Oral Answers to Questions
John Leech Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, to which I would say two things in reply. First, people who are in work can be referred to the Access to Work mental health support service, to get support delivered to them to enable them to stay in work. Secondly, the NHS now recognises that it has an important part to play here, and for the first time we have set out access requirements for mental health services, which will start this April.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
Why is no help available to get people with mental health problems back on to employment and support allowance, when they have voluntarily come off ESA and gone on to jobseeker’s allowance, wrongly believing that they were fit to work, only to be sanctioned for failing to comply with their jobseeker’s agreement because of their mental illness?
Mr Harper
One of the things that our work coaches in the jobcentre are able to do is flex the claimant commitment people make according to the claimant’s health condition. What should happen in such cases is that, if the individual remains on JSA, their work coach can alter the conditions to deal with that. If the hon. Gentleman has specific examples where that has not happened, I would be delighted if he wrote to me so that we can look into those cases.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Leech Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Harper
Of course local government has had to play its part in the savings, but local authorities can make choices. My local authority in Gloucestershire has protected the value of social care because it thinks that protecting older people—[Interruption.] No, my local authority has faced cuts, like all local authorities, but it has chosen to—[Interruption.] If Opposition Members want me to answer their hon. Friend’s question, they should stop yelling. My local authority has prioritised funding for older people and people of working age. Clearly, the hon. Lady’s local authority has made different decisions. If those on her local authority want to ring-fence the money transferred from the ILF, they are absolutely free to do so, so I suggest she take that up with them.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
10. What estimate he made of the potential savings to the public purse that would arise from implementation of the under-occupancy penalty; and what estimate he has made of the amount saved to date by that implementation.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
Before our reforms, the taxpayer had been paying for 820,000 spare rooms. To date, the policy has saved about £830 million from the housing benefit bill, and the estimated savings remain the same: approximately £500 million a year in 2013-14 and 2014-15. Those figures have been ratified by the Office for Budget Responsibility.
Mr Duncan Smith
Each local authority is dealing with this matter differently. We have given a huge amount of support, through the discretionary housing payments, so some will move, some will not, and some have had their rents dealt with and have stayed in place. We have trebled the support to £345 million, and more than 392,000 DHP awards were made last year. As I said, each authority is doing it differently. For example, Sheffield city council is using DHPs to pay removal costs and provide decorating, while Southwark and Islington councils are paying additional incentives through mutual exchanging with overcrowded households. They are all doing different things, but they are basically getting it right. We were warned that arrears would rise, but actually housing association arrears are lower than they were last year.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Leech Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
The Minister may not have long to wait for the question that he anticipates.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
11. Does the Minister agree that any change to licence fee enforcement would go against the coalition agreement of 2010, which committed to a full financial settlement for the BBC up to the end of 2016-17, given that it has been estimated that the amendment, if passed, could cost the BBC £200 million a year in revenue?
Mr Vaizey
My hon. Friend illustrates the point perfectly. There are many complicated issues surrounding the debate that has started about decriminalisation of non-payment of the licence fee. It is important that all those factors are taken into account, which is why the Government’s position is that it is perhaps better to do so during charter review.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Leech Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
Whether it is financial mismanagement that results in clubs losing their grounds, or bonkers owners trying to change team names or team colours, surely it is time for parliamentary intervention to protect the rights and interests of fans.
Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]
John Leech Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Kate Green
My hon. Friend is right. Over many decades, insurance companies have taken in premiums and in every way resisted paying out to victims. It is good to have reached the point at which the industry is finally facing up to its collective responsibility, but it still has a long way to go.
The Minister rightly described mesothelioma as a cruel and vicious disease that is caused by exposure to asbestos, and as a long-tail disease that is diagnosed years and often decades after it has been contracted. It is invariably fatal and, once a diagnosis is made, cruelly quick: following diagnosis, most victims have only about nine months of life left. The effects of the illness are horrifying for sufferers, and for the loved ones who watch them die. The true disgrace is that the link to asbestos has been known for many decades.
One consequence of the long period for which the disease can lie dormant is that, following a diagnosis, it is of course more difficult to attach liability, given that the circumstances that brought about the condition often took place many years previously. As a result, many sufferers have until now been forced to rely only on statutory payments and welfare benefits. Although I am pleased that the industry will at last take a small step towards meeting the obligations it owes to sufferers, it is only right and proper that it should finally do so.
I understand that, as the Minister said, the scheme will be established as one of last resort, which is to be relied on only if no employer or insurer can be traced. That might be a reasonable position for the industry, but we must ensure that it does not exacerbate the pain and difficulty for claimants.
During the short period from diagnosis to death, sufferers become desperately ill, yet at the same time they are expected to go to often huge lengths to trace a former employer, perhaps from many years back; to identify that employer’s insurer, perhaps via the Employers’ Liability Tracing Office; to obtain the necessary medical records and wait the 40 days that agencies have to respond to such requests; and then, ultimately, to take legal advice and access the scheme. I think we can see how that would eat into the tragically limited time remaining to sufferers following diagnosis, so we must do all we can to speed up and smooth the process.
I recognise the progress made in speeding up the process and helping victims to trace their employers’ insurers. Following its introduction in 1999, many insurers signed up to a voluntary employers’ liability code of practice, but none the less tracing rates remained deeply disappointing, never exceeding 50%. In 2012, the success rate was just over 34%; and even accounting for those cases now proceeding via ELTO, the success rate in 2012 still reached only 61%. Clearly, there is considerable scope for better support for victims to pursue insurers.
It seems, however, that the industry, in its negotiations with Ministers, has sought to do the very minimum it can get away with to make amends to sufferers. As noted, payments will be set at just 75% of average civil damages—admittedly, as the Minister said, an uplift on the 70% initially proposed. It is claimed that the industry cannot afford to pay more without passing on the additional cost to current employers’ liability customers. The notion that this multi-billion-pound industry, which has been collecting premiums for decades while doing all it can to avoid payouts and which is to be gifted £17 million by the Government under this Bill and lent a further £30 million to help with the scheme’s introduction and the smoothing of the first year’s payments, cannot and should not be more generous is simply not credible.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
Does the hon. Lady have a view on what level of compensation could be paid without insurance companies passing on the cost to current policyholders?
Kate Green
There are two questions wrapped up in that one question. First, on present figures, what does it appear the industry can afford? I will say something about that in a moment. Secondly, does the industry have to pass on the cost to its customers, or could it choose to absorb it? We are talking about roughly 10% of the total value to the industry of the employers’ liability market. I appreciate that that is not a small sum, but as colleagues have pointed out, the industry has had decades to accumulate profits as a result of the premiums it has collected.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Leech Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Steve Webb
There is a danger that this is viewed in a very static way. Many of the best housing associations are looking at groups of constituents, some of whom are over-occupying and are overcrowded, and are moving people around to create space. In the longer term, we need a housing stock that better meets the needs of people on the waiting list, and it is time that successive Governments addressed that.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
Because of the shameful under-investment in social housing by the previous Government, there are simply not enough properties for people to downsize to. What assessment has my hon. Friend made of the number of families who will end up moving to smaller, more expensive accommodation and end up receiving more in housing benefit?
Steve Webb
My hon. Friend is right: successive Governments have failed to build enough affordable housing. It is worth stressing that moving is one option, but only one option, for those in work. Just two or three extra hours on the minimum wage would cover this deduction. There are a range of options—going into work, taking in a lodger or sub-letting—and good housing associations are working with their tenants to achieve best outcomes.
Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
John Leech Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Caroline Lucas
I will speak to amendment 7, which stands in my name. It is an attempt, at least, to neuter what I believe is a cruel and callous Bill by restoring the historic link between benefits and tax credits and the retail prices index.
It is a fiction that benefit levels are too high. Someone who relies on benefits is poor and will be struggling to survive from week to week; if any unexpected costs occur, they will probably have to go without or go into debt. The Institute for Fiscal Studies points out that we do not know at least two important things about the Bill: we do not know what the actual effects of breaking the link with prices will be, because that will depend on future price levels, which exposes the poorest in society to serious inflation risk; and secondly, we do not know the Government’s view on how benefits should be indexed in the longer run, and we ought to.
What are we to make of the Government’s long-term policy intentions? Unfortunately, I think they are clear: to chip away at the welfare state and leave people to fend for themselves, with US-style deprivation for the unsuccessful. It is a scandal to expose poor people to such risk and insecurity, especially at the same time as the most wealthy are set to enjoy a significant tax cut. That is why I have tabled my amendments, which represent the very minimum safety net that must be in place.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
Will the hon. Lady explain whether she tabled amendment 7 because RPI is normally higher than CPI, or because she believes that it is a better way of working out inflation?
Caroline Lucas
I think the answer is probably both of the above. Recently, the RPI has been higher. I would have been happy to look at an amendment—no such amendment exists, unfortunately—that combined the work that the hon. Gentleman’s party has been doing on earnings with my effort to get a link back to the RPI and prices. We should look at whichever is the most generous. I stuck to the RPI link in my amendment because I wanted it to be realistic enough to get more support across the House. I fear that I might have been a little over-ambitious.
It worries me that instead of seeking to restore the link to prices, the official Opposition have not sought to protect people who are seeking work, but appear to have picked out one or two benefits, such as employment and support allowance and maternity benefit, for proper protection. They have ignored, for example, those on jobseeker’s allowance, as long as some sort of workfare system is brought in for people who have been looking for work for two years. Do the Opposition think that it is okay for the link to be broken for JSA recipients in the meantime? The Opposition amendments offer an improvement to a nasty Bill, and for that I support them, but I believe they expose a certain cowardice in not confronting the stereotypes and myths that the Government continue to perpetrate. Why are the Opposition not standing up for unemployed people and restoring the link to RPI? I do not accept that they could not consider that principle today, and it is disappointing that they will not. A link to prices is an absolute minimum, a safety net red line.
Atos Work Capability Assessments
John Leech Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)
I join hon. Members in congratulating the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher), the Backbench Business Committee and my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) on securing this timely debate.
As the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) said, we need to separate two things. The first is the principle of assessing those on out-of-work benefits to establish whether they can rejoin the workplace. As everyone in the House accepts, that must happen if we are to be responsible guardians of the public purse and if we are to help people who can work to get back into work. The second is the need to look in detail at the practice of how the assessments are being conducted.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way so quickly. A number of people who have been assessed reasonably recently had their incapacity benefits stopped but then reintroduced on appeal are now being reassessed and found fit for work once again. Surely people who have recently been assessed and won on appeal should not be being recalled by Atos.
Stephen Gilbert
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend and what he says goes to the nub of the points I wish to make. This debate should focus on the practice of how these assessments are being conducted. He, like me and probably every Member, will have had scores, if not hundreds, of constituents experience a similar problem as they go through the system.
There is a consensus in the House on the principle of making assessments. The last Administration set up the WCA and the Atos contract in 2008, and it was right that in 2007 Liberal Democrat Members pressed for and secured the annual review of how the WCA was being implemented. Over the last few years, as every hon. Member will know, these reviews have revealed a catalogue of errors, and, to their credit, the coalition Government have taken action: there has been increased flexibility for assessors to take additional evidence, not least from consultants; there has been better communication with people undergoing assessment; and new standards have been implemented for descriptors. All that is having results. The numbers going into the ESA support group have risen to 26%—from 11% under the last Administration —so fewer people are now being found fit for work.
None of us can underestimate or undervalue the human effect that some of these assessments are having. I would like to read into the record an e-mail I received from a constituent. It is probably similar to e-mails that all hon. Members have received. It reads:
“They never asked about the amount of pain I have to contend with or how tired I get from coping with it. After the interview I was told I was to be disallowed ESA benefit. I could probably go down the route of appeal but I really don’t feel like fighting for a benefit that I have already been made to feel that I do not deserve, neither do I have the energy”
to appeal. If we in this House cannot give voice to these people, who are some of the most vulnerable in our society, I really do not know what we are for.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Leech Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Maria Miller
The World Service has a unique role to play in broadcasting on a global level. The hon. Gentleman can have my assurance that we will continue to value that in the future, though the changes to funding that have been made are important.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
May I urge the Secretary of State to resist any calls for a reduction in the licence fee? The BBC has already faced significant cuts to valued services, such as local radio, as a result of the budget constraints. Surely this is just yet another attack on the BBC by its enemies, at a time when it should be focusing its attention on getting its own house in order.
CPI/RPI Pensions Uprating
John Leech Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Harriett Baldwin
Personally, I aspire to a future in which all Britain’s pensioners can rely on a secure retirement income, which will come from three main elements.
I welcome measures taken by the pensions Minister and the Chancellor to provide a triple-lock guarantee: the linking of the basic state pension, and increases in that pension, to CPI, average earnings or 2.5%, whichever is the highest. That, I think, is an extremely robust foundation. As the Minister knows, I look forward to the inclusion in the Queen’s Speech of further legislation simplifying the state pension system, eliminating the means-testing deterrent to saving and creating a stable, predictable and inflation-linked state pension that will be the foundation for a basic level of income in retirement.
Of course, we need to aspire to be a country where everyone has an additional employment-related pension. About 12 million people are already pensioners, and we welcome the fact that their inflation-linked increase will rise by over 5% this year: I believe that that is the largest cash increase in the history of the state pension. This Government’s budgeting decisions are therefore focusing on the needs of current pensioners, and for future pensioners the largest employers will from October start to auto-enrol their employees into employment-linked schemes. That measure enjoys cross-party support, and it will mark the beginning of a savings programme that is estimated to bring in a further 5 million to 8 million pension savers and add a substantial sum to the savings of this country. Otherwise, we will be woefully under-pensioned in future. We are currently a very under-pensioned country. It is tragic that our country has eroded its position in respect of pensions so much. In 1997, we were one of the leading pension countries in the world, but we now have a lot of catching up to do. I welcome all the steps the pensions Minister is putting in place to improve the situation.
Having mentioned the triple lock and auto-enrolment, I shall now make a few points about the difference between CPI and RPI. We all know that inflation is the big enemy of the pensioner, as nothing erodes retirement income more. Lower inflation results in less erosion of retirement income, of course, but all pensioners must understand that they need to protect their fixed retirement income from inflation.
CPI is the inflation measure that we have instructed the Bank of England to target and to average out over time. I therefore think the Bank of England should, perhaps, consider moving its own pension scheme on to a CPI link. That scheme is currently linked to RPI, but it would increase everybody’s confidence in the Bank’s long-term ability to meet its CPI target if it were to adopt that measure for its pensions. That is a cheeky aside, however.
Neither the RPI nor the CPI measure will ever accurately reflect the inflation that pensioners experience. We have talked about the fact that mortgage interest is not included in the RPI basket. Interest rates fell dramatically in 2008 and that led to the RPI being negative in 2009—it was minus 1.4%. Do we want to follow an index that results in people having reduced income in some years? In that instance, we decided that we did not want that so we maintained a zero rate, but people still complained to me that their pension had not increased that year.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
Does the hon. Lady agree that people might have more confidence in the Government’s decision to move to CPI if we were to use CPI for all other calculations, such as train fare increases?
Harriett Baldwin
I do not think that either the CPI or the RPI basket accurately represents inflation as experienced by pensioners. Most of them will have paid off their mortgage by the time they retire. Also, the CPI basket does not include council tax. Following the 100% increase in council tax under the previous Government, many council taxes have been frozen for the past few years. That is helpful for pensioners, as council tax represents a substantial proportion of their outgoings.
Food also represents a significant element of pensioners’ costs, and food inflation has been very high recently. Over the past 20 or 30 years, however, it has been largely on a downward trend, and food now represents a smaller proportion of overall costs than it did in the past. The cost of fuel and of heating the home is also an important factor for pensioners. That has also been rising sharply. Neither CPI nor RPI accurately represent pensioners’ experience of inflation.