Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kate Green and Justin Tomlinson

Monday 7th October 2019 Commons Chamber

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

T8. What training is in place to make jobcentre and other DWP staff properly aware of the needs of claimants with learning difficulties? A claimant in my constituency has been left with just £40 a month to support his family because of the lack of support that he received in a jobcentre.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising that important issue. We have doubled the number of disability employment specialist advisers, and we are ensuring that we do everything in our power to identify claimants who need additional support. That is a real priority for us.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kate Green and Justin Tomlinson

Monday 18th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

There are automatic exemptions for claimants on DLA, PIP, carer’s allowance, guardian’s allowance, working tax credits when working over 16 hours a week, universal credit when earning over £542, ESA support or the UC higher rate. Where they are not covered by that, discretionary housing payments can be used, and in that case they certainly should have been looked at favourably.

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

On 29 January, the Minister told me in a written answer that the Department does not know how many resettled refugee families may be subject to the benefit cap. Can he give me an assurance on the Floor of the House that the Government will start to look at that data and guarantee that no such family will be left unable to access the financial support they need?

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank the hon. Lady. I have met a number of stakeholders to discuss this issue and wider issues connected to refugees. It is an area of priority for the Department, and I would be happy to meet her to discuss this further.

Employment and Support Allowance and Universal Credit

Debate between Kate Green and Justin Tomlinson

Thursday 17th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

I predicted that that intervention was coming, and it is an important point. The pledge was incredibly popular with stakeholders and focused officials’ minds. When I was a Minister, a lot of my work involved lobbying other Departments, so it was helpful when I was able to namecheck the then Prime Minister, as this was his personal pledge. I do not actually recall that press release, as my understanding was that we had not set the date because that was going to be determined in the Green Paper. Personally, I wanted to see significant progress year on year.

One problem with just adopting the approach in the pledge is that the number of disabled people in work could remain static yet in a recession the overall number of people in work could fall, meaning that the gap would close without any more disabled people benefiting. I wanted to set a target such as having 1 million more people in work by a certain date, which would mean that we would know that 1 million more disabled people had benefited. We were due to consult on that as part of the Green Paper process when I was in my ministerial role.

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

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that a single target can be a crude measure, so would it not have been sensible to have had two targets: to halve the disability employment gap by 2020, as the Department appeared to be committed to doing last year; and a numerical target? Does he think the new ministerial team might consider that suggestion?

[Justin Tomlinson]

I think that is twice as good as the current plans—it is a brilliant suggestion. All these targets focus minds, and this one made a difference in terms of pushing. That was a lot of what we had to do. We did not necessarily have all the levers ourselves, so having that target to focus minds makes a significant difference.

Wages have increased by 2.3% this year against the backdrop of an inflation rate of 0.9%—that fell again this week, helping people. We have also extended childcare. Let me briefly talk about universal credit, which will make a significant difference.

Child Poverty

Debate between Kate Green and Justin Tomlinson

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[Justin Tomlinson]

I will address that later, so please be patient for a little bit longer.

Children grow up without the aspiration to achieve. They become almost certain to repeat the difficult lives of their parents, following a path from dependency to despondency, rather than to independence. At the beginning of my remarks, I talked about my background. That is what drove me into politics. We all have our calling, our passions and our priorities. That very much was what drove me into politics. As I said, I think we all share the same end goal; there is just disagreement on how we would look to achieve it.

On our record on worklessness and poverty, I highlight that many hon. Members have referred to the IFS statistics throughout the debate. I sound a strong note of caution on that. The statistics have been wrong every single year since 2011, and in the summer, they were half a million out, so I attach a big note of caution to the predictions and doom-mongering.

[Kate Green]

The Minister will know that one of the reasons why there may have been a discrepancy between the IFS prediction and the out-turn is to do with the use of survey data and different datasets. Does he agree that there is no doubt at all that the accumulation of measures announced in the summer Budget will increase child poverty, perhaps by many hundreds of thousands of pounds? They cannot fail to, because they will make working families worse off.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank the shadow Minister, but I am afraid we disagree on that, and I am setting out why I think that is not going to be the case.

Despite a huge increase in spending, by 2010, the number of households where no member ever worked nearly doubled, in-work poverty rose and the Labour Government missed their own 2010 child poverty target by 600,000 children. Compare that with our record. During the previous Parliament, we turned around Labour’s legacy of worklessness. There are now 2 million more people in work. To put that in context, it is more than the figure for the whole of Europe put together. We have the fastest growing major economy.