Social Security and Pensions
Kim Johnson Excerpts(4 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
David Rutley
We recognise that these are challenging times, and that is why, as I said to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), the Chancellor set out last week what we are doing to support vulnerable people with the rising costs of energy. We are taking steps to recognise and lean into the peaks in the inflationary pressures that we are seeing not just in the UK, but globally. We recognise the impact that global increases in energy prices are having on household finances. As the Chancellor announced recently, from 1 April the energy price cap will rise from £1,277 to £1,971—an increase of almost £700 in energy bills for the average household. We are introducing crucial and timely measures to help with the increased costs, as part of a comprehensive package of support worth £9.1 billion in 2022-23.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)
More than 30 leading anti-poverty groups, including the Child Poverty Action Group, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Trussell Trust, have warned that this motion will drive the most vulnerable deeper into poverty and misery, and they call on the Government instead to uplift benefits by 6%. Does the Minister accept that that needs to happen?
David Rutley
As I have been setting out in my opening remarks, we are taking forward this step in combination with a raft of other measures to help residents in this country face the challenges ahead. In fact, as part of the three-point plan, we have a £200 discount on energy bills this autumn for domestic electricity customers in Great Britain that will be repaid automatically over the next five years. There is a £150 non-repayable rebate on council tax bills for households in bands A to D in England; that is 80% of households. Of course, there is £144 million of discretionary funding for local authorities to support households who need support but are not eligible for the council tax rebate.
Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits
Kim Johnson Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)
This cut to universal credit is perhaps one of the most callous and cruel policies this Government have proposed, and we have a long list to choose from. After more than a decade of brutal austerity measures and chronic Tory mismanagement, absolute poverty and child poverty were soaring even before the devastating impact of the pandemic. In my Liverpool, Riverside constituency, where child poverty, relative poverty and absolute poverty already soar above the national average, it amounts to more than 3,200 families and nearly 6,000 children.
This draconian Tory Government are dangerously out of touch with the reality of millions. They have no comprehension of the reality of poverty, of missing meals and going cold. They claim that the need for fiscal responsibility overrides the need for just and fair policies, as if the two are mutually exclusive and as if economic prosperity cannot exist without inequality and poverty. The cut of £1,000 from the pockets of those most in need is the ugly face of that ideology of class warfare—let us call it what it is.
As a black, working-class woman born and raised in Liverpool, I know full well the impact of this class warfare. Thatcher’s policies of managed decline in the 1980s threaten to pale by comparison with the cruelty of this Tory Government. The bare, honest truth is that this cut is not fiscally competent. Hitting workers’ spending power with cuts to universal credit, a rise in national insurance contributions, a public sector pay freeze and a personal income tax freeze is not the economic competence that the Tories claim. It is the opposite.
Instead of taking money out of the pockets of those most in need, the Government must wake up to the reality facing millions of families who will be pushed into Dickensian levels of poverty and misery. I call on Members on both sides of the House to cancel this cut.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Before I call the Front Benchers, I should say that they have agreed to cut down their contributions to allow everybody to get in.
Covronavirus, Disability and Access to Services
Kim Johnson Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) [V]
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. This pandemic has been one of poverty and inequality. Pre-existing health, housing, employment and income inequalities have combined to form a perfect storm for disabled people.
In my role on the Women and Equalities Committee, I have listened to so many heartbreaking and shocking stories of the barriers that disabled people have faced during the pandemic. Disabled people have overwhelmingly been abandoned without the basic support they need to survive or live in dignity—from the suspension of local authority’s legal responsibilities to provide basic social care, to the reduction of access to activities and day centres, to an increase in isolation and loneliness, and difficulties in accessing healthcare, education and even food.
Mencap’s “My Health, My Life” report into inaccessible healthcare during covid highlighted some truly shocking realities faced by people with a learning disability during the pandemic. Some people with a learning disability were told that they may not receive life-saving treatment. Some were encouraged to avoid hospital and were asked to consent to DNRs. Overstretched and under-resourced hospitals meant there was a reduction in learning disability nurses, and some acute learning disability nurses were redeployed to other units.
While we welcome the Government’s commitment in their written response to the report to more funding for local authorities, their reference to the recent hike in the social care council precept raised concerns that they intend to place the burden for social care on those least able to pay for it. Such an approach is both unfair and completely unable to meet the scale of the challenge. This Government are in denial of the social care crisis that we are facing.
Can the Minister explain how this Government can claim a levelling-up agenda while forcing the costs of the crisis in social care on to the worst-off through this regressive taxation? About 60% of people in the UK who have died from coronavirus are disabled. Will the Minister please explain in clear terms why the Government have not taken up our report’s recommendation for an independent inquiry into the disproportionate deaths and adverse outcomes for disabled people from the pandemic? Also, why did the Government reject the recommendation for a statutory code of practice on the public sector equality duty?
We are having this debate in the most tragic of circumstances. What will it take for this Government to act? Disabled people’s lives must be valued equally. This Government have a responsibility to take action against the disadvantage and discrimination that put the mental and physical health of disabled people at risk. To do that, the Government must commit to full and transparent engagement with disabled people and groups about their concerns during the pandemic when forming a proposed national strategy for disabled people, upholding the principle of “nothing about us without us”.
Everyone has the fundamental right to live in safety and in dignity, with full access to health, social care and education. The report and the evidence we have heard has shown that we have failed disabled people by not upholding these basic rights during the pandemic. The report must be a turning point. The Government must investigate their failures, involve disabled people in developing a national strategy to uphold, protect and strength the rights of disabled people, and commit to significant and progressive funding to tackle our crisis in social care and ensure that disabled people can live in safety and in dignity.
Social Security
Kim Johnson Excerpts(4 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) [V]
I welcome the opportunity to speak in this important debate and recognise the thousands of Liverpool constituents affected by asbestos-related diseases. I would like to start by paying tribute to the fantastic work of the Merseyside Asbestos Victim Support Group, which has assisted thousands of victims in obtaining welfare benefits and civil compensation, as well as providing invaluable community support for victims and dependants of meso and other asbestos-related conditions.
I welcome this move to increase payments in line with inflation, and the uprating being applied to all disability benefits. However, while I welcome the fact that it has been regular practice to agree the uplift, we must make moves to ensure that the annual uprating of the schemes is placed on a statutory footing and that more is done to ensure parity of payments to dependants. Can the Minister tell us what the Government’s latest estimate is of the cost of providing equal payments to dependants, at a time when covid has left cancer patients waiting longer for diagnoses, treatments and surgery as well as facing the heightened health risk of contracting the virus itself? The automatic uplift is especially welcome in this difficult context.
Coronavirus has revitalised our focus on occupational health hazards, and I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the incredible key workers who are continuing to lay their lives on the line every single day to keep our country running and to care for those in need, and especially to the thousands who have sadly paid the ultimate price. The pandemic has also highlighted the vital role of the Health and Safety Executive in keeping us safe at work. However, cuts over the last 10 years by the Tory Government have seen the number of health and safety inspectors drop by a third. Those cuts have left workers at risk in unsafe conditions.
Despite figures released by Public Health England last month showing that there had been 3,500 covid outbreaks in workplaces including offices, factories and construction sites since last July, the Government have defended their decision not to place covid in the highest risk category, and the HSE enforcement database has revealed that no covid-related prohibition notices have been issued since the pandemic broke out. A decade of devastating cuts has turned the Government’s health and safety watchdog into a lapdog, and without better funding and increased enforcement, which can only come from placing coronavirus in the highest risk category, workers’ lives will continue to be at risk.
The TUC has called covid
“the most serious workplace safety hazard in a generation”.
More than 10,000 workers have died from the virus and many others are now living with long-term health problems as a result of it, yet the Government have so far made an extra £14 million available to the HSE during the pandemic, which does not even begin to scratch the surface of the cuts of more than £100 million in the past decade. I want to take this opportunity to call on the Government to recognise the need to keep workers safe in their workplaces and to take significant steps to provide the HSE with the funding and powers it needs to keep our key workers safe as they work to keep us safe.
Covid-19: Child Maintenance Service
Kim Johnson Excerpts(5 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) [V]
I congratulate the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) on securing this very important debate.
Given the immense pressure our welfare system has been under as a result of coronavirus, it is understandable that thousands of Child Maintenance Service staff were redeployed to help the team at the DWP to process universal credit applications and payments to meet the unprecedented demand during the pandemic. I thank them for all their hard work during this very difficult period. However, the Government neglected to consider the difficulties it would cause to single parent households. In reducing the CMS to skeleton staff, children and single parents, 90% of whom are women, were left without protection. Hundreds of thousands of receiving parents are being left to struggle with missed payments that are not being chased up. Missed payments are spiralling into hundreds of millions and many families are now struggling to cope. Can the Minister tell us what plans the Government have to make up the backlog of receiving parents who have arrears owed to them, especially with the added financial difficulties due to the pandemic?
Last year, a survey of single parents conducted by leading charity Gingerbread uncovered that three quarters of single parents have had—[Inaudible.] to food banks or charities to survive. Only 16% had received the full amount of maintenance they were due each month. On average, single parents are owed more than £9,000 in back payments. The Government need to get a grip on this situation urgently and ensure that parents who owe child maintenance pay their fair share.
We must remember that these families are already among some of the worst off. They are now forced to deal with cuts to this vital lifeline, often alongside further loss of income due to the coronavirus. In my own constituency of Liverpool Riverside, a massive 40% of CMS cases in the collect and pay service are not currently in payment. This is broadly in proportion to the rest of the country, demonstrating a staggering shortfall in payments to single parents.
The situation has been worsened by coronavirus, but these issues run far deeper. In June last year, we saw four single mothers launch court action against the DWP to challenge the persistent failure of the Child Maintenance Service. At that time, £354 million was owed to single parents and only 10% had been recouped by the CMS through enforcement actions. It is a child’s legal right to be supported by both parents, but we have seen the service, designed to uphold that right, failing children and leaving many in poverty. Given that almost half of children living in single parent households already live in poverty, this triple whammy—of lost income due to covid, extra costs associated with looking after children not attending school and now losing out on vital child maintenance income—is leading to unimaginable hardship.
With the economic situation worsening every day, the Government need to take bold action now to avoid families being impoverished further by UK Government failure. Can the Minister tell us how the Department is working to reconcile staff shortages with a reduced assessment period of 12 weeks to two weeks for parents with a change in their earnings, particularly given the rise in unemployment? Will the Government consider offering direct payments to single parents not receiving maintenance without it having an impact on any of their other benefits?
These payments make the difference between a family keeping their heads above water and plunging into poverty. We need to see the Government commit serious funding to our welfare system, including CMS, to ensure that single parents and their children are protected at this time of crisis and into the future.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kim Johnson Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Will Quince
The hon. Lady is right is that she has asked this question on three occasions, and she has had three answers. The legacy benefits were increased by 1.7% in April 2020, following the Government’s announcement to end the benefit freeze. It has always been the case that claimants on legacy benefits can make a claim for universal credit if they believe that they will be better off. There are special arrangements for those in receipt of the severe disability premium, who will be able to make a new claim to UC from January 2021. But it is important—I stress this—that claimants should check their eligibility before applying to universal credit as legacy benefits will end when they submit their claim and they will not be able to return to them in the future.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies) [V]
Evidence suggests that active labour market policies can be even more effective during recessions. We will continue to encourage claimants to prepare and look for work where it is safe to do so. Claimants will not be subject to conditionality until they have agreed a new or updated claimant commitment. We firmly believe the best way to support claimants is through empowered work coaches who engage proactively with claimants to help them identify the options they need to build on their skills, increase their confidence and return to employment.
Kim Johnson
Non-existent jobs. Liverpool has had the second highest unemployment increase in the country since March 2020. Our claimant rate has more than doubled from 12,000 to 32,000, and we now have the highest unemployment rate in the country. There are a further 27,000 people on furlough in our closed hospitality sector who will either be let go or have to survive on 67% of their wages come November. With benefits sanctions being reintroduced and welfare conditionality being reinstated, what evidence do the Government have that this is benefiting claimants and preventing a return to the high unemployment of the ’80s?
Mims Davies
I stress to the hon. Lady that sanctions are only used when claimants fail to meet their conditionality requirements without good reason. As I said in my previous responses, work coaches will work to ensure that any requirements set are reasonable, taking into account the claimant’s circumstances and, crucially, the situation in the local labour market, while allowing them to adhere also to public health advice. We are absolutely determined to help people back into work, giving them the power to do that, and the way we can do that locally in Liverpool is through the flexible support fund and other measures.