Oral Answers to Questions

Lee Pitcher Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)]

1. What assessment she has made of the impact of jobcentres on economic growth.

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

12. What assessment she has made of the impact of jobcentres on economic growth.

[The Minister for Employment (Alison McGovern)]

Increasing employment and helping people into good work is essential to growing our economy, which is why our “Get Britain Working” plan sets out our vision to reform jobcentres and build a new jobs and careers service that will meet the different needs of local labour markets, people and businesses.

[Alison McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend for meeting with Department for Work and Pensions colleagues in west Ealing and, through her, thank them for all the work they are doing. I know she will have been impressed by them, as I always am.

Disabled people have a right to work like everyone else, and it is our job to see that right realised. Doing so will benefit everyone, as we all win when people’s talents and potential are maximised. It is good for business and strengthens our economy. We are doing great things to bring forward our plan for a new jobs and careers service, which will put disabled people at its heart.

[Lee Pitcher]

I recently visited two jobcentres in my area, Thorne and Scunthorpe, and saw the great work being done by the staff there. Our jobcentres should be places where everyone can go for help to get them back into work. However, many blind and visually impaired people need technology such as screen readers to use computers, while others might need specialist screen magnification software. Research by Sense has found that no jobcentres have this specialist assistive technology, meaning that some disabled jobseekers cannot use the computers on site to look for work. How will the Government ensure that jobcentres are equipped with essential pieces of assistive technology in the future, enabling more disabled people to look for work?

[Alison McGovern]

I apologise to my hon. Friend; I could not quite hear which jobcentres he has visited. However, I thank him for doing so and for connecting with DWP colleagues in that way; it is really valuable. I ask him to take all our thanks back to them.

As part of the new jobs and careers service, we will radically enhance our use of technology so that people can access support through the channels that best meet their needs. Assistive technology can aid the accessibility and inclusiveness of the new service that we are building, so we are listening to those who already use it.

On 22 January, the Minister for disabled people, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), and I met colleagues from across Parliament on the all-party parliamentary group on eye health and visual impairment, where we had a great opportunity to listen to experts in this field.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

T9. What assessment has the Minister made of recent trends in the level of fraud in the welfare system, because every £1 lost to fraud is £1 that should have gone to our schools, to our hospitals or on the future of our residents?

[Andrew Western]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. The assessment I have made is of a trend that is up, up, up after 14 years of the Conservative party failing to act. We lost £9.7 billion in fraud and error in the Department for Work and Pensions last year, and we have lost £35 billion since the pandemic. That is too much, which is why I hope colleagues will support the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill on Second Reading later.

Blind and Partially Sighted People: Employment Support

Lee Pitcher Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

It is great to see you in the Chair, Dr Huq, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) on securing this hugely important debate.

I speak today from personal experience. My lovely wife has retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye condition that has no cure or treatment. Julie has reached the stage where she uses a white cane and eventually, like her mum and uncle, she will probably need a guide dog to assist her. Those who watch “Strictly” may know that retinitis pigmentosa is the condition that comedian Chris McCausland has. Like Chris, Julie is an inspiration, not a gimmick, having recently learned to ski blind.

Julie has never let her disability define her; instead, she excels with the abilities that she does have. What we have learned together over 30 years, as our careers have progressed, is how those abilities can allow her to thrive, and I have to say that her workplaces have been enormously supportive of her.

I will focus on the use of technology and the importance of awareness, because the use of artificial intelligence is a game changer. Apps such as Seeing AI can narrate the world around the user. It harnesses the power of AI to open up the visual world, and describes nearby people, texts and objects. In the world of work, it supports people to identify colleagues and helps to facilitate a team culture. As long as those colleagues do not take offence at being taken for a 55-year-old man, as happened to me when the camera was held up to my face—I am in my mid-40s—it is an absolute gem of a research project.

Maximising the use of existing functionality is also important and remarkably useful. Adobe will read out pages of text, and people can ask ChatGPT to find those texts with a simple verbal instruction. My one ask is that when people use hashtags, they should use a capital letter for each new word because that ensures that the hashtag makes sense when read out.

The ability to work from home has opened up a world of opportunity, as meetings and conferences can be accessed from an environment that does not require travel. Although I often witness the kindness of the majority of people when Julie travels on buses or the underground to visit me or work in London, I also witness people who just barge into her as she gets on to an escalator slowly, or who tut because they cannot get past her. I get upset by that. Julie takes no notice because it has become her norm.

There is a broader need in society for people to better understand disabilities, and that starts with education and awareness in school. Will the Minister speak to the relevant Education Minister about how that can be raised as part of the curriculum review?

Future transport technology is also exciting. It may be that when we travel in future, we will jump into our own driverless vehicles and travel to our destinations. When Julie and I visited San Francisco, we saw a driverless taxi for the first time. At the moment, that can be a scary thought, culturally, but it offers a different kind of hope for travel independence in the future, and we should start to embrace what is out there across the globe.

It is great to have all those technologies and the ability to work from anywhere in any part of the world. It is also great to hear that the world is changing.

[Marsha De Cordova]

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech, and I am pleased that he is talking about technology. Does he agree that many technology companies have cottoned on to the fact that if they make their products inclusive, it is better business for them? Companies such as Apple, Microsoft and others are leading the way by ensuring that their apps and devices such as iPads are accessible, which will help not just blind and partially sighted people, but disabled people in general into work.

[Lee Pitcher]

I could not agree more. There is a whole world of innovation out there, involving companies such as Apple and Microsoft, and we need to embrace that and find a way to channel it into everyday society and use.

As I was saying, it is great to have those technologies, but having them out there is not enough. We need to find a way for people to know about them and use them. The amazing work of organisations such as the RNIB, Guide Dogs, and the Partially Sighted Society in my area of Doncaster is just incredible. They make us aware of what can be done at home and at work through the use of technology.

The challenge for us, and for the 2 million Julies out there in the UK, is how to amplify the work of those organisations to improve employment support for blind and partially sighted people even more, to help employers to understand the technologies and processes that give opportunities for all and allow everyone to thrive. I ask the Minister how he might raise awareness of AI use in the workplace to support adjustments to maximise those opportunities.

I finish with this: I ask you, Dr Huq, to imagine Julie on that slope for the first time, carefully traversing the snow, the ice and the undulations with her white cane, then ditching that cane for ski poles, and hurtling down the mountainside with skill, talent and ability. The “Wow!” that you see on our children’s faces says it all. She is a role model and an inspiration. Anything is achievable with determination and the right support and resources. Let us make sure that everyone gets the opportunity to apply those abilities at home, when travelling to and from work, and at work. I want to see a world where that “Wow!” is visible every day in the workplace.

Food Banks

Lee Pitcher Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) on bringing this debate forward. I am grateful for hon. Members’ helpful contributions, and I am happy to take interventions from hon. Members who were not able to speak if there is time.

Let me first acknowledge that I agree with hon. Members who have pointed out that the existence and extent of poverty in our country is shameful. It is a source of deep shame to our country that so many people are reliant on the charity of others for essentials. Briefly, I pay tribute to the food banks in my constituency and in my former constituency of Devizes, which do such good work. I also previously worked with the Hammersmith and Fulham food bank. I echo the points made by hon. Members about the valuable work of such organisations.

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

I have seen extraordinary work and inspiring volunteers at the DN7 food bank, the Isle of Axholme Foodshare Project, Hatfield’s Pre-loved Uniform Bank and the Hygiene Bank Doncaster. Does the hon. Member agree that although their work is amazing, we do not want to see those banks grow on our high streets or even exist in the first place?

[Danny Kruger]

I am grateful for the intervention. I recognise those points and pay tribute to the hon. Member’s food banks too.

Hon. Members have cited some of the facts. It is a fact that the number of parcels handed out by the Trussell Trust doubled in the last Parliament in the light of the covid crisis and the cost of living crisis, but I emphasise that we should not take food bank use as a perfect proxy for poverty, because that data is patchy and affected by the supply of food banks. There is also an important displacement effect. It is not necessarily the case that all the need identified by food banks is new need; that need might formerly have been met by other sources, such as family and friends or other community organisations.

Nevertheless, the profile of food bank use tracks the state of the economy and the level of poverty in our country. We saw it spike during lockdowns, then decline and then spike again with the cost of living crisis. I am afraid that it has not really declined since: 1.4% of households have used a food bank in the last month and 3% in the last year, which are significant numbers.

So what is going on? I echo the point of my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) about the complexity of the causes of food bank use, but we recognise the obvious point that it is ultimately down to household income. The “Hunger in the UK” report points out that the main reasons for people having problems with their household income are difficulties with benefits, as many hon. Members have mentioned; the existence of in-work poverty; and the difficulty of gaining well-paid work, particularly for disabled people and carers.