Oral Answers to Questions

Lee Rowley Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

I have said that, under this benefit, what we sought to do was get more people into work, because that is the best way out of poverty, and that is what we have done. We are helping 1,000 people each and every day into work. We also said that we would make this benefit fair to the taxpayers, who are paying for it, and fair to those claimants, and that is what we are doing.

[Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)]

10. What steps the Government are taking to ensure that the benefits system is able to meet the changing needs of claimants.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Justin Tomlinson)]

This Government are delivering the biggest changes to the welfare system since its inception, creating flexibility to adapt to changing working patterns and offering personalised support.

[Lee Rowley]

I thank the Minister for his response. An increasing number of people in my constituency are self-employed and setting up their own businesses. Will the Minister outline what universal credit is doing to support people who are setting up their own businesses?

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is a real champion of the self-employed community, and I am proudly a former business owner myself. Universal credit is far more flexible to adapt to changing circumstances, particularly for those who are starting up on their career of owning their business.

Pneumoconiosis: Support for Former Miners

Lee Rowley Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered support for former miners with pneumoconiosis.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I thank the Minister for being here to respond to the debate and colleagues for their attendance.

It is a privilege to have secured my first Westminster Hall debate on a subject of interest to many of my constituents and many in former coalmining communities across the UK. Mansfield has a proud coalmining history, which ended very recently—just a few years ago—when the nearby Thoresby colliery closed. For decades, the community was built around the industry, and we still feel many of its effects.

I applied for this debate because, although coalminers’ pneumoconiosis is not a terribly widely known illness, it is prevalent within mining communities and should receive greater attention. I have been contacted by a number of constituents and unions about this issue, which I am keen to raise directly with Ministers. I am asking the Department for Work and Pensions to work with the Department of Health and Social Care to review the diagnostic tools that are used to assess miners for signs for pneumoconiosis.

Coalminers’ pneumoconiosis is an occupational lung disease caused by the inhalation of dust from coalmines. It is often known as “black lung” and it causes thousands of death each year worldwide. Inhaled coal dust progressively builds up in the lungs over long periods, leading to inflammation of the lungs, fibrosis and even necrosis. The most common symptoms of pneumoconiosis are coughing and shortness of breath. The risk is generally higher when people have been exposed to mineral dust in high concentrations and if they have been exposed to coal dust for long periods.

Coughing and shortness of breath can, of course, be symptoms of a wide range of illnesses, which is partly why pneumoconiosis is often overlooked by health professionals and others. Even when a former miner presents to their GP with those symptoms, it is not always picked up straightaway. Most miners would recognise that a cough is inherent—part of the territory of working in those conditions—and many would not consider it a symptom of anything more than their career underground. Many therefore do not come forward early enough, and this is where the problem lies. We need to do more to encourage this conversation.

Many former miners who present with such symptoms are simply referred as out-patients to their local hospitals for standard chest X-rays. They will have had these X-rays regularly throughout their time in the industry and most will have been told that they have a clean bill of health on that basis. The trouble is that traditional two-dimensional X-ray films often do not show enough detail to diagnose pneumoconiosis, especially when the patient is in the early stages of the disease. The tell-tale sign of the disease is nodules in the lungs, which can be as small as l mm or 2 mm in diameter. When using X-rays for diagnosis, it is usually possible to pick up on pneumoconiosis only at a later stage, when large masses of dense fibrosis have developed in the lungs. By that stage, there is usually a notable decrease in lung function—in effect, it is too late.

A successful diagnosis is also less likely because of the time that has passed since the pits closed. The doctor they see now, who examines the X-ray, is less likely to have specialist knowledge of the industry and related illnesses. They are also less likely to have seen this disease before, so are perhaps less likely to spot it.

For the best results and the quickest analysis, a CT scan is the most effective diagnostic tool. CT scans show the lungs in three dimensions, which provides far greater detail and allows for a more accurate diagnosis. For many of us, it is surprising to learn that there is not a regular screening programme in place for former coalminers to pick up cases of pneumoconiosis and other lung conditions. Many former miners received their last X-ray at work. When miners retire or are made redundant, their access to regular X-rays simply stops. Former miners then tend not to receive another until they present to their GP with symptoms such as breathing difficulties or a persistent cough. Many fear that they have cancer, and are given a CT scan only to find that it is in fact pneumoconiosis.

It is important to note that the latency period for pneumoconiosis is about 10 years, but can be as long as 15 to 20 years. The lack of regular screening once a miner leaves that environment and retires is clearly a problem. I am aware of several cases in my constituency of miners who received the all-clear for pneumoconiosis after getting old-fashioned X-rays at work, but were subsequently diagnosed with pneumoconiosis after CT scans revealed evidence of the disease.

[Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. I have personal experience of lung disease in the family. Both of my grandfathers were miners, and some of their lung issues did not come to the fore until at least a decade after they left the pit. I want to emphasise the importance of what he says: we need to ensure that there is support throughout the process and throughout people’s lives.

[Ben Bradley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is a prime example of why it is important that assessment is ongoing and people who used to work down the mines have access to diagnosis and treatment throughout the rest of their lives.

A few years ago, the Union of Democratic Mineworkers decided to run a test case. The UDM paid for five former miners who had recently been made redundant to have CT scans. The men had all received recent occupational X-rays at the colliery, and each had received the all-clear from those scans, but when the five men went for CT scans, two were diagnosed with pneumoconiosis. Interestingly, two of the other three men were diagnosed with other health issues, which had previously been unseen in the X-rays. Four out of five had conditions that required a CT scan to get a diagnosis. Surely it is clear that former mineworkers are at high risk of many different respiratory health problems, and that a CT scan is the most effective tool for diagnosis.

At present, the reality is that without post-retirement screening for pneumoconiosis, and with standard guidance from the DWP and the Department of Health promoting X-rays for testing, many cases are not picked up until it is too late. It is a sad truth that pneumoconiosis is often noted in a patient’s file for the first time when they receive a diagnosis of lung cancer or other advanced respiratory illness. That is clearly unacceptable.

Universal Credit Project Assessment Reviews

Lee Rowley Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to contribute to this important debate. Universal credit is a vital reform for our country and for those who rely on the system to live. Universal credit enables people to get off that system and find the jobs they need to provide for their families and children in the long term.

I have been listening with interest to the debate since it began, and I welcome the Minister’s decision to release the reports to the Work and Pensions Committee. As my right hon. Friend said, there is a balance to be struck between transparency—releasing everything into the public domain, or into the semi-public domain of the Select Committee—and ensuring that people in the forum of implementation can talk with candour, honesty and openness about the challenges that are coming.

By default, a project assessment review—I say this as someone who worked on this kind of thing as a project manager in industry for 15 years—is an assessment of the challenges in a project. It does not necessarily focus on the overall principle, which is very sound in this case. It does not focus on the successes, the targets that have been hit or the achievements that have been made. It focuses, rightly, on the challenges. However, my concern is that the tenor of this debate, and previous such debates that I have attended, suggests that some Members and some others outside the Chamber will not take the reports in that context or spirit. I fear that the focus will be on the challenges as the most terrible and outrageous things ever, and that there will be no recognition of the fact that there is a balance to be struck. I hope that hon. Members will reflect appropriately on that.

I do not understand why a request is being made for project assessment reviews that were carried out in 2012 when, by the common consent of everybody in this House, this innovation has changed dramatically and totally since then. Any project assessment review from 2012 will be completely archaic and irrelevant to any decision on what happens in 2017. That suggests to me that the intention of Opposition Members who are pushing this activity is to embarrass, rather than to be constructive in their criticism.

I noted that the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) stated on at least two separate occasions that universal credit had been acknowledged to be not fit for purpose. I am not aware of anybody on my side of the debate who has acknowledged that. Therefore, I can only assume that the Labour party’s intention is to push an incorrect narrative, which reflects the analysis in articles that have been written in The Guardian and elsewhere, and which does not accurately reflect the changes that have been made.

Let me be clear: I do not stand here today and suggest that universal credit is absolutely perfect. No Government Member is suggesting that. We recognise that in our complicated and difficult benefit system, which has been created over decades, there will be complexities, challenges and problems. I sat here on 18 October and listened to hon. Friends and Opposition Members speak in the first debate on universal credit during my time here. The principle behind universal credit is that we are fixing forward—we are assessing the problems, looking for ways to solve them and putting the solutions in place. That is exactly what the Chancellor did when he made his announcement two weeks ago.

I welcome the decision to release the documents to the Work and Pensions Committee. I hope that people who have an interest in the debate will take the documents in the spirit in which they were intended, although I fear that not everybody will do so. I welcome the Chancellor’s decision to make changes, and I hope that additional changes will be made, if necessary, to move our welfare system on. The system has not worked for decades, and it has kept millions of people on welfare and ensured that they do not go out to work.

I am dealing right now with constituents on legacy benefits who have given up work, or who are about to, because housing benefit does not pay and cannot cope with the kind of variability in their earnings. If universal credit can solve those kinds of problems, which is what I understand it will do and what my jobcentre tells me will be achieved when it is implemented, I welcome it coming to North East Derbyshire and the surrounding area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Onasanya (Peterborough) (Lab)]

On Wednesday 18 October 2017, 80 Members from across the House debated a motion calling for a pause in the roll-out of universal credit. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) said that she was touched by the speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), but we had an opportunity to pause and fix the system then. We had a chance to say, “Hang on a minute. This isn’t really working as we thought it would. Let’s pause it and fix it.” The hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) said we were “fixing forward”. I have no idea what that means. If something is broken, we fix it and then continue.

[Lee Rowley]

I can explain exactly what it means: when we discover a problem, we fix it as we go; we do not throw out the entire system. We are thinking about benefiting people in the long term. Nobody is saying the system is perfect, but the point of fixing forward is to improve as we go, which has been the principle since the beginning of the policy.

[Fiona Onasanya]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I beg to differ. If I had a vehicle that failed its MOT, I would fix it before putting it back on the road. I would not say, “I’ll keep on driving and see what happens.”

The motion in October was passed unanimously—by a vote of 299 to 0. None the less, despite that unanimous motion to pause the roll-out so that it might be fixed, the Government have continued with business as usual, saying, “Nothing’s going wrong. Let’s carry on as we are.” Some of the issues we pointed out have been taken on board, and I am grateful for that, but the system is fundamentally flawed. We have asked for a pause so that it might be fixed. It is even more vital, therefore, that the Government come clean with their assessment of the risks involved and the implementation issues encountered.

Universal Credit Roll-out

Lee Rowley Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to contribute to this important debate.

As is the case for the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin), universal credit is coming to my area in Derbyshire shortly. It will be rolled out to about a quarter of my constituency next month, and according to the current time lines there will be a further roll-out next year. Also like the hon. Lady, I am getting a number of people coming to me concerned about universal credit. However, what concerns me is some of the language used by Labour Members, and their scaremongering. It would be better if the hon. Lady did what Conservative Members are trying to do—assuaging people’s concerns, showing them the opportunities, and showing them all the things that have been put in place to make sure that these roll-outs can be done carefully and considerately.

I came here today with an open mind. I have been in the debate since the beginning. I listened to the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) as she gave a very heartfelt and measured speech, unlike the Leader of the Opposition earlier in the day. Unfortunately, I am confused about what the Opposition seek to achieve. Yesterday, we were talking about pausing and fixing, but today we are talking about pausing. I have been listening to the Opposition expressing cursory agreement with the principles of universal credit, before launching straight into speeches that completely undermined those principles. The principle that people should have the skills to enable them to get on in the workplace by accessing jobs online was immediately undermined by the speech from the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson. She agreed with the argument that we need to ensure that people are prepared for the workplace but rejected the notion that because 70% of workers are paid monthly, we should encourage people to budget on a monthly basis.

I do not agree with many of the Opposition’s arguments, but if Opposition Members are genuine in their wish to convince Conservative Members about those arguments, as I believe many of them are, perhaps the Opposition spokesperson should not seek to undermine the entire principle of universal credit. What she suggests is not a pause, but a delay. Ultimately, the Opposition seek to undermine the system in its entirety—from beginning to end.

I accept that there have been challenges, and I am heartened to hear from Conservative Members about how those challenges have been partially fixed. When universal credit comes to my area, I will be watching it like a hawk, along with my local citizens’ advice bureau, and if there are problems, I will be the first person on the line to the Minister. There are challenges, and this is a test and learn process, but ultimately we have a choice between continuing with a system that will improve things for people, or sticking with the problems that we have today.