Housing Benefit (Abolition of Social Sector Size Criteria)

Kate Green Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Every time we debate the bedroom tax, it is clear that it is not achieving what Ministers said it would. As costs rise for landlords and more is spent on discretionary housing payments, as even the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) described, the bedroom tax is not only not saving what was predicted, but, as the Minister for Employment claimed on BBC 5 Live in March, it is not about saving money anyway, but about making better use of the housing stock. The bedroom tax is clearly failing to achieve that when just 5.9% of affected households have downsized. That is hardly surprising, given the mismatch between the stock available and the number of families who are under-occupying, as has been highlighted by speaker after speaker. From Aberdeen to St Ives, from Liverpool to the north-east of England, where the number of families with spare rooms is larger than the number of overcrowded families by three to one, such a mismatch means that people simply cannot move.

The Minister for Disabled People claimed that housing waiting lists are falling, and implied that that was because of the bedroom tax. May I tell him that it has nothing to do with the bedroom tax? Waiting lists have been coming down because the eligibility criteria for housing have been tightened.

Meanwhile, individuals have experienced massive hardship, as my colleagues have described. Some 220,000 families with children, 60,000 carers and 330,000 disabled people have been affected by this pernicious tax. Most have lost £14 a week, or a total of £1,260 to date. People under-occupying by two or more rooms have lost considerably more—£25 a week—and disabled people, who also lose £14 a week, have so far lost a total of £415.8 million as a result of the bedroom tax. That is a disgraceful hit on disabled people and their households.

As a result—[Interruption.] I am coming on to discretionary housing payments, and the Minister for Disabled People will want to listen when I do. Two-thirds of those affected spent less than £40 a week on food, and less than £20 a week on fuel; according to the Disability Benefits Consortium, 12% have used food banks, and that figure rises to 15% for those hit by other cuts to welfare payments; two-thirds have struggled to pay their rent; and only 41% have been able to pay their bedroom tax in full, while 20% cannot pay it at all.

As a result, not only have some people got into arrears, but many more have gone into debt. The Real Life Reform research, which my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) mentioned, shows that 74.3% of the families it is following are now in debt. They owe on average a shocking £3,971, which is up 71.8% on the debt they had before the bedroom tax came in. That must be shameful and worrying to Ministers. They have rightly expressed concerns about rising personal debt; yet their policy is causing it. Those people have experienced rising personal debt, but it is true that their weekly repayments are lower. However, that is because credit periods have been extended and extended to the point at which nearly half those followed by the Real Life Reform research say that they have no idea how they will ever pay off their debt.

The system is riddled with injustices and cruel perversities for those affected by this tax, such as those who need space for special equipment, as described by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), and couples who cannot share a room. Those whose homes have been adapted are also affected: 35,000 such houses have been adapted, at an average cost of £6,700. The £234 million cost to local authorities is now in danger of being written off because those families are being forced out of their homes. That is another example of Tory welfare waste.

Children with high or moderate care needs are exempted from the bedroom tax, but not those with high-rate mobility. The Minister for Disabled People said that overnight carers have been exempted. That is true for overnight carers for adults, but it is not true for overnight carers for children, or for resident carers.

Despite all that, the Prime Minister said in the House on 6 March last year that disabled people were protected from the bedroom tax. That is simply not the case. As hon. Members have mentioned, nor are separated families; non-resident parents with their children visiting, whom my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (John Robertson) mentioned; those at risk of domestic violence; or the bereaved, who enjoy a 12-month so-called period of grace, which will be reduced to three months under universal credit.

It is not just individuals who are suffering. Registered social landlords are experiencing a loss of rent and are left with arrears and voids, as my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) pointed out. That means that their credit rating and their ability to borrow cost-effectively, and therefore to build the new homes that we need, are damaged. It is an utterly illogical policy.

Government Members said that the situation was the same as for the local housing allowance in the private rented sector. That point was made first by the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry), and then by the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng), who might want to stop playing “Candy Crush” now, and a number of other Members. Let us be clear about the differences between the two markets and about how long the situation has pertained. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) rightly pointed out, we have had size criteria in the private sector since 1989, so they were not first introduced under Labour as Government Members suggested.

In the social sector, housing is allocated based on need. That is not the case in the private sector, in which, without criteria, people could theoretically rent any property at all. As many Opposition Members have pointed out, the local housing allowance was not introduced on a retrospective basis, and it covered pensioners. Ministers have chosen to exclude pensioners from the bedroom tax, and they have to recognise that pensioners under-occupy the majority of stock. The policy is therefore doomed to fail, and the local housing allowance is not directly comparable with it.

The Minister mentioned discretionary housing payments, but they are clearly not the answer. They are temporary, and by definition they are discretionary. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, pointed out, for some families the idea of a discretionary payment is completely perverse given that they are living in circumstances that they simply can do nothing about. What is more, as the Chartered Institute of Housing has pointed out, discretionary housing payments are not always properly advertised, and some local authorities are discouraging people from applying or appealing. Some are treating disability living allowance, for example, as income when calculating entitlement, which hits the people affected doubly hard.

Larger cities have had to apply for additional funds for discretionary housing payments—so, it would seem, has South Derbyshire—or had to use their own resources. Some authorities that had apparently underspent now say that they need more money. Redbridge wants to carry forward its underspend, Barking says it will spend in full by the end of the year and Harrow says it will spend £41,000 more. Eight councils account for £1.2 million of failure to spend, and Wandsworth for nearly half of that. Some £30 million more than originally planned has had to be allocated through DHPs to cover the cost of foster carers, and the administrative costs to local authorities alone amount to £1 million.

How are people responding to the pressures? I heard it argued today, but without the basis of any evidence, that the bedroom tax was encouraging people to get into work, but there is no evidence that it is doing that, or, if it is, that it is getting them off housing benefit. One reason for that is self-evident: given that two thirds of those affected are sick, disabled or carers, it is very difficult for them to get into work or increase their hours. What is more, Ministers have previously suggested that people could take in lodgers, but people might not feel safe taking a stranger into their home—I know I would not—and many landlords will not allow lodgers at all. It is not possible for people to move, because there are no suitable homes in many parts of the country and many landlords will not allow people to be rehoused if they are in arrears.

The Kafkaesque proportions of this policy are beyond what we would have imagined even from this Government. It is perverse, cruel, unfair and unworkable, and it is time that it was scrapped. That will be the first action of a Labour Government, and for half a million households it cannot come soon enough.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I do not know all the facts of that specific case, but I would be delighted to discuss it with my hon. Friend. The general position is that tests about habitual residence and past presence are meant to make sure that only people with a close connection to Britain are able to claim our benefits. I will, of course, meet my hon. Friend to discuss the specific case.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Last week’s economic and fiscal outlook from the Office for Budget Responsibility shows that, following the PIP delays under discussion, spending on the benefit will be £1.2 billion higher than the Government planned last December. At the same time, disabled people are having to wait months for a decision, with more than 300,000 stuck in the queue, according to the most recent figures. In a Westminster Hall debate on 25 November, the Minister said that the DWP was receiving between 30,000 and 40,000 claims per month, and the most recent figures show 35,000 decisions per month being taken. The Minister is therefore running to stand still, so will he say exactly how he is going to bring down the backlog?

[Mr Harper]

Yes; obviously, I was talking about the figures that have been published so far. The hon. Lady will know, as she attended the debate in Westminster Hall, that I set out the timetable for publishing clearance statistics. Her general point is well made. I am very well aware of the delays—I have to reply to Members from across the House—and that is why we have put in a considerable amount of effort. Both the Department and providers are making considerable progress towards the Secretary of State’s commitment, and we will be able to say more about that in the new year.

[Kate Green]

Disabled people are being left, sometimes for months, without support. Some are very seriously ill, some have degenerative conditions, some are being hounded for a planned intervention—effectively, resubmitting their claim part way through their award—and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) pointed out, some are losing their passported benefits. All that, alongside delays in processing employment and support allowance assessments and today’s decision on the closure of the independent living fund, mean that disabled people are facing huge anxiety and uncertainty. Does the Minister really think it is right that they should take the pain for the Government’s welfare failures?

[Mr Harper]

I do not agree at all with the way the hon. Lady has set that out. Right at the beginning of my answer I said that I was seized of the delays to PIP, and we have made a lot of progress in dealing with them. She refers to today’s judgment on the independent living fund. She will know, of course, that that has nothing to do with saving money; it is about making sure that people are using the care and support system, which will be further improved by the Care Act 2014 in the new year. The judge was very clear and gave a very clear decision today about the proper, robust decision making in the Department. The ILF is working closely with local authorities to make sure that the transition from ILF to local authority support is as seamless as possible.

Remploy Workers

Kate Green Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) on securing the debate and all colleagues who have contributed to it. I thank the former Remploy workers whom I have had the opportunity to meet over many months, who have spoken to me about their feelings about the Remploy closure, and the Unite and GMB trade unions who support them. In that connection, I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Today’s debate comes just over one year after the closure of the last Remploy factory. It is clear from what we have heard that there is a wide gulf between the picture painted by Ministers when the closures were announced, which suggested that the Remploy model was outmoded, outdated and not offering genuine employment opportunity to disabled people, and the real situation we find ourselves in today. My colleagues have highlighted some personal consequences of that prejudice against the Remploy model: the fear that people have been left with, the insult to their dignity as proud working people and their sense of loss of hope for the future. That has come as no surprise to many of us, and it would not have surprised us when the closures were proposed.

Even when Ministers announced the intended closure of the factories, many colleagues sounded the alarm. They highlighted the challenge that many Remploy staff would face when trying to find work in mainstream employment, particularly in areas that have already been hit hard by job losses, as my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) said, and particularly for those workers who were employed by Remploy for many years, often for decades, or who lack formal qualifications. Such circumstances do not give people a head start in the labour market. That was well known and well understood from the outset.

Concerns were raised when the closures were proposed, and well before then, about the failure of the then Remploy management to optimise business performance. That has been mentioned during the debate. Accusations by trade unions and others suggested an over-costly management structure and an absence of will and determination on the part of senior Remploy management to seek and develop new business.

The business plan put in place in 2008 under a Labour Government had not been allowed to run its full course when the present Government announced the wholesale closure of the factories, but many Remploy workers strongly believed that, with the right management and focused business development efforts, that business plan offered the basis for a successful future for Remploy. When it was announced that the factories would close, some workers hoped to take over parts of the business themselves, such was their faith in the future of the Remploy model, and they were determined to make a go of it. It was a reasonable ambition. Evidence from other European Union countries, including Scotland, suggests that supported employment alongside other labour market strategies to promote the employment of disabled people can be effective in increasing their employment. This blanket assumption that supported employment is a dead-end for all really is not borne out by an analysis of the evidence.

As hon. Members have said, the real situation we face is that, according to the DWP, 1,507 disabled workers were laid off as a result of the closure and were, in the DWP’s words, “choosing to work” with personal advisers, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham said. The Library quotes a higher figure of around 2,000 workers losing employment, possibly because the DWP figure only reflects stage 1 lay-offs or because it is deliberately ignoring those workers who are not engaged with DWP, as the Department simply does not track them. Will the Minister be absolutely clear about the figures? How many people were previously employed in Remploy at the time of the closure and what destination has each of those individuals reached today?

At best, only about half the former workers are now in employment. The Minister said in a written answer to me on 15 October, that 774 are currently in work, 389 are in receipt of employment and support allowance, 345 receive jobseeker’s allowance and 382 confirmed their intention to retire. A survey by GMB in 2014 suggested that only a quarter of former workers were in employment and that many of those were working short hours or were on lower pay than when they worked in Remploy.

[Ian Lucas]

I noted an interesting statistic from the written answer that my hon. Friend mentioned. Does she agree that the fact that 345 former Remploy workers are in receipt of jobseeker’s allowance suggests they are not receiving dedicated help as disabled workers? Does not she find that disturbing?

[Kate Green]

I, too, found that statistic interesting. I hope that the Minister will explain whether they are receiving the same access to the personal help and support programme as those workers who have been placed on employment and support allowance, because it would be a matter of concern if a two-tier offer was being made to former workers, all of whom have emerged from the same circumstances. It also points to the fact that these workers have much to offer the labour market, with the right support.

Of course, we know that the assessment processes for determining who is in which category of employment support allowance or jobseeker’s allowance are not particularly trusted—I think that it would be fair to say—by those seeking employment support. The Minister would do well to delve a little more closely into the destinations of that JSA group, particularly, because if the Government’s logic is correct, it ought to be moving into work very easily. Yet here we are, 18 months on, and it would appear that 345 of them have not done so.

The GMB survey suggests that the picture is rather more gloomy in any event, with only a quarter of former workers in employment, often in poorer conditions than under their Remploy contracts. We know from the GMB research that many more of those who are now categorised as retired have chosen to retire in the light of futile searches for alternative employment or because of a lack of help from the Department. That is dispiriting, because Ministers assured Parliament at the time of the closure programme that extensive support would be put in place. An extra £15 million was committed to the Access to Work programme and £8 million was committed to create the guaranteed people help and support package, which was to provide support to each affected disabled employee for 18 months after they left Remploy.

Despite that funding, we have to accept that the employment outcomes are disappointing. It is unclear what the additional funding committed to Access to Work and PHSP has achieved. In a written answer on 14 October, the Minister told me that 265 former workers were receiving Access to Work support and that 827 former workers had taken part in community support fund projects, of whom 348 were helped into employment. Unfortunately, the DWP does not track those working fewer than 16 hours a week and has no information on whether the type of employment they are accessing is fixed term, temporary, part time or voluntary.

Former workers have reported difficulty in accessing the support they want. One group of workers in Yorkshire who have established their own business and are attracting contracts from former Remploy customers reported a rigid reluctance on the part of the DWP to support them with grants, other funding and advice. Other people have told me that the employment support they were offered was inadequate and did not meet their needs, although the Minister told me in a written answer on 14 October that the DWP has spent £5.5 million on providing individual specialist support. I would be grateful if he offered his analysis of why, when more than £20 million has been spent on supporting former Remploy workers, around half of them remain without work. Is he satisfied with that performance? If not, what further action is he taking to increase the employment rate of former workers? Why has only £5.5 million of the £8 million allocated to personal support been spent more than a year after the factory closures? What will happen to the remaining funds?

According to the DWP, former workers who receive specialist support through the PHSP will continue to receive specialist support after the first 18 months of support is complete, usually from the same specialist adviser. Where is that support coming from and how is it being paid for? How are the advisers being remunerated? Are they being paid on the basis of results? How many former Remploy staff have moved on to other labour market programmes, such as the Work programme or Work Choice? What outcomes are being achieved for those workers if they are participating in those programmes? Will the Minister comment on the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham of the attitude of private employment agencies? What are their success rates in placing former workers into employment? What fees are they receiving? What is their attitude to former Remploy employees?

What steps have been taken to assist former workers in reskilling and developing new skills for a different labour market? How successful has that been? What process is in place to analyse, identify and prepare them for specific employment opportunities in their local communities? As my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli pointed out, travel is not a reasonable option for many. In some parts of the country—Wales is a good example—travel distances would be extremely large in reaching any other offer of employment.

What support is being given to enable groups of former workers to come together to form their own businesses or social enterprises? In particular, what steps are the Government taking to help them in accessing public contracts? It was noted in the debate that the failure to put energy into delivering public contracts to the Remploy factories through public procurement processes as intended was a factor in the difficulties they experienced in achieving their business plans. It would be useful to know what advice is being given across central and local government to encourage procurement from social enterprises, where those have replaced Remploy.

The wider well-being of former Remploy workers has been raised in the debate. My hon. Friends have highlighted the importance of social contact with colleagues and of employment routines for this otherwise potentially isolated group of individuals. It seems that information on the nature of the impairment or the condition of former workers has not been tracked, so we will not know how their ongoing physical or mental health has been affected.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham highlighted that there would have been a capital receipt from the sale of the former Remploy factory in his constituency. Will the Minister say more about what has been achieved overall from the realisation of capital assets? How much has been recouped in that manner? If the Government have received capital money, where does that funding sit and what will it be used for?

It seems that there has been complacency in the Government on the future of former Remploy disabled staff, both at the time and subsequently. There is little sign that Ministers can show what has worked in helping former workers into sustainable employment. There is little evidence of help to build successful businesses or social enterprises. For those individuals left without work, the future remains bleak. I hope that the Minister can provide details of further effective, ongoing support, since he surely cannot be satisfied that half the former employees remain without work. Many fear that they will never work again.

In conclusion, if the Minister proposes further sensible plans to maximise the employment chances of former Remploy staff, the trade unions, the workers themselves and all my parliamentary colleagues here today, as well as those colleagues not present who had Remploy factories in their constituencies, stand ready to do what they can to support the Government in increasing the employment chances of those workers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I am happy to say that he did not ignore it, but he skated over it and ascribed motives to my hon. Friends that were simply not warranted. He did not ascribe such motives to the right hon. Member for Neath who made similar decisions when faced with exactly the same difficult financial circumstances.

[Kate Green]

I alluded to the revised business plan that was brought forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain) in 2008. Why was that business plan not allowed to run its full course under the present Government? If there were problems in achieving its objectives, what consideration was given to whether that might have been due to faulty management?

[Mr Harper]

The statement of the right hon. Member for Neath made it clear that, despite the 28 factories that he had to close, the previous Labour Government managed to keep open the sites that they did only

“on the basis of very stretching procurement targets and a tough forward plan.”

He continued:

“It will be up to everyone with an interest in Remploy—Government, management, trade unions, local MPs and other political representatives—to pull together to ensure that those factories meet their ambitious targets, otherwise they, too, could be put at risk.—[Official Report, 29 November 2007; Vol. 468, c. 449.]

The reality is that when this Government came to office we faced an even more challenging financial situation, due to the previous Government’s appalling fiscal legacy, which included borrowing £1 for every £4 that was spent. It is no good the hon. Member for Wrexham shaking his head. When this Government came to office, we inherited the worst fiscal position of any Government in the western world. The budget deficit was 11% of GDP. It is no good his shaking his head again. He simply cannot ignore that fact. We had to deal with it, and wanted to ensure that we could support disability employment programmes, on which we have increased spending. That would not have been possible had we not made difficult decisions about the Remploy factories.

Personal Independence Payments

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby, in this welcome debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) on securing it, and extend my thanks to all the hon. Members who spoke this afternoon, particularly for the constituency experiences that they highlighted.

It is clear that there continue to be substantial problems with the personal independence payment, yet it is an important benefit for disabled people and for disability equality. It addresses the additional costs that living with a disability entails. We have heard today of continuing delays and problems with access to the benefit, and of poor service, as described by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck). The cost to the public purse is also rising, so there are several causes for concern, and we look forward to hearing the Minister address those. Interestingly, all those who spoke this afternoon commented on the fact that the benefit was brought in without piloting or experimentation. Early on, MPs and Members of the House of Lords, and organisations such as Citizens Advice, suggested that it would be a good idea to pilot the benefit from the outset. However, Ministers refused to do so.

Of the problems and difficulties that disabled people are experiencing with the benefit, it is the delays in getting an assessment and a decision that are of the most immediate concern. The latest statistics from the Department for Work and Pensions, which go up to September, showed that 529,000 people applied for PIP between April 2013 and July 2014, but just 206,000 had received decisions by that time. That leaves 323,000 waiting in the queue, including 540 in my constituency, many of whom have contacted me to report the distress and problems that that has caused them; other hon. Members taking part in the debate have also had such experiences.

In February, the National Audit Office reported that the DWP had expected decisions to take 74 days, but that the average time for a decision was 107 days. Some delays have been considerably longer, as we have heard. I have constituents who have waited the best part of a year for an assessment for PIP. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East, among other hon. Members, gave several examples of delays that her constituents have experienced. Colleagues also spoke of horrific experiences that resulted from delays. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was right to highlight how delays compound disabled people’s health problems and anxieties and sometimes contribute to a worsening of the condition. We should be very concerned about that.

I have been told of the deeply distressing case of a 51-year-old woman in south London who applied for PIP in September 2013 and was still awaiting an assessment after a year. She had a brain tumour removed in May 2014, and covering the cost of weekly travel to her hospital appointments meant that she had to cut down on food. She simply could not afford non-essentials such as buying clothes. Other claimants who have waited months for a decision have had to borrow from friends and family, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East pointed out, or use food banks, as my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View, said.

Generally, we would expect the personal independence payment to be backdated in the event of an award being made, although I was interested in the experience of my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), who suggested that that might not always happen. However, in the meantime, when delays are very long, disabled people are being left without financial support to help cushion some of their additional costs—the cost of equipment, transport to appointments, special diets or additional heating bills. That is happening at a time when many face a reduction in income—and perhaps not just their own, but that of their partner, who may be forced to give up work or reduce their hours to provide care.

What is more, people may also be prevented from accessing other support to which a PIP award may be a passport, such as blue badges and disability premiums on means-tested benefits and working tax credits; carers’ entitlement to carer’s allowance might also be affected. Although the PIP award may eventually be backdated, claims to such passported benefits might not. In other words, claimants might never recover that lost period of entitlement. The Multiple Sclerosis Society reports that some claimants in PIP reassessment areas who were previously in receipt of DLA and who have since reported an increase in needs may lose nearly £3,500 due to delays, as their payments are not backdated. That situation was also highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore).

I acknowledge that both the present Minister and his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), are concerned about the delays. The previous Minister initiated a number of steps to address delays both in the activities of the assessors and in the Department for Work and Pensions, but it has been interesting to hear today that there are still claims of staff shortages among the health care professionals who are carrying out the assessments, and I hope that the Minister can update us on that situation. In a written answer on 7 July, the previous Minister told me that, as a result of the steps he was taking:

“By the autumn, we expect no one to be waiting for an assessment for longer than 26 weeks and by the end of the year, we expect no one will be waiting longer than 16 weeks.”—[Official Report, 7 July 2014; Vol. 584, c. 109W.]

The present Minister has committed to honouring that promise, although he might like to acknowledge that it represents a rather less ambitious target than the 12 weeks for a decision that we were originally promised.

We remain in the dark about exactly what progress is being made. Macmillan Cancer Support has suggested that it would be helpful if waiting times could be made entirely transparent and publicly advertised. In a written answer on 17 November, however, the Minister told me:

“Departmental statisticians are continuing to develop measures around clearance and waiting times”.

I hope the Minister will be able to update us on performance as regards addressing delays, and will tell us when official statistics will become available.

The right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead also took steps to address delays in dealing in special-rules cases for terminally ill claimants, which was welcome. From what we have heard this afternoon, I regret that the problems with such cases do not seem to have been wholly resolved. Problems remain, for example, with the rigid application of the six-month prognosis rule, which was highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and the Motor Neurone Disease Association, which has suggested that, although it is possible in some circumstances for the DWP to take account of an overall diagnosis, that is not always happening. I would be grateful if the Minister commented on that.

We have heard about some assessors’ lack of knowledge about, for example, muscular dystrophy. There appears to be a particular and very disturbing anomaly in relation to existing DLA recipients who become terminally ill. If they wish to request an increase in benefits due to their terminal illness, they have to make a claim for PIP. When such claimants make a change of circumstances request, the DWP makes an enhanced award under the care component 28 days after the form is submitted and not, as is the case for DLA claimants and new PIP claimants, from the day of the form’s submission, which means that that very particular group of claimants is being denied 28 days at the enhanced care rate that new claimants who have not previously been in receipt of DLA would receive. The Minister may be aware that I wrote to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions about that a couple of weeks ago, for it seems to us that the way in which the regulations have been drafted has created an apparently unfair anomaly. Will the Minister undertake to look at that matter? It surely cannot be right that people already in receipt of DLA who become terminally ill should be denied immediate access to a higher award of PIP, if appropriate.

The delays are not only causing great hardship for individuals; they are also piling up costs for the public purse. In 2010, the Government suggested that PIP would have 600,000 fewer claimants than DLA by 2018, leading to a £3 billion cut in departmental expenditure, including a £780 million spending reduction by April 2015, but in February 2014, Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, noting that early operational problems had delayed the programme’s roll-out, said:

“Because it may take some time to resolve the delays, the Department has increased the risk that the programme will not deliver value for money in the longer term.”

Those costs continue to mount. The NAO estimates that £127 million per annum is spent on assessment costs, and in total it will cost £2.9 billion to clear all new claims and migrating cases.

Meanwhile, the Office for Budget Responsibility has noted that the number of claimants who have secured awards is higher than the Department anticipated, and there is uncertainty about whether the pattern will change and the numbers will reduce in future. Additionally, some claimants are receiving compensation for the delays they have experienced, which has further increased costs.

[Sheila Gilmore]

In the original consultation paper in 2010, one of the justifications for throwing all these things up in the air and putting many disabled and ill people through a great deal of anxiety was that too many people were getting the benefit and that PIP would be different. Some 50% of DLA claims were unsuccessful, but in some cases the award rates for PIP appear to be well in excess of 50%. That may be very good for the applicants, but it suggests that the whole thing was premised on a lack of proper research. The change has made many people extremely stressed and anxious over the past few years.

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend puts her finger on the issue. We may be seeing some sort of cohort effect, because the cases that went through early may have been more likely to have attracted awards, or higher awards. It may be that initial departmental assumptions were simply wrong or over-optimistic about the savings that could be achieved. It may be that the situation will become even worse, because delays in processing claims and making decisions must be suppressing expenditure on the benefit. If, as the Minister intends, those delays are reduced and, hopefully, eventually eliminated, we will see the costs of the benefit increase. Whether the Government’s ambitions to reduce costs will be achieved is very uncertain. As my hon. Friend rightly says, the real problem for disabled people in that context is the huge uncertainty and anxiety. Disabled people are very uncertain about whether they will be awarded the benefit, which creates great anxiety and alarm.

I have mentioned that there appear to be additional costs for the Department due to the payment of compensation for delays. My constituent, Mr W, received £100 compensation for delays that he had suffered, yet when I asked the Minister how much such compensation payments are costing the Government overall, he told me in a written answer on 23 October that the Department does not record such information. What we do know is that spending on DLA and PIP is set to be £1.4 billion more than projected in this financial year. What is his assessment of the continuing trend in the figures? What impact will that have on the Government’s overall welfare cap? Obviously, any significant increase in expenditure will put that cap at risk.

Given the way in which we have seen costs rise, it is surprising that, in a written answer on 14 July, the Minister’s predecessor told me that the Government remain on course

“to make savings against earlier forecasts of £2.8 billion by 2017-18.”—[Official Report, 14 July 2014; Vol. 584, c. 587W.]

Given all the circumstances that we have heard about in this debate, will the Minister again confirm that expectation and tell us what the Government will do if they do not get spending back on track?

Overall, it is clear that the system is working far from smoothly. The picture for the future remains uncertain, and things remain well off course. In June, the DWP confirmed that it expected 752,000 PIP decisions in this financial year; the latest statistics show that about 37,500 decisions a month were made in the most recent months available, and about 30,000 to 40,000 claims a month were made. At that rate, it seems that the DWP will be unable to clear the backlog of 323,000 cases still awaiting a decision, yet bizarrely, the DWP apparently continues to add more areas where existing DLA claimants are being transferred to PIP, including, in the past couple of weeks, my area of Greater Manchester.

In the circumstances, adding yet more pressure to the system seems inexplicable. Claimants will be deeply worried that the Government are pressing ahead while the programme is manifestly still subject to extreme delay. It does not make sense, it is not fair and it is causing deep uncertainty and hardship to thousands of claimants. I am glad that this debate gives us time for the Minister to respond fully to the concerns that colleagues have raised, and I look forward to hearing what he has to say.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I am spoilt for choice. Let me take an intervention from the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston before taking one from the hon. Member for Edinburgh East.

[Kate Green]

I merely wanted to point out that, in part, it is a matter of expectations. We were assured throughout the process by the Secretary of State that universal credit would come in without difficulty, and in full, by 2017, and each time he has been called to the Chamber to report on its progress we have heard something to that effect, but obviously reality has not borne him out. On the other hand, we are very early on in the process of PIP. MPs, Lords and outside groups suggested that it would be sensible to pilot the programme first, but Ministers chose not to do so. We are merely saying how important it is that Ministers not only adopt the right process, but communicate what they are going to do and then do it.

[Mr Harper]

I have been clear about communicating what I have been doing to improve the process.

Let me just try to make progress on responding to the issues raised in the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View on battling through the effects of her dental treatment. I am not sure how painful it was, but we got her point on terminal illness. Just to be clear, it is not only in cases of terminal illness that we can make decisions on paper. That can be done in any case in which the position is clear. We have a separate process for terminal illness, which is about speeding up the assessment process to 10 days. She also asked about existing DLA claimants. That point has been raised personally with me by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard). I am considering those cases and I will report to the House in due course on whether we can make a change. However, she made a good point, and it has made to me previously.

Under-staffing is a problem. As I have highlighted, both providers have made considerable progress in hiring new members of staff.

There is a problem with some work capability assessment centres, but all PIP assessment centres are accessible—no PIP assessment centre is on the first floor. In Plymouth, a new six-room centre was opened in September to boost capacity, building on two centres in the Atos supply chain in Plymouth. We have new centres opening in Chelmsford, Edinburgh and Newcastle. In addition, Atos opened a large 18-room assessment centre in Manchester, and there are further plans for centres in Liverpool, Wakefield, Preston, Blackburn, Wigan, Carlisle and Lancaster. Providers are increasing not only the number of staff they have, but the size of their estate.

On statistics, I am sure that few Opposition Members, with the possible exception of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston, are assiduous readers of the PIP statistics website on the gov.uk page. If they are assiduous readers, they will know that, last week, we set out that we will publish the PIP clearance times statistics, and waiting or outstanding times statistics, for the first time in March, which is before the election. The release will be pre-announced in line with the UK Statistics Authority release protocols. My statisticians have been working on getting figures that will give a proper and rounded picture, without leading to any perverse incentives. I will not go into that now—I have set out my views on it clearly and at length for the Work and Pensions Committee.

The hon. Members for Stretford and Urmston and for Edinburgh East mentioned success rates, which the Department is looking at. The priority has been ensuring that we not only deal with the delays but keep the quality of the assessments high. The hon. Member for Edinburgh East said that the problem is delays—admittedly, she said she had only anecdotal evidence, but evidence has come from elsewhere. When people have had their assessments, generally the experience has been a positive one. I am not saying that every single case has been positive, but generally speaking the experience has been positive. It is important that we do not lose sight of that.

Finally, in response to a point made by a couple of hon. Members about our forecasts for the cost of the system, they will not be surprised to learn that I will not pre-empt what the Chancellor will set out next week in the autumn statement, when further forecasts will be published—not mine, but those of the Office for Budget Responsibility.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

Yes, I can. I have taken a close interest in the contracting process, and we have learned from the previous experience. We are confident, given the bid that Maximus put together and the successful contracts that it has operated in Australia, Canada and the United States of America, that it will be able to deliver the assessments competently over the next three years.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Last week, the BBC reported that Ministers were considering cutting employment and support allowance for those in the work-related activity group—that is, those who have been assessed as being too severely disabled or too ill to be ready to work. I was grateful for the Minister’s letter, which I received this morning, assuring me that that did not reflect Government policy. I am sure he will want to place that on the record in the Chamber now. However, Ministers are in trouble with employment and support allowance. Over the course of this Parliament, it is likely to have a cumulative cost of £8 billion more than they had planned. The Office for Budget Responsibility has also sounded the alarm, saying that

“spending would remain higher…because of delays to the work capability assessment programme”,

which puts the Government’s own annually managed expenditure cap at risk. Will the Minister guarantee that there will be no cut, now or in the future, to the benefits on which disabled people rely, in order to pay for the Government’s policy failures?

[Mr Harper]

I am glad that the hon. Lady has referred to the letter I sent her, because it confirms that the BBC report

“does not reflect Government policy.”

It also makes the point that we have seen

“a fall in out of work benefit numbers of 832,000 since 2010—the total is now below 4 million, the lowest figure since 1990”,

that incapacity benefit numbers have fallen by 98,000, and that the spend on incapacity benefits has also fallen by £1 billion in real terms between 2009-10 and 2013-14.

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform (Disabled People)

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes the comments of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform, Lord Freud, on 30 September 2014 that the work of disabled people is not worth the minimum wage; believes that these comments have further undermined trust among disabled people in this Government’s policies, a trust which had already been damaged by delays in assessments for a personal independence payment, problems with work capability assessments, and the poor performance of policies aimed at helping disabled people into work; further notes that the conduct of Lord Freud had already damaged that trust through his oversight of the housing benefit social sector size criteria which has had a particularly severe impact on disabled people, many of whom have nowhere else to move to and need extra room for medical equipment or carers; and therefore concludes that this House has no confidence in the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform; and calls on the Prime Minister to dismiss him.

I offer the apologies of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) who is unable to be in the Chamber today.

This afternoon, the eyes of millions of disabled people, their families, friends and carers are on this House. They include people such as Ciara, who has a learning disability. I had the pleasure of meeting her in Parliament a few weeks ago. She works full time for Mencap. When she heard of the noble Lord Freud’s remarks about disabled people, she said:

“People with a disability are often made to feel like second class citizens and face many barriers when trying to receive the same rights as everyone else, especially in employment. Having a politician place further barriers to us being included is incredibly upsetting and frankly quite frightening.”

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kate Green]

Not yet. No, I will not.

Ciara continued:

“I hope politicians realise that people with a disability should be encouraged to become active citizens, and not to be discriminated against for their disability, and I want to call for a full explanation of how these comments are deemed acceptable in this day and age.”

I hope that this debate will give Ciara some answers.

[Mr Stuart]

There are 116,000 more disabled people in work now than there were a year ago. Is it not time that the Labour party stopped using the disabled to smear its opponents, and supported this Government’s and Lord Freud’s efforts to get people mainstream jobs, rather than leave them stuck in joblessness or Potemkin factories?

[Kate Green]

I am astounded by that intervention immediately after I had quoted the concerns of a disabled woman.

For many months under this Government, disabled people have endured hardship, hostility and fear. They have lived with the consequences of Ministers’ decisions, which are causing them and their families real pain. As things have got worse, they have lost all faith that Ministers understand their lives. They do not believe that the Government are on their side. They have become anxious and despairing, desperate and insecure.

The remarks of the noble Lord Freud last month that disabled people were not worth the minimum wage sparked an outpouring of anger and outrage. That has prompted this debate today, for those remarks go to the heart of the collapse in trust in this Government among disabled people, not just because they might be thought a plausible statement of Government policy or of what the Government really think deep down—that is what a Freudian slip is, after all—but because disabled people already know from the effect that the Government’s policies are having on their lives that they are not valued by this Government.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will my hon. Friend use this debate to try to flush out details not just about Freud, but about other aspects of disability, such as the disabled students allowance? Can we find out whether the Government have taken away that allowance or partially put it back? They should have been proud of the fact that every disabled student in this country had the ability to go into higher education, but that has been wiped away.

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. This afternoon, we in this House have a chance to send exactly such messages on behalf of disabled people, as well as to send messages to them. I hope that the whole House will embrace this opportunity to state that we value them as equal citizens, believe we should treat them with respect, recognise the worth and potential of every person, and will not tolerate an attack on their dignity or their rights.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady accept that overall spending on disability benefits will be higher in the period to 2018 than it was under her Government?

[Kate Green]

Of course it is right that the benefits bill for disabled people has risen under this Government, but it remains Ministers’ ambition to cut that spend. The former Minister with responsibility for disabled people, the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), told me in a written answer on 14 July that the Government were on track to achieve billions of pounds of savings in cuts to the personal independence payment by 2017-18. Ministers need to be clear about whether they are spending more on disabled people or are in practice aiming to cut their benefits.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that what is so shocking about Lord Freud’s comments is the simple lack of common humanity and decency in them, which reflects the Government’s attitude to disabled people as a whole? When I have asked questions about work capability assessments or Atos cancelling appointments, the Government simply do not know: they do not choose to find out such information because they do not actually care about it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green]

That is absolutely right. As I will show later, on several occasions when I have asked Ministers for information about what is happening, the answer has either been that they do not know or that they do not record the information at all.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

I have known the hon. Lady for a long time, and I am concerned by a charge she is making. Will she explain to the House why, if this matter of the clumsy and offensive words for which Lord Freud has apologised were of concern to the Labour party to the extent it says, Labour waited weeks after it had the recording to bring it forward at Prime Minister’s questions? Surely if Labour Members were so concerned about this—instead of the faux concern they are now showing—they would have raised it immediately and demanded an apology and an explanation. Why did they not do so immediately rather than wait for weeks?

[Kate Green]

We were so taken aback and stunned by these remarks, and we considered them so offensive and serious, that we considered it right to bring them before the Prime Minister in the highest forum in this land, this Chamber, in the very first Prime Minister’s Question Time that we had the opportunity to do so.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

I want to go back to the question about increased spending. It is unacceptable to boast of increased spending when that is due to inefficiency and the failure to deliver. In 2010, the Office for Budget Responsibility expected spending on incapacity benefit to fall. That projection has now been changed to an increase of £3 billion, which, put against the sort of savings being made on disabled people through the bedroom tax, is absolutely outrageous. Surely nobody can boast about spending more if it is down to their own inefficiency.

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is right.

As we start the debate this afternoon, let me say that we can send a message of dignity and respect to disabled people in two ways. We can do so by voting for the motion to make it clear that anyone who makes comments that suggest discriminating against disabled people or that demean them should not be in government, least of all in a role in which they make decisions day in, day out that affect disabled people’s lives. We can also show our feelings by the way in which we conduct this debate. The real reason this debate matters so much is that it is an opportunity for us to show disabled people that we understand why Lord Freud’s remarks caused such anger and pain and that we understand what is happening in their lives. Lord Freud’s comments have touched a chord because disabled people are already suffering so much from the policies for which he and his ministerial colleagues are responsible.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

I think that the hon. Lady is struggling to make her case. Will she explain why, in 2003, the Labour party had a policy to get rid of the minimum wage for people who had mental health problems?

[Kate Green]

That was never our policy. Of course programmes exist to support disabled people who are on benefits to get into therapeutic work, but that is not what the noble Lord Freud was speaking about.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to condemn unreservedly the reprehensible comments that were made by Lord Freud at the Conservative party conference, but should we not also condemn his actions? It must never be forgotten that Lord Freud is the chief champion of the bedroom tax, which has condemned two thirds of disabled people to live in poverty.

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that this debate is about the Minister’s bedroom tax, which disproportionately affects disabled people and their families, with two thirds of those who are hit being disabled people, their families and their carers. It is about the chaos of the personal independence payment, which is leaving thousands of people without essential support. It is about Ministers’ handling of the work capability assessment and the abject failure of their policies to support many disabled people into work, and it is about the collapse in social care and the services that support people to live the lives that they want. My hon. Friend is right that what this afternoon’s debate is truly about is putting the policies that Lord Freud and his colleagues have been pursuing under the microscope, and understanding what has gone wrong.

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

In this place I have campaigned on mental health with people from all parts of the Chamber, including some fabulous people from the Opposition. The one thing that I have learned is that people make mistakes. Sometimes people get it wrong, like Lord Freud did, but they apologise and are allowed to move on. Please will the hon. Lady find some compassion for people who make mistakes and apologise? He is not a bad man.

[Kate Green]

I have known Lord Freud for a number of years and I agree that, personally, he is courteous and caring. However, his remark touched a deep nerve for disabled people and we have to understand why. It is because it came in the context of the Government’s policies and the effects that disabled people are experiencing.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

Lord Freud is an intelligent and articulate individual. He knew what he was saying and he meant what he was saying. Does my hon. Friend agree that Ministers, of whatever political persuasion, who make such offensive remarks about disabled people should be kicked out of office immediately, never to return?

[Kate Green]

I do think that it is difficult for someone who expresses such views to remain in government and in that role.

Let us examine the policy record of the Government. Let us start with the bedroom tax—Lord Freud’s brainchild. Everyone knows that it is a disaster for disabled people. Many disabled people have lived in their homes for years. They have invested in adaptations, as have their families and local councils. Some people need an extra room for equipment or so that an overnight carer can stay. Some people have a condition that means that they cannot share a room with their partner. Many people are settled in their community, with care and concerned family and neighbours close to hand so that they can call for help when they need it. Now they are being forced to move, to cut back on other expenditure to pay the rent or to go into debt.

We all know of cases in our constituencies, such as that of a disabled grandfather, Paul Rutherford, who cares for his severely disabled grandchild, Warren. Extra space is needed in the family home to cope with all of Warren’s equipment. Paul has to rely on discretionary housing payment to pay the rent. Why should he have to go through the anxiety and indignity of pleading for the support that he and his family need? Have we lost all compassion? Have we lost all sense of people’s dignity?

Not only is the bedroom tax exceptionally cruel; it is failing to meet its objectives. Only about 7% of those who have been hit by the tax have been able to move to a smaller home. It is not saving the money that the Government said it would, either. Is it not time that Ministers admitted that this Freud tax is not working and got rid of it, as Labour has pledged to do?

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Having served with the hon. Lady on the Work and Pensions Committee, I applaud her commitment to these issues. She made an important point about the tone in which this debate must happen. Does she agree that what matters most is what all of us are doing as individuals and as part of the Government or the Opposition to support people with disabilities to get back into work? In that context, Gloucestershire county council is one of the best rated authorities in the country. Through its Forwards programme, it is working closely with the Government on a Disability Confident event that I am hosting on 14 November, which the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), will attend. Will the hon. Lady join me in saying that that is precisely the sort of thing that we need to do around the country to help people with disabilities to get into jobs and find ways of taking their lives forward helpfully and productively?

[Kate Green]

Of course, I welcome any initiatives such as those that the hon. Gentleman describes. I am looking forward to hosting a Disability Confident event shortly with my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) in our local authority. However, I think that we need to look a little more broadly than just at what we all do as individuals. It is the collective responsibility of Ministers and the collective policies of the Government that are under examination this afternoon.

When the Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform questions whether disabled people are worth a full wage, does he forget that under his Government, hundreds of thousands of disabled people are right now sitting in queues, waiting to be assessed for the financial support that they should be receiving from the Government? More than 300,000 people are awaiting an assessment for personal independence payment, which is the Government’s replacement for disability living allowance.

Can Members imagine what it must be like to become disabled as a result of a catastrophic event such as a stroke or a terrible accident; to have to spend a fortune on adapting your home, on transport to get to appointments, on new equipment and on adjusting to your new life; to have to give up work and to have less money coming in; for your partner to have to give up work as well to care for you; and then for your PIP award, which should be helping with the additional costs associated with your impairment, to become stuck in an enormous backlog?

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Kate Green]

No, I will make some progress.

We heard again this morning in Westminster Hall that the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), is determined to bring down the waiting times for PIP assessments to 16 weeks. That is welcome, but he should acknowledge that it is a less ambitious timetable than the 12 weeks from application to decision that the Government initially suggested in the PIP toolkit. Meanwhile, disabled people are left high and dry for months. I have constituents who have waited almost a year for an assessment. My constituent, Mr W, has even received compensation for the delay that he has experienced. I was shocked when I asked the Minister how much compensation payments had cost the taxpayer. In a written answer on 20 September, he told me that the Department for Work and Pensions is not bothering to keep a record.

Most pertinently, when the Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform says that the way to get more disabled people into employment is to cut their pay, I point to the failure of a raft of Government policies. The work capability assessment, which was introduced by Labour in a staged manner, was then pushed through by this Government in a botched rush. There is now a backlog: 600,000 cases are awaiting a first assessment. Reassessments have been put on ice altogether. People are waiting for weeks, in some cases with no money at all coming in, for mandatory reconsideration. There is a terrible record of poor-quality decision making and a huge number of cases have been appealed successfully. Just last week, The Independent reported that thousands of people with degenerative conditions are being put in the work-related activity group and denied the support element of employment and support allowance. Can Members imagine the anxiety that that must cause, not to mention the waste of resources?

At the same time, the number of people being put into the support group overall is rising rapidly. Far from getting people into work, more people are being cast aside by the coalition Government. People are being abandoned, exactly as happened under Mrs Thatcher, when incapacity benefit was used as a means of massaging down the unemployment figures. Of course disabled people who are not able to work must get the support to which they are entitled, but many disabled people could work and would love to work, and they are being truly failed by the Government.

The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) highlighted the number of people who have moved into work, but he should also acknowledge that the gap between the employment rates of working-age disabled and non-disabled adults remains at a stubborn 30%.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green]

No, I will not at the moment, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, because I want to finish my point.

For a while under Labour that gap was closing, but now progress has stalled. The Work programme—the Government’s flagship programme for getting people into work—is totally failing disabled people, getting only around one in 20 into sustained employment. It is worse than if there were no programme at all.

One year after the last factory closed, 50% of Remploy workers are still without work. The number of people on the Access to Work programme, which helps with adaptations in the workplace to enable disabled people to work, has fallen by 1,800 since 2009-10, and more and more people are reporting difficulty in accessing it. Although last year the DWP claimed that it was expanding Access to Work to cover internships and placements, and that that would benefit hundreds of disabled people, on 9 September the Minister told me in a written answer that he could not provide me with statistics to show how many people had benefited. Meanwhile, the number of specialist disability employment advisers in Jobcentre Plus is down 20% under this Government, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) pointed out, Ministers are cutting the disabled students allowance by upwards of £70 million.

[Mr Stuart]

This is a difficult area in which to get policy right, and criticisms can be made of this Government and indeed the previous Government. What is the point of personalising this issue when Lord Freud was wrestling with exactly the issue the hon. Lady has just identified? How do we get the disabled into work, and how do we support them? If, because of their severe disability their commercial value is not right, how do we supplement that? That is what Lord Freud meant and I think the hon. Lady knows that. Perhaps she will put that on the record.

[Kate Green]

I will put on the record that it was not anybody making those remarks but the Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform. He is responsible for making decisions that affect millions of disabled people’s lives, and they took deep offence and were hurt by what they heard him say. Those remarks exemplify Government policies that are failing the objective that the hon. Gentleman describes. That is why we think it important to connect Lord Freud’s remarks with wider Government policy.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kate Green]

I will make some progress as I know that many other colleagues want to join the debate.

It seems that the Government are happy to accept a waste of potential, and the additional cost of leaving disabled people on benefits year after year is resulting in their spending £8 billion more than Ministers planned. I think we are all agreed: if we—including Lord Freud—want more disabled people in work, as Labour does, there are plenty of policy areas to consider and policies that could be improved before we start to talk of cutting pay.

We have already come forward with our ideas: to refocus the work capability assessment on its original purpose of helping to identify the package of support that a disabled person who could work would need in order to do so; to introduce penalties for wrong or poor-quality assessments by work capability providers; and to ask disabled people to be part of a process of reviewing and improving the WCA, as they have direct experience of it. We know that the Work programme is not working for disabled people. We have said we will replace it with a specialist programme of locally contracted support that will mean that local providers, who have best knowledge of local opportunities, services and other providers, will be able to design holistic support for disabled people, to enable them to prepare for work. Perhaps Ministers will heed our practical suggestions, and most importantly, perhaps they will heed our promise that under a Labour Government the tone of the debate will be different.

We should all be ashamed that disability hate crime continues to increase, and that disabled people report experiencing a stream of negativity and hostility towards them. Research by Scope last year, one year after this country proudly hosted the 2012 Paralympic games and celebrated our medal winners, found that 81% of disabled people said that attitudes towards them had not improved in the previous 12 months, with 22% saying that things had got worse. Some 84% of those who said that that had happened thought that media coverage of benefit claims and the welfare system had had a negative effect on public attitudes.

I am deeply ashamed that disabled people feel hounded and bullied in our country, and I am angry that DWP Ministers, if not actually using hostile and negative language towards disabled people, are certainly not doing anything to halt it. Indeed, the DWP is promoting it. In one egregious example recently, the DWP press office retweeted a derogatory story about disabled people on benefits that had appeared in the national media. Last month’s remarks by Lord Freud have done yet more damage.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Angela Maher, a brave mother battling angina with two disabled sons in my constituency, fell prey to a whispering campaign—“Why is she getting a car on benefits?” It culminated in her severely disabled son having stones thrown at him when he was in his wheelchair. She came to see me the day after the Chancellor’s speech on shirkers and strivers. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is absolutely shameful that the disabled should ever in those circumstances be branded as “shirkers”? It is a disgrace that we have a tone that has led to hate crime on the rise once again in 21st-century Britain.

[Kate Green]

None of us can feel proud when we hear that story. Hon. Members do not have to take my word for the concerns of disabled people. Michaela, a member of Trailblazers, Muscular Dystrophy Campaign’s network of young disabled campaigners, says of Lord Freud’s remarks:

“I’ve worked since I was 17 to improve, enhance and find full inclusion for those of us living life with disabilities. I’ve worked with a range of charities as a volunteer, pushing for better policies for a range of services, tried to give my voice to the cause and I can honestly say that I do feel more included in society today than ever before…What happened yesterday”—

she means the day Lord Freud’s remarks became public—

“has damaged our position. Lord Freud has enforced the idea that we are less productive, less valuable and by definition less human than the rest of society.”

That is how disabled people feel, and Ministers know how damaging Lord Freud’s remarks have been.

On 16 October the Secretary of State for Health said on “Question Time”:

“Well first of all, I don’t defend what he said, those words were utterly appalling.”

and the Minister’s colleague, the Minister for Employment, the right hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), said:

“you’re right those words will haunt him. I cannot justify those words, they were wrong.”

I know Lord Freud has apologised, but the damage has been done—done in deed and in word by the Minister and his Government. Disabled people deserve a clear signal that we know the offence and hurt that Lord Freud’s remarks have caused. This afternoon we can send them a clear message that we will not tolerate such language, and that we value and respect them as equal members of our society. This afternoon, we can vote for the motion before the House, and I ask hon. Members to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I will set out some of the things that Lord Freud has done in government, but let me finish on the record of the Labour party, which is worth listening to. Some Labour Members may have to do some rapid rewriting of their speeches.

James Purnell, when Secretary of State, appointed Lord Freud to work on his proposals. Lord Freud served with the Labour party until January 2009. He then concluded that there was no appetite for radical welfare reform under the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). Lord Freud then joined the Conservative party and our Front-Bench team, of which I was a member at the time, to develop our proposals for welfare reform. James Purnell of course had similar thoughts about the appetite of the Labour party for welfare reform and he resigned from the Government five months later. He called on the Labour party to dump its leader, and thankfully for us the public did so a year later.

Lord Freud joined us, I have worked closely with him and he is passionate about getting disabled people into work. I know that the travesty of his character that the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston set out is unfair and unwarranted.

[Kate Green]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

I will take the hon. Lady’s intervention in a moment. It is worth adding that, for his work under the Labour party and under us, Lord Freud has not taken a penny from the taxpayer in salary.

[Kate Green]

I acknowledge all that the Minister says about Lord Freud’s personal motives, but as a Minister the language that he uses is important. It exemplified what disabled people feel, experience and live in their daily lives. Does the Minister not accept that that is why the remarks of Lord Freud, not as an adviser but as a Minister who takes decisions about disabled people’s lives, have caused so much hurt and offence?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady knows that Lord Freud’s mistake was to accept the premise of the question. The man who asked the question is the father of a disabled daughter. He was concerned about her ability in the past to get work. It was an honest question asked in an honest way. Lord Freud himself accepts that he expressed himself clumsily and that he had offended people. He apologised for that when the remarks were drawn to his attention. Any reasonable person would accept his apology.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady will know that the WCA and the personal independence payment are not based on diagnoses of conditions; they are about the impact on somebody’s life. It is also—[Interruption.] Perhaps Members will listen to the reply. It is also worth making sure that people are getting the appropriate help. When someone is assessed the first time, it might be that they are found able to work. If their condition deteriorates and has a larger impact on their life, it is important for us to ensure that they get the help they need for that level of condition, so I think it is perfectly appropriate to reassess people at intervals of up to three years.

The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston mentioned the spare room subsidy, which this House has debated at great length. The basic issue is one of fairness and treating people in social housing the same as those in private rented accommodation. That was the position that applied under the whole of the last Government, and I am still waiting to hear how Labour plan to fund the reversal of that policy. It is also worth noting that the example she gave, if I heard her correctly, was of somebody who had received support from discretionary housing payments, which are exactly designed for people who need that extra support. I could not quite see what her criticism was.

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to the Minister for allowing me to answer that point. The issue about discretionary housing payments, as I know from my own disabled constituents, is the stress and uncertainty of receiving short-term award after short-term award and having to apply, then reapply and reapply. I frequently have to intervene with the local authority to ask it to make longer awards. Would it not be fairer, simpler and less costly for those claimants, as well as giving them much greater peace of mind, simply to make an award that recognised their housing needs?

[Mr Harper]

In preparation for the private Member’s Bill debate, I read through the guidance we give to local authorities on discretionary housing payments, which is clear that it is perfectly open to local authorities to make a long-term award where someone has a long-term condition. That was one reason why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out the amount of discretionary housing payments not just for the current year, but for the year ahead, saying that local authorities could make those awards with the confidence that the money would be available.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I very much wanted to take part in this debate so I greatly appreciate being called to speak given that I must apologise to the House for not having been here for all the opening speeches. I was at a meeting with the Home Secretary that could not be changed. First, I add my congratulations to the newly elected Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) on her very good maiden speech. I associate myself with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) about the importance of her victory, which virtually the whole House will celebrate.

I am surprised that the Opposition are continuing their witch hunt against Lord Freud. I did not agree with the form of words that he used, for which he has apologised. I would have thought that after the drubbing the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), received on “Question Time”, they might have learnt their lesson about the pursuit of this individual for some remarks that he made in answer to a question by a family member of someone who was affected by this distressing issue without rephrasing their words. I think that is about the sum of it. I have spoken to him about this. He in no way marks down the worth of people with disabilities that have nothing to do with the economic value that they might add to an enterprise in the workplace.

We have to face the fact that while many people desperately want to work—to find an occupation where they can be of some value and make a contribution—there is sometimes an issue about whether their value can be recognised economically, and that might call for more Government intervention. The Opposition have not addressed that. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) put this very well, and he reminded the House that only 10% of people with learning disabilities are in work. We should all be ashamed of that and seek an answer to it rather than conducting a witch hunt against a man who is giving his time, without any remuneration at all, to try to help people with disabilities.

The Opposition have a track record in this area. For 10 years, before 2008 or thereabouts, almost 1 million people with disabilities were more or less parked on various incapacity benefits—out of sight, out of mind, with no review.

[Kate Green]

I want to put the record straight. People were parked on incapacity benefit going right back to the 1980s, and in the early 2000s the Labour Government began to explore policies that ultimately led to the employment and support allowance and work capability assessment, which were endorsed by both parties. It is not right to say that Labour policies parked people there only over the past 10 years.

[Margot James]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, which was slightly premature, because I was going to carry on to give the Opposition some credit for what they belatedly started to do in government —with, I must tell the House, the help of Lord Freud, which is an irony not lost on me.

We must not forget some of the things that the previous Government did. They appointed Atos. They left this Government with the legacy of a fairly draconian system that made no allowances for people with mental health issues who took part in work capability assessments in the early days. Some of those people had fluctuating conditions that meant that if they went for their assessment on a bad day, they might get somewhere, but if it happened to be a good day, they would not. No account was taken of that. This Government brought in Professor Harrington, who conducted a number of reviews that have humanised the system considerably. Now we are looking to find a new provider that will take the place of the Atos, which, as I have said, we inherited from the previous Government.

The previous Government did try to start getting people with disabilities into work, but they needed to will the means as well as the ends. It was not enough just to go round closing day centres and pushing people into the community. Their mantra was that everybody had to be in work before they could set about tackling discrimination, tackling the fact that a lot of businesses were ignorant about how to employ people with disabilities, and trying to change public attitudes. As a result of this Government’s more painstaking approach, some of those issues have been tackled at source, working with industry and employers. The number of disabled people in employment is up by 116,000 this year. Over 35,000 people with disabilities have been helped by the Access to Work scheme. I accept what was said earlier about the possibility that not everybody on the Work Choice programme is a proper candidate for it, but that is down to implementation, which all Governments wrestle with. The majority of the 27,000 people who have been helped have been eligible.

The companies that have been brought on board by the Government’s Disability Confident campaign have made a real difference. I pay tribute to Sainsbury’s and Waitrose in my constituency. Nationally, Sainsbury’s has employed 2,000 people with disabilities through its You Can initiative. I pay tribute to the Government for changing the whole ethos—seeing what people with disabilities can do. It really is a credit to the Secretary of State and his team that they have improved those people’s chances of finding work. The results are there for all to see.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Employment (Esther McVey)]

I want first to congratulate the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) on her maiden speech. It was delivered with humour, confidence and skill. I look forward to her future contributions in the House. I would also like to pay tribute to her predecessor, Jim Dobbin, a Member of the House who was much respected and well liked in all parts of the House. He will be sorely missed.

Returning to today’s motion and debate, there is one point on which there is consensus and on which we all agree, which is that the words used by my noble Friend Lord Freud were wrong. And do you know what? He came forward immediately and said the same thing: he agreed. He apologised without reservation for his words and then went on to explain fully how he listened to the pleas of a father of a disabled child saying what he would do, who had used his same words. For clarity, nothing that my noble Friend said on that occasion was Government policy—not now and not in the future. National minimum wage entitlement applies to workers whether they are disabled or non-disabled. That is the Government’s policy.

Let me confirm that this Government’s overarching ambition is to enable disabled people to fulfil their potential and fulfil their ambitions. The UK has a proud history of furthering the rights of disabled people. I am pleased to say that even in these very tough economic times, this Government have continued that progress and continued to maintain this country as a world leader in the support it gives to disabled people, spending £60 billion a year on benefits and support for those who face the greatest barriers to enable them to participate fully in society. We spend nearly double the OECD average, a fifth more than the European average, double what America spends and six times what Japan spends. In every year up to 2017-18, we will be spending more on disability benefits than in 2009-10.

Let me explain what has happened over the last few years. No one would know this from listening to today’s debate, but there are now nearly 3 million disabled people in work, which is up 116,000 this year. Access to Work is helping more people—5,000 more than in 2011-12. An extra £15 million has been put into that programme. Attainment levels for pupils with special educational needs have increased since 2010-11 at both GCSE and A-level. The number of disabled students gaining their first degree has increased from nearly 32,000 to nearly 40,000 now. We have also reduced the proportion of disabled people in relative income poverty. These are the things that are happening. Social participation has increased. Sports participation has increased. Those are the facts that we need to set out.

We have heard Members of the House deliver some powerful speeches today. Let me turn first to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), who said, “I want to look past labels; I want to make the world a better place. Isn’t that why most of us came into this House?” I believe that is true. He talked about the work he has done on disability hate crime. When I was the Minister for disabled people, I visited the work he was doing providing safe places for people to come forward and explain what was happening to them. He has played a key and crucial part in the journey towards people feeling able to come forward and talk about the issue.

Many Members asked why we, in the epicentre of democracy and the home of free speech, should not be able to talk about the matters that really concern the public. Should we not be able to tackle them head-on, without shying away from some of the difficult issues? Was that not what Lord Freud was trying to do? My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) said that most clearly, as did my hon. Friends the Members for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) and for Ipswich (Ben Gummer).

I want to move on to something that I hoped today’s debate would touch on, but it did not. I am going to read out what a mum, Candice Baxter from Grimsby, said. It would have been better if more time had been devoted today to listening to what some people who heard Lord Freud’s words had to say about them. She said:

“My daughter’s ambition is to get a job in an office. She has Down’s syndrome. She thinks that, if she works hard, someone, somewhere will give her a job. At £6.50 an hour, it’s never going to happen.”

Maybe at something else, it could. She continued:

“The minimum wage protects from unscrupulous employers. But for my child, it is a barrier to meaningful employment. Indeed, because of the minimum wage, she is destined for a life of short-lived, voluntary non-jobs”.

This is the mother of a disabled child, and she wanted this issue debated here today, but we never debated it. What we did was just talk about what Lord Freud said. This demonstrates what parents of disabled people wanted the debate to be about. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who should have talked about that, did not do so.

[Kate Green]

rose—

[Esther McVey]

I will not give way. I have listened to points raised for several hours, and many of them were wrong, particularly those about the Work programme and how we are helping disabled people through it. Over 60,000 people have got a job from the Work programme, which is now on track to deliver a 17% higher performance than Pathways to Work. That means it is supporting an additional 7,000 people back into work. Furthermore, the Work programme is helping more people than any previous employment programme did, which I think needs to be put on the record.

When we talked about Remploy and the staff who used to work there, a couple of points made by the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) were wrong. In fact, 80% of former employees have now found jobs or are receiving specialist tailored employment and support to help them find one. These are the sort of things we are doing to help disabled people, as well as helping an extra 116,000 people into work in the last year.

When we talk about positive initiatives moving forward, I was delighted to be part of the Government who introduced Disability Confident, which was about moving forward and working with employers. How do we best engage with employers? It is about having a conversation with and listening to them, but it is equally for them to understand—this is where we started the conversation with employers—that the disability pound is worth £80 billion a year. It makes sense for employers to get involved with the disability movement and employ more disabled people. When they looked at the issue in a logical way and thought about who were the people shopping in their stores and listening to the things they were saying, they realised that they should get on board with Disability Confident. I am pleased to say that 1,100 companies are involved. That conversation has partly led to 116,000 more disabled people getting into work this year.

As for media coverage, we all agree that it is totally wrong to stereotype people or depict them in a negative way. That is why I was pleased to arrange a round table and to secure a motion for moving forward with some of the main players in the media to make sure that they employed more disabled people—not just in front of screen, but behind screen. They are now creating the programmes and the words said and moving forward so that everybody is portrayed in the best possible light.

We have to reject the motion, because it is absolutely wrong, although many Government Members suggested that it would be best for us not to vote on it, and for the Opposition to remove it. We have every confidence in Lord Freud, who has done so much—working for both this Government and the Labour Government—to advance the status and the job outcomes of disabled people.

Question put.

Separated Families Initiative

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve in the debate under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. Unlike the Minister—it is good to see her in her place—I am not moonlighting. I am a former director of the National Council for One Parent Families, which has since merged with Gingerbread, so this is part of my brief. I join my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) in thanking Gingerbread for the helpful briefing it has given many of us in preparation for the debate.

I welcome the debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend, who raises an important issue in relation to the separation of parents and the financial arrangements that follow separation. The issue is perhaps too little in the public eye these days, which is in stark contrast to the 1990s, when child support issues dominated MPs’ postbags. I fear that the reason is not that the difficulties we saw in earlier years between parents have gone away, but that too many parents have given up hope of ever seeing any maintenance at all.

I recognise that there were considerable difficulties with the legacy 1993 and 2003 schemes, and I strongly recognise the need for reform. I also acknowledge that the new 2012 scheme is being introduced carefully by a stable and respected team in the DWP—there are lessons there for other DWP projects. However, I have long been concerned about the overall objectives of the 2012 scheme. I cannot help feeling that the overarching objective is to get as many parents as possible out of the statutory scheme and into voluntary arrangements to bring in fee income for the Government—according to a written answer from 10 December last year to Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, the income is estimated to reach approximately £1.2 billion by 2022-23—and to cut costs. While it may be argued that voluntary arrangements between parents, freely and equally entered into by them, will often produce the best outcomes, the new scheme means that many more parents will not choose those arrangements but will, effectively, be coerced into them. The jury is out on what that will mean in practice for their success.

Of course, the overarching objective of the new scheme should be to get maintenance flowing for the benefit of children. Yet neither the Government’s express intentions, nor the monitoring data that we have been able to get, nor the help and support for separated families initiative described by my hon. Friends, have focused, as far as I can see, on that specific goal. Yesterday I received a written answer from the Minister for Pensions, who said he could not tell me, with respect to new applications to the scheme, what change there had been in the proportion of children receiving maintenance.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East said, the DWP’s early iterations of the purpose of the HSSF innovation fund gave two key objectives: increasing the number of children who benefit from child maintenance arrangements, by reducing conflict and improving collaboration between separated and separating parents; and testing a wider range of interventions to understand what is effective in encouraging such collaboration and reducing such conflict. However, in later iterations, the object of increasing the number of children to benefit from the arrangements has disappeared.

I can understand that the 17 HSSF innovation pilots differ greatly with respect to the groups that they deal with and the approach that they take; but surely a simple, measurable way to test their success and compare them would be to assess whether something, at least, is being paid towards the cost of raising children by the parent who is not the one with care. Hon. Members have acknowledged that ensuring the flow of maintenance to separated families is one of the best forms of support that can be established. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was right to highlight the pressures put on family relationships by poverty. It is right that the arrangements that we are discussing should be aimed at reducing that poverty.

NatCen Social Research and Gingerbread say that regular child maintenance can lift one in five one-parent families out of poverty. Those families are at a particularly high risk of poverty, and escaping poverty is the route to a host of other improved socio-economic outcomes for families and their children. However, although it is early days, the introduction of application fees this June, under the new scheme, seems already to be having an effect. In May, before they were introduced, there were 9,700 fresh applications to the scheme, but by August the number of fresh applications had dropped by 38% to 6,000. The Government expected a drop of 12%, with 250,000 fewer cases in the statutory scheme by 2018-19; so the rapid fall-off in new cases seems to be well out of line.

Meanwhile, the number of parents contacting the options service who say that they would consider a voluntary arrangement is also falling. According to a recent report by the Public Accounts Committee, the number who say they are considering one is down from 5,540 in August last year, to 3,590 in March 2014. Ministers responded that the phenomenon would be temporary, and that it resulted from the fact that people are now for the first time being required to go through the options gateway. However, the two sets of statistics, showing a decline both in new applications and in the number who think that they will make a family arrangement, are clearly cause for concern. The unavoidable implication must be that some families—perhaps many—will end up with no arrangement at all. That is a worrying prospect. What is more, as has been pointed out this afternoon, the early statistics cannot yet tell us much about parents who intend to make a family arrangement and try to do so, but find that they cannot, or that they cannot sustain it. Will those parents attempt to go on to the statutory scheme, or will they give up at that point?

We will shortly be able to get more information. The Pensions Minister told me in a written answer on 14 October that the Government intend

“to publish the results of the Child Maintenance Options survey by the end of the year.”

I welcome that. The survey is carried out quarterly by the options service and it goes back to callers who telephoned the service in the previous six months or so, to find out what child maintenance arrangements they made, and whether they in fact receive any maintenance. It has its limitations, but it will at least offer some measure of what callers actually did about child maintenance after their call.

Perhaps I can push the Minister for a little more information. Is it the intention to publish the options quarterly surveys of caller outcomes on a continuing basis, rather than as a one-off? What continuing tracking of parents will there be, with respect to their arrangements and the flow of maintenance after the first six months? If we are serious about improving outcomes for children, we need to know not just what families agree or do at first, but what maintenance actually flows and continues to be paid regularly. When exactly does the Minister expect the Government to publish the first results?

On the question of the pilots, I recognise that the Government want parents to reach their own arrangements wherever possible, and in the past Ministers have said that 51% of parents with care and 74% of non-resident parents said they would make a family arrangement if they had the help and support of an expert and impartial adviser. I assume that that is, in part, exactly what the HSSF initiatives are intended to provide. However, we must also remember the figures given to Members by Gingerbread and Families Need Fathers, which have been mentioned this afternoon: 13% of parents with care and 14% of non-resident parents say that their relationship with the other parent is not at all friendly; and 42% of parents with care and 41% of non-resident parents say they have no contact with the other parent at all. It would take a heroic effort for those parents to make private arrangements, and I fear that the HSSF will fall well short of what will be required.

In cases where there is no contact at all, or where there is considerable hostility between the parents, it will be particularly difficult and challenging to reach private arrangements, and will need specialist and specific support. Yet most of the pilots appear to have been quite generic. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East pointed out, only the most recent, quite small-scale pilots have focused on those whose relationships might be seen as the most intractable, or those who have been separated for a long time. My hon. Friend also pointed out other difficulties with and deficiencies in the pilots. Some began late. We should bear in mind that they are short term, so a late start has a significant bearing on their impact. Some are offered by only a small number of organisations. Those are, as my hon. Friend said, highly respected, but none the less with only a small number of charities and other bodies engaged in the pilots, there must be some concerns about coverage. As she highlighted, use of the Sorting out Separation online application has been at a level well below what Ministers expected; just 9,132 unique users had clicked through to a signposting action by January this year, whereas the Government said that there would be 260,000 users in year one.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) pointed out, there were plans to strengthen co-ordination of local face-to-face services by identifying and utilising touch points that parents have contact with, providing information and links, appointing regional co-ordinators to develop regional networks of contacts, recruiting and training advocates to promote collaborative parenting across delivery organisations and promoting quality mark use, but those pilots have been dropped from the scheme. It is not clear why, especially when we think of those parents with more difficult or long-standing separations who may need highly skilled and longer interventions that that local face-to-face support could best provide. Perhaps the Minister will explain the rationale for dropping that initiative.

There are questions about the impact of the kitemark. It is welcome, but we must know how widely it is used or recognised, and what improvements in service it has helped to bring about. I understand that 35 organisations have been awarded the kitemark, but there is little evidence that parents are aware of its significance and little effort has been made to communicate that to them.

The innovation fund that the Government have set aside has been underspent. With little time left to complete the pilots, it would be useful if the Minister could explain why, and whether they intend to get the rest of the money out of the door before the pilots are due to conclude and to be evaluated in spring 2015. Meanwhile, very little information has been published about parents’ participation in the 17 projects financed under the innovation fund, nor have details been made public of the evaluation process to assess what works in assisting parents to collaborate. Will the Minister say more about that? Who will carry out the evaluation and what will be the criteria for success?

Most disturbingly—colleagues highlighted this—no commitments have been given to scale up the lessons learned from these projects of what works and can be implemented on the scale necessary throughout the country, yet we are now heading into the period when not only new applications but thousands of case closures from the legacy systems will be coming into the new scheme. In truth, the HSSF initiative is way too limited an offer for the almost 2 million parents who will be steered towards making their own child maintenance arrangements over the next three years.

[Pamela Nash]

On the limited offer from HSSF, does my hon. Friend share my concern about couples who have been separated for a long time? It seems that many of the pilots are aimed at those who are separating imminently or have done so recently. Figures from the Department for Work and Pensions have shown that 70% of couples who are using child support allowance have been separated for more than five years.

[Kate Green]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern and I find it puzzling that it was so late in the organisation of the pilots that we began to see efforts to address that specific and challenging group of separated parents. It is hard to imagine how people would be able to make a private arrangement easily with someone with whom they have had no contact or only hostile contact for a long time. I am puzzled at the lack of attention, given the effort that has been put in to, for example, planning the transfer of the legacy cases. It would be helpful if the Minister could say whether the Government intend to offer more support or different support to couples who have had a long period of separation and little or no contact with each other.

Funding for the HSSF pilots ends in March 2015, whereas the CSA legacy cases closure programme runs between 2014-15 to 2017-18. Will the Minister say whether there are any plans to extend HSSF funding to cover the period of CSA case closure? Can she tell us now what financial resources will be made available post-March 2015 to support the HSSF initiative? What funding plans, if any, are in place to implement the lessons learned from the 17 HSSF innovation fund pilots on a wider scale when they have been evaluated? Without decent answers to these questions, we cannot avoid the conclusion that the HSSF initiative, with its pathetic budget of £20 million over three years, has been intended only as window dressing for the scheme.

In scaling up to meet the level of real need, those 17 projects come nowhere close. How can the Government claim to be serious about the HSSF programme when the £10 million awarded to 17 projects is expected to help at best only around 24,000 families face to face plus around 270,000 online while around 300,000 couples separate every year, and around 1 million CSA cases face closure over the next three years? If the Government are to succeed in reducing use of the statutory maintenance service and at the same time enable more parents to collaborate in fixing and paying their own child maintenance, the success of the HSSF initiative is fundamental. Today’s debate raises big questions about whether it is up to the task.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

No, we have to look at what has worked throughout this journey, so that we can use whatever worked with the CSA and on the ground with families. We must go into the process knowing that, without a shadow of doubt, it is complex. This is about families, emotions and relationships that are not working, but what are we trying to do? We all agree that the sad reality is that too many people are affected by separation and, too often, it is the children who suffer the consequences. In Britain today, there are 2.5 million separated families, and one in three children live in households in which their mother or father no longer lives at home. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, the cost of family breakdown is £48 billion, and he spoke about parental alienation; what are we going to do there, too?

This Government believe passionately in strong families who can provide the stability that is vital to enable children to thrive. The family environment provides the foundation for raising a child, and we are committed to supporting safe and loving family environments. When parents’ relationships break down, we want to help parents to work together more effectively, so it is important to reduce levels of conflict after a separation and to minimise the negative impacts on the children. That is key. As I think we have all agreed today, this is about moving the child to the centre of what we are doing and focusing on their needs.

We do not need to increase conflict; we want to minimise that as best we can. Where we can help people to have a more conducive family environment, that has to be key, because conflict between parents puts children at a greater risk of anxiety, depression and antisocial behaviour, but when children continue to have positive relationships with both parents, they are more likely to do better at school, stay out of trouble, have higher self-esteem and develop healthier relationships as an adult. That was part of the “Impact of Family Breakdown on Children’s Well-Being” evidence review, so that is the context in which we have to view the changes. How do we support those young children going forward? How do we do the best for them?

That is why we have invested some £14 million in the Help and Support for Separated Families initiative, which has various parts to it: the Sorting out Separation online information tool; the HSSF mark; telephony training to promote parental collaboration; and the innovation fund. On the Sorting out Separation service, we have looked at how many people are using that and going on to the website. Some 205,000 visitors have accessed it since it was launched, 120,000 of those being unique visitors. That is close to what we had hoped for, and not to the numbers mentioned by the hon. Member for Edinburgh East.

[Kate Green]

I recognise the overall figure that the Minister gave for the number of visitors to the site, but the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) and I were making was about the number of people who then click through to a signposting element of the site. I wonder whether the figures that the Minister is quoting are actually about those people, because clearly, merely visiting is not about taking action, or even thinking about taking action, beyond the initial turning-up.

[Esther McVey]

I have spoken to people who use the site, and I have been on the site myself. There is a lot of information that people can get from it, and there are names and links to the various organisations that they might want to go to. It is not a site where people would do everything at once. They would jot the names down, follow up what they want to, and speak to friends and to other people who would signpost them to the relevant places. What I am explaining is that people do not need to link through; they could get all the information just by going through the site. However, the actual linking through is nearly double what the hon. Member for Edinburgh East said; it is over 9,000. I think we need to look at this in the round. Could people get all the information they want? Could they go back to Google and put in the names that they got from that website? Yes, they could. There are different things that people can go to via that website.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

I can tell the hon. Lady that we will provide further details as part of our overall evaluation strategy, which we expect to publish by the end of this year.

I was giving details of what was working, what we know is happening and various innovative projects. For example, a Birmingham project run by Malachi recently worked very closely with both the mother and the father of a boy who had been excluded from school because of bad behaviour, and who had not seen his father in three years. Now, following the intervention, the father spends time with his son regularly and contributes financially to the child’s household, and the child’s teacher has confirmed that his behaviour at school has dramatically improved. That is what we want to happen. Those are the outcomes that we want.

Of course this is about finances; we know that. The CSA was not necessarily providing that. We need to work with families and the child’s surroundings more generally, and get the father seeing the son. We need the son not to be excluded from school and to have better attendance, which will allow him a better education and support him later in life. It is right that a key strategy and raison d’être of this Government is fighting child poverty, and fighting poverty full stop. How do we go about that? It is through education. It is about getting people into work. It is about supporting the family. All these things have to be key, and not just now, for those parents who have made their decision. They have brought a child into the world; how do we as a society protect that child? That is the only way to prevent poverty.

[Kate Green]

The Minister is being rather ambitious if she thinks that the HSSF projects will provide all those very laudable outcomes in and of themselves. The anecdotes are very helpful and give us a flavour of the projects that are being conducted, but can she assure us that the evaluation will go well beyond anecdote? We want to be able to look at data and trends. In particular, Opposition Members want to see the number of parents who are receiving maintenance, the amount that they are receiving, the sustainability of that maintenance and the proportion of children who are benefiting from it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am not going to prejudge at the Dispatch Box the detailed response I shall give to the Work and Pensions Committee’s detailed look at the work capability assessment, but clearly one of our key priorities is to continue Atos’s work to the end of its contract, get the new provider in place and ensure that the process is working. The Select Committee made some thoughtful remarks about steps for the future. We shall respond to them in due course, when I respond to its report.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I am delighted to congratulate the Minister on his new appointment.

Last month, it emerged that some people have been waiting a year and more for a work capability assessment—we heard that again from my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) this afternoon. The Minister is right that many of those people will receive some benefit while waiting for their claim to be processed, but they may also be subject to inappropriate conditionality and a deep sense of uncertainty and insecurity. What action is he taking to ensure that assessments and claims are finalised within 13 weeks, as the Government intended?

DWP: Performance

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Let us be clear: this is not a debate about the philosophy of welfare reform. It is a debate about the way in which it is delivered, and about the service that our constituents receive. Today we have presented a catalogue of anxiety, chaos and waste: a catalogue of extra cost to the taxpayer, huge pressures on DWP staff, and inappropriate and hostile language used about benefits recipients—never challenged by Ministers, but hurtful and offensive, as we heard from, among others, my hon. Friends the Members for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) and for Darlington (Jenny Chapman).

We have heard about anxiety, fear and hardship among those who rely on social security, namely most of us at some point in our lives. The Secretary of State, who is responsible for this calamity, is in denial, while his Department is on the brink of meltdown. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), the Chair of the Select Committee: the Department has bitten off more than it can chew, and we are all paying the price.

This is what we have heard about today. Universal credit, the Government’s flagship policy, was intended to reach 7.7 million households by 2017, but in April it was reaching fewer than 6,000 people. It will take 1,052 years to roll out fully at this rate, and the cost to the taxpayer is rising. The Secretary of State will be concerned about that. The National Audit Office has drawn attention to the write-off of assets worth £40 million which have never been used, and a further £91 million of assets that will last for only five years. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says that the NAO is talking nonsense. I am surprised that he is prepared to put that statement on record tonight.

The Department is having to invest in two system solutions in parallel. As the Select Committee has pointed out, we have no idea how or when the final system solution will be achieved, or how much it will cost. We still have no idea about the treatment of passported benefits following the introduction of universal credit. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) asked about that in 2011, but we still do not know about the treatment of free school meals. There is no clarity about the scale, the cost, or who will receive them. We also have no idea of how or when housing benefit will migrate. The local support services framework, which the Department itself has said is as important as universal credit, is not in place, and is not yet even being piloted in universal credit areas. We do not know when that framework will arrive.

This is a tale of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) rightly described as cumulative disaster, but Ministers have been determined to deny it. That is why we are demanding that the Government publish the risk register and other documentation relating to the delivery of universal credit, and the courts agree with us.

Then there is the failing Work programme—with overpayments to providers totalling £11 million, and getting just 7% of employment and support allowance claimants into work—coupled with the crisis of confidence in the work capability assessment that has been presided over by this Government. We have been told this evening, and the Minister told the Work and Pensions Committee a couple of weeks ago, that 700,000 cases, or just under, are now outstanding and awaiting WCAs, and 294,000 of those are former incapacity benefit recipients. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) and others pointed out, that backlog of nearly 700,000 cases was not created by the Labour Government. It is a product of the mass migration of IB claimants by this Government, despite the warnings that we gave them that the system could not, and should not, bear that.

Meanwhile, nearly half the cases that are appealed are successful; reassessments have been halted altogether for two years; according to a leaked internal document, decisions are taking nine months; and I tell those who have said that the benefit, or annually managed expenditure, cap is one of the great achievements of this Government—the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) will be interested to know this—that it has resulted in an extra £800 million of costs since December on ESA and there will be an extra £13 billion by 2018-19, meaning the AME cap will be breached.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

All I was observing in my speech was that it is the single most popular Government policy since the war according to opinion polls.

[Kate Green]

I think the hon. Gentleman has got two policies confused, which shows how on the ball he is. I am talking about the AME cap, not the £26,000 benefit cap—the AME cap that this Government are introducing and which is now, even before it is in place, going to be breached.

Government Members rightly pointed to trends in employment, and it is good to see more people in work, but too often they are working for poverty pay. I have to say to the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller) and others that Labour was never content to abandon people to a life on benefits. That is why we introduced the successful new deals that increased lone-parent employment by 15%. It is why we introduced the future jobs fund which, far from being a failure, was extremely good at getting young people into work and keeping them in work when the programme came to an end. We introduced tax credits that made work pay. Making work pay is not an invention of this Government; it was done under Labour first.

PIP is another tale of disaster—it was not piloted, there were misleading statements on Atos’s bids, and there were long delays in decisions. Like others, I have had constituents waiting for an assessment since last October—in one of those cases, my constituent had it only last week. There are huge backlogs already, which at the current rate of progress will take 42 years to clear. To put it another way, the Minister will need to increase the number of assessments from 7,000 a month to 73,000 a month immediately if he is to get the programme back on track, and this is also wasting taxpayer money. Each decision costs £1,500 for a benefit which for many is only worth £1,120. The NAO has said it does not represent value for money and the £3 billion savings are likely to be wiped out by the costs.

We know the bedroom tax is a disaster. Just 6% of those affected have moved. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation points out that savings are £115 million lower than they should be, and many households, including two thirds with a disabled family member, and more than 60,000 carers face hardship and fear.

[Robert Halfon]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kate Green]

No, I will not.

The Secretary of State said the Child Support Agency was a success. The NAO is rather more cautious. It says it has not really been tested yet and will not be until charging is introduced. In the meantime, full roll-out is expected to exceed by £70 million the costs projected in 2012.

What is really shocking is the effect of all this failure. For the first time more of the people in poverty are in work than out of work—two thirds of children in poverty are in working households. It is leading to a shocking rise in debt and the use of food banks, and it is a catalogue of failure that would be farcical if it were not so desperately serious for us all. It is serious for individuals and families who look to the system to protect them but who are being appallingly let down; it is serious for charities, local authorities, housing providers and others picking up the pieces from this disastrous state of affairs; it is serious for the staff working in the Department, who are under pressure, demoralised and blamed and cannot provide the service they would like; and it is serious for the taxpayer, who is footing a bill that is rising and threatens to spiral out of control. It is serious for everyone except the Secretary of State, who has his head in the sand. He denies the facts when they are inconvenient, but tonight those facts have come out. This Secretary of State has presided over disaster and chaos. It is time to get this Department back on track and to call a halt to this catastrophe—it is time for a Labour Government to clear up the mess.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

One of the things we are trying to do is communicate much better with people who are waiting, which is the most important thing we can do. What we do not want to do is build up promises, so that people think they will be assessed quicker than they will be. On PIP in particular, we will make sure that the providers are doing the job we are asking them to do, and that we are acting as fast as we can and taking the correct decisions. On the first point, I cannot give a time scale at this time, and it would be wrong for any Minister to stand before the House and do so.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

The Government did not bother to pilot PIP properly, Atos made misleading statements in its bid, Ministers have presided over a 42-year backlog in cases, and each decision costs £1,500—more than the benefit of some £1,120 that many receive. Reassessments have had to be postponed while sick and disabled people wait for a decision, including cancer patients, who according to Macmillan are experiencing anxiety, financial worries and worsening health. Is it not time that the Minister acknowledged that it is another catalogue of DWP chaos and that the £1 billion savings promised by 2015 will not be achieved, while sick and disabled people are living with the worry and hardship that he has caused?

[Mike Penning]

I do not accept many of the points that the hon. Lady makes, but what I do accept is that it is unacceptable for people who are in desperate need to wait, which is why I acted with Macmillan really fast to bring the time down from 28 days to inside 10 days for people with terminal illness. We are now looking at the other cases and working with as many of the charity and other groups as we can to make sure that we get the figure down. If they work with us, we can work on this together. The Opposition keep moaning about the policy, but the previous Administration left people on the disability living allowance for years, with only 7% of them ever having a face-to-face assessment. That was an appalling situation.