No-fault Benefit Debts

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Commons Chamber

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I am very grateful to have secured this debate, particularly as the last item of business before we rise for the summer recess. Before moving on to the substance of the debate, I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone in the House, especially the staff, a very happy, peaceful and restful break.

A number of organisations have been incredibly helpful in briefing me for this debate, including StepChange, the Child Poverty Action Group, the Salvation Army and my local citizens advice bureaux in Easterhouse, Parkhead and Bridgeton.

Other than housing and asylum, benefits and social security issues make up the largest cohort of my constituency casework. In the five years that I have served in this House, I have seen endless problems with the social security system, which too often is found wanting when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable in our communities.

The issue I want to hone in on today is no-fault benefit debts. That is not to say that there are not other aspects of our social security system that could do with repair, but in the interests of time I will confine my remarks solely to no-fault benefit debts. I am particularly appreciative of my colleagues in the Child Poverty Action Group, whose early warning system flagged this matter up.

Let us look at a particular case study that brings a human angle to the issue, rather than focusing on dry regulations, as can often be the case. Jess and Mark have a benefit debt of £600 because they were accidentally paid too much universal credit. The Department for Work and Pensions has acknowledged that it made a mistake when it worked out their entitlement, but it is asking for the money back, and Jess and Mark are legally obliged to pay it. Since they do not have the £600—they thought it was theirs, so they have spent it on essentials for themselves and their two children—the DWP is recovering the debt by taking £80 a month off their universal credit. Jess’s and Mark’s income was already low, and now they simply do not have enough to live on.

Unfortunately, this issue is becoming a more common concern. There are a few more case studies I would like to draw the House’s attention to. One claimant with a mental health condition has been left with an overpayment because he was accidentally given too much help towards his rent—that is, the wrong local housing allowance rate was applied; he had his young son staying with him but only the minority of the time. He could not have been expected to spot that pretty technical error.

A lone parent of a 10-year-old with disabilities was overpaid UC through no fault of her own—she received the severely disabled child element of UC when she should have received the disabled child element only. Again, she could not have been expected to spot that; but again, she is liable to repay the difference. A bereaved claimant with diabetes and osteoarthritis was overpaid UC when the DWP failed to act on information that she herself had given them about a private pension she had inherited from her late husband. She is now paying back the overpayment at £48 a month. As of April this year, she still had another 17 months of that left to go.

No matter how an overpayment of universal credit happened, the Department for Work and Pensions can ask for it back, even when somebody has done nothing wrong and indeed has done everything that could reasonably have been expected of them.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing this important issue forward. He has outlined some cases; I had a similar case, and I commiserate with his constituents. Does he not agree that when someone has done all they can to be open and honest and there is clearly no fault for which they can be responsible, the stress of debt repayments on a household can be crippling? There must be a compassionate clause that can be used to override the computer systems. I think that is what the hon. Gentleman is asking for; it is certainly what I would ask for.

[David Linden]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. When I and the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) visited his constituency office on holiday during the Easter break, I saw at first hand how hard he works for his constituents; there were piles of casework all around him that day. His intervention is born of the fact that he is a hard-working constituency MP and can see the reality of this issue. He is right to call for that special clause.

Speaking about the rule before the introduction of universal credit, the then Employment Minister, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), said:

“The practical reality is that we do not have to recover money from people where official error has been made, and we do not intend, in many cases, to recover money where official error has been made.”––[Official Report, Welfare Reform Public Bill Committee, 19 May 2011; c. 1019.]

Yet the DWP almost always asks for the money back now. Overpaid claimants can ask the DWP to waive recovery, but only about 10 waiver requests were successful in 2020-21, set against 337,000 new overpayments caused by DWP mistakes in the same period. The DWP openly asserts that it will abandon recovery only in “exceptional” cases.

When the DWP insists on recovering a no-fault debt, it has the power to make large deductions from somebody’s future universal credit payments—up to 15% of their standard allowance. To be clear for those watching today’s proceedings at home, I should say that the standard allowance is the amount that the Government believe a person needs to live on, so reducing it by 15% certainly causes hardship. The Government have already suspended energy companies from that, so why on earth are they doing it?

All this is out of line with basic ideas about fairness and fault. The rules about recovering overpayments are very different from what they were for the legacy benefits and tax credits that the universal credit system replaces.

DWP Office Closures

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

I want to raise the issue of Department for Work and Pensions office closures. I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, in particular my role as chair of the Public and Commercial Services Union parliamentary group.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I believe you have made representations on behalf of your constituents who are employed in the Department for Work and Pensions. This issue affects DWP staff across these islands. The PCS is the largest trade union in the civil service, representing 180,000 members, with workers throughout the civil service and Government agencies, including 50,000 members employed by the DWP. They are concerned, as hon. Members across the House are, about the DWP’s announcement of 17 March 2022 that more than 40 of its processing sites are to close, which we believe has the potential of putting more than 3,000 jobs at risk of redundancy.

There are three categories of processing site closures. The first is where the site is closing and the work will not be consolidated anywhere in the vicinity. I understand there are 13 sites in that category. The second category is where the site is closing but work will be consolidated into an office that the DWP has deemed is within the vicinity, which I understand is 28 sites. The third category is sites that were originally announced as transitional, which will be retained in the short to medium term but will remain badged as transitional. That is eight sites.

Despite the initial assurances given by Department Ministers at an urgent question I secured, the real concern is that we were told that the closures would not impact frontline services, but a further announcement, on 30 March, was for the closure of five jobcentres. That is very concerning and seems to be the latest push by the DWP to implement its network design strategy, which will put jobs and services at serious risk, and there is concern that the latest announcements could signal further jobcentre closures.

The PCS parliamentary group is clear that, following the previous closures under the people and locations programme, these closures will have a devastating impact on the services that staff provide and the local communities where the offices are based. They are a serious threat to DWP staff jobs.

On 17 March, when the original announcement was made, there were 1,118 staff in processing sites that will close without the work being consolidated within the vicinity and 7,341 staff in sites where the work is being consolidated into other offices. The speed at which the Department is operating and has moved to issue “at risk of redundancy” letters to staff across 25 of the 43 sites vindicates the concerns that many of us have that jobs will be lost as a result of the closures.

While some of the sites in the second category are seeing work moving into buildings that are very close by—the Falkirk and Preston sites, for example—other offices that the DWP has classed as being in the vicinity, and so plans to move staff to, are actually some considerable distance away. That includes the proposal to move the Doncaster office to Sheffield, which you will be aware, Madam Deputy Speaker, is 22 miles away. In many of the offices, one-to-one meetings have taken place with members of staff and it is clear that many will not be able to move; it is therefore certain that many DWP staff will be faced with the very real prospect of redundancy.

There are two processing sites in Wales due for closure from a previous round of closures, where staff have also been confirmed as at risk of redundancy as part of the 16 June announcement. That is because there are more than 120 staff based across the two sites who are unable to make the long journey to the proposed new office. The offices are closing in two tranches. On 16 June, the Department for Work and Pensions announced that, of the 29 sites in the first tranche, at 25 sites a total of 903 staff were at risk of redundancy. We believe that at the remaining 14 sites, which are due to be closed on a slightly slower timeline, similar numbers of staff are likely to be at risk of redundancy.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Stephens]

No Adjournment debate would be complete without an intervention from the hon. Gentleman.

[Jim Shannon]

Adjournment debates do not usually come this early in the day, Madam Deputy Speaker, as you and I know, but none the less we are very pleased, and I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on coming forward with it. He is assiduous when it comes to these issues, and I thank him for that. I think the whole House should thank him for it, by the way.

Coming from a rural constituency, with intermittent public transport as well as an intermittent internet and mobile service, I know that centralisation or closure of services is never a good suggestion for people in isolated areas. I know the hon. Gentleman is referring to towns, but does he agree and will he call on the Minister to consider, where this is possible, the suggestion of having satellite offices in rural areas such as where I live as well as in the centralised urban areas he has mentioned?

[Chris Stephens]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention because I have family members in his constituency, as he knows, so I am well aware of his constituency. He raises a very important point about satellite offices, but there is also homeworking. We were told that homeworking was a suggestion, but it seems now that the Government want to force people away from working at home into offices—only the Government are now closing these offices, so there do seem to be some mixed messages from the Government. I do thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He makes a very important point, and I hope the Minister will respond to it.

On 16 June, a voluntary redundancy scheme was offered to those staff at the 25 sites identified as being at risk of redundancy. Most of these closures are based on plans originally drawn up in 2016 and announced in 2017, and they are seriously out of date. The sites chosen for closure have, according to the Department, been selected after not just looking at the condition and suitability of buildings, but considering the potential impact of taking work out of locations that score more highly for economic deprivation.

However, many of these closures do not seem to make a lot of sense if their impact on the local economy has been taken into account. Many of these closures are in areas of economic deprivation that can hardly afford to lose good-quality public sector jobs. For example, 29 of the 41 processing sites are in constituencies that have higher than the national average claimant rates, and 18 of the 33 England office closures are in constituencies rated in the top 100 most deprived constituencies in the country. I do not call that levelling up.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) has done a survey of businesses near the Springburn site, which is earmarked for closure. It makes interesting reading, and I will take a moment to mention what has been identified in that community impact assessment. There are many businesses that staff at the Springburn site use. The off-sales, where people may perhaps buy a bottle of wine before they go home for the evening, and the Chinese restaurant next door, have concerns about the closure of that office.

The local florist is very concerned because the staff use that service, the local pharmacy has concerns about the closure and the local butcher has made representations about the closure of the Springburn office. That is the very real impact, just in Springburn alone, that such office closures will have on the local economy. It seems—perhaps the Minister can confirm this—that the overriding reason for many of these closures is that the Department for Work and Pensions has itself let the buildings in which it is located fall into major disrepair.

Let me now turn to concerns about the lack of opportunities to redeploy staff. When offices have been closing, Ministers have sought to reassure Members that staff will be redeployed elsewhere in the DWP or in other Departments whenever possible. However, the potential for redeployment elsewhere in the civil service has become less likely following the Government’s announcement on 13 May, through the press and without consultation with staff or trade unions, of their plan to cut 91,000 civil service jobs. The DWP’s decision not to make permanent thousands of staff on fixed-term appointments will, I believe, have come as a blow to staff as well as service delivery.

Under the recent permanency exercise for 12,000 work coaches who joined the Department on fixed-term contracts, only 9,300 have been offered permanent posts. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us whether those who are not among the 9,300 will be offered permanent employment in the DWP. Not all the posts have been offered to staff in their preferred workplaces, so they face making significant journeys if they want to continue their employment with the DWP.

The current position is that 1,400 full-time equivalent staff are on a waiting list but are being told that their contracts will end on 30 June 2022. Other FTEs have not been put on the waiting list and have been selected out of the process, despite having joined the DWP on the basis of fair and open competition. If this position does not change, it will lead to significant shortfalls in staff in jobcentres and DWP offices, which face staff reductions of up to 5,000. That will lead to increased workloads, place greater pressure on existing staff, and have a detrimental impact on the services that the public receive from the DWP. We believe that it makes no sense to threaten experienced staff with redundancies when the Department needs more staff, not fewer, to deal with higher workloads. If these closures and job cuts are allowed to go ahead, we will face the absurd prospect of staff being made redundant in one area while new staff are recruited in another to do the same job. That would be both costly and inefficient.

There is also the issue of the buildings. I understand that the Department aims to rationalise its estate, taking into account matters such as hybrid working, making offices fit for the future, and considering the green agenda as it reviews existing offices. I am told that all offices will be looked at, including jobcentres, and that the Department wants to ensure that everyone is working in an office that is of good quality.

The employers seem to believe that much of the DWP’s existing estate is no longer fit for purpose. They will seek to leave sites that are no longer suitable and relocate in new premises in the vicinity where they want to maintain a presence, overhauling some sites and closing others where they believe the DWP no longer needs to be located. They also seem to believe that having fewer, bigger buildings is a more efficient way of running the Department, although, as we heard earlier from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), that will not necessarily always be the case.

However, many of the processing sites are based in buildings from which the DWP will still operate. For example, jobcentres remain in the same location in Doncaster, a site that could easily accommodate the 300-plus staff that the DWP considers to be the minimum number to make a building viable. It will not be possible to sub-let parts of the buildings that it will be vacating, so we question the sense in making experienced staff redundant only for the part of the empty office space that they have vacated to—potentially—become unused. One such example is the Gloucester jobcentre at Cedar House, where only one part of one floor is being vacated and more than 40 staff who are unable to move to Worcester have now been identified as being at risk of redundancy.

The Department and Ministers have claimed that the estate programme is in support of the Government’s commitments on sustainability and net zero carbon. However, these plans are likely to lead to staff having to travel further to work as a result, which in turn would lead to more carbon emissions. No doubt the hon. Member for Strangford would agree with that, given his earlier intervention. It is also worth considering that the DWP is not totally vacating many of the buildings in question but has not said whether it plans to invest in making these buildings more energy-efficient in future. There is little evidence that the DWP is doing anything to improve the rest of its estate. Much of the remaining estate is similarly unsuitable and unsustainable. We also have concerns that not all the buildings the DWP proposes to move staff to will be able to accommodate the numbers.

That brings me to the issue of equality impact assessments. The restrictions on the equality impact assessments have been lifted by the Department and they are now available in the House of Commons Library. However, there are concerns that the equality impact assessments have identified that there will be groups disadvantaged by the closures but said very little about what is being done to mitigate those impacts. The assessments were produced before the one-to-one interviews were conducted with staff facing closure of their offices. It is likely that this process would further confirm the impact on people with protected characteristics.

Women form a significant majority of the DWP’s workforce, on some sites constituting over 75%. There are no tangible mitigations offered in these documents that are likely to compensate for the clear detriment that women face from this office closure programme. People with disabilities, particularly if they impair their ability to travel to work, are likely to face disproportionate impact from office closures as they will have to travel, in some cases by making significant journeys, further to work.

The DWP aims to mitigate the impact on disabled staff by exploring reasonable adjustments and flexible working arrangements. However, this is unlikely to provide sufficient mitigation as the Department is currently not prepared to fully embrace working from home as a redundancy avoidance. I am sure that people in Strangford and other rural parts of these islands have benefited, and Departments have benefited, from staff working from home, particularly those in the DWP, where there was a huge increase in the number of universal credit claimants, for example. DWP staff should be congratulated on the work that they did during that period and should not now have to face their offices being closed and the prospect of redundancy.

In some sites—for example, Hackney—there is a high percentage of staff from ethnic minority backgrounds. The proposed solution inevitably means longer travel at greater expense if they are able to relocate, which is a clear detriment for those impacted. In Blackburn, 36% of staff have been identified as being ethnic minority. Despite this, the DWP’s analysis is that there is no evidence to suggest that they will be negatively impacted. We believe that that analysis is flawed. There are high proportions of part-time workers, who are more likely to be carers, in many of these sites. Again, there is little by way of mitigation offered to those workers.

We are aware that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the permanent secretary invited a limited number of staff to attend a meeting on 26 May 2022 that they addressed with a presentation of the departmental plan for 2022-25. Once again, the DWP and Ministers have gone to staff without proper engagement with the trade unions. I would suggest that there should be full and proper consultation with the trade unions on the detail of a plan that has huge implications for trade union members, DWP staff and the public they serve. The plan identifies a cut in funding for staffing resources while at the same time introducing more work. It suggests a 12% cut in funding for staff over the three-year period. It also suggests a 16% increase in payments for universal credit, legacy benefits and pensions. This can only mean more work for less staff.

We want to see the Department take a realistic approach to a likely surge in demand for services as the impact of the war in Ukraine and the fall-out from the pandemic devastate the economy. I hope that the Minister will be able to answer many of the points that have been raised on this office closure programme and the concerns that we have for DWP staff, who deliver a great service. I hope that she will be able to confirm that there are no redundancies for those staff.

Universal Basic Income

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

May I say at the outset how pleased I am that the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) has brought this issue forward? I fully support what she is trying to achieve. Everything that the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) has just said supports my thoughts as well.

I say respectfully that we do not always hear from someone with an opinion that is from what we are putting forward here, so I am pleased to see the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Gareth Davies) in his place and arguing his point, which is the right thing to do. I probably do not agree with much of it, but that is not the point. The point is that the hon. Gentleman had the courage to come here and say his piece, which is something I admire in anybody.

I am also pleased to see the Minister in his place, because I know that he always puts forward his point of view compassionately and respectfully. We would hope that the Minister might agree with us—we will wait to see whether that is possible—but we will make our points.

I have highlighted in this House numerous times over the past few weeks that I have real concerns about the working poor. Maybe that is because—I say this for no other reason than that it is factual—when I was a young boy growing up, we did not have very much. We did not have many goods or toys, but we always had plenty of love in the house from our parents. I say that because it may give a perspective on those who do not have much today. That is the reason I have come here to speak in support of what the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East has put forward.

For those who were working hard this time last year but barely making ends meet, increasing costs mean difficult choices—poverty is staring them straight in the eye. For example, how do parents explain to a seven-year-old why a school trip to the local aquarium is not accessible, and why they will have to stay in school with another class while everyone else’s parents pay the £11? How do they get across to the child the fact that the school only informed them mid-month and they were expected to pay within the week, that Mummy literally does not have a spare pound until the child benefit comes in, and that the money usually goes towards topping up the electricity, as it does today more than ever? If that sounds far-fetched to some people, I can assure them that it happened in my office just last week. A member of my staff stepped in and paid that amount for a parent who had come in for a food voucher and broke their heart with that story.

The three hon. Ladies who spoke—the hon. Members for Edinburgh West, for Lanark and Hamilton East, and for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter)—reiterated the importance of food banks. That parent hated asking for the food voucher, but they were desperate. That is life today in this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; that is what we face. I do not say this to score points, but to speak up for the people who we have to speak up for. That is what I am here for, and I know it is what everybody else is here for.

That school trip was not essential for that seven-year-old, but it is life at present for their Mummy who works in the local shop and whose partner also works, and that will be their life until we in this place reduce the cost of fuel and electricity and uplift the cap. I want to see the cap uplifted. It is not about millionaires getting money; it is about the working poor and those in poverty. This year they simply cannot manage and that is only going to get worse.

We can give the food voucher and we can point to the wonderful local charities that help parents in need, but we in this place must address the fact that the working poor are working full time but can still not make ends meet. That is the reality in my constituency and many others—maybe including yours, Ms McVey.

That is why we need to consider a universal basic income. That burden cannot fall only on small business owners by demanding increased wages from them, because sometimes that is not possible. Businesses are on the brink and that could tip them over. For example, one small business owner told me that he used to be able to buy for 80p a toilet roll that he then sold for £1. Because the price of shipping has gone up by £9,500 per container, he cannot buy it for £1 anymore; he now buys it to sell for £1.29, an increase of 29%. If we tell him he has to top up the wages of his staff again, the product will be £1.50 and the price will continue to increase. It is about viability and sustainability for small businesses.

When the Government created the universal credit system, it was with the idea that it would give flexibility to working people to ensure that they have enough money. For example, £20,000 a year for a couple without Government assistance may have been enough last year, but it certainly is not enough this year. I ask the Minister, with respect and with a plea from myself, all the hon. Members in this corner of the Chamber and the shadow Minister, on behalf of working families in poverty, will he go back to the Cabinet and the Treasury and uplift the cap, and get hard-working people who want to work, such as my constituent, the help they need to survive?

I am talking about surviving. It is not like getting a passport to take a much-needed holiday, or saving for a TV or a new sofa. Instead it is about people feeding their children and allowing those children go on educational school trips, instead of being left with another class feeling left out, embarrassed and ostracised. That is why this is not okay.

I have great affection for the Minister; he and I speak about many things and there are not a lot of things that we do not agree on, from a human rights or persecution point of view, and we are on the same side. But I say to him and to the Government that this is not okay. This House has the ability to make changes. I ask that we make them, please.

Child Maintenance Service: Reform

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2022 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

May I apologise to you, Ms Rees, for being a few minutes late to the Chamber? I was in the Pass Office. It has moved, which I did not know, and there was a queue, so I apologise for not being here for the whole introduction to the debate.

This subject is very close to my heart and one that I am very pleased to speak on. I spoke, in the form of interventions, in the Adjournment debate on this issue the other night, and the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) was also there. I thank the House of Commons Library for its notes and advice. It always gives us lots of good information.

I think I should start by saying that I understand that the figures show that an estimated one in three separated families in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have a child maintenance arrangement that is paid in full. That is good news, and something to say before we start. As elected representatives, we will always be the ones people come to with their problems. People do not come to us all the time—as you know, Ms Rees, and I know—to say, “That’s a great job. Well done.” They come to tell us their complaints, so unfortunately, Minister, although I am not being negative, I want to say some things about where the fall-downs are.

The NAO report stated that the aim of increasing the number of effective maintenance arrangements overall was based on a wider, cross-Government set of policies on separated families. However, that broader set of cross-Government actions have yet to emerge as the chances that we hoped to see. In most of the cases that people bring to me, it is often the man who controls the money and that is where the problems lie. It is a fact of life that relationships break up. I am always sorry that it happens, and I do not like to see it, but sometimes it does happen, for various reasons. We are not here to condemn or identify why that is, but relationships do break down.

The DWP research does not explain why take up of the CMS is lower than expected. The CMS has improved its maintenance calculations and was designed to limit fraud and error, but the DWP has not estimated how many calculations are incorrect due to fraud and error. When an MP is presented with the case as the elected representative, it is very hard, especially when there is a lady sitting across the desk who is in absolute floods of tears and does not know what to do next. There are probably two or three children who are outside in the office, or maybe with their mummy. We can see the pressure on that lady in the office at that time.

CMS debt money is not collected, and outstanding arrears will continue to grow indefinitely. They are forecast to reach an eye-watering £1 billion. I find that quite hard to understand. Perhaps the Minister can tell us what is being done to collect the arrears. I know the Minister is a man who understands the issue very well, and always responds to MPs in a way that gives us some hope for the future. We are looking for that same consideration today, and I want to make some constructive comments.

I want to give some examples of real difficulties from my office. As I mentioned in the Adjournment debate on Tuesday night, the inconsistency of not being able to get the same person at the end of the phone to speak to about a constituent’s case is infuriating. I know that during covid people were ill and that meant changes every day, but even before covid, it was difficult to speak to the same one person about a constituent’s case. Then, when I got put on to somebody else, what happened? It all started again—the process just started with each new person. The timescale it took for things to happen was infuriating. Perhaps the Minister can give us some indication of what is happening in that regard.

There are also the pressures of the job. In Belfast, even before covid-19, many staff were moving on. I hope the Minister can give us some reassurance on what can be done or needs to be done to retain staff. Can the Minister give us some figures for the internal movements in civil service jobs? I do not expect him to have all the answers today. The DWP is under the control of Westminster, so will the Minister give us figures for movement on child maintenance within the DWP Belfast office in particular?

I have had mothers come to see me at the end of their tether with children under their care and without the wage and income that they once had. I have witnessed blatant attempts to not make child maintenance payments. In almost every case—99.9% of cases—it is the man, although sometimes it may be the lady who has the bigger income. In all those cases, it was husbands who had closed their businesses, transferred moneys and removed moneys from bank accounts prior to those accounts being checked, and who had handed valuable properties to parents or new partners. I know that marriages and relationships break down, but that anyone should try to walk away or abandon their children is outrageous.

I am aware of people who are property millionaires on paper and had large bank accounts, yet the hesitancy of the CMS to pursue them effectively was truly frustrating. They returned financial accounts showing a profit of less than £15,000 per year, when they are driving a car worth more than 30 grand and are sitting in properties that show their income is higher than that. If someone is withdrawing moneys from the bank account before a relationship break-up, there is a case to answer.

Why is it so important? Ladies are squeezed financially. They cannot pay their mortgage when they are left with all the bills. They cannot pay the electric. In some cases, they cannot even buy food for the house. They are desperate.

My constituents have given me lots of examples. In my office, as I am sure is the case in everybody’s office here, we quite regularly get such cases. We find it frustratingly difficult to negotiate through their process with constituents. I want to raise some points to the Minister. First, is it possible to put urgency into the request from us, as elected representatives, to the CMS? There is real urgency to get things done quickly and to, importantly, have a process at the end of it. Secondly, can we assign one officer or staff member to look after each case? I am ever mindful that officers might be off sick, but there should be someone who knows the case, so that we do not have four, five or six people. Thirdly, checking the bank accounts before the breakup would give an indication, I suspect, of where the process is.

We should listen to the wife in those cases, the lady who knows. She knows where the dead bodies are buried. She knows where her husband’s moneys are. She knows what property he owns. She knows about the bank accounts. She knows. We should be looking towards that evidential base. It is not right that husbands can abscond or ignore CMS letters. The legal authority to investigate must be central to the obligations. I know that the Minister has great understanding and that he wants to assist. I ask him to hear the four requests and others have made. I appreciate the evidential base that they have, but I do feel that the DWP can do better and must do better.

I am probably old fashioned. I am a traditional person, and I believe in the sanctity of marriage and commitment. That is just me. A man must remember his obligation to his wife and children. We need the law of the land tightened, thereby ensuring impartial treatment for men and women. There is much to do, Minister—much to achieve and change. I value the Minister’s help and commitment to trying to make changes that ensure we have a system that really works for the lady. I think that is the way it should be.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Rutley]

I give way to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon).

[Jim Shannon]

I loved the comments made by the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) and, in particular, the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows). I also associate myself with the Minister’s comments. I have been a Rangers supporter since I was a wee boy. Rangers may not have won last night, but they made this great kingdom of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland better together. It was a showcase for us all.

[David Rutley]

I agree. Other hon. Members may not quite agree with everything that the hon. Gentleman just said, but I think we can all agree that it was a remarkable achievement.

We can all also agree that this debate is important. Even though my current ministerial brief does not cover this area, it is vitally important. The Child Maintenance Service plays a valuable role in ensuring that children are supported in instances where parents do not live together and where they come to a private arrangement. We know that the vast majority of separated parents quite rightly take their responsibilities extremely seriously, as the hon. Member for Strangford pointed out. Our aim is to help parents to support their children and we are sensitive to the needs of both parties. The CMS is designed to promote collaboration between parents, and it offers a statutory scheme where collaboration is not possible.

The central focus in all of this is that the children are supported. The intent of child maintenance reform is to encourage parents to meet their responsibilities and provide their children with the financial support they need to get a good start in life, and that intent is well supported by the evidence. I will come on to that point in a second.

We are committed to maximising the positive impact of the Child Maintenance Service and ensuring that good arrangements are put in place for children, no matter where they are growing up. As the hon. Member for Strangford pointed out, parents need to honour their responsibilities to their children. We believe the CMS has made substantial improvements in the pre-covid period, notwithstanding that there is further room for progress, and the statistics support that. The compliance rate for parents on the collect and pay service has increased significantly, with the percentage of parents paying something rising by eight percentage points between the quarter ending March 2018 and March 2020. From March 2016 to December 2021, the percentage of CMS cases where no maintenance is being paid fell by about 30%, from 46% in March 2016 to 32% in December 2021.

CMS investigators have the power to deduct directly from earnings and to seize funds owed in child maintenance payments where requests for payments are consistently refused. For example, the CMS has the ability to seize funds held by a third party that they owe to the paying parent. Over 800,000 children are now covered by the Child Maintenance Service arrangements, up from 700,000 in mid-2019. We are making a difference to the support that children have been receiving: since 2019, over £1 billion in child maintenance has been arranged each year through the direct pay service and the collect and pay service. The hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) made an important point about poverty. She and I have regular debates on this subject, but it is important to note that around 140,000 fewer children are growing up in poverty as a result of child maintenance payments. That is good progress, but clearly more work needs to be done.

The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw rightly raised points about the fee for an application to the Child Maintenance Service, which is set at £20 for all CMS participants. That fee is intended to encourage parents to consider whether they really need a statutory scheme case, but it is not so high that it creates an insurmountable obstacle. Applicants who are victims of domestic abuse or under the age of 19 are exempt from paying the application fee. It is not our intent to create a barrier for vulnerable customers; in fact, around 60% of applicants do not pay that fee. Collection charges, which are 20% for the paying parent and 4% for the parent with care, only apply to the collect and pay service, and are intended to provide both parents with an incentive to collaborate. The collection charge for the receiving parent is deducted only when maintenance is paid, so the receiving parent does not owe money to the Child Maintenance Service if maintenance is not paid. If there were no charge for receiving parents, there would be no incentive for them to use the direct pay service.

The Child Maintenance Service may also review the income of a paying parent if earnings decrease or increase by 25% over a year—a point that was raised by the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw. That 25% threshold ensures that liabilities remain stable so that both parents can budget with certainty, which aims to provide ongoing certainty for the child as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the Minister very much for what he has said so far. I think that each and every one of us here today—and, indeed, those who are not here—have the very same issues, particularly that of men trying to hide their incomes. For instance, before a couple separates, money could be moved out of bank accounts and properties could be shoved sideways into the ownership of parents, brothers, sisters or new partners. Does the DWP have the power to investigate such cases in a thorough, almost forensic way? That is really what is needed.

[David Rutley]

I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes—with conviction, as always—but until an application is made to the CMS, it has no jurisdiction to investigate finances. It is important that applications are put in place so that that sort of action can move forward.

[Jim Shannon]

Does that mean that there is going to be a review of the system and that it will lead to such action? If it does, that is a giant step forward.

[David Rutley]

That is a point on which the redoubtable Baroness will need to come back to the hon. Gentleman. I will write to him on that point.

[Jim Shannon]

Will the Minister give way one further time?

[David Rutley]

The hon. Gentleman is very persuasive. I will allow him one last intervention, because he is a good man, but then I think we better move on.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the Minister for giving way, and I thank you as well, Ms Rees, because I would not be able to intervene without your say-so.

I also made a point about the evidential base. The ex-wife has great knowledge of where the money is. I referred to her knowing “where the dead bodies are buried”. She knows everything. Discussions with the wife are really important. Can that also be part of the process that the Baroness is considering?

[David Rutley]

I will ensure that the Baroness hears these views. We have all had cases as parliamentarians that have shown us that there are real challenges. We want to lean into this and tackle the challenges appropriately. I have a couple of concluding remarks, which I hope will give Members some confidence.

We have talked about dividends and unearned income. This addresses the point raised by the hon. Gentleman, to some extent. Including that income will reduce the scope for parents to organise their financial affairs in such a way as to reduce their financial liability for their children, which is the situation that we need to stop. Parents need to honour their responsibilities. I also recognise the current cost of living pressures as a result of rising prices around the world and the impact of the Ukrainian war. We will strive to introduce this change as soon as possible.

On enforcement, between January 2020 and December 2021 we arranged a total of 14,300 deduction orders, which represents about 33% of non-paying collect and pay parents. We also referred 15,000 parents to enforcement agents, which represents about 35% of non-paying collect and pay parents. These enforcement actions are taken before sanctions are considered.

During the same period, where further action was needed the CMS initiated almost 6,000 sanction actions against non-paying parents, which represents about 13% of non-paying collect and pay parents. That led to 249 prison sentences—244 suspended of them and five immediate.

We are always looking for new, innovative and effective ways to encourage paying parents to provide the financial support that their children need. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has set out, we are aiming to introduce curfew powers before the end of the year—I understand the point made earlier by the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw—and changes to the measures on unearned income after that, which will increase the range of enforcement measures available. Having listened to today’s contributions, I think that those changes will meet with the approval of the hon. Members in attendance.

I thank hon. Members for their participation in this important debate and I hope they will join me in agreeing that the CMS provides an important service. We will continue to keep under review options with regard to CMS policy and operational reforms. Hon. Members can be assured that we will strive to continue addressing the needs of separated parents and producing better outcomes for children—it is a clear priority.

Child Maintenance Arrears

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this debate forward. Child maintenance arrears are a massive issue in my constituency, as they are in his. Does he not agree that with the cost of living crisis, single-parent families are under more pressure? There are 20,000 children in Northern Ireland alone whose cases are with the Child Maintenance Service’s advisers, and they deserve an up-to-date, functional service to ensure that payments are adequate, correct and timely.

[Dr Mullan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue. My focus today is on the need to change regulations, but I accept the wider concern about the functioning and efficiency of the agency. I will go on to talk about his point about the cost of living crisis. Figures suggest that 16% of children who are not in receipt of maintenance payments would be lifted out of poverty if they were, and that shows the level of concern we are trying to address.

We have seen some improvements. The NAO found that the internal processes for moving towards enforcing compliance were better, but the bigger picture is not positive. Of separated families who have a Government-mediated arrangement in place, the NAO found that only one in three see it paid in full, so two in three are not getting the payments in full to which they are entitled. Sometimes, the sums people are expected to pay are incredibly small. At the end of September 2021, total cumulative arrears under the current child maintenance scheme were £436 million. That amount is increasing at roughly £1 million a week, and the total will hit £1 billion by 2031. That is a huge amount of money that is not being paid by non-residential parents, and we have a responsibility to hold to account and punish individuals who behave in this deplorable manner.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman]

It is not, Madam Deputy Speaker, but it is an honour for my hon. Friend to be blessed by such an intervention.

My hon. Friend knows, because we have discussed this before, that I am not the Minister with direct responsibility for this issue in the Department for Work and Pensions; that is the noble Baroness Stedman-Scott. I have already informed the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), who has a Westminster Hall debate on the subject, that another Minister will be responding to that debate. As she knows, I have long booked that day off—I have a birthday—so the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley), will be responding to her debate on Thursday.

I want to deal with a number of key points at the outset. First, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich asks whether there can be a meeting very shortly between him and the Minister concerned. I have spoken to the noble Baroness tonight, and she has assured me that on Monday or Tuesday, subject to the demands of his diary and hers, they will meet either in the House of Lords or in the Department for Work and Pensions to take this matter forward.

We should not forget that the purpose of the Child Maintenance Service is to facilitate the payment of child maintenance from one separated parent to another when the parents are unable to reach agreement on how to care for their children following separation, but the interests of the child are at the heart of this policy. The key issue my hon. Friend raises today—this is a perfectly legitimate point that any Member would genuinely want to grasp—is the desire to get the best outcome for the child, namely the payment of the sums to support the child. There is also a desire, as he rightly outlined, to punish the parent who is not participating in the payment. However, the public policy point that always has to be grappled with is that it is very important that the punishment of the offending parent does not impact on their ability to make the payment for the child, because the most important thing is that the child is supported. There are balances to be struck, and that is the really difficult issue that the Child Maintenance Service has to grapple with at every single stage.

[Jim Shannon]

The Minister is absolutely right about the importance of the child, but the system sometimes falls down, as the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) mentioned. One of the ways it falls down is in consistency in the officers who look after each case; they often change. Is there any way that that could be looked at, so that each case is looked after by one officer, rather than three, four, five or six?

[Guy Opperman]

The hon. Gentleman has forestalled one of the issues that I was going to raise. I remember the debate secured by the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw on 21 January 2021, in which there was discussion of how the CMS was managing during covid. It was a struggle, to be perfectly blunt; all such services were struggling to provide assistance during the pandemic, and there were complications. I would like to think that all colleagues accept that the Child Maintenance Service has improved as covid has disappeared, as people have been able to return to work, and as consistency has returned because people are no longer getting ill, having to shield and having all the problems that follow.

The hon. Member for Strangford raised the issue of numbers. There are approximately 4,000 staff working for the Child Maintenance Service in the United Kingdom. That is a lot of people who are addressing this problem on an ongoing basis. I take the criticism, and the constructive criticism, about consistency in dealing with a case. In every MP’s office up and down the country—whether on this issue, on passports, on the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency or on any public services—there are desires and hopes for consistency, so that people can build up a relationship with a particular individual. Clearly individuals working in the public sector are free to move on to other things, but the criticism is legitimately made, and I take it on board; I am certain that the noble Baroness does, too.

My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich talked about collections in his outstanding speech. Collections are increasing. The criticism can be made that they are not increasing enough, but despite the difficulties of the pandemic, CMS collections have continued to increase; they rose by 8% between 2018 to 2021, and in 2021 some 71% of paying parents who used the collect and pay service were complaint.

In the quarter ending December 2021, a total of £46.6 million was paid through the collect and pay service; in addition, £210 million was due to be paid through direct pay arrangements. As a result of child maintenance payments, between 2018-19 and 2020-21—the most recent period for which there are statistics—the households of some 140,000 children were taken out of the category of low-income households. That goes to the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford and emphasises the desperate importance of this issue. It is particularly relevant in a cost of living crisis. Those payments are made both through family-based arrangements and the CMS.

The main point of the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich was about enforcement, and I turn to that now. When a parent fails to support their child and fails to fulfil their financial responsibilities, a number of options cut in. If arrears have begun to accrue, the CMS aims to take immediate action to re-establish compliance. For example, £3 million was collected between October and December 2021 through CMS civil enforcement action.

There are other enforcement powers, too. If a non-compliant paying parent is employed, the service will first attempt to deduct the maintenance and any arrears directly from their earnings. That is done by a deductions from earnings order or request; employers are obliged by law to take that action. This represents a quick and efficient way of going directly to the source of income to obtain the money. We learn these lessons from those who are the best at this: the taxman, who basically goes to earnings directly and ensures that they get immediate recovery.

Working Tax Credit and Universal Credit: Two-Child Limit

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Alison Thewliss]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Member on that point and with those religious leaders who wrote that letter then and who continue to campaign on the issue now. I will touch on some of that a little later.

The effect of the two-tier policy that has been created is that a family with three children, the youngest being six, will receive support. However, a family with three children, the youngest being four, will not. The needs of these families are exactly the same, but this Government have decided that they are not entitled to the same support. Previous research on the issue has found that in some cases older siblings can come to resent the new baby in the family, because they have lost out on their activities, their sports clubs and the things they used to do because the family no longer has the money to get by. It is desperately unfair that children are already losing out on wider life experiences because of this discriminatory policy, as well as now on the very basics because of the cost of living crisis.

I will describe some of the other inconsistencies in the policy in some detail, because every time I explain them to people they are absolutely baffled; I would like to hear the Minister’s answer to the mad exemptions that exist. On the exemption policy for multiple births, if someone happens to have twins after having a single birth, there is an exemption to the policy, which is fine. If they have twins first and then go on to have another baby, they are not entitled to support, presumably because they should have known better. There are three children in each scenario, but different support.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) mentioned, the rape clause is even more pernicious. For this exemption, a woman has to fill in a form and have her traumatic experience verified by an official to say that her third child was conceived through rape or a coercive relationship. This form exists and has to be signed off by a professional to verify that someone has had a child in that circumstance. However, it can be claimed only if the person is not living with the parent of that child.

We know that forcing a woman to leave a relationship can put her and her children in danger, but that reality does not appear to trouble the Department for Work and Pensions. Some 1,330 women claimed under the exemption in 2021. The really perverse part of this pernicious and stigmatising policy is that it applies only to third and subsequent children. If someone’s first child was conceived as the result of rape and they went on to have two more children, that is just unlucky for them as far as the DWP is concerned.

The exemptions around adoption are also perverse. There is no additional support for an adopted child if they are adopted from abroad, or if a person and their partner were that child’s parent or step-parent immediately before they adopted them. Why on earth would this Government want to disincentivise adoption? The exemption for kinship carers, who were losing out on support for their own children because they had been so good as to care for others, was only granted after the Government were taken to court. It should not take legal action for this Government to recognise and fix their mistakes, but we know the DWP repeats this pattern again and again.

The effect of this policy is well documented and well assessed, and I pay tribute to the Child Poverty Action Group, the Church of England and other faith groups including the Interlink Foundation, which represents the orthodox Jewish community. As my hon. Friend mentioned, there is a discrimination at the heart of this policy that affects people of faith. It sticks in my craw to see Easter greetings from Members of this place—the Holy Willies of this place—when their faith does not extend to supporting children, who they are instead actively pushing into poverty through the policies they advocate. How does the Minister believe this policy affects people of differing backgrounds and faiths, and how can he say the policy is fair in this context?

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I am normally pleased to hear the hon. Lady speak on any issue, but particularly so on this issue, given her knowledge and expertise. On her point about faith, does the hon. Lady feel that a human rights issue could well be at stake here? While that is not a direct responsibility of the Minister, it is a part of this debate that must be considered. By enforcing this rule, the Government are creating a human rights issue for people who do not want to be under that law.

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct to point that out. There are particular issues with this policy for women in Northern Ireland, related to the rape clause and issues of abortion. When this policy was brought in and was being implemented, Northern Ireland particularly was an afterthought to this Government, just as faith groups have been. Children are regarded as a blessing—not just by people of faith, but particularly by them. Therefore, the policy of this Government to limit support to the first two children in a family has a disproportionate effect on people of orthodox Jewish, Muslim or Catholic faith, for whom abortion and contraception just are not options. We already know that this policy is forcing some of those families into significant poverty.

We all know that contraception is not infallible, even for those who actively choose it. In one of its reports, CPAG has quoted a parent who said:

“I got pregnant despite having an implant. When I found out it was too late for [an] abortion. I’m struggling since then as I had to give up my work”.

I very much support a woman’s right to choose, but a Government welfare policy should not be forcing people into abortions. The British Pregnancy Advisory Service has carried out its own research on this issue and found that it was a factor in the decision making of women who were aware of the policy. BPAS has said:

“We have warned the government that the two-child limit is forcing some women to end what would otherwise be wanted pregnancies. Since 2016, the number of abortions performed to women with two or more existing children has risen by 24%, compared with an increase of 11% performed to women with one existing child.”

I would like the Minister to comment specifically on how he is monitoring the impact of this policy on women’s decisions, and why he considers this to be an appropriate part of social security policy.

We are in a cost of living crisis, and the impact of that crisis on larger families is particularly acute. Energy and food prices are soaring, and this Government did little in the spring statement to hand out a lifeline to people who are struggling right now. Can the Minister outline what, five years in, is the ongoing monitoring of this policy? What consideration has been given to removing it altogether? What conversations has he had with the Chancellor about this policy? When the modelling of its impact on child poverty is so clear—I almost wish we were in one of those American Senate hearings where I could show the graph, because it is absolutely crystal clear—why are this Government, dystopian as they are, continuing to pursue a policy that they know has failed in its objectives? It is simply causing more hardship in every passing year. Almost half of all children living in families with more than two children are in poverty, and the Government must know that. I want to know why they refuse to act.

The Scottish Government have done their best to support families with the Scottish child payment, which we brought in and are increasing, and on which there is no two-child limit, under the social security powers we have. With 85% of social security powers still held in this place, the UK Government bear a responsibility to do what they can. In the face of the UK Government cutting giant holes in the safety net, tackling poverty and making Scotland the best place in the world to grow up in is a challenge. Our devolved powers go only so far. We need all the powers of a normal nation to ensure that we can support all our people and value every child, and not just the first two.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is always a pleasure to speak in Westminster Hall, but it is a special pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss). The hon. Lady and I have many things in common—apart from the independence of Scotland, of course. However, when it comes to social issues we are on the same page on just about everything; I can comfortably support her on those issues. I thank her for setting the scene, and I thank all other Members who have contributed.

I love accents. I love the accent of the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter). I hope I have pronounced that correctly—I probably have not. I think the Welsh accent adds to this Chamber; there are a number of Welsh Members who, through their voice and accent, add to the Chamber. I hope that my Ulster Scots accent from Northern Ireland also adds in some way to the Chamber, bringing the cultural values of all four nations together. It is always a pleasure to do that.

I fully support the comments of the hon. Member for Glasgow Central, and indeed those of everyone who has spoken and will speak afterwards. Hopefully, the Minister will give us some succour and support. Opposition Members’ comments are clear, and we look to the Minister in hope of a response. I am going to take a slightly different angle. I think the hon. Lady probably knows this, because she is always well versed in the subject matter, but the London School of Economics has been very clear. Its research set out to explore how the policy, in operation since April 2017, has affected fertility of third and subsequent births, and it said:

“Using quantitative methods, we find the policy led to only a small decline in fertility among those households directly affected. This implies that the main impact of the policy has been to reduce incomes”—

this hits on the issue that the hon. Lady referred to—

“among larger families who are already living on a low income”.

There are therefore two issues to this debate. It continued:

“and hence to increase child poverty.”

Those are the things that this debate and my short contribution will address. That is why I am very much opposed to the two-child policy and its effect on tax credits and universal credit.

[Margaret Ferrier]

Research from the New Field Foundation found that the limit does not discourage families from having more children, and has only worsened their financial difficulties. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that Ministers must actively engage with charities and organisations with expertise in policy impact to understand the real-terms impact of such policies?

[Jim Shannon]

I wholeheartedly support the hon. Lady’s comments.

I am going to say something fairly harsh. I am not a harsh person, or I try not to be, but I always had a fear about the two-child limit—perhaps others agree with me—which is why I opposed what I dubbed at that time the “Chinese limit”. We do not have an authoritarian state just yet, but in China they have—I know they are going to change the two-child rule, or at least they are hoping to change it—and in a way that is the authoritarianism of this DWP directive, which inadvertently or directly has put in place the Chinese limit.

I was talking to the hon. Lady before the debate, and I said that if there had been a two-child limit when our parents were born, I would not be here because my mother would not be here; she was the fourth child out of five. The hon. Lady and others—perhaps even the Minister—would not be here either. If the two-child limit were enforced here with the regularity that it is in China, but with an income base that makes it almost authoritarian, there would be children who are not born—people who would not be here. I want to highlight that dark perspective, because that is where I see this draconian, dictatorial and very authoritarian directive from the DWP going.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman mentions China, and he knows that it is having huge problems now because there is an expectation of low numbers of children. It is having difficulties with its birth rate. It is interesting that since 2012—since austerity kicked in—the birth rate in the UK has dropped by 12%. That is significant, and it has huge implications for pension contributions and for many jobs.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. It is about not just the two-child limit on its own, which means that a person cannot have a third child because there will not be the same structures in place to help them. It is also about issues such as the impact on income and pensions. She is absolutely right. The Minister in his place is the man who is placed to answer all these questions. I hope he will give us his thoughts on how this situation can be corrected. I go back to my point of a few moments ago about the Chinese Government. The policy does not simply impact the third child—it impacts every child in that home.

I have three sons. The first two each have two children and made a decision themselves not to have a third one. The third boy has one child and another one on the way. That is not because China’s limits are impacting upon the Shannon family, because they are not—it is a decision made by families themselves. If a family was to have a third child, why should they not be allowed to? Why should we not look at the issue of income of all the other families, and maybe say to those who said that the policy would cause there to be fewer births and cause people to use birth control, that that is proving not to be the case? We are simply taking money from households.

I referred to the fertility aspect of the two-child limit in the research summary, and want to quote further from the research:

“This raises the question of whether the two-child limit reduced the overall fertility of third and subsequent births in the UK. Survey evidence from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service found that 57 percent of women who were likely to be affected by the two-child limit said it was a relevant factor in their decision to have an abortion”.

I know some may not agree with me—I know others who do—but I am very clear in my mind. We have a duty. That is how I have always voted in this House, though others may have a different opinion. I believe in the sanctity of life—the life of the mother and the life of the child—and this policy has done something that I think is morally wrong. I think it is wrong that people should have an abortion because they cannot afford to keep the child that they carry. It is as simple as that. I very much disagree with the policy.

The researchers say that the 57% is a random sample, but also that it is bigger than that. They took it a wee stage further on income and divided

“adult women of childbearing age into those who are on benefits (or are likely, given their socio-economic status, to be on benefits) or not; and those who already have two or more children or not.”

The stats provide an evidential base for the Minister; I am happy to make them available to him, if he thinks they would be helpful. I think they would be, including for civil servants, when it comes to looking at the bigger picture.

Data published in April 2021 shows that 1.1 million children were affected by the two-child limit—237,000 more than the previous year. Updates for 2022 are not yet available. The number of children affected will continue to grow as nearly all low-income families with three or more children eventually become subject to the limit. What we are doing—I say “we”, but it is not the people here; it is the Government—is imposing an income limit on those who already have three children or more.

I have already discussed in this place on several occasions the need for the child benefit limit, set in 2013, to be uplifted, because working families are affected. Someone who earned, for example, £49,000 in 2013 was on a good wage that would allow their partner to work part-time hours to take care of their children. They are in a completely different scenario today, with energy costs. The hon. Member for Cynon Valley spoke at some length about energy costs and the impact on income. It is no different in Cynon Valley from Strangford or Glasgow Central, or anywhere else.

With gas, electric and fuel at treble the price of 2013, now more than ever we need to do the right thing by families—review, change and abolish this rule. We need to give some decency, compassion and understanding back to families, who are under incredible pressure. A review of the policy and then its abolition are essential.

The data also suggests that the probability of having a third or subsequent child declined by some 5% after the reform, which suggests that the two-child limit has led to a decline in the number of third and subsequent births of approximately 1%. The evidential base is there. This measure has a success rate of only 1%, while children in our homes are suffering. If it has only achieved a change of 1%, why pursue it? Some might say that if a party wins an election by 51% to 49% they have still won it, but as I understand it, the whole idea behind this policy was to focus on saving money. The savings are not there, so it comes down to the critical question of what this policy is really all about. Five years on from its implementation, research has found that the policy has a very marginal impact on families having more than two children but has deprived low-income families of approximately £3,000 per year—the hon. Member for Cynon Valley referred to that at some length, and the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) spoke about it as well. They both did surveys in their constituencies, so they have done their homework. They have got the evidential base; they have got the proof.

I am conscious of time, so I will conclude with this: given the pressure that families are under, we in this place must take appropriate steps to alleviate that pressure. The Minister is an honourable man and is always incredibly friendly; it is his nature, and he does take on board the issues that we bring to his attention. However, today we are not just looking for the decent side of the Minister—which we will always get—but for concrete evidence that some of the changes that we on the Opposition side of the Chamber seek, which we feel are important, will be made. I can foresee a time when working families will be unable to make ends meet, and we in this place have a duty to the vulnerable and to the children who are suffering as a result of policies that do not reflect the issues that people have but are outdated and based on wrong assumptions. In my opinion, that 1% figure means that a wrong assumption has been made, so it must change. The time is right to make those changes, so again I look to the Minister, not just for reassurances but for a change in the law.

Cost of Living Increases: Pensioners

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House is concerned that older people and pensioners risk being at the sharp end of the cost of living crisis as a result of spiralling inflation, a lack of Government action on household energy bills, a poorly thought-through tax rise on older people in work and a real-terms reduction to the state pension; notes that the state pension is being cut in real-terms by hundreds of pounds a year and that working pensioners will begin paying the Health and Social Care Levy from next year; regrets that levels of pensioner poverty and pensioner debt have risen over the last decade even before the current cost of living crisis with almost one in five pensioners now living in poverty; and calls upon the Government to cut home energy bills, halt the planned tax rise on working pensioners and ensure older people are protected from the cost of living crisis.

In recent weeks I have had the privilege of travelling the country, and I have heard the most desperate stories from our elderly citizens and retirees trying to cope with the devastating cost of living crisis they face. In Swindon, a woman in her late 60s told me that she now never uses the oven and instead lives off sandwiches and cold meals to avoid the bills associated with switching on the cooker. I met a man who served this country in the RAF but who could not understand why, despite contributing so much to our nation, he has been given so little help as prices rise, energy bills rocket and his fixed income is stretched to the limit. At a food bank in Bury I heard how more and more older people who, wrongly in my view, feel there is shame in asking for handouts and are too proud to ask, now feel they have no choice but to go to a food bank and are now turning up there in ever greater numbers.

Age UK tells the story of Maureen, who says, in desperation:

“The pension goes up by pennies and bills go up by pounds, so the money in my pocket is getting less and less.”

Age UK also quotes Albert:

“I have to choose between eating and staying warm for some hours of the day. I forego social life in order not to fall behind with essential bills”.

These are not one-off stories: in every constituency there are thousands of Maureens and Alberts facing soaring inflation, sky-high energy bills, petrol prices through the roof, and price rises in the shops. The situation is desperate and the prospects are terrifying, and to say this is a struggle to make ends meet does not do justice to the scale of the crisis people are facing.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

To back up the right hon. Gentleman’s comments, I point out that 300,000 pensioners and people in Northern Ireland—18% of the population—are in absolute poverty. That is reflected right across the whole of the United Kingdom. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that this situation has swept across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to such an extent that people now, as he rightly says, have to decide whether to eat or heat?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend—I will call him a friend as a fellow Leicester City fan—speaks, as usual, with passion and eloquence on behalf of his constituents. The poverty we are now facing is so desperate and severe, and the destitution so acute, and it is felt across the whole of the United Kingdom. I hope Ministers respond to the representations we are making tonight, and I hope the Chancellor responds to them on Wednesday.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Ashworth]

Without having read the details, it sounds like a very sensible Bill. I look forward to reading the details. At first sight, it certainly has my strong encouragement.

[Jim Shannon]

I was doing some research beforehand and I see that there is an older people’s commissioner for Scotland, for Wales and for Northern Ireland, but not one for England. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with the Age UK campaign for an older people’s commissioner for England? Does he think the Minister should do that? It would help older people in England, so does he think the Government should do it?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

Typically, the hon. Gentleman, my friend and fellow Leicester City fan, makes a very wise and astute recommendation. I hope the Secretary of State takes it up. It would certainly have my strong encouragement.

I hope the Secretary of State can provide an answer for why divorced women are excluded. It seems utterly unfair, particularly given the desperate cost of living crisis. Secondly, when the Department makes a lump sum payment it is normal to pay interest, so why is it not paying interest on those payments? I encourage the Secretary of State to explain when she is going to get on and fix that. The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee said this process has become a “shameful shambles”. Given the scale of the cost of living crisis, can she tell us when Ministers will finally fix this shameful shambles?

Of course, there are other scandals that need fixing, too. We know about the Allied Steel and Wire steelworkers who have not got their full entitlement, or the thousands of members of the British Steel pension scheme, who incurred massive losses because of failures in pension regulation and protections on this Government’s watch. Whether it is working pensioners, women pensioners, steelworkers or anyone who relies on the state pension as their main source of income, the Government have let them down.

Our retired constituents worked hard all their lives, paid their national insurance, served our country and contributed to our communities. They deserve security and dignity in retirement. Instead, what we get is the state pension cut in real terms, the triple lock abandoned, energy bills unaffordable, pensioner poverty increasing and retirees robbed. We need a plan to get energy bills down and halt the tax rises that are coming, and a plan to ensure that all pensioners are protected from this devastating cost of living crisis. I commend our motion to the House.

DWP Estate: Office Closures

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[David Rutley]

We are not removing the back office; we are modernising it. Of course we want to ensure that we deliver, at the front end, for people in the channels that need it. It is interesting and important that many people who have disabilities or health conditions and who are staff members can now be empowered to do their work, because they do not have to travel because of digital capabilities. There are some exciting possibilities there, notwithstanding the fact that, on the frontline, we need to ensure that we are providing support for all customers in the way they need it.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

On the impact of job losses, the Minister has clearly said that, in his opinion, there will be no impact on the offices and the delivery of the service, but I suggest that there is always an impact when jobs are lost. People who live in rural constituencies who have to travel by bus or do not have a car can be sanctioned if they do not attend their appointments. Can he assure the House that the benefit entitlements of constituents of MPs present, and not present, will not be affected by the changes in the offices?

[David Rutley]

I assure the House that this does not have an impact on the front end—on the activities that we do to support our claimants and our customers. It is also important to reconfirm that we are not reducing staff numbers; the focus is on retaining as many people as possible. We have great staff and we want to retain them. In many cases, people will relocate to another site in close proximity.

In-work Poverty

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I thank the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) for setting the scene so well. He has a passion for the subject, as we can tell from the way he introduced the debate.

Like others, I have been contacted by countless constituents who are not only concerned about the increase in the cost of living, but struggling to make ends meet on a daily basis. It is as simple as that, unfortunately. It is important to highlight these issues and discuss what steps we can take to help working families who are in need.

It has been estimated that 14.5 million people—some 22% of the population—were in poverty in 2020. If they were in poverty in 2020, they will unfortunately be even more so today. In addition, some 11% of families where one adult is in work are in poverty. Although the cost of living and some other issues remain devolved, they have an impact on the whole United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Consumer rates were 5.4% higher in December 2021 than they had been a year before, making the inflation rate the highest recorded since 1992.

We all know the issues that I want to focus on. I want to focus on working-class people, who are impacted the most. I am not saying that the middle class are not impacted, because they are, but the hurt and anxiety are larger for the working class. Fuel prices are up 50%, and food prices are up some 25%. Almost 60% of people in the UK are termed working class, and in Northern Ireland 220,000 working-age adults are in poverty. We have seen the prices of petrol and diesel soaring with little or no hope of a reduction, although they have stalled today. The price of heating oil has gone up, like the price of diesel or petrol for the car.

I want to make a genuine request to the Minister. The Republic of Ireland—I do not think it is the greatest country in the world, by the way, as people know—has responded to its people by reducing VAT on household energy and fuel, as a short-term measure to help constituents. Why can we not do the same? I put that very gently but very firmly to the Minister, because I think we should do something about this.

I want to highlight the problems with the child benefit cap. I am conscious that many working families feel unable to take a pay rise from their employment, because they could lose their child benefit and be worse off. That is not the Minister’s responsibility, but we need to address the issue for those who juggle their wage with the child benefit cap.

The people of the United Kingdom deserve more when it comes to housing rental prices and food prices. In the Department for Communities back home, Deirdre Hargey has brought forward some support in the Northern Ireland Assembly for those on benefits at this tough time. Whenever I see that being done, I look to the Government here to do the same. My staff have taken numerous calls from those in unemployment who cannot afford the cost of living, and unfortunately there does not seem to be any answer. More must be done to support them.

What is sure is that the issue with living costs will not de-escalate any time soon. Prices are set to rise even further in April, and we cannot and must not sit idly by and watch that unfold without knowing that we have taken all steps possible and done everything practicable to combat it. I know that this is not directly in the Minister’s portfolio, but it is important, and he is the man here today responding to the debate. We need to have some measures in place and take some steps in the right direction, so that we can go back to our constituents knowing that we have done our darndest for them in Westminster Hall today. I urge the Minister to ensure that all the comments are taken on board and that the devolved nations are communicated with, so that we in Northern Ireland, and in the Northern Ireland Assembly, can benefit from whatever steps are taken to try to address the issue.

Regional Inequalities: Child Poverty

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) for setting the scene so well and for securing this debate, giving us all an opportunity to participate in it.

There is little as heartbreaking as seeing a child in need. As a father and grandfather, it is my purpose in life to see that my family have enough—not that they have everything they want, just that they have enough. I cannot imagine seeing my child go hungry or wearing ill-fitting shoes, and I cannot imagine that there should ever be an excuse that any child in any corner of this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland should live that way.

Ask any teacher and they will say that children are coming to school who are not well nourished, and that their free school meal does not do enough for them. There are also children who are spotlessly clean, yet their shoes have holes. The number of families who use food banks has risen hugely. More than 31,000 food parcels were provided to children in Northern Ireland between April 2020 and March 2021. The Trussell Trust provided some 79,000 parcels in total to children and adults last year, which was a 75% increase on the 2019-20 figure. In all, 2.5 million food parcels were given out across this great United Kingdom, which was up from 1.9 million in 2019-20.

Just last week in my constituency of Strangford, we had the launch of a Christians Against Poverty group. Christians Against Poverty helps people with their finances. I will just say this: the uptake for that group in my constituency has been enormous. We are very grateful that the churches and other bodies have come together to make that group happen, but it tells me where society is going and that worries me.

It cannot be refuted that people are struggling more than ever, and when a family struggles, the children pay a high price. To be fair, many parents make sure that their children eat before they do, but is that the way it should be? It should not be that way. Although we must be thankful for our charities, churches and other groups in the voluntary sector, the fact is that we in this place are missing a trick when children are in such need.

There are 1.8 million people in Northern Ireland, including 440,000 children, with almost 25% of those living in child poverty. Yet the majority of households in Northern Ireland—61%—have at least one working parent. One in four children in Northern Ireland are living in a family that struggles to provide for their basic needs—a warm and adequate home, nutritious food and appropriate clothing—as well as to pay for childcare costs. Children in poverty are twice as likely to leave school without GCSEs, and they are also more likely to suffer poor mental health and have fewer years of good physical health than other children.

We are not talking about children whose parents cannot afford to take them to Disneyland; we are talking about parents who cannot buy shoes, or parents who cannot afford the internet access their children need to do their homework, or parents who need their 14-year-old boy to dry dishes in the local chippy just to help feed the family. These are the issues and this is the society we live in; others have said that already and others will say it after me.

Consequently, the pressure on young people is incredible, which has seen a rise in mental health concerns as well. Our children are in physical and emotional need. Minister, we have to meet that need. The hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) referred to removing the two-child limit on benefits and I would put that case forward, too. Take someone on a wage of £1,200 per month. Last year, their fuel cost £100 a month but it is now double that; similarly, their groceries were £100 a month, but now they are £125 a month. That shows that the wages of 2020 cannot match what the situation is now in 2022.

Children are our greatest resource; I believe that with all my heart. Money spent on giving them the best start is a long-term investment in ourselves and, Minister, it must start right now.