Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Bill

John McDonnell Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I want the last words of the debate to be a thank you to two young people, because if they had not taken the Government to court, we would not have had this debate. I want to thank them for having the courage to say no when they were forced into unpaid work. I want to thank them for their courage in pursuing it through the courts, and I also want to thank them for allowing us at least to have some debate today to expose the regime that the Government have introduced.

I also want to thank the two organisations that have launched a week of action: Boycott Workfare and the Right to Work campaign. They are campaigning around the country to expose what companies are doing to exploit unpaid labour; the threats to benefits; and the harassment that people have endured. They are also coming out with a simple demand on behalf of young people across the country: they just want a job, but they want one with decent pay. I do not think that that is too much to ask in the seventh richest country in the world in 2013. I want to thank all those organisations for enabling us at least to have some form of debate on this issue today.

Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Bill

John McDonnell Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Is it not true that the Office for National Statistics has confirmed that the Government have included in their employment figures those who are not being paid for their work?

[Mr Hoban]

If the hon. Gentleman looks at the detail of the Office for National Statistics labour force survey, he will see that there are people who are on schemes who say that they are in employment, but that was the case under the previous Government. I have raised that issue with the ONS, because I agree that they should not be included in the numbers who are employed, but it rejected the argument on the grounds of international consistency. We cannot ignore the fact that, excluding those schemes and any reclassification, we have seen more than 1 million net new jobs created in the private sector since May 2010. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should congratulate us on achieving that.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I feel proud of a whole range of speeches that have been made. They have been principled and have set out the case very clearly.

The straightforward issue is that the judgment basically said that the Government acted unlawfully. What surprises me is that there has been no word of apology from the Minister—not a single word to say, “We got this wrong, and therefore we apologise to the House.” Let us be clear what the judgment said: that the Secretary of State acted beyond his powers. He failed to provide the details of workfare schemes within the regulations and bypassed Parliament by introducing an umbrella scheme—the employment, skills and enterprise scheme. This is not a technicality. In fact—I quote from the judgment of Lord Justice Stanley Burnton:

“There is a constitutional issue involved. The loss of jobseekers’ allowance may result in considerable personal hardship, and it is not surprising that Parliament should have been careful in making provision for the circumstances in which the sanction may be imposed.”

This is a fundamental constitutional issue. The Government tried to slide through Parliament, without adequate consideration, regulations that would eventually deprive our constituents of significant sums of money. The decision found that the Government have unlawfully required tens of thousands of people to work without pay, and, if they have said no, have stripped them unlawfully of a significant amount of their benefits.

The public interest lawyers who took the case said that there are basic requirements of fairness, and those basic requirements are usually dictated by Parliament. The basic requirements of fairness in relation to anything like these regulations are to provide people with a clear explanation of what they have been asked to do, why they are being asked to do it, and what the consequences are if they fail to do it. That has simply, as a result of this judgment, not been complied with. That is what the debate is all about.

The solicitor who represented the claimants, Tessa Gregory, summed it up very well:

“The case has revealed that the Department for Work and Pensions was going behind Parliament’s back and failing to obtain Parliamentary approval for the various mandatory work schemes that it was introducing.”

There was a lack of transparency and fairness in implementing the scheme, and claimants had no information about what could be required of them under the back-to-work schemes. The Court of Appeal affirmed the basic constitutional principle that everyone has a right to know and understand why sanctions are being threatened and imposed. That is what this is all about.

It is worth referring to the cases that determined the judges’ action, and putting them on the record. It is staggering that the Government even contested them. Jamie Wilson, the lorry driver, said:

“I refused to participate in the Community Action Programme…because I objected to being made to clean furniture for 30 hours a week for 6 months when I knew it wouldn’t help me find employment. I was given next to no information about the programme, I was told simply that I had to do whatever the DWP’s private contractor instructed me to do and that if I didn’t I may lose my benefits. Being without jobseeker’s allowance was very difficult for me but I don’t regret taking a stand”.

The community action programme

“is a poorly thought out and poorly implemented scheme which even according to the DWP’s own statistics is not helping anyone get people back to work.”

He continued—this is enlightening about the nature of the people we are dealing with; they are desperate for work:

“I am now participating in the Work Programme but it doesn’t involve me working for free, I have to meet an advisor every 3 to 4 weeks who helps me look for work. I will continue to attend these sessions with my adviser regardless of whether or not I am required to attend because I want to find a job”.

That is what people want.

In the other case, Cait Reilly said:

“I brought this case because I knew it was wrong when I was prevented from doing my voluntary work in a museum and forced to work in Poundland for free…as part of a scheme known as the sector based work academy. Those two weeks”

I worked at Poundland

“were a complete waste of my time as the experience did not help me get a job, I wasn’t given any training and I was left with no time to do my voluntary work or search for”

a job. That is extraordinary. She continued:

“The only beneficiary was Poundland, a multi-million pound company. Later I found out that I should never have been told the placement was compulsory.”

The Secretary of State has been quoted as saying elsewhere:

“Does Cait Reilly think she is above shelf stacking?”

I hope that is a misquote. If he did say it, he should withdraw it because it is a disgraceful insinuation about someone’s character. Cait Reilly also said:

“I don’t think I am above working in shops like Poundland. I now work part-time in a supermarket. It is just that I expect to get paid for working.”

That is all she asked for. She continued:

“I hope the Government will now take this opportunity to rethink its strategy and do something which actually builds on young unemployed people’s skills and tackles the causes of long-term unemployment. I agree we need to get people back to work but the best way of doing that is by helping them, not punishing them. The Government ought to understand that if they created schemes which actually helped people get back into work then they wouldn’t need to force people to attend.”

That is what the young woman who took the case to court said, and I congratulate her on doing that. If she had not, we would not be in the situation of contesting what the Government are doing.

Let us be clear about the intent of the Bill. The Government have acted unlawfully. They have robbed some of the poorest people in our society of, on average, £500 of benefits, which is a lot to people living on the breadline. Now the Government are using this retrospective device to avoid paying back to those poor people money that they should not have been deprived of in the first place. The argument that paying £130 million back to poor people would damage the economy is derisory and laughable. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) said, if the £130 million was given to the poor who need to spend the money, it would help to boost the economy. To suggest it is a threat to the economy when the bankers have been bailed out with £1.2 trillion is laughable in any Government logic. The suggestion that if we pay the money back, it must come from other claimants is the Government’s classic strategy of divide and rule in their welfare benefits policy.

As my hon. Friend said, the use of retrospective legislation simply ensures that illegality is made legal and sets an extremely dangerous precedent, but that is nothing to do with the money, taxpayers or the economy. It is about prejudice against the poor, the demonisation of the unemployed and the iron heel of a prejudiced state. It is also about the preservation of a large pool of unpaid labour for large-scale corporations to exploit. It is now estimated that the Government will put through 250,000 people on work experience, 850,000 on work programmes and more than 70,000 on the mandatory work activity. At the last calculation, that is about 60 million hours of free labour to those corporations. That is exploitation; it cannot be termed in any other way.

In the past two decades, we have seen a transformation in how unemployment is considered, discussed and viewed. Governments since the second world war had a commitment to full employment and saw as a responsibility their role to ensure full employment. There have always been sanctions within the system to prevent people from abusing it, but they were about ensuring that people were sanctioned if they refused to go for paid work, never unpaid work. Now, just when unemployment is at its highest and it is the hardest time to find a job, the attitude is that unemployment is not the fault of the system or a failure of Government or of society, but a failure of the individual. The individual is to blame, not the society that has caused the unemployment. Therefore, the logic follows that the individual must be penalised, so what the Government have successfully done in the media and elsewhere by ministerial statements is demonise the unemployed—the unemployed themselves have caused their own poverty, rather than the system that has created the unemployment. The result of that logic is what we see today: the poor and unemployed have to be harassed, pilloried, sanctioned, blamed and made to feel guilty for being unemployed.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree not only that the Government have shown no contrition whatever on the issue, which is a mess of their own making, but that they are trying to scapegoat those people who have been sanctioned illegally?

[John McDonnell]

It is that, but there is also a wider agenda of making people feel guilty just because they are out of work and guilty just because—temporarily, in most instances—they have to depend on some benefits. This is about scapegoating and victimising the poor and people who cannot get a job. It is about harassment and exploitation. At the heart of that is the judgment that Parliament was not properly informed of what those schemes and regulations meant. That is what the judgment said.

I make it clear that I shall vote against the Bill because it is immoral and wrong. Before we vote to render those schemes lawful retrospectively, it is important that Members are aware of what we will be supporting. Boycott Workfare is an organisation that set up— [Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. There seems to be a phone ringing somewhere. Wherever it is, we can certainly hear it.

[John McDonnell]

It is most probably someone looking for a job.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Let us hope that somebody answers it, then.

[John McDonnell]

Before we vote tonight, it is important we know that we will be voting to support the workfare schemes being introduced by the Government. The Bill will enable the sanctions to be continued and retrospectively made legal, because people refused to go on those schemes—I think justifiably so with regard to many of them. Let us take some examples from the Boycott Workfare website. Tesco is a classic, and one example refers to

“a fifty-six year old man who worked at Tesco for 40 hrs a week for 6 weeks for no pay.”

He was

“given the worst job, constantly filling freezers in the hope he would be taken on. After the 6 weeks were up the manager asked him if he would like to stay on for some extra weeks,”

and the man said,

“‘with pay?’”

The manager said no,

“why would he pay him when he can pick the phone up and get more unemployed people who have to work for nothing”?

That was at Tesco, and the list goes on. Poundland is a classic example of an organisation exploiting unemployed people, time and time again recruiting shelf stackers while laying off other workers. Primark is another example. One young woman who went to Primark said:

“The Jobcentre paid travel money but no lunch. I worked three days a week, 10 am to 4.30 pm or 5 pm with one half-hour break.”

Primark

“don’t pay any money. It was nearly six months, from January to June. When I finished the placement I took my CV and I asked the managers if they had any vacancies. They said, ‘Not yet—we’ll call you when we do.’ I haven’t had a call.”

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that there are companies that do the same, but with people who have not come through the jobcentres? People apply for a job, are asked to work for three or four weeks on probation and are then told to go and are replaced by colleagues. There are shops even in the west end using large numbers of totally unpaid staff on a permanent basis.

[John McDonnell]

The whole point of the exercise, as far as I can see—despite the arguments that it makes people job fit—is the massive exploitation of tens of thousands of people for free labour. I will not go through all the examples, but it is worth looking at the Boycott Workfare website, which gives example after example of people who have been exploited or have worked in unsafe conditions lacking health and safety, have stuck at it to try to get a job and who have never got the job. The job never materialises.

What happens if people say no or drop out? They are sanctioned. Sanctions have increased dramatically in this country. In 2009, 139,000 jobseeker’s allowance claimants were sanctioned. By 2011, the number had nearly tripled to 500,000, and it has risen again this year. Interestingly, it is private companies that recommend sanctions to the Department for Work and Pensions. The worst are Serco, Seetec, A4e and Working Links. If they do not get their pound of flesh—if they do not feel that they are getting value for money from someone who is unpaid—they recommend to the DWP that the person be sanctioned.

The irony is that despite all the pain, anxiety and suffering inflicted on unemployed people, the schemes are proven not to work, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) said. Time and time again, all the evidence—whether from the Social Security Advisory Committee, the DWP peer review, Ben Goldacre or the National Audit Office—demonstrates that not only do the schemes not work but, as others have said, they undermine wages for people in work and prevent others from getting paid jobs.

Large numbers of people are extremely angry at how they have been treated. I believe that many are now willing to stand up and say, “We’re not going to be treated in this way.” That is why the sanctions system is becoming even more rigorous, and why it is important for the Government to pass the Bill: they want to intimidate more people and force more people into work, done for free, that they do not want to undertake.

It is worth stating that this is about exploiting people. It is about ensuring that young people in particular are intimidated into unpaid work. People who were brave enough to say, “I’m not willing to take unpaid work and be exploited in this way, and if necessary, I’ll be sanctioned because of that,” have now been proven right. They were not informed of what they were getting into, but they were bright enough to understand the level of exploitation involved and they stood up against it. The Bill says to them that now they have won in court, we will try to ensure that they do not get justice. That is what it is about.

I urge Members to vote for justice. The Bill is a disgrace. It is a monument to a combination of incompetence by the Government and brutality to the poor. I look forward to hearing the Labour party consider what we are doing here today. I urge Members to vote against the Bill, because I think that people are looking to the Labour party to defend them again—to stand up for what is right and just, for the people in our society who are exploited and for those at the bottom at the moment: those who are unemployed, unable to get a job, dependent on benefits and desperate for work. Those people do not expect to be harassed and exploited by a Government using sanctions to force them into unpaid work. That is why I shall vote against the Bill, and why I urge all Members to vote against the Bill to demonstrate that someone in the House is standing up for those people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Grahame M. Morris]

My hon. Friend, who is very knowledgeable and has a background as an economist, has hit the nail on the head. The general public, my constituents and many Opposition Members do not understand why the Government do not address this problem. There is a relatively straightforward way to do so: by legislating for a general principle of tax avoidance. The Government are quite happy to use primary legislation retrospectively to deprive people who have been illegally sanctioned of £130 million, but they will not use the same route to recover moneys properly due to the Exchequer.

There is a contradiction here. Although the Government have been highly critical of what has happened, they continue to push the case for further deregulation. Just yesterday, in a Delegated Legislation Committee the statutory period of notice for compulsory redundancies for employers employing more than 100 people was reduced from 90 days to 45. This Government are still very much pursuing the Beecroft agenda.

[John McDonnell]

It is worth noting that, according to the Government’s impact assessment of that delegated legislation, employers will gain £290 million and employees will lose £250 million.

[Grahame M. Morris]

That just goes to show that we are all in this together—or rather, we are not.

I have seen the graphs and the charts showing that the poorest are being hardest hit. We should consider the effect of a 5% cut in their weekly income. Other Members have spoken about the sort of cuts that individuals are going to experience. I do not know whether the Minister, other Front Benchers or even Conservative Back Benchers know what it is like to exist on £71 a week, but it is a real struggle. Taking up to £25 a week from the poorest families, most of whom are in social housing, can mean a choice between eating or having proper heating. How can this be fair, when the Government’s priority is to make millionaires richer, to the tune of £2,000 a week? Such a tax cut is unimaginable for someone who would be sanctioned under the Work programme. In fact, the £2,000 a week tax cut for millionaires that we anticipate tomorrow equates to 28 weeks’ income for somebody on jobseeker’s allowance.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes]

I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for delaying his intervention. My understanding—the Minister could be helpful in this respect in her winding-up speech—is that the Court upheld the general policy principle of the employment programmes and ruled that the general principle of such employment programmes did not breach article 4(2) of the convention. The failures to be specific and to get the paperwork right meant that programmes could breach the convention. I am not disputing what the right hon. Gentleman says, but I understand that mandatory work activity is not illegal under the European convention. We need to be clear about that. Labour Front Benchers accept the principle of mandatory work activity, provided that it is decent, and accept sanctions in the benefits system.

[John McDonnell]

Lord Justice Burnton made it clear—I think I quoted him before the right hon. Gentleman arrived—that this is a constitutional issue. It is not just a matter of not informing claimants, but of not informing this House.

[Simon Hughes]

I did hear the hon. Gentleman and I accept what he said.

My fourth constituent was sent to a charity shop. He was required to carry out mundane manual lifting work. He said that he had a problem with a back injury, which meant that the work was inappropriate. He has asthma, and therefore work in a dusty environment was not great. There was a failure to provide sufficient work for people to do, including for other people who had been sent there. There was a clear breach of the rules that state that people are meant to work four weeks for five days a week from Monday to Friday. The person at the work placement said, “You have to work on a Saturday if I say so.” Clearly, that was not in the paperwork. The crude point for the Minister is that I am not sure that a graduate seeking work in finance should be sent to a charity shop to dust shelves and move boxes. This seems to be regular and routine in the current system. The Government are spending taxpayers’ money on providing schemes that should help people back to work. I am not sure, however, that there is any intelligent management of the schemes being offered.

It is entirely reasonable for somebody who has been out of work, and has extremely low qualifications, to do a relatively low-skilled mandatory work activity. It is not reasonable if they are seeking to do something else. The Secretary of State is in his place, and he has always been very courteous and helpful in responding to such issues. I ask him and his team to consider how we can significantly improve the quality of mandatory work activity, monitor it better and ensure that we do not send people to do work that, bluntly, will be of no use to them in enhancing their job prospects. Almost nobody wants to be on benefits all the time. People on benefits struggle to make ends meet and we need to do better.

Pensions and Social Security

John McDonnell Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

It is unfortunate that the order cannot be disaggregated, which would allow us to vote for its individual elements—supporting the increases at the rate of inflation and opposing those with a 1% increase. The breaking of the historic link between inflation and social security benefits, which has lasted over a generation on a political consensus, is a significant step, so it is important for us to judge it issue by issue in respect of the people affected by it.

I have looked at the Government’s impact assessment, which says that we are affecting one in eight households. The households most affected—those most likely to receive a cut—will be those further down the income scale, families with children and women who are heading lone parent families. I think that when we take decisions such as this, it is important to assess the position of those whose benefits are at stake and to look at their plight. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that 2.5 million workers’ families will lose an average of £215 a year; 7 million in work will lose £165 a year; and, to reiterate what was said in previous debates, 68% of those affected by the order will be in work.

An assessment undertaken by the House of Commons Library showed that these families are already facing higher inflation because they spend more on food and utilities. Their experience of low income is quite startling. Children born in families with low incomes already have a birth weight 130 grams lower on average than children in social classes 4 and 5. These families are more closely associated with infant mortality and chronic disease later in life, yet these are the ones whose benefits and income we are cutting. Before their second birthday, a child from a poorer family is already showing a lower level of attainment than those in professional families. By six, a poorer child will already have been overtaken in terms of attainment by a child of lesser ability from a professional family. Children aged up to 14 from unskilled families are five times more likely to die from an accident and 15 times more likely to die from a fire at home than a child from a professional family. Such children also leave school with fewer qualifications.

Last year, according to the figures, 130,000 people—and they will be the people whom we are discussing tonight—including 20,000 children were fed by the Trussell Trust through its food banks. That is the reality of what is happening to the people whose benefits we are cutting tonight—for that is effectively what we are doing.

I pay tribute to Save the Children for two pieces of research that it conducted. One was a survey of parents, and in the other it talked to children directly, which I think was quite a significant thing to do. It is important for the voices of children to be heard in the House. As the survey of parents showed, what families are currently experiencing is shocking; and, as I have said, those are the families whose benefits we are cutting.

In response to the survey, well over half the parents on low incomes—more than 60%—said that they were having to cut back on food, while more than a quarter said that they had skipped meals in the last year. One in five families said that their children had to go without new shoes when they needed them. A large number of the children in poverty said that they were missing out on things that many other children took for granted, and one in five specified school trips. One in five parents in poverty said that they had had to borrow money to pay for essentials such as food and clothes in the past year. Those are the families who are in the most poverty, and they will be impoverished even further as a result of what we are doing tonight.

[Mr Russell Brown]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. Organisations such as Save the Children, Barnardo’s and the Children’s Society have produced the cold hard facts that Labour Members all know about. I should like to think that Government Members would get a grasp of the facts as well.

Does my hon. Friend recognise, as I do and as, I think, many people do, that a mother who is trying to prepare a meal and put it on the table often says that she will eat something later, when in fact she is skipping that meal in order to feed her children, knowing full well that they need food in their bellies to get through the rest of the day?

[John McDonnell]

Indeed. According to the survey, half the parents questioned had gone without food themselves at some time in the past year to ensure that their children were fed.

We sometimes forget that children have views as well, and that those views can permeate a whole family. When a family is living in poverty, the children understand what is going on. They have a glimpse of what is happening, and they realise what their parents are going through. I found the survey of children shocking as well, and quite startling. Save the Children said that

“the most striking finding from the survey is the extent to which children are aware of the financial strain their parents are under. Parents are stressed by lack of money and”

—whatever they do—

“many children are sharing this burden.”

It said:

“The majority of all children (58%) think it is getting harder for their family to pay for everything.”

Those children understand. It also said:

“Over half of children in poverty (52%) agree that not having enough money makes their parents unhappy or stressed.”

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is advancing a powerful case. I am glad that the Secretary of State is present. He often says that debt is a route to poverty, but is not the situation that my hon. Friend is describing proof that, in fact, poverty will drive those families into debt?

[John McDonnell]

That is true, and I shall say more about it shortly. There is a wider debate to be had, but the pressure on parents that forces them into debt eventually has implications for their children.

According to Save the Children,

“Over a third of children…say their family struggles to pay the bills….4 in 10 children… ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’”

—that phrase is typical of surveys—

“that their parents are cutting back on things for themselves, such as…clothes and food.”

The children witness their mums and dads not eating properly.

Let me leave the last word to the families themselves. A number of parents were quoted extensively by Save the Children. It is worth reading quite a few of those quotations, because they hit home and reveal what people are really experiencing. One parent said:

“ I regularly leave the heating off and use blankets and jackets to keep warm so that we have more money towards the food bill... I buy the cheapest brand foods so that I can afford the right amount of fruit and veg for the children. Missing a meal or two a week is not uncommon for me so that my children can eat. My children never go without what they need, but I sometimes have to.”

Brendan is 13. He says:

“I had shoes that were all broken up and full of holes. People at school laughed at me…I saved up my own money for my own shoes, but I don’t care about the brand or the make.”

They are the people who will be driven further into poverty as a result of the decisions we take tonight. We now have 3.5 million children living in poverty, and as a result of the last Budget, the autumn statement and today’s measures, we will probably have another 400,000 or 500,000 children living in poverty by 2015. We are blighting a generation.

Those children will never forgive us, and nor should they forgive us, because we are currently redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich, not from the rich to the poor so that we can tackle poverty and child poverty. That is why I wish I could vote against tonight’s orders. We are in a bind, however. If we vote against this order, we vote against the CPI increases as well. I hope lessons will be learned so that in future years we will properly consider each element of any such proposals.

Any Member who votes for this order tonight should feel a weight of guilt on their shoulders. Individuals and families are suffering greatly. The Save the Children survey findings reflect what we see in our constituencies. People say to us in our advice surgeries every week that they cannot survive on the income they have, whether they are in work because of low wages, or out of work because of low benefits, or—that dangerous combination—in work and on benefits at the same time. They cannot survive on their incomes.

Poverty is not just about income, of course. There is a range of other interventions that need to be discussed and debated, but those other interventions do not work if people cannot put food on the table. They do not work if people are cold at night and do not have shoes or a coat to put on their children. That is why we must halt this cutting of benefits.

We must instead start to look at how we can create a fairer society. We had a consensus for at least two generations after the welfare state was established that when inflation took hold, we would increase social security benefits in line with inflation, so that the poorest would be protected. I agree that we occasionally had rows in this House—both between and within parties—about what form that protection should take. I refused to support the shift from RPI to CPI. That was a debate worth having, and even under the new definition at least people on social security benefits were protected. Now we have torn up that consensus and the people who suffer will not be those who take part in party political debates, but the sort of people who were surveyed by Save the Children, and most of them will be children. That is a total disgrace.

We cannot vote against the Government tonight because of the nature of the order before us, but we can campaign against these measures, and that is what we will do. We will take our argument into our constituencies. We will mobilise people, and I think this generation of children will remember who forced them further into poverty. Any Member who votes for this order tonight will pay for it in the long term—even if they end up paying for it in history. Those Members will be taking part in the impoverishment of a whole generation—kids who cannot afford coats, school shoes and school trips and whose parents have to go without food. That is unacceptable in 2013 in the seventh richest country in the world.

Housing Benefit and Disabled People

John McDonnell Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention and I agree with him. Certainty is vital, which is why I am asking for clarification, and hopefully clarification in the terms used by the then Minister for disabled people in the House of Commons last year.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman on behalf of the whole House for pursuing this matter so consistently, and I congratulate him on having the benefit of having as a constituent John Turner, who I know is an assiduous campaigner on this matter.

Consistency across the country is also necessary. There needs to be monitoring by central Government of how the policy is being applied, because I think we will discover, as we are already discovering in some areas, inconsistency of approach by individual councils.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is right: in the two cases that I have outlined of Stafford borough council and South Staffordshire district council, we can already see some differences. Those differences have arisen not for ideological reasons, but because each council takes a slightly different approach. I am all in favour of local councils making their own decisions, but if we end up with a situation wherein some councils’ conditions for DHPs are drastically different from those of other councils, there will be serious problems. Of course, there is also the question of the different profile of housing stocks in different parts of the country, which has an impact on what the hon. Gentleman has said.

To continue discussing space, the size of the rooms also needs to be considered, but the rules specifically rule that out. A typical tenancy agreement may describe the bedrooms as “two plus one plus one”—in other words, one double bedroom and two single bedrooms. The single bedrooms are described as single for a reason—they are often very, very small, as I have seen for myself. Yet a family comprising, for example, a couple and two boys under 16 would be considered as under-occupying that type of property. The rules encourage that family to move to a two-bedroom property, which may itself be described as “two plus one” and where they would effectively be in breach of the tenancy. Surely, size of rooms needs to be taken into account when determining whether there is under-occupancy. I ask the Minister to reconsider the rules.

Of course, the family that I have just spoken about might not be able to find a such a property. In many areas, there is a shortage of suitable housing into which tenants can downsize, which is a serious problem, and it is probably the most significant reason why disabled people are by far the most likely to be affected by the changes to the housing benefit rules, given that, as the impact assessment stated, disabled people will tend to be in smaller households. There is nothing that disabled people, or indeed anyone else who is affected, can do about that situation. They cannot move into properties that do not exist.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

That is precisely why we are monitoring and evaluating the scheme, and we will continue to do so for two years to see what extra support might be needed. Of course we are watching and observing what is going on. [Interruption.] I will complete my comments here. However, we are committed to undertaking the independent evaluation of all housing reforms. The first report on the private sector is due to be published later this year, and work on evaluating the social sector changes will be implemented in April, with initial findings being available next year.

I trust that I have answered many of the questions that have been raised today. On other specific matters, I will get back to my hon. Friend. As I have already said, this is an important debate, and it is crucial that we closely monitor the situation. We are considering the most vulnerable people in society, and we have a commitment to them.

[John McDonnell]

I do not want the Minister to sit down thinking that there is no housing crisis out there. She referred to the predictions on housing benefit not coming true, but they have in my constituency. I have the worst housing crisis since the second world war. Nevertheless, she has mentioned monitoring, which is critical. Will she give an assurance that that monitoring will be published regularly, so that the House can receive and debate it? The points raised by the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) are critical. We must see what is happening on the ground, because a number of local authorities might want to work with Government to plan a transition over time. There will be a number of families for whom alternative private accommodation or social housing is not available and might not be available for years. An assurance that the monitoring will be published and that we will be able to debate it in the House would be helpful.

[Esther McVey]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Of course, we have to monitor the situation, and I have confirmation from colleagues that the monitoring and evaluation will be made public. At the moment, there is much speculation about what might happen, but that is hypothetical. We do not know about that, but by monitoring closely, by introducing a discretionary fund and by working in a common-sense way with people on the ground who know best about local needs, we can get this right.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

John McDonnell Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whiteford]

I start by paying tribute to the work of the Scottish Campaign on Welfare Reform, which has done so much to draw attention to the impact of the measures in the Bill. It speaks volumes that more than 60 charities, Churches, other faith groups and trade unions have come together to speak with one voice to express their concerns about this heartless Bill and to support amendments that might mitigate some of its most adverse impacts.

The problem with what we are debating tonight is that an uprating cap of 1% is entirely arbitrary. It will inevitably cause hardship not just to those on low incomes but to those on middle incomes. I want to try to focus on amendment 7, which was supported so eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). It is important that we try to restore a link to prices this evening. The problem with a below-inflation flat-rate uprating of benefits is that it represents a real-terms cut in the incomes and living standards of those who already live in the most straitened circumstances and will continue to do so for the next three years. Some 70% of those who are adversely affected are families with children and an estimated two thirds of the savings derived will be taken from the pockets of people in low-paid or part-time work.

Tonight, we have repeatedly heard, not least from the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), that it is unfair, when people in work may be receiving below-inflation rises, not to impose a real-terms freeze in the uprating of benefits. That is a particularly facile argument, which we rehearsed on Second Reading. It goes without saying that whereas someone with a job with average pay would receive £200 or £300 for a 1% increase, depending on whether they were a man or a woman, a person on benefits of £70 a week would see an annual increase of £36. That probably would not even take me beyond the boundaries of my own constituency. It is wrong to pretend that 1% of not very much is equivalent to 1% of an average salary—or, indeed, of the very generous salary that so many people in this place enjoy.

As others have highlighted, there is a great deal of uncertainty in the Bill. If inflation stays in line with OBR predictions, the Government’s approach will result in a 4% real-terms cut in tax credits and benefits by 2015. That is a very big “if”, though: the OBR’s crystal ball has not been very effective to date and it has certainly not been good at predicting inflation—or, pretty much anything else. If inflation is higher than the guesstimates from the OBR, the impact on low and average-income households will be greater than we predict today. That is why we must preserve the link between social protection payments and the cost of living.

The Government’s distributional analysis of the impact of the autumn statement shows that next year the people in the five lowest income deciles will be worse off as a consequence of the cumulative impact of the Government’s changes to the tax and benefits system, and the least affluent will be the most affected. In contrast, three out of five people on average incomes and above will be better off. That exposes the truth of the matter: the Government have set themselves priorities and made choices that make those on low and average incomes pay for the tax breaks for the very wealthy. The poorer half of our society is being asked to carry the can for a financial crisis and a failure of political leadership that is not of its making, rather than seeing that burden shared across society.

The other key point that I want to make this evening—again, one that I made on Second Reading—echoes points made by the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) earlier today. It is that the measures of inflation that we use are not especially good at measuring the impact of inflation on lower income households. We know that low income households spend a far greater proportion of their resources on essentials such as food and domestic fuel. In the past five years, food prices have risen by around 30%, and the prices of some staple foods, such as potatoes, have risen by 40%. Projections for next year are for rising prices for a number of staple commodities because of poor harvests in north America and many parts of Europe, not least in our own country. Thrifty shoppers, as we know, are adept at switching to cheaper brands when money is tight, but when global prices are on an upward trajectory there is often nowhere to hide.

The other disproportionate expense for low income families is domestic energy, which is another area where prices have soared and fluctuated in recent years. The 20% increases in gas prices announced before Christmas are just the latest in a series of cumulative hikes in the price of fuel in recent years. There is snow on the ground outside today; that may be unusual here in London, but it is just normal winter weather in my constituency. In such conditions, families, especially families with young children, need to heat their homes adequately.

Although neither the consumer prices index nor the retail prices index captures the full impact of inflation on the lowest income households, the retail prices index includes some housing costs and is more likely to reflect the actual inflation that poor people experience. The Bill will cause tangible hardship, quantifiable in real money terms and in practical ways for people on low incomes. Hundreds of thousands of people who are disabled, who are carers, who are lone parents, will be particularly hard hit. It will hit families, whether they are in or out of work, dealing with the added expense of bringing up children. It will not cut the deficit—indeed, it will take money out of local economies and inhibit recovery at a time when we should be trying to get local economies going. On the basis of the Government’s own assessment, 200,000 more children will be pushed into poverty by this part of the Bill alone. We know that the long-term cost of child poverty cannot be measured only in financial terms. The long-term implications for children who grow up in deprivation are well quantified. The results are devastating and store up problems for the future, some of which we are still dealing with from the last period of austerity and the last poverty measures back in the 1980s and 1990s.

Dickens has been mentioned several times today. Whereas some speakers have talked of “A Christmas Carol” and the days of Scrooge, I was set thinking of “A Tale of Two Cities”, and indeed a tale of two countries. Today the Scottish Government announced an extra £5.7 million for advice services to support people who have to face the problems associated with these welfare cuts. It is a sad state of affairs when people are using food banks; it is a sad state of affairs when disabled people who, through no fault of their own, cannot persuade an employer to give them a job, are being pushed further into poverty and are being blamed and vilified for the state of the wider economy. People in Scotland have a choice and I look forward to the day they will get to make that choice in a referendum on their future governance, because never again will they have to take the Tory policies that they did not vote for.

Amendment 7 would make this deeply flawed Bill slightly less iniquitous and slightly less unfair, and would ensure that the very poorest families do not carry a disproportionate share of the burden in tough economic times. I urge Members across the Chamber to support us this evening when we push it to a vote.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I apologise, Mr Amess, for persisting in seeking to speak at this late hour. I sat through the five hours of Second Reading and time did not permit me to be called then, and I have tabled an amendment tonight which we will not reach. One could become paranoid at times. I wanted the opportunity to set out my views briefly on this core element of the Bill for my own constituents.

I will vote for every amendment that seeks to ameliorate the Bill. That includes the amendments that have been tabled from both sides, including by my own party. I feel there is a moral imperative to do so. There was a consensus for a time in our country about how we dealt with welfare benefit upratings: they would increase on the basis of either earnings or inflation, whichever was the higher. That consensus was achieved because there was a moral commitment to protect the poorest in our society—in a civilised society. It went alongside a steady rise in wages at the time. What we have seen recently—it has impacted on my constituents particularly—is wage cuts and wage freezes across the public sector and in some parts of the private sector. I opposed the wage freeze in the public sector that was supported by my own party.

In the past 12 or 15 months we have seen a succession of measures—more than a dozen key measures—that have cut the income of my constituents. The Bill is the last straw. People in my constituency are suffering and will suffer more as a result of this measure. As I mentioned in a recent debate in Westminster Hall, there is a gulf between the views and experiences of some Members of the House and the experiences of many of our constituents and the way that they suffer. I thought that might be particular to my community—a working-class multicultural community that is taking a battering at present—but I looked at some of the statistics in the briefings that were prepared for this debate.

The Government’s own household survey of those living below the average wage identified 11% of families in that category who cannot keep their homes warm. I looked at the Save the Children survey, which found that 14% of children do not have a warm coat this winter. I looked at the survey undertaken by Contact a Family, the charity that works with families who care for disabled children. It was an extensive survey which found one in six families going without food, one in five without heating, one in four without the specialist adaptations that they need, and a third taking out a loan to pay for food and heating.

I looked at the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust work that has been undertaken by the Centre for Research in Social Policy, which demonstrated how the basic income from benefits has decreased in relation to the inflationary impact on basics such as food, heating and rents. I also looked at the work it had done on nutrition for expectant mothers and the concern, which was echoed some time ago by the Minister himself, about the incidence of poor maternal nutrition resulting in low birth weight.

The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy) expressed his fear that this was, effectively, dog-whistle politics, that the poor were being used as a political football between the parties. I share those fears. I wish I did not. That was the tenor of the debate that was opened up in the budgetary statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer—the reference to curtains, and the debate that has gone on in the media about skivers and strivers. I have more faith in the British people. I do not believe that they accept the terms of that debate. I think the British people have a sense of fairness and a sense of moral commitment to people less fortunate than themselves. That is why I do not think there is majority support for the measure. I think that, as a result of this debate, understanding is overcoming prejudice. Prejudice will be defeated by humanity; there will be an upsurge of popular support for those of us across the House who will oppose this legislation tonight and are calling for the Government to think again about the whole trajectory of their welfare cuts.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) has done immensely important work about interventions to tackle deprivation. There is a whole range of them, and they are not just about income. However, his work has found that those interventions are impeded from the outset if people are struggling simply to put food on the table, heat their homes and have some kind of decent standard of living.

Clause 1 is a major setback for large numbers of people right the way across our country. It undermines their standard of living and diminishes the whole of our society. It will have repercussions for a long time to come, unless we defeat it tonight.

Atos Work Capability Assessments

John McDonnell Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Someone said that what we are debating is a party political issue. Let me be clear: I opposed the system when it was introduced by the last Government and I oppose it now—for the same reason. I see it as a brutal attack on the weakest and most vulnerable individuals in our society and an exercise by private companies to profiteer at those individuals’ expense.

I started raising the issue in Parliament early on. My first constituency involvement was like that of many other hon. Members: it involved someone who was mentally ill, went for the assessment and had a nervous breakdown. That had an impact on the whole family—the mother, in particular.

I was then contacted by a range of organisations, which came together and produced the Spartacus report. I urge Members to read it. In the last debate on this issue, in Westminster Hall, we read some of its case studies into the record. They are horrendous examples of human suffering and what can only be described as abuse by the system itself.

I also refer Members to Calum’s List, which has a website. It is a list of people who have died, including by suicide, as a result of, or where there has been a contribution from, the loss of benefits. The first example on the list was that of Paul Reekie. Some Members may have known Paul, an award-winning writer and poet in Leith, Scotland. He did not leave a suicide note, just two letters on the table beside him. One was about his loss of housing benefit and the other was about his loss of incapacity benefit. He died.

The other example is that of Mark and Helen Mullins from Bedworth. They could not access their benefits. They were walking 10 miles a day to a Salvation Army soup kitchen. They committed suicide together because they could not access their benefits. Read Calum’s List, which has example after example of the brutal effect of the system.

This is at least the sixth debate that we have had on the issue. The concern expressed by Members about an issue of public administration in all those is unprecedented in recent decades. There is example after example of human suffering on a scale unacceptable in a civilised society. That is why 117 Members of Parliament have so far signed our early-day motion calling for the scrapping of the system.

I have read Mind’s briefing for today’s debate and I urge other Members to do the same. It has put forward what is wrong with the system. Yes, it has recommended improvements, but one of the key factors coming out of its survey of people facing the work capability assessment process was that 51% of them said it made them have suicidal thoughts. Any system involving that level of risk is irretrievable and unreformable. That is why I believe it should be scrapped and why the British Medical Association has said it should be scrapped.

I say the following, and I do not say it lightly: we now know that the system does not work. We know the human suffering that is occurring. The responsibility is now on us to do something about it. We will be to blame for every injury, harm, suicide and other death as a result of the system if we do not scrap it now and bring in something that is fair and based on proper medical knowledge—assessment by a person’s own GP, reinforced by expertise. We need something that gives advice and emotional support for people when they go through the system, not something that leaves them at risk.

[Ian Lavery]

rose—

[John McDonnell]

If my hon. Friend does not mind, I shall not give way as other hon. Members want to speak.

I conclude by saying that we all have a responsibility to say, “Let’s end the system now, start again and make something fair.” We will be to blame for all the injury and harm if we do not.

Welfare Reform (Disabled People and Carers)

John McDonnell Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Sometimes our role as MPs is to bear witness, so it is important that the words spoken by people with disabilities and their carers are put on the record. Professor Peter Beresford of Brunel university, working as the chair of Shaping Our Lives, the national disabled people’s and service users’ organisation network, undertook a massive survey of people with disabilities and their carers. The Spartacus report was published earlier this year, and has now been revamped. I just want to quote a few brief statements from people with disabilities. This is one person’s family member:

“John is so severely disabled he has to wear nappies and is fed through a tube. He is blind and deaf, cannot speak, suffers frequent seizures and requires 24-hour care. But he has now been told by a Government decision maker that he is ‘capable of work’ — and that he is no longer entitled to benefits. Family members have contacted officials who say that an appeal against the decision will have to be lodged.”

What happens when those appeals take place? Let me quote a person with a disability:

“It’s like doing a crime. I am a human being who needs additional support but here I am facing a panel who are making a decision on my life. I am tired of fighting officials who seem to think they know more about my disabilities and needs than I do. It now makes me feel ashamed of who I am. I am being punished for being disabled and feel powerless.”

What happens in the assessment itself? Here is a quote from a wife:

“I can honestly say there are lies that go into that assessment. I do shorthand and I took down word for word my husband’s whole assessment. What actually came back was practically the opposite of everything he said.”

Let me quote another claimant:

“They are now ordering claimants (and their companions) to surrender any notes they have taken during the interview. Before the assessment even began, both I and my companion were warned that we had to first agree first to hand over our notes at the end of the assessment. We were told that the notes would be photocopied and stored on a database. I was told that the penalty for refusing to agree to this condition was the immediate termination of the assessment.”

The implicit warning was that they would lose benefits.

What happens in the administration of these benefits? I will give another example. The client’s husband is in hospital in a coma. He was sent an ESA50 form. The client contacted the Department for Work and Pensions to explain the situation, and was asked to obtain a letter from the hospital confirming that the client’s husband was in a coma. The client did so, and sent it to Atos rather than the local benefit disability centre. The client was then sent a letter saying that they had failed to return the appropriate form and the client’s husband was no longer entitled to the benefit.

Let me save the final words for Karen Sherlock, 44. She was put in a work-related activity group. She was required to attend interviews. She suffered from a whole range of conditions. Her husband Nigel said it was a disgrace that she was refused benefits. Last year, she lost the long process of appeal against the decision. In April 2012, as a result of the time-limiting of employment and support allowance to one year, she lost her benefits. She won her appeal a few weeks later and was finally put in the support group. She died eight days later, on 8 June.

Read the Spartacus report. It gives example after example of the inhumane treatment of people with disabilities and their families. It shames any Government to treat people in this way.

Work Capability Reassessments

John McDonnell Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. Everybody here is probably familiar with some of the issues relating to the employment and support allowance and the work capability assessment. Between the introduction of the assessment in October 2008 and August 2011, 1.15 million new claimants were assessed and 687,000 were declared fit for work. Of those, 102,500 successfully appealed their decision and were awarded ESA. That means that 9% of all ESA assessments have been overturned. When we look at assessments leading to fit-for-work decisions, the figure rises to 15%. Although the proportion of decisions overturned has started to fall, the overall number still remains extremely high.

Those figures do not include all the incapacity benefit claimants currently being migrated to ESA, a process that started last year and is due to be completed in 2014. The figures published recently cover claims only after appeals have been taken into account—they have been published on a different basis—so we have no data on how many claimants in the migration are originally declared fit for work and then appeal, and how many of those appeals are successful. Although that is not precisely the subject of this debate, I hope that the Minister will see to it that we have more comprehensive and comparable data in future.

The number of incorrect assessments and successful appeals is still high. Like many of my colleagues, I have been considering a number of different aspects of the issue. Earlier this year, I secured a debate here in Westminster Hall on the work capability assessment. On that occasion, I focused on the recommendations for new mental, intellectual and cognitive descriptors drawn up by Mencap, Mind and the National Autistic Society. Although the descriptors are certainly not the only issue that needs addressing, they could have gone a long way to improving the assessment process.

Professor Harrington approved and submitted the descriptors to the Department for Work and Pensions in spring 2011. It is frustrating that officials are only now getting down to assessing properly whether the descriptors would improve the WCA, and we will not get the results of that so-called gold standard review until next summer. There will have been more than two years of delay since the proposals were published.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I preface my remarks by thanking my hon. Friend for the work that she has done on the issue over a long period. Is her experience the same as mine? The largest number of constituents with whom I deal who have lost their benefits, and those with the most distressing cases, are those with mental health problems and those on the autistic spectrum.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. That is the case. There is a flaw in how the original test was drawn up if it is not accounting properly for those types of condition. That is why it needs to be examined.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julie Hilling]

What concerns me is those people who will always have such a condition or who have a progressive condition, meaning that they will only get worse. What about them? To continue to reassess them and put them through that stress feels absolutely wrong—I cannot think of a better word—

[John McDonnell]

Cruel.

[Julie Hilling]

Cruel, yes. Why are we doing that to that group of people who will never get better?

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

I thought I had dealt with that a little earlier when discussing the decision makers and how there is the right to look at when they feel it is appropriate to call someone back, whether three, six, 12, 18 or 24 months later. That obviously has to be right for all, whether the person assessed or the system as a whole. As the hon. Lady knows, we have reviewed the process not once, not twice, but three times under Professor Harrington. Each time recommendations have come back, and we have implemented them, so significant changes are under way.

As the hon. Lady mentioned at the start of the debate, we inherited the situation—the system was put in place before this Government—but we are trying to get it right, we have brought in changes and we will continue to do so until all parts of the House and, most importantly, those being assessed, feel we have got it right.

In conclusion, I echo Professor Harrington who has made it quite clear that the work capability assessment, designed as the “first positive step” towards work, is the “right concept” for assessing people who need our support. He also recognised, however, that there was a need to improve it, which is why we accepted and have largely implemented more than 40 recommendations made in his first two reviews.

Following our reforms, twice as many people go into the support group now as when ESA was introduced. The proportion of people with mental health conditions being awarded ESA has risen from 33% to 49%. I know the hon. Member for Edinburgh East asked specifically what was happening in that regard, and I hope that she can take some comfort from how clearly we are looking into the matter and at how the numbers have changed.

In response to the hon. Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero), who mentioned one of her constituents and a physiotherapist, the assessment looks at the function and not the condition. Physios are experts in this area and have comprehensive training, especially on mental health. They are only approved and allowed to be assessors if they have the necessary skills.

As for the critics, Professor Harrington made it clear in his third review:

“All they call for is a scrapping of the WCA but with no suggestion of what might replace it”,

and

“to recognise that things are beginning to change positively in the best interests of the individual would be helpful.”

Debates such as this improve the situation.

[John McDonnell]

Will the Minister meet some of those critics, such as Disabled People Against Cuts or Black Triangle, which has been occupying DWP offices and demanding meetings with Ministers?

[Esther McVey]

I am more than happy to meet them, although they might not wish to as I am not the Minister responsible. I will forward the invitation and I am sure, diaries permitting, that he will do so. I hope that today has been constructive and I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh East for bringing forward the debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Atos Healthcare

John McDonnell Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Yesterday, I met constituents who have gone through the system. They call themselves victims of Atos, and I promised them that I would briefly set out the experience that they described. The assessment was exactly as others have said. Applicants are often met by an assessor with no expertise or specialist knowledge of their condition; it is a tick-box exercise—my constituents completely agree with the BMA about that. Despite the Harrington recommendations for improvements, the test bears no relationship to the real-world challenges that people with disabilities face. There is no recognition of fluctuating conditions, as has been said—particularly in connection with mental health. The procedure largely ignores the assessments and advice of applicants’ own GPs.

[Mr Philip Hollobone in the Chair]

In addition, the process even ignores previous Atos assessments. A constituent of mine was employed by Royal Mail, which used Atos to assess capability for work, and was assessed as not being capable. My constituent then retired and applied for benefits, and following another Atos assessment was found capable of being re-employed in the same type of work.

The fly-on-the-wall exposés by television programmes have exposed the pressure exerted on assessors to fail people. If people are assessed as capable of working correctly, they are then regularly harassed with challenges that they are unable to cope with, and they lose their benefit as a result. If they succeed at the assessments, they are harassed with reassessment after reassessment. We have heard the appeal statistics, but most of my constituents must wait six months or longer for an appeal. Those who have support—and I do support them; I represent people now at appeals—win. However, there is a lack of support, because of cuts in local government support for advice centres, and Government cuts so many people are not supported.

The result? To be frank, it is financial hardship. People are living in poverty because they lose their benefits. In addition, there is emotional stress, breakdowns, and, as Mind points out in its briefing, self-harm and suicide. Why do the Government defend the company? Why have they awarded it the personal independence payments process?

I share the disgust of many disability groups about Atos being allowed to sponsor the Olympics. That is a disgrace. I support Disabled People Against Cuts, and the Black Triangle campaign, which organised the protest against Atos sponsorship. I am calling for an inquiry into violence against people with disabilities who protested last week at the Department for Work and Pensions, and elsewhere. A few months ago, I tabled an early-day motion calling for Atos’s contract to be withdrawn, and for the establishment of a new system; 103 hon. Members have signed that early-day motion. Surely after that, and following debate after debate and the protests on the streets, the Government must reassess the role of Atos, and establish a new system based, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) suggested, on reputable, fair and equitable criteria.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Specialist Disability Employment

John McDonnell Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend will know that 29 factories were closed under the previous Administration, and it was an error not to put more support in place for people affected. I am sure, if Labour did it again, it would do things differently, because it became apparent very early on that, of the 1,611 disabled people who left factories as a result of the modernisation redundancy programme, very few got into work. However, given the package that we have put in place today and the record of Remploy employment services over the past two years—they have helped 35,000 disabled people to get into work—we are living under a very different set of arrangements.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

The Minister referred to this as a difficult decision, but for the Remploy workers watching this debate it is a tragic decision. She has just mentioned the numbers who left work last time who have never been employed since. How many can she guarantee will be in secure employment in 12 months’ time?

[Maria Miller]

I can guarantee that by using the money differently we can help more disabled people into work. As a result of today’s measure, some 8,000 disabled people can get into work who would not have had that support otherwise.