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

Debate between Kate Green and Graham Stuart

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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Disadvantaged Children

Debate between Kate Green and Graham Stuart

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that suggestion, which covers a number of important points. The first is the importance of fathers in raising children and improving child outcomes, and of the support that we can give families, whatever their structure, to ensure that both parents remain engaged in their children’s lives.

Secondly, the hon. Gentleman hints at the important point that universal provision for all people who become parents—not just the poorest—provides us with a crucial opportunity to improve the way in which they are equipped and given the confidence to raise happy, successful kids. He is right also to say that parenting and the ability to parent well go much further than simply providing materially for children and providing them with good physical health and circumstances. They are also about emotional, educational and social support, all of which should sit within programmes of support for new parents. I very much welcome the hon. Gentleman’s comments.

As I said, we should do everything we can to enable parents to bring up their children successfully in the context of family life. It is therefore particularly important that we give extra attention to services such as Family Action’s Building Bridges service, which works with parents in the home to enable them to keep their kids with them and ensures that they are properly supported to do what they want to do—raise successful children. I am wary of an over-emphasis on care settings and taking children out of the family home, which we should avoid wherever possible. The worst outcomes are for our looked-after children, and we should do everything we can to minimise the number of children who end up in state care.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

We all take on board the hon. Lady’s comments, given her long record in this area. I am delighted to hear her say that she sees an equal role for fathers and mothers in bringing up children. Does she agree with a presumption of equality of access between fathers and mothers in the event of separation, rather than the current presumption, which too often means fathers dropping out of children’s lives altogether?

[Kate Green]

The presumption at the moment is that the child’s best interests must be paramount, which I continue to support. Of course, in the majority of cases, we would want to secure contact with both parents after separation. However, the starting point should not be the interests and wishes of the parent; the best interests of the child must remain paramount. I hope that there will be no deviating from that valuable and valid principle in the Children Act 1989.

Let me conclude by addressing one or two of the suggestions made in the report of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North. I am disappointed that he is not here this afternoon to hear the many compliments that his work certainly deserves. I was pleased that he wrote of the need to intervene early and to sustain that intervention and support. His suggestions for private funding to support our children and the families who raise them are interesting and imaginative, but I hope they will not be used to let the Government off the hook. At this time, when so many of the voluntary agencies that have done so much to support our most vulnerable families are struggling to maintain their finances and when they are concerned about their financial future—they face uncertainty perhaps as soon as the beginning as the next financial year—it is important that we underwrite with financial support what is needed to raise happy, successful and healthy children. That is the responsibility of all of us: the country, the state and the Government cannot abdicate it.