Under-occupancy Penalty

Debate between Jo Stevens and Ian Lavery

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the regional effects of the under-occupancy penalty.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Dorries.

Our debate today on the regional impact of the bedroom tax is important and comes on the back of the Government’s recent judicial review defeat in the Court of Appeal, where it was determined that the bedroom tax discriminates against victims of domestic violence and the families of severely disabled children. I pay tribute to campaigners throughout the country who have put considerable energy and effort into challenging this iniquitous tax and raising public awareness of the Government’s continuing attempt to defend the indefensible. People such as Paul and Susan Rutherford have led the charge in one of the Court of Appeal cases on behalf of their severely disabled grandson, Warren, and Alan Lloyd of Cardiff Against the Bedroom Tax gives voluntary help to victims of the bedroom tax in my constituency of Cardiff Central and across south Wales by preparing and presenting appeals. I spoke to Alan Lloyd yesterday as he was on his way to appear at yet another tribunal to present an appeal on behalf of a woman whose long-time home is at risk because of the tax.

It is clear from the number of hon. Members present here today that the impact of the tax remains an important issue to many people and is not limited to those who pay the tax itself. The Opposition have opposed the bedroom tax since its introduction. Since this grossly unpopular Conservative and Liberal Democrat policy was forced on the public, exactly what we warned would happen has happened. The bedroom tax is not working; it is not achieving the aims that the Government set out to implement; and it is hurting some of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society and giving them a problem that is absolutely no fault of their own.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend, who has been a lawyer for many years, for bringing this important issue to the Floor of the House. Normally, people adhere to Court of Appeal judgments, but in the case of the bedroom tax, the Government are once again ignoring what the court said. In what way—the right, decent and honourable way—should the Government deal with the Court of Appeal judgment and listen to what is happening to the thousands of people out there who are suffering as a consequence of this now unlawful and illegal tax?

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Can we keep interventions short and not make speeches, please?

Employment Tribunal Fees

Debate between Jo Stevens and Ian Lavery

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. May I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests regarding my previous occupation as a director of Thompsons Solicitors, which is a national firm of employment law specialists that conducts a substantial number of employment tribunal cases on behalf of trade unions and their members?

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) on securing the debate. Like him, I am deeply concerned about this issue. As he outlined, the impact of the coalition Government’s tribunal fees has been to price people out of access to justice. The Conservative party calls itself the party of working people, but if there is one single policy that totally exposes that statement as a myth, it is the introduction of employment tribunal fees. The Conservatives knew exactly what the impact of the policy would be, because they and their Liberal Democrat coalition partners at the time were told repeatedly and forcefully that the proposal would decimate access to justice. Just as with legal aid cuts, civil court fee increases, restrictions on judicial review, the Trade Union Bill, the proposal to repeal the Human Rights Act and the intended increase to the small claims limit that the Chancellor announced in last week’s spending review, employment tribunal fees were not introduced to solve a real problem. They were introduced to diminish the voice of ordinary working people, of trade unions and of their members.

I am sure the Government will try to say that the rationale for introducing the fees was to defray the cost of the Courts and Tribunals Service. If that really was the rationale, it has failed spectacularly, because so few people can afford to bring claims that the revenue has not been generated, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston said.

The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General openly stated that the purpose of the fees was to deter people from bringing employment tribunal claims. In an article for The Telegraph website in March 2014, he wrote:

“Unscrupulous workers caused havoc by inundating companies with unfounded claims of mistreatment, discrimination or worse. Like Japanese knotweed, the soaring number of tribunal cases dragged more and more companies into its grip, squeezing the life and energy from Britain’s wealth creators.”

He went on to say that the tribunal system had

“become a system that in too many cases was being ruthlessly exploited by people trying to make a fast-buck.”

Where is the evidence for that? If the situation really was as he stated, the success rate in employment tribunal cases brought after the introduction of fees would have risen significantly, because the fees would have acted as a disincentive for unmeritorious claimants. What has actually happened? The success rate has stayed at the level it was at before the introduction of fees.

Preventing access to justice through high fees, therefore, weeds out not just unmeritorious cases—I accept there will be a few of those—but nearly all cases. In that respect, the policy has been tremendously successful. Fees have had a severe negative impact on the ability of people—particularly those on low and average household incomes and the more vulnerable in society—to access the justice system. That was a shameful intention. We had a Minister openly stating that he and his coalition partners wanted to prevent members of the public from accessing the justice system.

[Ian Lavery]

My hon. Friend will not be surprised by that attack on hard-working people in the workplace who want to seek justice. Like me and other Members, she has experienced the gagging Bill part 1, the gagging Bill part 2 and what is classified as a trade union Bill. All in all, they are a concerted attack on people who just want to get on in life. If there is a problem with justice in the workplace, they want to be able to challenge it.

[Jo Stevens]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I could not have put it better myself.

As we have heard, there has been a 69% drop in single-applicant cases since the introduction of fees. However, I want to comment on a couple of other statistics. There has been a 90% drop in sex discrimination cases and a 45% drop in pregnancy-related unfair dismissal cases. That is yet another example of the Prime Minister’s problem with women. He does not want public money spent on women, so they bear the brunt of 75% of his Government’s public sector spending cuts. He does not want to do anything about the grossly unfair VAT regime—the tampon tax. Instead, he cuts funding for domestic violence refuges and rape counselling services, and he makes women pay for those services themselves through the VAT on sanitary products. Furthermore, if any of us is subject to sex discrimination at work or sacked because we are pregnant, he prices us out of access to an employment tribunal to challenge that unlawful treatment.