Universal Credit Project Assessment Reviews

Karen Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams]

As some of my colleagues are saying, we are asking for the documents now. We are pleased the Government finally acknowledged that their universal credit programme is not fit for purpose, and now we need to understand the extent to which it is not fit for purpose through the publication of these reports.

I wish to start by giving some context to today’s debate and then set out why it is so important that we have access to these project assessment reviews. For many months now, Labour has been calling on the Government to pause and fix universal credit. This is a direct response to the mounting evidence that the full service programme is driving hardship in the areas where it has been rolled out. I am sure hon. Members from across the House will now be aware of the figures, but the realities of the misery being caused by this programme bear repeating: half of those in rent arrears under UC report that their arrears started after they made their claim; 79% of those in debt are recognised as having priority debts by Citizens Advice, putting them at higher risk of bailiffs and evictions; and two in five have no money to pay creditors at the end of the month.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware of research published today by the Residential Landlords Association on this point, which found that 73% of landlords remain reluctant to let properties to people on UC? That is vital context. We need to understand what the Government know about the pressure on landlords in the context of UC.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes such a pertinent point. I was going on to say that demand for emergency food parcels in areas where UC has been rolled out is up 30%. Disabled people, single parents and families with children have been particularly affected. Initially, the Government’s impact assessments said that UC would reduce child poverty by 350,000, but then it was to be by 150,000. Now, the Child Poverty Action Group has estimated that by 2022 an additional 1 million children will have been pushed into poverty by as a direct result of cuts to UC. We have identified three drivers for these widespread problems: policy design issues; implementation flaws; and funding cuts.

As I have mentioned, at the recent Budget the Chancellor was forced to respond to Labour’s concerns about UC, as well as concerns from across the House—I acknowledge everybody’s work on this. As I said in my response to the Secretary of State’s statement on this, the measures in the Budget are welcome, not least in finally acknowledging that UC was not fit for purpose. But they are not nearly urgent enough, as they do not come into effect until next year; they do not address key issues, such as the assessment and payment periods or the single household payment; and fundamentally they do not redress the cuts and restore work incentives. Only £1 in every £10 that has been cut has been restored. Though he refused to pause the programme, as we had demanded, the roll-out of UC has been slowed considerably, meaning that the roll-out to all jobcentres will now not be completed until December 2018.

That brings us to the project assessment review reports and today’s motion. Five reviews on UC were carried out by the then Major Projects Authority between 2012 and 2015. As Members know, such reviews are independent ones that provide assurance to major projects. They contain in-depth analysis of the implementation of the project, including detailed assessment of the risks faced and the progress that has been achieved against the Government’s objective: to deliver their flagship social security programme, universal credit. Although these review reports have never been made public, the National Audit Office’s report on UC in 2013 stated that

“the Major Projects Authority’s project assessment review expressed serious concerns about the Department having no detailed ‘blueprint’ and transition plan for Universal Credit. In response to these concerns, the head of the Major Projects Authority was asked to conduct a 13-week ‘reset’ between February and May 2013”

In other words, it was clear that all was not well even then. The announcement of a “reset” was buried in the MPA annual report of that year, accompanied by a single sentence of explanation. This is how UC has limped on ever since.

To try to uncover the extent of the issues, freedom of information requests were submitted to the Government to access these project assessment reviews; but they were refused. The doughty campaigners appealed to the Information Commissioner, and on 30 August this year, the Information Commissioner’s Office ruled that this information must be disclosed by the Department in full, with the exception of the names of the civil servants named in the reports. The ICO’s judgment is important and worth reflecting on here.

Universal Credit

Karen Buck Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

We have to remember that, since the reforms in 2008, most tenants in the private rented sector receive their housing benefit directly, rather than the benefit going to landlords, but about 30% of tenants have alternative payment arrangements in which the money goes directly to the landlord. Once we change the guidance, the presumption will be that such alternative payment arrangements will continue and that the money will therefore go to the landlord, rather than to the tenant. We are constantly considering ways in which we can ensure there is support, and let us not forget that housing benefit transitional payments will provide two weeks of support—the payments are not recovered, they are additional support—to help people as they migrate on to universal credit.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

The changes and additional resources to help tackle some of the glaring problems emerging in universal credit are welcome, but social landlords and others are still extremely worried about the impact of potential arrears. Will the Secretary of State work with his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government to ask social landlords to ensure that they do not go for “ground 8” possession, which reduces the flexibility of the courts in dealing with arrears? It is critical that we do all we can to prevent the eviction of tenants who fall into arrears.

[Mr Gauke]

I welcome the hon. Lady’s warm words, and I note the constructive approach taken by a number of Labour Back Benchers. On evictions, it is important that the pre-action protocols are respected. The Leader of the Opposition’s comments on what happened with Gloucester City Homes turned out to be wildly inaccurate, for which he should apologise. We are keen to work constructively with landlords in both the social sector and the private sector, and it is important that we debate this in a reasonable way, without causing unnecessary stress by scaremongering, which the Leader of the Opposition did.

Universal Credit Roll-out

Karen Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the impact of in-work conditionality. There are about 1 million people on zero-hours contracts who may not know from one week to the next whether they will be able to work 35 hours each week, and we know how much harm universal credit will do to them. Those people are doing the right thing, but they may be sanctioned if they are deemed not to be working enough hours.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being generous with her time. During last week’s debate, I raised the reluctance of private sector landlords to rent properties to people who are on universal credit. Is she aware that social landlords frequently issue a notice indicating that they will seek possession of a property if the tenant is in arrears for only a week? Is it not scandalous that an ever-increasing number of people will approach the Christmas period with such a threat hanging over them?

[Debbie Abrahams]

Absolutely. Surely what is happening is not right, so we must stop this.

I will now make some progress, although I will take more interventions later. People might not have kept up with the hundreds of stories that we have heard from colleagues on both sides of the House, but we must make sure that the Government’s flagship programme is amended to take account of the real hardship that people are experiencing. We have heard about that hardship not just from claimants, but from charities that deal with claimants, as well as many other organisations.

There are three key issues with universal credit: the programme’s design flaws, which have been there from the outset, as I mentioned last week; the cuts that were introduced in 2015; and various implementation failures. First, I will talk about the programme’s flaws. The six-week wait before new claimants receive any payment is particularly draconian, and it is having real impacts. Four weeks of the waiting period are to provide that universal credit can be backdated, but an additional week’s wait was added as policy, and claimants must wait a further week for their payment to arrive. That is believed to be one of the primary drivers of the rise in debt and arrears.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention.

Let me run through, very briefly, one or two of the points made by the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth. She is fond of saying that she completely supports the principle of universal credit and wants it to be implemented, but she then goes on to list innumerable reasons for her fundamental disagreement with all the key strands of the benefit. She cannot have it both ways. If she does not want universal credit to be implemented, let her just stand up and say so. She should not pretend that she agrees with the fundamental principles, and then say that she disagrees with almost every important aspect of it.

I listened to and read very carefully what the hon. Lady said during last week’s debate. I shall pick just a couple of reasons for the fact that I could not support that motion. The hon. Lady referred specifically to housing. The Minister set out the position very clearly today, as the Secretary of State did last week. If there are universal credit recipients who have issues with managing their rent, they can arrange for their landlords to be paid directly, but I do not think we should patronisingly assume that every single person receiving universal credit is incapable of managing the rent. Most of them are perfectly capable of managing their finances, and we should treat them accordingly.

[Ms Buck]

Can the right hon. Gentleman explain, then, why two thirds of private landlords are now expressing a reluctance to accept universal credit claimants as tenants in the first place?

[Mr Harper]

What I was going to come to was why I do not think it is right to pause the roll-out. One of the important aspects of the roll-out is the housing portal which will enable social housing landlords in the first instance to communicate with the Department to deal with tenants when there are rent issues. If we were to pause the roll-out, the Department would not have an opportunity to deal with the real issues that are raised, and to fix them.

Universal Credit Roll-out

Karen Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I was grateful for my hon. Friend’s earlier intervention, which was taken up. It is a serious point. The former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), made the point that pausing the roll-out of universal credit does not help anybody, given the positive effects it is having on getting people into work and allowing them to progress in the workplace. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made the point that this is both an in-work and out-of-work benefit. That means that those who are out of work and are thinking about taking a job can have the confidence to do so, because it will not mean throwing up in the air all their existing arrangements for paying for their house and supporting their family. They will have the confidence to take on that work and to take extra hours, because they know they will be better off and that if it does not work out they will not have to go back to the drawing board.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

One of the principal concerns about universal credit is what is happening to people’s housing costs. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that two-thirds of all private landlords now report that the people on universal credit they are renting to are in arrears? Will he support the call of housing charities for changes to be made to the roll-out of universal credit to make sure that when people take that step into work they do not put themselves at increased risk of losing their home? As currently envisaged, that is exactly what the roll-out will do.

[Mr Harper]

Let me address part of that point now and I will also come on to it later in my remarks. We should not compare universal credit with some mystical world of perfection; we should compare it with the existing system. Under the existing system, housing benefit is not perfect. There are lots of issues with housing benefit and tax credits in the existing benefit system. I understand that the citizens advice bureau has about 600,000 ongoing cases under the existing benefit system, so we are not talking about comparing universal credit with perfection. The existing system is not very good, does not work very well, and does not support people very well. Universal credit is an improvement.

On housing and the direct payment of landlords, which I know is controversial, my own view is that it is better to assume that people can manage their rent themselves. In cases where they cannot, and it is shown that they cannot, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green made it clear—as the Secretary of State did, with the roll-out of the housing portal—that we can deal with that. I do not think it is reasonable to assume that everybody on universal credit is incapable of managing their own money. That is what is assumed with the insistence on paying landlords directly. The other advantage of paying the person directly is that landlords cannot then discriminate against people who get housing benefit. If universal credit is paid directly to you and you make the payment, the landlord does not know that you are a benefit recipient and therefore cannot discriminate against you by having signs in the window saying, “I won’t take people on DSS,” which I know some landlords do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

The roll-out of universal credit affects more than 5,000 of my constituents, as Southwark has been one of the trial authorities for “full service area” and has suffered all the consequences as a result. It is fair to say that it has been a disaster for some of those involved: the individuals left waiting 12 weeks-plus in many cases; the 1,242 Southwark Council tenants facing eviction-level arears owing to universal credit delays. Only 11% of council tenants are on universal credit, but it accounts for 40% of all arrears—over £5 million. To cite the comparator that the Secretary of State seemed to struggle with: the average account balance for people on housing benefit is £8 in credit; the average universal credit claimant is now £1,178 in arrears.

It is equally damaging for some other landlords. Leathermarket JMB is absolutely brilliant and has done a huge amount of work to support people through the process, despite being denied information and access to the landlord portal at the beginning. Its average tenant not on universal credit is £73 in credit, whereas those on universal credit have arrears of £648 on average. Jobcentre Plus staff know that the system cannot cope and that the IT system is too fragile and inflexible and does not reflect things such as childcare costs or fluctuating incomes.

As for the voluntary sector, according to the food banks and Citizens Advice Southwark, the number of people coming through their doors has gone through the roof. Among the last tranche of people to whom universal credit was extended—[Interruption.] The Minister is disagreeing. We have had this discussion elsewhere. I will send him a letter about it rather than get into it now. Following the extension of universal credit to parents, the number of children using Southwark Pecan food bank tripled. That is not uplifting—the word credited to the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg)—but shameful.

[Ms Buck]

We have heard from Government Members about the advantages of bringing all the benefits together into a single system, and there are indeed benefits of simplification, but is not the downside exactly as my hon. Friend says—that when something goes wrong in one part of the system, it brings about a potential catastrophe right across the system, including the potential loss of people’s homes?

[Neil Coyle]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

The Government stressed again today that they put a lot of faith in advance payments, but those cannot cover full rent costs. We found out this morning that the new guidance for Jobcentre Plus was only sent out this week, demonstrating perhaps that the Government were more afraid of their Back Benchers in today’s debate than they were concerned to address the underlying problems. We have just had a spat about the landlord portal. It is still not fixed. The Government claim it is, and there is some faster information sharing, but there is no evidence of an impact on cutting delays, inaccurate payments or overall arrears levels. The Government acknowledge that 20% of social landlords will never be included in the landlord portal—and that is before we look at the private rented sector.

There are other solutions that have been put to the Government not just recently but for months and years. We need to end the insistence that only the claimant can confirm rents. There is no point having “trusted partner” status for landlords and then ignoring them when they say that rent is owed. We need to remove the seven-day wait period for housing costs and introduce a transitional period of rent payment for those coming from housing benefit—rents do not change just because DWP decides to force someone on to a different programme. We should also backdate housing costs. All these issues have been on the table, but the Government have ignored them.

The Government also need to improve real-time information collection. We know that DWP and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs have now set up a “late, missing and incorrect” joint initiative, thanks to information shared by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), but the Department acknowledges that that does not address the system defects. The Government are treating the symptoms not the cause of the problems. Today is an opportunity to pause and address those underlying problems, not to push out universal credit even further, thereby increasing debt, poverty, arrears, evictions, food bank use and homelessness.

Housing and Social Security

Karen Buck Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Sajid Javid)]

Before I open today’s debate, I want to reflect briefly on the horror that unfolded at Grenfell Tower last week. My thoughts are still very much with the victims, their families and their friends. All hon. Members will have heard the Prime Minister’s statement earlier today and, having visited the site for myself and met some of the bereaved families, I want to echo her determination to get to the bottom of whatever went wrong. I will also write to hon. Members shortly with a detailed update on what we are doing to support the people who have been affected by this tragedy, the progress we are making in rehousing people and the steps we are taking to improve fire safety at similar tower blocks across the country.

In the longer term—this point is perhaps more pertinent to this debate—it is clear that any changes in the wake of this tragedy should not just be technical or legislative ones. What happened at Grenfell also showed us all that we need a change in attitude. We all need to rethink our approach to social housing, and we need to reflect on the way in which successive Governments have engaged with and responded to social tenants. We do not yet know for sure whether this disaster could have been avoided if the people who called Grenfell Tower their home had been listened to, but we do know that for far too long their voices fell on deaf ears. If nothing else, let the legacy of Grenfell be that such voices will never, ever be ignored again.

It is good to see the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) in his place, to which I am delighted to welcome him back after the general election. I am even more delighted that we have not swapped places. I know that we have a great deal in common—perhaps we use the same barber—and it is always a pleasure to debate with him. I look forward to doing so regularly during the next five years. Like other hon. Members, I have heard the right hon. Gentleman talk about his party’s policies on the big issues facing the country, especially the issue of how we can build more homes, and we will no doubt hear him set out some of those policies.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

On the point about building more homes in the context of what the Secretary of State has said about social housing, does he accept and will he now confirm that, since 2010, the Government’s record on building social homes has been deplorable, with, in fact, a 97% fall in social housing starts?

[Sajid Javid]

There was a deplorable record on building social homes, but that was the record of the previous Labour Government. As the hon. Lady will hear shortly, as I rightly talk about their record, during the 13 years that Labour was last in office we saw, for example, a decline in socially rented homes of 420,000 units.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sajid Javid]

I will come to the right hon. Gentleman’s record in particular in just a moment, and then I will let him know what I will and will not accept. Let me remind the House that, on Labour’s watch, the number of social rented homes fell by 420,000. In fact, the only thing about social housing that actually grew under Labour was the waiting lists—by a massive 70%.

[Ms Buck]

I am looking at the live tables—published online yesterday, I believe—concerning the record of the Government that the Secretary of State represents. It shows that the number of social rent starts was 39,492 at the end of 2009-10 and had fallen to 944 by 2016-17. Can he explain that?

[Sajid Javid]

Over the past six years, 330,000 new affordable homes have been built, which is a record in a six-year period and is certainly higher than the last six years of the last Labour Government. For every 170 right to buy sales, Labour built just one new council house—a replacement rate of less than 0.6%.

In 2010, when house building completions hit their lowest peacetime level since the great depression, who was the Minister in charge of housing? I will let hon. Members know: it was the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne himself. You will forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker, for being a little bit sceptical when the right hon. Gentleman stands up and claims to have all the answers.

What is the great answer to housing shortfalls and rising unaffordability? What is Labour’s magic bullet to fix the broken housing market? It is a Ministry of Housing. Young people struggling to get on the housing ladder or people who cannot find a place big enough for their growing family should not worry if nothing in their area is affordable because Labour is going to create a new Government Department. It is the typical Labour prescription: there is no problem that cannot be fixed with a bit more bureaucracy.

That is the difference between Labour and the Conservatives in a nutshell. We want to build more homes for hard-working people; they want to build more offices for civil servants. Moving the furniture around Whitehall may create the illusion of action, but it does not get any homes built. Only this Government can deliver the housing and market reforms that this country needs. Only this Government can provide the economic strength we need for house builders to thrive in a post-Brexit world. Only this Queen’s Speech takes the first steps towards fixing our broken housing market. That is why I am delighted to commend it to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) on a fine maiden speech, and congratulate others who have made maiden speeches today.

I hope I may be forgiven for particularly singling out my hon. Friend the new Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad), who not only made a fine and moving speech but has had to rise to the kind of challenge that I am not sure anybody has ever had to rise to so soon after being elected to Parliament. Kensington needs her, and she has certainly risen to that challenge in these days. I hope we will all do what we can to support her in the times ahead. I speak with particular feeling because some of the wards in the northern part of her constituency were in my constituency under previous boundaries, as was Grenfell Tower. What she said was therefore particularly powerful and moving for me.

I echo what my hon. Friend and others have said about the extraordinary community response at a time of serious failure in the institutions of the state in the aftermath of the tragedy, including from many constituents in north Westminster, a sister community who have been working tirelessly over the past week to help the victims and survivors of the disaster.

Along with very many other Members of Parliament, my hon. Friend and I have residents living in other tower blocks, many of whom are deeply concerned. I hope that few will have anything like the equivalent level of reason to be concerned, although they will still need reassurance. However, some may need more support and assistance than reassurance. It is absolutely incumbent on us to rise to that challenge.

[Steve McCabe]

Is not the one single bit of reassurance that everyone needs the knowledge that if local authorities are going to carry out inspections and take remedial action, there will be funding from the Government to deliver it?

[Ms Buck]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I and others pushed for that during the statement and at other opportunities. The local authorities, the arm’s length management organisations and other providers must have a guarantee. They must have the bills underwritten both for the inspection process and for any remedial works. I think we have nudged closer to that commitment this afternoon, but we still do not have it unequivocally. This is important because local authorities have had their budgets cut very severely, Kensington by 38% in the past five years and my own borough of Westminster by 46%. Local authorities, including the environmental health teams who are so important in this context, have had their budgets cut, and social housing providers have had a rent cut imposed on them, with an impact on housing revenue accounts and on management and maintenance in social housing. That has to be recognised. It was a policy imposed by the Government and it has implications that they need to respond to. That action has to be forthcoming.

The Government will need to demonstrate to us how quickly they can respond to the findings of the inquiry, which cannot be prejudged, of course, but actions need to be taken even before that. We have spoken about social housing in this context, but we need to remember that many residents in towers and high-rise blocks, even those built by local authorities, are not actually local authority tenants. In many cases, about a third are either leaseholders, or are legally subletting their properties to private tenants. Those people are all in different situations and subject to different regulatory arrangements, and there are real concerns that the fire safety and other standards applying in social housing do not automatically apply to private owners and leaseholders in social housing blocks. That must be urgently addressed by the Government.

In my view, we need to bring into force section 38 of the Building Act 1984, which would allow victims of breaches of building regulations to sue for damages. The Government could move on that. We need to introduce a statutory consultation process applying to tenants when there are major works in buildings. Such a process currently applies to leaseholders, but not to tenants. We need to amend the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 to allow landlords to go into tenanted properties and ensure that fire safety standards are comparable. We also need to impose new obligations on leases to enable landlords to require access for the purpose of making fire safety improvements, and so forth. There are regulatory changes on which the Government could act immediately and urgently—and they must do so—without in any way prejudging the findings of the inquiry and the separate actions that they will need to take afterwards.

I ask the Government to revisit a revised version of the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill—I introduced the proposals as a private Member’s Bill, and the Opposition put them forward as amendments to the Housing and Planning Act 2016—because, particularly in an age of cash-starved local authorities, we need to enable tenants to enforce standards in law when there is substandard accommodation, as they can currently do with respect to properties in disrepair. This is not about having a new regulatory burden; it is about tenants being able to enforce such standards.

In my last remaining minute I want to raise one other matter. The absolute first priority today must be to house the survivors of the Grenfell Tower tragedy adequately—we must provide them with decent local accommodation—but that must not be at the expense of the needs of other people who are homeless and in desperate housing need, whether in Kensington, Westminster or other parts of London. At the moment, we are in the dire situation that homelessness is rising fast: it has risen by 17% since 2010, and just yesterday we saw figures showing that the number of households in temporary accommodation has risen by a staggering 61% since 2010. As has happened in Kensington and Westminster, many of those families have been moved away from their homes, their children’s schools and their support networks. Social housing is not part of the problem; social housing for these and other people is part of the solution, provided it is properly funded, decent and affordable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow such excellent maiden speeches from Members on both sides of the House. I was here to listen to the tremendous contribution made by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke)—the first, I am sure, of many in this House.

I must draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have been involved in the property market for 25 years and am still involved. I am deeply passionate about it, and I am very pleased by the Government’s clear and ambitious plans to increase house building by 1 million homes between 2015 and 2020, and by 500,000 more by 2022. Those are very ambitious plans.

I am delighted to see that the shadow Secretary of State is back with us in the Chamber. I tried to intervene on him earlier to question one or two of the facts that Opposition Members keep repeating. They keep saying that since 2010 house building has fallen to its lowest level since the 1920s, but the House of Commons Library shows that some 100,000 houses were built in 2009-10, and 153,000 in 2016. Where do these figures come from? The claim is that affordable housing building is at a 24-year-low—the shadow Secretary of State can intervene on me on this point—but we know that in the past six years we have built 304,900 affordable homes, and in the last six years of the Labour Government, 294,000 affordable homes were built. Members can choose their own opinions, but they cannot choose their own facts.

[Ms Buck]

Is the hon. Gentleman querying the Department for Communities and Local Government’s own statistics, on its website, which show that there has been a 97% drop in the number of social housing completions since 2010? Those figures are there on the website now to be inspected.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Lady raises a valid point. There is a different definition. Social housing is part of the overall definition of affordable housing—that is true. The shadow Secretary of State will tell the hon. Lady that that is true. It is also true that we are building more affordable homes than the Labour Government were in their final six years in office.

Building more homes has to be our objective and Members on both sides of the House will agree that we must reform the planning process to deliver more homes and release more land, whether that is brownfield or greenfield. That must take up some of the slack to deliver the amount of housing we need.

We need not just to deliver more land but to reinvigorate some of the sectors of house building on which we have come to rely. Some of that is about our local authorities, and the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government reported on that just before Dissolution. We believe that local authorities should be given the opportunity and more levers to increase house building to previous levels—they were building about 100,000 homes a year back in the 1970s—but only if those houses are properly designed and communities are designed properly around those developments.

The key element of reforming planning to deliver more homes is the role of small and medium-sized enterprises in house building. In 2008, SMEs built 44% of new homes delivered in this country. Today, they deliver 26% of homes. It is not just about land; it is also about capacity. The difficulty for small house builders is that they cannot find the land. That is the primary difficulty: finding access to the land and to the finance.

A White Paper from the Department has accepted that we need to deliver more housing for more small sites, and proposes that in the future, instead of local authorities simply allocating a huge site that is ideal for a huge house build and drawing a big red ring around it, which is probably easier for those local authorities, a certain number of sites in that local plan must be allocated for smaller sites and for small and medium-sized enterprises. It recommends that 10% of those sites should be half a hectare or less. That is good progress, but we need to go further if we really want to get small builders back into the business of building houses. It is critical that they do that.

The other principal problem is finding finance. It is almost impossible for an SME house builder to get finance for their developments. The Government have recognised this with their £3 billion home building fund, but we need to go further. We need to ensure that the mainstream high street banks lend to those SMEs. Those banks are their first port of call, but that is a difficult conversation at the moment. In Germany, the state-backed bank, KfW, sits behind the loans to SME house builders, meaning that builders can keep building. Through that, Germany has been far more successful in ensuring that there is a mixed delivery of house building.

For the next couple of minutes, I will focus on something else of huge significance to the industry: the tenant fees ban. I am still involved in the business and I am told by my finance director that the ban will cost us around £800,000 a year, so hon. Members might think that I am against the legislation, but I support the fee ban. I recognise that there is a problem. It cannot be right that when a tenant finds a property they want, they are susceptible to charges of which they were not aware and which can vary wildly between different letting agents.

All legislation that we bring forward in this place cannot just be about the measures. Delivery—the oversight and enforcement—is also needed. My concern is whether the measure will be delivered with that proper oversight and enforcement. The team that currently manages that within the sector is the National Trading Standards Estate Agency Team near Bangor. That team does not have the capacity to deliver the necessary oversight. We need to ensure that if this legislation is brought forward, it drives out the cowboy operators, who will try to find a way around the rules, which cannot be right. If the legislation is well thought through, it can include new measures about rental property standards. We need to ensure that the rented property sector delivers an appropriate standard of rented accommodation.

Housing Benefits (18 to 21-year-olds)

Karen Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank my hon. Friend for that, and absolutely yes. Those who cannot live with their parents and those in receipt of the main disability benefits will be exempt from this policy.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Further to the question from the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), will the Minister confirm what I believe she said earlier, which is that the only thing necessary for a young person to demonstrate before being entitled to the housing element of universal credit is that their parent has said that they cannot live at home?

[Caroline Nokes]

Yes, and I think I have made that very clear. If it is inappropriate for a young person to live at home with their parents, they will be exempt from this policy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Karen Buck Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

My right hon. Friend highlights an important point. I know my hon. Friend the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work will be looking very closely at the issue of people with autism. This also highlights that one of the key determinants for post-release employment is what happened with the individual before they were convicted, and it highlights again the importance of making sure nobody is left behind. In our work, we pay particular attention to all these groups who face particularly difficult barriers in getting into work.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Our Work and Pensions Committee report found that reoffending costs £15 billion to the public purse, yet fewer than one in four ex-offenders goes on to find work. Alarmingly, Westminster Council’s report on rough sleeping that was published before Christmas found that one in three of its rough sleepers had come directly from prison. Why is the Department unable to provide proper transitional support for people leaving prison to make sure that they are not on the streets and that they are assisted into employment?

[Damian Hinds]

It is vital that ex-offenders and people on release from prison have help with finances, employment and housing. Among the things we have done to help on housing is to ensure that there are no waiting days in relation to universal credit and to keep the housing element in universal credit open for 26 weeks rather than 13 for certain types of prisoner in order to ensure that we can enhance their support.

Employment and Support Allowance and Universal Credit

Karen Buck Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) on calling this timely debate. The fact that he has such a degree of support from across the House cannot be overestimated. The speeches we have heard show the House at its absolute best. We are concerned about the plight facing so many of our constituents and the impact that this additional cut in support will have on them.

Although my party wants the ESA WRAG cuts to be scrapped completely, we will support this motion calling for a postponement until the Government have been able to analyse the consultation from their Green Paper. The same points have been made a number of times: I think that only one speaker generally supported what the Government are doing, while everyone else set out the reasons why their proposals should not go ahead. The key element is that we have only just had the closing date of the Green Paper consultation. I hope that the Minister accepts these points; she will have support from across the House if she does.

Let me re-emphasise some of the points that I made in yesterday’s debate. Half the 13 million people living in poverty are disabled or live with a disabled person. The number of disabled people now living in poverty is 5 million—one in three disabled people. The situation is getting worse after a decade when the problem was in decline. According to research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the figures that are officially published are an underestimate. Labour Members are concerned that the Government do not seem to recognise the link between disability and poverty. We know from extensive research that disabled people are twice as likely to live in poverty as non-disabled people. Eighty per cent. of that poverty results from the condition or disability that they experience. We have heard moving accounts from Members on both sides of the House, including the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), who gave a very eloquent description.

This is happening in the context of what disabled people are already going through; it is not just about social security cuts. The Welfare Reform Act 2012 cut £28 billion from 3.7 million disabled people, and that does not even include the cuts in social care and other health-related public services, such as the number of specialist nurses who might be available for people with a learning disability. I will not say that it is the tip of the iceberg, but it is not the whole story. Yesterday I mentioned research showing that families with a disabled adult or child have been made five times worse off than non-disabled people.

Among a number of measures in the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016 that the Minister debated extensively with me last year, this is one of the worst. We have already heard about the cut of £1,500 a year affecting nearly half a million disabled people.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

This morning I received an email from a constituent who has lost his ESA and has been put on the assessment rate. He suffers from lymphedema, an extremely painful condition that makes him almost unable to walk. He asked what advice I could give him, because the rate that he is now on means that he has to choose on a weekly basis between turning on the heat and eating. What advice should I give him?

[Debbie Abrahams]

I have a constituent with exactly the same condition, and we are going through exactly the same process with the personal independence payment as well as ESA. It is important that my hon. Friend will be representing her constituent. Sixty per cent. of people are successful in the appeals process, which shows how flawed the system is, does it not?

These are people who have been found not fit for work. There is absolutely no evidence that the cut will incentivise people. In fact, the Government’s own research, which was published earlier this year, and the Low report say that it is less likely to help disabled people back into work.

Macmillan Cancer Support has forwarded me details about a woman called Lynn, who said

“When I was ill, I had to give up work for a year. I couldn’t work—the chemotherapy knocked me for six and I just wanted to sleep all day. It was horrendous. I couldn’t pay my mortgage, my council tax. I thought I was going to lose my house. Then I got Employment Support Allowance. If they cut the ESA that would just be absolutely horrendous. I would hate to have had that done to me. Without it, we would have been homeless.”

Members across the House will have similar examples.

I again remind the Minister that the Government’s own data, which were published last year, show how vulnerable people in the group are. They are twice as likely to die as the population as a whole. That proves that incapacity benefit and ESA are good population health indicators. We hear awful language about shirkers and scroungers, but these are sick people who deserve care and support, not humiliation.

I mentioned the work, health and disability Green Paper at the beginning of my contribution. It is out for consultation, and while it seems to include some good measures, I have a number of concerns about it. I am also concerned about the reduction in employment support from £700 million to £130 million. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) said, how on earth will we reduce the disability employment gap with such reductions? The Access to Work programme is inadequate: it serves only 35,000 of the 1.4 million disabled people who are fit and able to work. It is nonsense.

I know that we are pressed for time, but I want to touch on the limited capability to work component of universal credit. It has been suggested that it applies only to new claimants, but everybody will transfer to UC at some stage, so it will affect absolutely everyone.

I also want to reflect on growing evidence of the effects that the current round of cuts are already having on sick and disabled people. They include isolation, loss of independence, reliance on food banks, homelessness, exacerbation of existing conditions and a direct link to mental health issues. They have also been associated with the deaths of claimants. It is absolutely unacceptable for policies of the state to be doing such harm, so we support the motion and call for the ESA cuts to be paused. There is a lot of support for that.

In conclusion, there is an evidence base of the effects that the cuts are having on sick and disabled people. Over the same period that the Government have cut support for them, they have given generous support to high earners and big business. Last year, the average worker’s pay of £27,645 increased by 2%, while pay for top executives on £5 million increased by 50%. The trend is getting worse and the inequalities are already being felt. We cannot underestimate the effect of those inequalities. They are not inevitable; this is about political choices. The cuts must not go ahead and we would welcome the Government moving on the issue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Karen Buck Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

That is a sensible suggestion, and I thank my hon. Friend for making it. If we can use all the data that Government hold—for example, care plans or evidence for someone’s war pension—better to reduce stress and bureaucracy for individuals and arrive more quickly at a good result on the assessment, we should do so.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

How confident is the Minister of the robustness of emergency payments for disabled people who lose their ESA or PIP? What would she say to my constituent who suffers from chronic lymphoedema? He wrote to me two weeks ago, having lost his benefit:

“I can’t seem to concentrate on what I should do. I have no money at all. My electricity and my gas have run out. As for food I don’t know what to do.”

How can we have a system in which people are left in such a predicament?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am sorry to hear of the circumstances of the hon. Lady’s constituent. Enormous numbers of decisions are made on ESA, PIP and on all sorts of other benefits. In some cases, the wrong decision is taken and it is overturned on appeal. We need to concentrate on ensuring that we arrive at the right decision in the first place. That has been our focus over the last few weeks, and we are doing a lot of work to ensure that medical and other evidence is submitted earlier in the process so that such circumstances do not arise. I would be very happy to look at the situation of the hon. Lady’s constituent.

Universal Credit (Children)

Karen Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) for his eloquent introduction to the debate and the Backbench Business Committee for bringing it to the main Chamber.

This debate is of particular concern in my constituency, where there is a high proportion of people claiming welfare benefits. As of April 2015, there were 14,500 people on tax credits, and it is estimated that, by 2020-21, 19,000 people will be on universal credit. According to figures from Child Poverty Action Group, reductions in work allowance under universal credit, introduced in April 2016, will result in a working single parent in rental accommodation losing up to £554 per year and in a working single parent who owns their home losing up to £2,000 per year. In both cases, this is more than double the loss suffered by working couples. The majority of these single parents are women. Once again, this is a cut that comes at the expense of women, who account for 86% of cuts to benefits and tax savings. This figure has increased, not decreased, as a result of the Chancellor’s latest Budget.

A single parent already working full time on the national living wage will have to work an extra 46 days each year—more than two additional working months—to make up what they have lost. While the Government may paint these reductions in income as an incentive to work, for single parents already in full-time work, extra hours are not realistic. Support for childcare might have increased from 70% to 85%, but this will not compensate families for the losses they will suffer as a result of the changes in universal credit. End Child Poverty estimates that 42% of children in my constituency live in relative poverty, which makes it the constituency with the sixth-highest level of child poverty. The four-year freeze on support for children under universal credit is expected to reduce the value of key children’s benefits by 12% by the end of the decade, when creeping inflation will also have added to the cost of living.

In 2011, the Government forecast that universal credit would lift up to 350,000 children out of poverty. In 2013, this figure was amended to 150,000 and the Government today refuse to give a figure. There remain significant gaps between the Government’s aim of making work pay through the new universal credit regime and the reality of families facing huge cuts to their income. I would like to ask the Minister two questions. First, will the Government review the impact of work allowance reductions on working families, particularly working single families? Secondly, will they agree to review annually the decision to freeze most key children’s benefits for four years?

As I have stated, the impact of changing tax credits to universal credits will affect families in my constituency. I am here representing them and trying to get their voices heard in the Chamber, so I ask that the Government take very seriously the effect the changes will have on families and women.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Does she agree that we should be particularly concerned about the plight of the self-employed—an increasingly large group of income-insecure people? Does she share my concern that about 800,000 self-employed people are likely to lose £1,000 a year as a result of the cuts to universal credit?

[Kate Osamor]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. There are many lone workers and people who have their own businesses in my constituency, and they have come to see me in my office to say that they are very concerned because they need to use benefits to top up their salaries. This is an issue that I hope the Government will take into account.

I conclude by asking the Minister to review the impact that work allowance reductions are having on working families, particularly single families. Secondly, will the Government agree to review annually the decision to freeze most key children’s benefits for four years?

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I am very grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Today’s debate comes at an interesting time. The right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) introduced it with his usual reasonableness on an issue of concern to everybody here. There are two or three points that I would like to highlight in a brief contribution. The first is the biggest strategic challenge for the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues, which is where the balance of the strategy that Labour Members are trying to pursue will lead the country. I offer two thoughts. The first is that Labour Members have still not told us what reforms to welfare benefits they would make to reduce the budget deficit that we and all our constituents still face. At a time when the country is spending more on the interest of our debt than on the education of our children, it has to be wrong to ignore this part of the equation.

I think I am right in saying that Labour opposed every one of the welfare reforms pushed through by the coalition Government in the last Parliament, which amounted to some £20 billion of reductions in expenditure, and indeed have opposed everything in this Parliament as well. This comes at the same time as consistently opposing in this Parliament measures that the Government have taken to improve conditions for businesses that generate, directly and indirectly, 75% of all the tax that pays for the services, the welfare and the pensions that we all know are so important to our constituents.

[Ms Buck]

rose—

[Richard Graham]

I give way to my colleague on the Select Committee.

[Ms Buck]

Does the hon. Gentleman believe that giving a tax cut to the richest people in society and introducing the married person’s tax allowance are a better use of public money than investment in universal credit?

[Richard Graham]

I have two points in response to that. First, when it comes to generating more tax, I subscribe to the philosophy of the former Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, who said:

“It matters not whether the cat is white or black so long as it catches mice.”

On this occasion, when we lowered the top tax rate from 50% to 45%, the additional tax revenue was £8 billion. My question to the hon. Lady and her colleagues is this, “Would you rather have an extra £8 billion of tax revenue to spend on our vital services, or enjoy the ideological thrill of raising the top tax rate and collecting less tax revenue with less to spend on services?” I know what I would go for; I am not sure about her.

[Ms Buck]

indicated dissent.

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Lady is shaking her head, which suggests to me that my colleague on the Select Committee on Work and Pensions is still from the school of thought that prefers to raise taxes and get less tax revenue. I would have thought that the period of Reaganomics and Thatcheromics had made it very clear that we incentivise businesses to grow, to generate more revenue and to employ more people by creating a business-friendly environment rather than the opposite. It is something that the hon. Lady and her party will have to work out.

The hon. Lady’s second question was on the married person’s tax allowance. All the evidence from research done over a period of years shows that we have happier families and less dysfunctional behaviour when we have closer families, and marriage plays a key part in that. I recognise that not all Members subscribe to the importance of marriage as a contributing factor to a happy society, but we should probably leave that debate for another day.

My second main point relates to what the right hon. Member for East Ham said about universal credit, in particular the part of the motion that states that

“many may struggle with elements of the new approaches to payment and administration”.

There is a philosophical issue here, too. Originally, the current Minister for Welfare Reform, Lord Freud, acted as an adviser to the last Labour Government, and he recommended many solutions to the problem of tax credits, which he has now implemented in government with our party. I once asked him what the difference was between the work he had done for the previous Labour Government and our own Government. He said that the difference was simply that we would implement it.

The former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer and Member for Edinburgh South West, now Lord Darling, said in this House that Labour had not implemented universal credit simply because it was “too difficult”. His party has always struggled with the fact that we are implementing something that it had decided was too difficult. Labour Members have not been able to work out whether to oppose it all in principle, which would be odd, given that they had looked at it, or whether to attack it in detail on the basis that it is too complicated to do. As universal credit continues to move forward on its journey across the country, affecting a growing number of people, I suspect that that challenge is going to be more and more difficult, and those on the Labour Front Bench are going to have to reconcile these problems.

The assumption behind what the right hon. Member for East Ham said today is that universal credit is basically all too complicated, with the twist that it now cannot be understood by those who are going on to it. I do not know how many Members have actually been to their Jobcentre Plus and spoken to people working there about the implementation of universal credit, as well as to their customers, namely our constituents who are receiving it. I suspect that those who have done so, as I have, will find that people working in Jobcentre Plus find universal credit to be a huge step forward. More than one officer working there described it to me as a quiet revolution, while those receiving it find it much easier to understand than the plethora of often contradictory benefit systems that our country built up over a long period of time.

I fundamentally disagree with the right hon. Member for East Ham—reluctantly, because I agree with him on several things—on the notion that universal credit cannot be understood by those either receiving it or responsible for administering it. He claimed that there were “long delays” to universal credit claims, and that the Trussell Trust had said once again, having said it several times before, that the increase in demand for food banks was largely down to the delays in benefits. Because I had heard that argument for quite a long time, last year I set up with my local citizens advice bureau a service agreement that obliged it to refer to me any instance of any of my constituents who are waiting longer to receive benefits due to them than the accepted norm set by the DWP. That covered any situation. In the last six months, how many people had been referred to my office for unnecessary delays to their benefits? One—one single constituent. It could be argued that there is not a complete correlation between people referred to the food bank by the CAB and those who go to the food bank. That could be true. A number of organisations in the city of Gloucester, including my own office, refer people to our food bank. None the less, the CAB is probably—I do not have the precise statistics—the biggest single organisation handling the welfare difficulties of my constituents. It is, I think, telling that over the last six months there has been only one case of unnecessary delays in the receipt of benefits.