Welfare Reform and Work Act

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Mike Gapes

Wednesday 21st March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Neil Gray]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Gapes (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr Gray, the Minister has made it clear that he is not giving way. He does not have to give way, so I would be grateful if you would allow him to carry on.

[Kit Malthouse]

I have lots to get through. I want the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire to reply, and the Scottish National party has had a lot to say today.

The hon. Lady majored fairly heavily on disability benefits in her speech. We are committed to ensuring that more of the money goes to the people who need it most. We have continued to increase benefits for people with disabilities and health conditions, and we will spend £800 million extra in 2018-19 to do that once again. For people in the employment and support allowance support group, that means £720 more per year than in 2010. For recipients of the monthly rate of disability living allowance, paid to the most disabled children, it is more than £1,200 a year more.

At the same time, we are determined to break down the barriers to employment faced by disabled people. The hon. Lady spoke about the removal of the work-related activity component under ESA. The old system, as we all remember, was failing to help disabled people and those with health conditions into work. Only one in 100 ESA work-related activity group claimants leave the benefit each month. We believe that disabled people and people with health conditions deserve better than that.

We believe that the changes, working in tandem with a £330 million support package over the next four years, will provide the right incentives and support to help new claimants with limited capability for work. Taken as a whole, our policies to help people with disabilities to find employment have been making good progress. More than half a million more disabled people are now in work than four years ago, and on a before-housing-costs basis the absolute poverty rate among people living in a family where somebody is disabled is now down to a record low.

On the underpayment of ESA, the hon. Lady asked about paying back further than 2014. We are actually legally restricted from recalculating payments back beyond 2014. Statute governs that position, which we are not allowed to exceed. The hon. Lady also raised the success rate of personal independence payment claimants who go through the appeals process. It is worth remembering that the vast majority of PIP decisions do not go to appeal. Some 2.9 million PIP claims were decided on between April 2013 and September 2017, of which only 8% of initial PIP decisions were appealed against, and only 4% were overturned at appeal. A decision being overturned does not necessarily mean that the original decision was incorrect; often it is because the claimant has provided more cogent oral evidence or other new evidence that has allowed a more accurate assessment.

In a forensic speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) dissected the case against welfare reform very ably. In particular, he pointed towards the benefits cap, which a number of Members have criticised. Of course, the numbers show that the benefits cap has been extraordinarily successful as an incentive to get into work. Over the last couple of years, tens of thousands of people have come out from under the benefits cap, because of course it does not apply once someone moves into work. The amount at which they are capped has dropped significantly too.

My hon. Friend the Member for Redditch asked about older claimants and when an impact assessment was likely to be approved. I am informed that we will publish the evaluation of the two Jobcentre Plus interventions for older claimants in the spring of 2018—I assume before the summer recess. Those will look at the impacts of sector-based work, academy and work experience interventions.

The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) raised the issue of reassessments for those who are terminally ill. He will know that in both PIP and ESA we have a fast-track process for any claimants who have fewer than six months to live. In ESA we introduced a severe conditions criteria last autumn, which means that people with the most severe degenerative conditions will not need to be reassessed. It is more complex in the case of disease, but if those individuals qualify for the highest level of ESA under the support group, and there is no possibility of improvement, they do not need to return for reassessment. I am more than happy to keep that under review and have another look at it in future.

Finally, the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) raised the rape clause, which is an issue on which she has campaigned. Obviously, it is a very difficult and sensitive issue, which we are more than happy to keep under review. As she knows, a third-party model has been put in place, but if particular issues are being experienced by women accessing that model, I am more than happy to look at it again. As she also knows, there are particular circumstances in Northern Ireland. My undertaking to her this morning is that I am happy to meet her, if she wishes to discuss it with me, to try to find a way through this issue.

It has been an interesting debate, although it has put the House into two polar opposite groups: those who thought that welfare reform was required, and those who did not. One of the things that I have found most disheartening about such debates since I was appointed to my job is the implicit defence by those who are opposed to welfare reform of an old benefits system that was frankly fraudulent. It was trapping people in poverty, and insisting that it was trying to help them when, in fact, it was holding them back.

We believe in treating everybody with dignity, and giving them the power to take control of their lives and find their own way forward, for them and their families, in work. We believe in giving them all the tools that we can to do that, whether they are disabled, single parents, families, or older people who wish to access work. The way to a dignified future for everybody is to give them control, not to make them vassals of a welfare state.

[Mike Gapes (in the Chair)]

Dr Whitford, you have five seconds to wind up.