Department for Work and Pensions

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

The number of young people who are unemployed has almost halved since 2010. Female unemployment is at a record high, and wages are growing at their joint fastest rate in a decade. These are the reasons why our labour market is outperforming many—

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Call me old fashioned, but I thought the purpose of the Minister coming to the Dispatch Box was to reply to the debate. He has now been on his feet for 10 minutes, and all he is doing is reading out his civil service brief. This is becoming a habit among Ministers. He said that he was going to refer to Members in the debate, and I think he should start to do that—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I would have stopped the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) a few seconds earlier, but the House must forgive me for being unable to speak volubly today. He knows that this is not a point of order, and that it is up to the Minister to answer the debate however he wishes to do so. The Minister is perfectly in order.

Universal Credit: Managed Migration

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

There are a number of ways in which people can claim universal credit. There is, of course, the online process, and help with that can be provided in jobcentres. There is also the Freephone telephone line, and people can also have appointees. As the hon. Gentleman has said, there are home visits, but, again, I would be happy to discuss the issue with him.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Many people going on to universal credit find it difficult to manage their finances. May I ask the Minister to give serious consideration to local working with credit unions? I am a director of NE First Credit Union for the North East, which offers people simple bank accounts and affordable finance. Would the Minister consider linking credit unions with the DWP so that people can not only receive advice, but stop getting into the hands of loan sharks?

[Alok Sharma]

I would be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss that suggestion and see what is possible, but, as he will know, we have a new arrangement with Citizens Advice and Citizens Advice Scotland to ensure that advice is given to people to help them as they move on to universal credit. That arrangement will kick off formally in April. We have made £39 million available, and of course we want the process to work well.

Universal Credit and Welfare Changes

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

My hon. Friend is, again, correct. The NAO made it clear that the pace could do with speeding up. It also said that we should continue with universal credit, far from what the Opposition are saying. It said that we should speed up the pace and carry on going, and that progress had been made in what we are doing. I say to Members: please read the report.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Having visited the DWP offices in Stanley and Chester-le-Street in my constituency, can I agree with one thing that the Secretary of State said and say thank you to the staff for their work? However, a real fear has been raised with me by constituents who have poor IT skills. What more can we do to support these individuals and also to expand access to IT, because many libraries have been closed or have introduced restricted hours, which is a stumbling block for a lot of those individuals?

[Ms McVey]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for mentioning work coaches in such a positive way, because they are doing a significant amount of work, and I hear only praise wherever I go. The system needs to give people support, whether with IT or debt. Support is definitely there for IT—£200 million has gone to local authorities. The jobcentre can point claimants in the right direction, so I ask them please to go via the jobcentre in these situations.

Personal Independence Payments

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Laura Pidcock]

I have to make progress—just give me a minute.

DLA was criticised for having complex and subjective criteria and inconsistent decision making, resulting in too many awards and too few reviews of awards. The Government say that the PIP process is

“a more active and enabling benefit”.

I disagree in the strongest possible terms. The introduction of PIP was another cuts exercise. The coalition Government made the need to make savings a clear aim of the new benefit. [Interruption.] They said it themselves. According to the Library, PIP was expected to reduce expenditure by £1.5 billion, and 607,000 fewer people were expected to receive PIP by 2018. That kind of reduction cannot be achieved without the anguish and suffering of thousands of people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock), on the debate.

The hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) is right in what he says about how the system should operate, but that is not how it is operating in practice. In the Mind survey, 55% of those surveyed found that their PIP was either stopped or reduced. I also want to mention that study’s satisfaction rate for people with mental health issues. We are making the same mistake with that as we are with the work capability test. If we are going to have a system that is fair to people with mental illness, we need properly qualified assessors, and that is not happening. It was the same with the work capability test: the assessments were done by people who had no qualifications to give them an understanding of people with mental illness. That is not right.

Yesterday in the Chamber I did not get an answer when I asked the Minister, at column 708, what happens to the 22% of people with mental illnesses who, according to the Mind survey, did not appeal because of their condition. I know those cases will be looked at again, but do I advise constituents who have not appealed to make a new application, or will those concerned somehow get around to seeing them? We need clarity for those people, many of whom have valid claims but felt unable to appeal because of the onerous nature of the system. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham is right; in Durham, welfare rights will tell you the appeal waiting time is now more than a year for such cases.

I want to touch briefly on a couple of constituency cases. What the hon. Member for North Swindon said about lifetime awards and people missing out may be true, but I can give him an example of the opposite. A constituent was given PIP from 2016, and when his condition worsened he put in an application for the higher rate and, after an assessment, had his entire PIP taken away. The mobility issue is also creating complete heartache. A constituent of mine has got five stents and has had two heart attacks. He went for assessment in January and did not qualify for PIP. They said he was not entitled, so he will lose his mobility car. He got a letter the other day saying he had not been entitled to the car since last October. I do not know how that view was reached when the assessment happened in January.

I want to nail the idea that people on PIP somehow are shirkers, and the lazy of society. [Interruption.] I am sorry—that is some people’s narrative. I am not going to listen to anyone who comes in here as an obvious Whips’ plant to bolster the number of Tory MPs. Members who want to make a contribution should put in to speak. I give credit to the hon. Member for North Swindon, who at least made a speech rather than some cheap intervention that the Whips obviously told him to make.

In many cases, the people I am talking about are working. The worst case I know of is of a man in his 40s with a degenerative condition, who was a butcher and could not work. He retrained in IT, got a job, went for his PIP assessment and was not awarded the higher enhanced rate. Therefore he lost his mobility car. That is a guy who got off his backside, as he said to me when he came to my surgery, and went to get a job because he did not want his children to grow up in a household where the father was not going out to work. It cannot be fair that we are dealing with such people in the way we are.

The system as it has been designed is making all the same mistakes as the work capability test did. It is a sausage machine to get claims through. I would argue—to save money for the Government—for taking out the cases that we know will not improve. We are wasting our time on those individuals’ cases. As to making sure that the system works properly for others, especially those with mental health issues, we must have a system where assessments are done by properly qualified people.

The people who claim PIP do not choose to be in that position. Any one of us here today could end up on it if we had a serious illness or accident. Claimants do not want to be on PIP. The way to judge a society’s fairness is by how it treats its most vulnerable. I am sorry, but the system we have is not treating them fairly.

PIP Back Payments

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution. She is absolutely right to focus on parity of esteem—the Government have legislated for that—between people with mental and physical health conditions. That is really important.

Let us just look at the facts about how many people with mental health conditions are being positively supported by PIP. The latest figures from 27 October show that 66% of PIP recipients with mental health conditions get the enhanced daily living component compared with only 22% who receive DLA, the predecessor benefit. Some 31% of PIP recipients with mental health conditions get the enhanced mobility rate compared with just 10% of DLA recipients. It is absolutely the case that hundreds of thousands more people are being helped with PIP than with DLA. It is of course important, however, to do all we can continually to improve the process.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

The mental health charity Mind found in its survey last year that 22% of the people it surveyed did not actually appeal against a PIP refusal because of their condition—they did not feel able to do so. I assume from what the Minister is saying that those people will be part of the reassessment, but what advice should Members of Parliament give those individuals now, because some will want to put in new applications? What support will they be given, because some of them have been left in a very difficult position, through no fault of their own, due to their mental illness?

[Sarah Newton]

We will be working with Mind—I agree that it is an excellent charity—and other organisations, and they will help us to shape this process so that it is conducted in a sympathetic and appropriate way to make sure that we reach all people who are entitled to PIP.