questions. My constituents believe that the Bill creates a financial disincentive for middle-income earners to save for their retirement. Does he not agree that this risks creating a pensions gap, with individuals becoming more dependent on the state in later life, which will cost the taxpayer more in the long run than the tax relief costs today? My constituents feel that, and I am asking the Minister the question. How would he answer it?

[Torsten Bell]

The hon. Member always raises questions brought up by his constituents, which we know is a valuable part of the work he does in this place. The direct answer to his constituents is that all of them have a very strong tax incentive to save for their pension, without salary sacrifice. We spend £70 billion a year to provide that incentive, whether via the lump sum or the national insurance exemption for employer contributions. I hope the main thing he says to any of his constituents who come through the door is that they have a very strong incentive to save, whatever their circumstances. On the pension gap, that is why we have revived the Pensions Commission. Its work is ongoing, and I am sure he will read in detail its interim report, which will be coming out in the coming months.

Fuel Duty

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the shadow Secretary of State and the Opposition on securing this debate. It is important that we consider this matter, as we are fast approaching a crisis that cannot be circumnavigated. Does the shadow Secretary of State agree that the Government must consider reopening North sea production to produce enough for our needs, if they continue to refuse to play their part in securing fuel elsewhere? Does he not agree that fuel duty would benefit from self-reliance, rather than dependence on volatile nations, as we have at this very moment?

[Mr Holden]

I could not agree more with the hon. Member. We need to get back to drilling in the North sea. Norway is drilling on one side of the same basin and getting the benefit of those jobs and the tax revenue. It bemuses me why we are not doing that here. The shadow Energy Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), has consistently said from these Benches that that is exactly what we should get on and do.

Child Maintenance Service

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Kirith Entwistle]

That is exactly why this debate matters. I will come on to some of the points my hon. Friend raised.

When a public service not only allows, but actively facilitates, the continuation of abuse and fails to recognise the realities of coercive control, it is not just flawed; it is unjust. The national evidence is deeply concerning. Research by Gingerbread, a charity supporting single-parent families, found that 77% of primary carers using the CMS reported experiencing domestic abuse from the other parent.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing the debate. This is a massive issue in my constituency, as it is in hers. In Northern Ireland, a large proportion of parents relying on the CMS face difficulties in receiving timely maintenance, which directly impacts child poverty and family stability. Does she agree that there may be a lack of staff, and that to ensure that the CMS system operates effectively for families not just in her constituency, but in Northern Ireland, more needs to be done to reduce the backlogs and secure the financial support that their children are entitled to?

[Kirith Entwistle]

Absolutely.

Even more troubling is that 45% of the parents in that research said that the CMS’s involvement had actually led to an increase in abusive behaviour. Those figures should stop us in our tracks.

For survivors, the very experience of using the CMS can be deeply distressing. From the cold tone of emails and letters to the aggressive and harsh text messages, right through to the opaque way payments are calculated, the process can be deeply triggering for those who have experienced abuse. At the very beginning, survivors are asked whether they have experienced abuse and what form that abuse took. For a moment, there is hope that the system might understand the gravity of that disclosure, but what follows is often little more than signposting to a list of organisations before the process simply continues as though the question had never been asked.

Ultimately, the disclosure changes nothing. There is no meaningful change in how the case is handled, no structural safeguards and no recognition that the dynamics of abuse may shape the entire case. Crucially, it does nothing to change the tone of communications with the CMS. For someone who has taken enormous personal risk to leave an abusive partner, that can feel like jumping out of a plane only to find that there is no parachute, no safe landing and no one to catch them when they fall.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend make an interesting suggestion, and I know there has been some campaigning around this issue. The Health and Safety Executive has not seen evidence that the current arrangements are inadequate. They appear to be robust and well established, and they seem to be doing the job that is needed. If there is evidence of a problem to which my hon. Friend is able to draw attention, the HSE will certainly look at that very seriously. For now, though, the focus is on making sure that NHS trusts and others know their obligations under the current regulations.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Minister for his answers. I do not know whether he had a chance to see in the paper last week some figures for poisonings of those over 50 years of age on a number of occasions, although whether those were the unexpected effects of medicinal products or arose from lifestyle is not yet known. As a result of the uncertainty and the rising number of such poisonings, will the Minister look into this issue and come back to the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst), me and the House on whether there is a connection? I think there may well be one.

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I do not think I have seen the report the hon. Gentleman refers to. From what I have seen, there is no evidence of a problem with the current arrangements. There may be some pointers in the information he referred to, and if there are, I would be keen to have a look at them.

Work Capability Assessment Timescales

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Work Capability Assessment timescales.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. I welcome the Minister to his place to discuss this important issue. I am grateful to him and his office for their recent engagement with my office on this issue. I am sure he has gathered from our recent correspondence that the focus of my remarks today will not be about the timescales for first-time applications for work capability assessments, but those for people who have requested a new assessment or a reassessment.

There are lots of reasons why someone might need a new assessment. No health condition follows a set path. Although we hope that someone’s health might stay stable or improve, often that is not the way it works out. I do not know how many applicants are waiting for brand-new work capability assessments, but I know that the Minister wrote to me last month to tell me there was a backlog of 35,000 reassessments waiting to be seen. That is a lot of people struggling or unable to work and arguably not getting the support that they need. In response to recent parliamentary questions, I was told that the Department has no breakdown on that backlog, which I find quite concerning. I hope the Minister will take that away. I hope he will tell me in his remarks all the ways they are trying to fix the backlog, but I put it to him that we cannot add capacity if we do not know where to target, so we need a breakdown of that backlog.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate. To add my support from a personal point of view, in my office I have a lady who looks after nothing else but benefits. She has told me that there are major issues regarding reassessment waiting times for those who are up for review. The official internal figures for Northern Ireland show that the mean average wait was around 290 working days—58 weeks—and some people are waiting as long as seven to eight years. I have to say, in all honesty, those are extremes, but it does underline the very issue that the hon. Lady is talking about. Does she agree that the one way to solve this problem is more staff? They must be hired to deal with the backlog, as applicants are feeling stressed and anxious that their financial stability might change.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his intervention. I will go on to talk about my own caseworkers’ experience. It is right that we recognise that they are the people dealing with the brunt of this. I am going to outline some of the challenges and what I hope the Minister might tell us he is doing to address those.

There are different assessment providers across the UK. Maximus serves my constituency of North East Fife, whereas other assessment contracts sit with Capita, Serco and Ingeus. I would be grateful for more staffing near North East Fife, but the Department for Work and Pensions seems to have no knowledge of whether the problems are greater in Scotland or Skegness. When I talk about delays, I am not talking about a service standard being missed by a few weeks or even a few months. Like the hon. Member for Strangford, I have cases where wait times are 18 months or more.

I want to talk about the impact of such delays on people on the waiting list. I hope the Minister and you, Mr Western, will understand that for the security and wellbeing of my constituents, I am not going to share individual details. There are common denominators across the cases that can paint a picture but, as most MPs know, the people we support are often vulnerable and have suffered considerably in their lifetimes, and it is important that we safeguard their welfare.

The common denominators are backgrounds of serious abuse, sometimes back to childhood—abuse that is hard to imagine and has a serious impact on adult mental health and wellbeing; severe anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder; physical symptoms and pain, sometimes linked to external factors like car accidents and other times linked to past and ongoing trauma. I also have at least one case waiting for a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In general, there is extreme vulnerability across the board.

Summer 2024 seems like a long time ago. There were 243 happy and optimistic newly elected Labour MPs filling the Palace, the Paris Olympics were just kicking off, London was full of Swifties for the Eras tour, and my constituents were taking the difficult decision that their health struggles were too much to manage to hold down a job and starting the process of requesting support from the DWP. That illustrates how long they have been waiting. These extended waits are absolutely debilitating. The not knowing is incredibly difficult. I think all MPs know from experience that these people worry to the point of obsessive hyper-fixation that their existing benefits will be taken away. That is added to by the stigma people feel for not being able to support themselves or their children, relying on the food bank and not being able to meet their basic needs for energy or clothes, and the anxiety of being judged by those around them.

The hon. Member for Strangford mentioned his caseworkers. I spoke with my caseworkers in the run-up to this debate. I want to take a moment to appreciate our caseworkers, because we need to remember that they are not trained as benefit advisers, counsellors or welfare specialists, but they are the ones picking up the phones day in, day out, trying to unpick what has gone wrong and providing back-up to constituents who find themselves in crisis with nowhere else to go. That is true of all MPs’ offices.

Charter for Budget Responsibility

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller (North Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for a succinct opening speech.

The charter for Budget responsibility seeks to confer the important attributes of stability and credibility on a Government’s management of the public finances and the wider economy. “Stability” and “credibility” are not exactly the first two words that spring to mind to describe the current Government’s management of the economy. Through their own incompetence, they have presided over a chaotic year that has shredded any remaining confidence in the Chancellor and her team and—more important—has done lasting damage to the life chances of so many young people who now cannot find work.

As the Chancellor prepares her spring statement, we have a Prime Minister living on borrowed time. This Government are painfully lacking in real-world economic experience, and they desperately need help. We will not be opposing the measure this evening.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Does the shadow Minister share the concerns that many, probably all, MPs from Northern Ireland have—although I welcome the good news in relation to the tax surplus; who would be churlish and not welcome something that is to the benefit of us all—about the Northern Ireland Executive finding it incredibly difficult to make ends meet and make the books balance? One thing we look back on is the Barnett consequentials. We have heard promises many times over a number of years that the Barnett consequentials would be addressed, but that has not happened. The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has raised it, and individual MPs have raised it too. The Conservative Government and this Government said that they would look at it, but nothing has happened. Does the shadow Minister believe that it is now time to get things right for Northern Ireland, with a budget to help us to govern and deliver the goods, as the Government are doing here?

[Richard Fuller]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I think his issue with the Barnett consequentials is one for the Minister to reply to, but the Conservative and Unionist party, as he knows, has very strong support for and kinship with our citizens in Northern Ireland. On his comment about the revenues that the Government received in January, I would just point out that that in large part was due to self-assessment returns and capital gains returns filed in that year. When we tease through the data, we will see that a lot of that came from people making economic decisions that, in the long run, were not in their interest, because of the uncertainty brought into the economy by the Chancellor, who has confused people for an entire year.

To illustrate the chaos of the last year, let me remind the House what the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), said in the equivalent debate on the charter last year:

“Growth is the primary mission of this Government.”—[Official Report, 29 January 2025; Vol. 761, c. 344.]

But since then, comparing the OBR forecast from 2024 and 2025, growth is down in each year of the forecast period. In 2026, it is down to 1.3% from 1.8%. It is down in 2027, 2028 and 2029.

The then Chief Secretary also said that the autumn 2024 Budget

“put the public finances back on track, and we will keep them there.” —[Official Report, 29 January 2025; Vol. 761, c. 345.]

But since that statement the Chancellor has brought forward proposals to cut £5 billion from welfare. Then she reversed them. She said that she would stick to the two-child benefit cap, but then she caved in to Labour Back Benchers. The Chancellor has been forced to U-turn on her removal of winter fuel payments to pensioners. She has U-turned on her plans to tax our pubs out of existence, and she has U-turned on her damaging plans on the family farm tax and family business tax. After having said that she would not be coming back for more taxes, she did indeed come back to whack the British people again with tax increases amounting to over £26 billion.

When this Government came into office, the forecast was that they would need to borrow £77 billion this fiscal year. But under this Chancellor, that level of borrowing has ballooned to £112 billion so far and is forecast to reach £138 billion by the end of the year. According to the OBR in November 2025, public sector net debt will continue to rise over the forecast period, despite Labour raising taxes to record levels, and debt will rise from 93.6% of GDP to 97% by the time of the next general election in 2028-29—if the Government last that long.

Given the wreckage that they have caused in the general economy, Labour’s spin doctors have started to claim that the Government have the fastest deficit reduction plan in the G7. But that is only because this Government have spent so recklessly in their first years. Achieving this remarkable reduction rests on the credibility of the Government’s plans to raise taxes ahead of a general election and on their ability to rein in public spending in the out years—plans which, surely, their skittish Back Benchers will stymie, if the Government last that long.

There are two changes in this revised charter that I would like to note. The first is the decision to change the definition of the current Budget being “in balance”. Paragraph 3.6 of the previous charter said that

“balance is defined as a range: in surplus, or in deficit of no more than 0.5% GDP.”

The current charter does not include that condition. Can the Minister tell us why the decision has been made to remove that flexibility? I would also be interested in what he thinks of the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ recent report, which stated:

“The UK’s fiscal framework is based around a set of pass-fail, numerical fiscal rules. The fiscal debate is overly fixated on the amount of ‘headroom’ the government has against the most binding of those rules. The system incentivises the government to operate with the smallest amount of ‘headroom’ possible, with policy often fine-tuned according to the central point estimate of a highly uncertain forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility.”

The IFS report recommended that

“the UK would be better served by a new framework based around a set of ‘fiscal traffic lights’”.

The Government appear to have gone in the opposite direction to the recommendations by stressing the importance of pinpoint accuracy, and I would be interested in the Minister’s views on that.

I turn to the most significant change: the removal of what was paragraph 4.27 in the previous charter, which said:

“At the same time as the forecasts, the OBR will produce its assessment of the extent to which fiscal policy has delivered, or is likely to deliver, the fiscal mandate.”

The Government have, at a stroke, removed the opportunity for an independent assessment by the OBR ahead of the Government’s spring statement, yet last year the OBR significantly revised many of its previous assessments ahead of the spring statement. The OBR wrote that it was expecting GDP growth of 1%—half the rate of the October forecast—and that

“CPI inflation is forecast to rise from 2.5 per cent in 2024 to 3.2 per cent in 2025, 0.6 percentage points higher than forecast in October.”

[Interruption.] I have not been called “kiddo” for a while. I hope the Whip on duty, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra), understands that this is an important point to make. It may have taken me some time to get there, but this is an important point.

The issue here is: why make this change now? The Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011 is clear that the OBR must prepare fiscal and economic forecasts and assessments at least twice a year. Clause 251 of the Finance (No. 2) Bill retains the requirement for the OBR to prepare forecasts twice a year, but it seeks to remove the requirement in the 2011 Act for the OBR to provide its assessment twice a year. Perhaps the Minister—the wannabe Chancellor—can confirm that the reason we are today debating a revised charter, which now excludes an OBR forecast just ahead of the spring statement, is specifically to preclude the OBR from doing its own assessment on the imminent spring statement.

We support tonight’s measure, but not with any confidence in this Government’s handling of the economy. In lacking that confidence, we are not alone. According to the latest Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales survey, business confidence fell again in the last quarter of 2025, with record concerns about the tax burden on business. In its December 2025 survey, YouGov found that 80% of the British people thought the Government were handling the economy badly. It is a sorry, sorry state for our great country.