Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

14. How many people are currently claiming universal credit.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

18. What recent progress his Department has made on the roll-out of universal credit.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

Since October, universal credit has started running in Hammersmith, Rugby and Inverness and it is rolling out today in Harrogate and Bath. It is already out in a number of other centres up in the north-west. Based on caseload projections, some 6,000-plus people are likely to be paid universal credit in the pathfinder. That will be subject to confirmation in the official statistics. Many more claim jobseeker’s allowance using the key elements of universal credit, which are also being rolled out to a wider audience. Some 270,000 jobseekers are now using elements such as the claimant commitment, which is part of universal credit.

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[Mr Speaker]

I call Laura Sandys.

[Laura Sandys]

No. 18, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Lady’s question has been grouped with 14 and therefore she asks her question now.

[Laura Sandys]

Thank you so much—very informative!

[Mr Speaker]

It is always useful to have a bit of information, and I endeavour to be helpful to Members. The hon. Lady need not sound quite so surprised.

[Laura Sandys]

I am a strong believer in behavioural change, and my behaviour will change shortly—but just before it does, what assessment has my right hon. Friend made of the behavioural change that is happening as a result of the introduction of universal credit?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I say to my hon. and highly informed Friend that it is important for us to understand what this is all about. Colleagues on either side of the House should attend centres where universal credit has been rolled out. They will hear from the advisers that we are beginning to see a real change in culture among those who are claiming benefit and those who are delivering it. All the centres that I have visited believe that this is improving the situation for claimants, and it makes life a lot easier and a lot more efficient for advisers in jobcentres.

Food Banks

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

The Minister gave an important description of all the different measures we have taken to support those who face the greatest challenges with poverty and low incomes. We are not here—I hope that the Opposition are not—to celebrate food banks, which are not the answer. They must be seen not as a solution or as something that we want institutionalised, but as a transitional support mechanism for families in stress at particular moments. Opposition Members sometimes seem to relish the number of food banks. If they would mention some of the key reasons for the perfect storm hitting those on low incomes and benefits in particular, we might start to arrive at solutions.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I agree with my hon. Friend that there is a “relish” about this on the Opposition Benches. Is it not the case that, in her constituency as in mine, food banks did not come into being in May 2010? Next year I shall be reading at the 10-year anniversary service for the Winchester Basics bank. The fact is that food banks have been around for a long time.

[Laura Sandys]

My hon. Friend is quite right.

Let us return to some of the reasons that lie behind the present situation, few of which were mentioned by the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle). Food prices began to rise in 2008, and since then global commodity prices have risen by 30%. Much of that happened under the last Government. During our first couple of years in office, we linked pensions to inflation and the rise in the cost of living.

We need a solution to the problem of rising global food prices. Why, in 2010, did the proportion of our domestic food production—which would have hedged our exposure to global prices—drop to 48%? This Government are working to increase our food resilience and our long-term food production.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Is it not rather disappointing that the one group of people about whom we have not heard today are the general public, who donate so generously to food banks? Ought we not to express our gratitude to them?

[Laura Sandys]

I entirely agree. There are extraordinary people—committed volunteers—in my constituency.

Poorer families in my constituency also face structural poverty. Some families in private rented accommodation have no cookers and are captured by microwaved food, condemned to eat expensive food with no resilience, while others have to feed families of three or four with only one ring on which to cook. We must do something about the quality of our private rented accommodation.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Lady is raising some very interesting issues. However, I have been told by the Trussell Trust in Cardiff that half the people who have been referred to a food bank in the last six months were referred because of changes or delays in social security payments, unemployment, debt, low incomes, homelessness or domestic violence. Is the hon. Lady not surprised that Ministers are not willing to take a shred of responsibility for that?

[Laura Sandys]

That is not so, but the point is that there are numerous background issues for us to address, including education. Where was food education on the agenda before this Government included it in primary school education? It is now at the heart of citizenship. We think it important to build, in the long term, resilient families who can support themselves during a period of change and rising food prices.

Finally, let me say something about the food sector itself. I have campaigned strongly against what we are now seeing throughout the retail sector: shrinking products, promotions that are not really promotions, and even the selling of horsemeat, which is an example of food crime. I urge the Government to set up a cross-departmental taskforce to examine the issues involved in food poverty and develop a resilient set of policies to address the problem that food banks are creating. We need to improve housing and our skills base, and enable the food system itself to support communities throughout the country that are finding prices difficult to manage. We have a wide range of volunteers in the food sector who are supporting food banks in the short term, but we must start looking for long-term solutions. I wish that the motion had focused more on the long term and the strategic problems that we face, and less on short-term tactical politics.

Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is because we are committed to continuing to improve the whole process that we work with mental health charities. Since coming to office, I have had several meetings with charities to talk about what we can do, and this is why we are currently going through the process of assessing alternative descriptors, particularly for those with fluctuating conditions and mental health issues.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

9. What progress he has made on supporting disabled people back into work.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)]

The Department offers a range of support to help disabled people get into work and stay in work, including the Work programme, Work Choice and Access to Work. Although there has been a welcome improvement in the disability employment rate over recent years, much still needs to be done. We will be doing that by launching a new, two-year disability employment campaign in July.

[Laura Sandys]

I thank the Minister for that reply. I also thank the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), who is coming to our jobs fair tomorrow morning where there will be information about jobs that local companies have designed around people with certain abilities and disabilities. What can we do to communicate to businesses the value of employing people with elements of disability and to ensure that they play a good part in our work force?

[Esther McVey]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the work she is doing. Employers have the jobs and young people want those jobs, so getting them together is key. That is precisely what we will be doing when we launch our new employment strategy: getting together all the FTSE 100 companies, SMEs and young disabled entrepreneurs so that they can employ people and share best practice.

Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Lady will know that we are in the process of finalising the assessment criteria for the new personal independence payment. I am sure that she will be reassured to know that I have met a number of organisations that represent blind people. I remind her that with the personal independence payment, we are trying to recognise the barriers that people face to living an independent life, and not simply to categorise them based on their impairment.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

T9. I thank the Minister for agreeing to come to a jobs fair in Thanet in June. I am sure that he shares everybody else’s pleasure at seeing that there has been a small drop in youth unemployment. What more can I tell the young people of Thanet that we are doing to help them get the jobs that will be advertised at the jobs fair?

[Chris Grayling]

I am sure we were all pleased to see the small fall in youth unemployment announced last week, but there is a long way to go in tackling what is a big challenge for this country. I hope that the employers of Thanet will respond to the wage subsidies in the youth contract by giving young unemployed British people their first step on to the ladder of employment. That is what we all want to happen.

Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The point about universal credit is that it gets rid of quite a lot of the complexity in the system. That complexity has led to so many mistakes by individuals claiming and by the officials who are meant to be settling those claims. The hon. Lady, and her party, should welcome the arrival of universal credit at the earliest opportunity.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

2. What support is available through Jobcentre Plus for people who wish to start their own business.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

I am pleased to refer my hon. Friend to the announcement we made a couple of weeks ago that our new enterprise allowance is now available nationwide for people who are looking to move from unemployment to self-employment. The early indications from Merseyside, where the scheme started back in the spring, are that a significant number of people have moved into self-employment. Those to whom I have spoken regard it as a really positive experience and are doing well as a result.

[Laura Sandys]

I thank the Minister for that answer. One resource that we do not necessarily use effectively is the help of retired business men and women who are interested in mentoring new start-ups. Would Jobcentre Plus consider recruiting them across the country to ensure that such start-ups have a much greater likelihood of success?

Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I thank my hon. Friend for that example. She has just underlined the need for change, because the current system is not working as it should for all constituents. Indeed, there are now 100,000 cases that cannot even be dealt with on the current IT system—costing the taxpayer a great deal of money and, as she points out, the patience of a great many of our constituents.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

This Government inherited a youth unemployment crisis, and to tackle the problem the Chancellor’s Budget announced 100,000 new work experience places and funding for an additional 40,000 apprenticeships, on top of the 75,000 places that we announced last year. That is a far better way of helping young people into sustainable jobs and long-term careers than some of the rather expensive and ineffective programmes that we inherited.

[Laura Sandys]

I would like to associate myself and my local fishermen with the condolences that the Secretary of State paid to our hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray).

I, like many other hon. Friends, am taking on an apprentice, and I wondered what the Department was doing to support apprenticeships and work placements, which are so crucial to giving young people that first step in the workplace.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

We are doing two things. First, we are supporting the programmes in a practical sense. We already have apprentices working in the Department, but we as a Department will take a lead in providing work experience places—including something like 4,000 throughout the Department per year. We will also actively go out and encourage organisations to come forward and take part in the work experience programme. I hope every company in the country—private, public and voluntary sector organisations—will give young people the chance to take those first steps in the workplace.

Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Monday 14th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman. One of the sad things about the previous Administration was that they never actually supported the number of apprenticeships that they announced. We intend to make a difference and to deliver more apprenticeships—we have announced an extra 50,000 already this year. I can give a clear commitment that the Department will continue to support the apprenticeship programme, both practically and through our relationship with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

I have been written to by a 16-year-old who has done the right thing by taking an apprenticeship, but having done so, she has found that her family’s benefits have been reduced by £90 a week. Will the universal credit address such discrepancies and this discrimination against those who want to work and take up apprenticeships?

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend highlights the chaos that we inherited in the benefits system that can lead to perverse incentives that often mean that work does not pay. The universal credit is designed to ensure that work always pays. I would be interested to meet my hon. Friend to talk about her constituent’s case, so that I may understand more clearly what has gone wrong, but we are clear that work must always pay.

Housing Benefit

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) for his speech, despite disagreeing with many of the things he said, not least the last one. This is an interesting debate because we are considering housing benefit change, but in many ways it has to be regarded as part of a much wider welfare reform programme. As such, we can ensure that some of the observations of Labour Members will be addressed by the universal credit benefits, the Work programme and many other ways in which the Government will make work reward and pay, by ensuring that we put the right value on, and give the right level of reward to, those who work.

It has taken a lot of political courage to address housing benefit. It has not been done early enough, but the coalition can now deal with what has become a ludicrous and highly inflationary system. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), I represent one of the poorest areas in the country—it has the second highest number of low-paid workers. These people earn less than £7 an hour and often hold down more than one job at a time; they work in the care sector, in our hospitals and in the low-paid retail sector. Before and during the election, my campaign with them focused on asking how we could show how greatly we valued them. I promised to do something about this issue and said that my Government would try to help those people who hold down one or two jobs, who put food on the table and who ensure that they pay their rent.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Lady acknowledge that the majority of housing benefit recipients are people in work, pensioners and disabled people, and that less than one in five of the recipients are unemployed?

[Laura Sandys]

First, it is 13% of people who work who receive housing benefits. It is good to see on the Front Bench the Minister who is responsible for disability, because in addition many provisions are made for people with disability. We need to protect those who are vulnerable, and they will be protected. It is crucial that we ensure that equity and justice are at the heart of the housing benefit structure.

Housing benefit is one of the key problems in Thanet. In an area of real deprivation, the rate of housing benefit has dramatically distorted the market, disadvantaging those on low wages while not delivering an improvement in the housing stock for those on housing benefit. I wish to highlight three blights that my constituency faces as a result of the level of housing benefit. As I said, it is unfair on the low paid, who do not claim housing benefit. The double whammy of inequity is compounded by the inflationary impact on the overall housing market.

[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

I, too, represent a seaside constituency, so I know that my hon. Friend’s point is strong and fair. The average wage in my constituency is £21,800. People earning that will be paying about £4,500 in taxes, yet they often find themselves priced out of the local market by people who move into the area from other parts of the world.

[Laura Sandys]

My hon. Friend mentioned £21,000, but the average wage in the south-east is £17,000. The inflationary impact of housing benefit on those families has been huge.

My second point is that these rates have not seen an improvement in the housing stock. Some landlords are interested in the rental value rather than the capital appreciation because that gives them such a high return on their investment. Investing in the properties and in the fabric of them is therefore not a priority.

The third issue is the extreme concentration of housing benefit claimants in pockets in my constituency. That problem was brought up by my hon. Friends the Members for North East Hertfordshire (Mr Heald) and for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott). We create micro-economies that attract a significant amount of housing benefit because property prices are so low and the return from housing benefit is proportionally high.

The current situation has fundamentally distorted housing in my area. The average wage in Thanet is £17,000 and housing benefits for the unemployed stand at more than £8,000 a year. Most working families cannot compete in that market.

[Richard Graham]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the bizarre uses of the word “fair” during the whole debate has been the assumption that it is somehow unfair to people who are not working for them not to have better housing than those who are working? The whole point of this reform is to enable a level playing field in which people can live in the houses that they can afford from their work.

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[Laura Sandys]

Absolutely.

As I said, concentration is also an issue. Two wards in Thanet have 83% privately rented accommodation and 20% of all the benefits claimants in my district, but only make up 2% of the population of Thanet district. Some 30% of the activity of all our housing benefits department is taken up by those two wards. Why? The housing benefit has increased by more than 50% over the past 10 years. Some landlords are making a return on their investment of more than 12% through housing benefits whereas similar properties in Westminster would generate only 4 to 5%. These pockets are hugely attractive to landlords, particularly in coastal towns, and that can be very inflationary.

In certain areas across the country, these micro-economies have significantly lower house prices than areas within their broad market rental area. I urge the Government to consider the possibility of allowing local authorities to create sub-districts to ensure that they can exercise the localism that is at the heart of our agenda and the discretion to assess where low market values are creating a magnet for housing benefit claimants. However, that has to do with broader issues of welfare reform. I am sure that throughout the universal approach that the DWP is taking, we will be able to reverse the current situation.

Our system is broken. Those who want to work know that work does not pay. Those who work get less than those who claim and those who do not work often receive the most. I commend these measures and believe that many in my constituency and those areas that have lower income workers will welcome the reforms.