Local Housing Allowance and Homelessness
Liam Byrne Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Eddie Hughes
It would not have been the Mayor’s first priority if it were not a substantial problem, as the hon. Gentleman rightly sets out. We all recognise that it is a substantial problem in the west midlands, but the Mayor is certainly putting all he can into tackling it. He is one man with limited powers, but often a Mayor’s power is a subtle one—the power to convene. One of the great things that he did was get a lot of housing associations across the region to work together to decide where they would be best placed to develop land, build new houses and so on, and engage them with the idea of tackling homelessness.
Liam Byrne
I am grateful; I will be very brief. When the Mayor came to office, Her Majesty’s Government promised £211 million to build new homes. Parliamentary questions show that £209 million has not been paid out. Why has the Mayor not secured that cash in hand?
Eddie Hughes
I am disappointed to say that I cannot speak on behalf of the Mayor, but I will keep my eye on my phone today, just in case I become the Housing Minister—in which case I will be in a position to answer the right hon. Gentleman’s question.
Eddie Hughes
I completely accept the right hon. Gentleman’s case about the money that has been promised. He and I spoke at a recent event in Parliament with Midland Heart, and I completely back his case for ensuring that we secure that funding.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Bailey.
A stone’s throw from St Philip’s Cathedral, on the steps of the House of Fraser, in the heart of Birmingham’s business district, there is a shrine. It is marked with flowers, photos and expressions of feelings. Here, in the wealthiest quarter of the second city of the fifth richest country on Earth is the latest memorial to a man who died homeless on the streets. “You are unforgettable, Miguel”, reads one dedication. That is right. It is right that we remember this man in our city. It is right that we hear and remember his name in the House of Commons. And it is right that we remember the names of the 90 people, along with him, who have died homeless in our city since 2013, many on the streets of the second city in this country.
Those people are the citizens who we collectively have failed, so I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma). I personally believe that we should be debating every day the deadly doctrine behind this death toll, because be under no illusion: this is now a moral emergency and it requires from the new Prime Minister today an emergency response.
In Birmingham, rough sleeping has now risen by almost 1,000% since 2010, yet that is just the visible crisis that we can see. The invisible crisis is just as bad. In total, 20,000 people—the size of a small town—along with 5,000 children are now lodged in temporary accommodation. They are cursed to move every couple of weeks, when it is time to rebook. Be under no illusion: these are futures that are now being sacrificed, as every single one of us who has had to support children taking their GCSEs from a Travelodge will now know.
Andrew Selous
The right hon. Gentleman is making a very powerful and moving speech. Of the 90 people who died, is he aware how many had drug issues at the same time? I absolutely accept that decent housing helps people to get over drug problems, but does he know the proportion that were involved with drugs?
Liam Byrne
We do not know, because obviously there is not a safeguarding adult review for everyone who dies. There should be a safeguarding adult review for everyone who dies, because my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall made a sensible but crucial point: that local housing allowance is absolutely part of this crisis. He is absolutely right. The average LHA in Birmingham, which is £132 a week, covers only two thirds of the cost of a median home in our city. However, it would be delusional to pretend, as our current Mayor has tried to do, that local housing allowance is somehow the nub of the changes we need to make.
The truth is that to fund tax cuts for the lucky, this Government have reduced social insurance for the unlucky to a clutch of shreds and patches. This Government have now cut back so hard that social insurance in this country is now in systems failure. I know the Minister will say that it was a hard choice, but the truth is that it was the wrong choice. The tax cuts that have been handed out to British corporates now total £110 billion. Overwhelmingly, that money has either gone back to shareholders or is lodged in those corporates’ bank accounts. It was the wrong choice, because rather than strengthen the hand that helps, this Government chose to feather the nests of those who already had plenty.
I will illustrate the systems failure that we now face. From all my interviews with homeless citizens in Birmingham through the long nights, what has become clear is that three systems are needed: a benefits system, a health system and a housing system. All three are now in crisis. Mental health caseloads in our region are now rising four times faster than funding. Addiction services in our region have been cut back by between 12% and 20%. The University of Birmingham has concluded that the health services provided to homeless people are now so bad that those people are actually being denied access to basic health services. Housing benefit hands cash to the landlords of houses in multiple occupation in a way that is completely unregulated, with no obligation on them to provide much-needed counselling or support. There is no regulation of private landlords worthy of its name, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) said, the conditions that we now contend with are absolutely disgraceful.
We are building affordable homes in our region so slowly that it will take us until the 2050s to clear the council waiting lists across the region, which now number well over 50,000. Just to add insult to injury, although the Government promised £211 million to build new homes, according to parliamentary questions they have handed out only £2 million. That means that £209 million is left in the Treasury when we have people dying on the streets of our city.
Matt Western
My right hon. Friend is making a powerful and important speech. Does he agree that there are two issues: that the Government are hiding behind statistics about housebuilding that are inflated through permitted development rights and in other ways, and that we are seeing an increase in HMOs? The provision is completely inappropriate for the housing and social needs in our communities.
Liam Byrne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are hiding behind definitions of “affordable housing” that are frankly meaningless in the real world. What we need to be doing is building houses for social rent—what used to be called council houses. Let us again build council houses that communities can be proud of.
This systems failure is now killing people, as should be obvious to all of us in this House. I pay tribute to the incredible coalition of kindness in my city that is trying to turn the tide, particularly Councillor Sharon Thompson, who knows a thing or two about homelessness, Jean Templeton, who is chairing the Mayor’s taskforce, and the 14 or 15 different outreach groups that make sure that the homeless people in our city are not actually starving on the streets. However, what those people need is a Government who are on their side, and are prepared to make sure that the Mayor does not spend £1 million on secret consultants, but puts that money into ensuring that there are more emergency shelter places than there are rough sleepers.
We need a hard duty on all public services to act together and collaborate to prevent homelessness from happening in the first place. We need a region-wide private landlord licensing scheme. We need to expand accommodation in refuges. We need a universal offer on all public services for vulnerable people. We need to double the pace of council house building. We need to end the Vagrancy Act 1824 and reintroduce housing benefit for the under-25s. We need to end the lunacy of the “no recourse to public funds” rule, and we need an urgent review of the exempt accommodation rules.
George Dawson, the founder of the civic gospel in our city—the precursor of municipal socialism—once asked his congregation,
“Are you prepared to vindicate the enormous wealth of some men, side by side with the extreme poverty?”
I am not prepared to live in a city where we have cranes in the sky, but homeless people dying in the doorways. We need an emergency response to this moral emergency, and I hope the Minister will drive it through with today’s new Prime Minister.
Liam Byrne
It was not so long ago that, at about 2 am or 3 am, I met a man who goes by the name of “Ginge”. He sleeps in the Barclays bank lobby at Colmore Row, and has schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Is he supposed to find the money to cover the entire rent of a home that he could move into?
Will Quince
The right hon. Gentleman refers to rough sleeping. Often people lump homelessness and rough sleeping together, but there is a huge difference between them. The Government are taking considerable action on rough sleeping. I will happily meet him, or arrange for the Housing and Homelessness Minister to do so, in order to discuss it in more detail. I know that he cares hugely about this issue, and contributes to debates on it. I share his passion. The Government are taking significant action, but he is right that we must look at LHA rates. I hope I made it clear at the outset that I am doing that with the Secretary of State, and ahead of the next fiscal event we are looking very closely at what more we can do.
Between 2000 and 2010, housing benefit expenditure rose by more than half in real terms, reaching £25 billion in today’s prices. Left unreformed, by 2014-15 housing benefit would have reached £29 billion. That was clearly not sustainable. The measure to freeze local housing allowance rates for four years from April 2016 built on reforms introduced in the previous Parliament, which saved £6 billion in total by 2015-16. Savings from freezing LHA are estimated to be around £655 million for Great Britain over the four-year period of the measure. Our reforms are part of our wider goal to move people from welfare and into work.
We recognise that some places have seen higher increases in rents than others, and have made provision to help people further in those areas, as the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) mentioned. We have used a proportion of the savings from the freeze to reduce the gap between frozen LHA rates and the 30th percentile reference rent in the areas of greatest rental growth. Initially, 30% of the savings from the freeze were used for targeted affordability funding, but we invested an additional £125 million in that funding for the final two years of the freeze. That was based on 50% of the savings rather than 30%.
Will Quince
Not necessarily. They have been available since 2011, and more than £1 billion has been made available to local authorities. Quite intentionally, we allow local authorities discretion on how it is used, and they use that money and use it well. There is an underspend in a number of local authorities, but it is a tool used by many local authorities to prevent homelessness. Where individuals or families are at risk of homelessness, local authorities will use DHPs to protect tenancies.
The hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) has raised the point about broad rental market areas a few times; I note his concerns about the broad rental market area boundaries in Stroud and the wider area. As with all policies, we keep that under review, and I am looking at this very closely. I hope the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that any reform of the policy would be a significant and complex undertaking, given that there are 192 broad market rental areas across England, Scotland and Wales. We should be aware that any changes to the BMRAs and their boundaries are likely to create both winners and losers, so I have to give very careful consideration to the potential impact.
The hon. Gentleman also raised a point about “No DSS”—landlords not renting to those in receipt of benefits. The Prime Minister and No. 10 have taken that issue very seriously. I attended a recent roundtable with a number of stakeholders and we are working very closely with the Residential Landlords Association. Part of the issue is mortgage lenders and insurers. More and more mortgage lenders are now reducing or removing their restrictions on renting to those in the receipt of benefits—Metro Bank is the most recent addition to that list. There are a few still to go, and we still have to tackle the insurance market, as some insurance policies still do not allow people who buy to let to rent to those in receipt of benefits. We are looking at that area closely and are working with key stakeholders, because we very much want to fix this—to break the myth and challenge the ignorant belief that those in receipt of benefits are riskier tenants than those who are not, because it is absolutely untrue.
The hon. Member for Ealing, Southall also raised temporary accommodation. With other Government Departments, we are working to assess what more can be done to address the number of people in temporary accommodation. Time spent in temporary accommodation means that people are getting help and ensures that no family is without a roof over their heads. The Government have targeted funding streams focused on reducing the number of households in temporary accommodation as part of our £1.2 billion spending plan.
Liam Byrne
While the Minister is being constructive and generous, and before he finishes, could he undertake to try to secure an explanation as to why the £211 million promised to the West Midlands Combined Authority when it was set up has not yet been paid over? Could he do that before the reshuffle?
Will Quince
The right hon. Gentleman tempts me down a road that is wholly outside my remit. That is a question for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and my counterpart or the Housing Minister in that Department. The right hon. Gentleman knows that he has tools in his arsenal—he can write to that Minister or secure an Adjournment debate, or he could catch the Minister around the Estate later on to ask that question. If I see him, I will raise it, but I think the right hon. Gentleman might be able to find his own salvation by raising it personally with the relevant Minister.
Oral Answers to Questions
Liam Byrne Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Amber Rudd
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising this important issue; we have addressed concerns about the five-week wait by putting in additional measures. One measure now in place relates to the receipt of legacy housing benefit over two weeks. All universal credit applicants can get an advance, and we now find that 60% of applicants take up that opportunity. That obviates the need for concerns about the early amount of cash that people get.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
I spent most of Saturday collecting a third of a tonne of food for our local food banks as part of our Winter of Compassion campaign. It is already clear that we will have to run such food-bank collections all year round. When will the Secretary of State join us in Birmingham to help collect the food needed to end the hunger that her policies are causing?
Amber Rudd
I totally reject the right hon. Gentleman’s assumption and comments. The issue with food banks is partly that the early roll-out of universal credit had some difficulties. We now know that 85% of applications for universal credit are paid on time and, as I said in answer to an earlier question, 60% of people get advances. I hope that that combination will enable people to access the cash that they need straight away.
Department for Education
Liam Byrne Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
A few hours ago, our city bid goodbye to Kane Walker. He was a young man who died on our streets in the cold of January. A man gone; a man who should still be with us; a man who, together, we have failed to save. And yet Kane Walker was not the only homeless man to have died in Birmingham. More than 70 homeless people have died on the streets of our city over the past four years. That is why I say to the Minister that the core of the debate today is not numbers or statistics but the moral emergency of homelessness that is now out of control because the safety net has been shredded around people who are only a couple of twists of fate away from the pavement.
When the National Insurance Act 1946 was passing through Parliament, creating the Minister’s Department, Clem Attlee himself moved the Second Reading. He was absolutely determined to see a social security system in this country that would deliver freedom from fear of want. He wanted to slay the five giants of injustice that Beveridge identified back in 1944. However, look at the evil giant of unemployment today. In Birmingham, youth unemployment has shot up by 23% over the past year, with 15,000 more young people now out of work. When Beveridge launched his report, he talked about the giant of disease. Today, disability is knocking more people into poverty than ever before, and yet 33,000 people in our region have been stripped of their right to PIP over the past few years, plunging them into a poverty from which it is difficult to recover.
When Beveridge talked about his five giants, he talked about freedom from want, and yet nearly 60,000 people in our region last year had to rely on food banks—a third of them children—which is a rise of nearly a third over the past few years. The giants of injustice that Beveridge identified now hunt and haunt us on the streets because of the collapsing safety net, and it is the crisis of universal credit that is at the core of the problem. I was amazed to discover in an answer to a written question yesterday that the Mayor of the West Midlands has not written to the Government once in the past year to express concerns about universal credit.
In my last minute I will rattle through the many different problems that Birmingham MPs have identified. There is wholesale confusion about eligibility for housing benefit and universal credit. Huge variations exist in the deductions made for advance payments. The self-employed experience long waits for correct payments. Sanctions are issued against those who are too ill to attend interviews. Those who challenge the inappropriate use of sanctions face huge benefit delays of up to five months. Constituents are forced to travel across the city to access IT to fill out online forms. Constituents with mental health problems are denied the right to face-to-face support. There are process delays and confusion about getting link codes to connect to childcare components, and the same applies to entitlements. There is total confusion about those moving from non-UC areas into UC areas. More confusion exists around eligibility for free prescriptions. Finally, there is complete confusion for our EU neighbours who have to pass the habitual residence test once again. In one of the richest countries on earth and in a city like mine, how can it be that homelessness has spiralled by 1,000% in five years? The system is in crisis, and this Government need to put compassion back into the system where it belongs.
Justin Tomlinson
The hon. Lady made a powerful point about Antony, and the relevant Minister will contact her to discuss it further.
The key for us is partnership working. On domestic abuse, we are rightly working with Women’s Aid and Refuge to help with training and guidance, and to strengthen our ability to identify, refer and support. We are working with organisations such as Barnardo’s and the Children’s Society to strengthen opportunities for care leavers. Ex-offenders are working closely with the Ministry of Justice to make sure that their universal credit claim is in place before they leave prison so that no people are falling between the gaps. On homelessness and rough sleeping, we are working with a number of organisations. Only today, Crisis said that over the past two years the Government have been showing drive and energy.
Justin Tomlinson
I am sorry but I do not have time to give way. The duty to refer change that was brought in in October will be addressing the points that the right hon. Gentleman made.
This party is committed to supporting the most vulnerable. Household incomes have never been higher. Income inequality has fallen. Risks of low income and material deprivation for children and pensioners have never been lower. The incomes of the poorest fifth are up by £400 in real terms, with 300,000 fewer children in absolute poverty. We are now spending £50 billion a year in supporting those with disabilities and long-term health conditions—£4 billion higher than in 2010. We, as a Government, are determined to help the most vulnerable. This is what drives me and many Members across the House who are here today. This Government are determined to get it right for the people who need the most support.
Oral Answers to Questions
Liam Byrne Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Amber Rudd
I would ask the hon. Lady to come back to me, if she will, and to have a conversation about this. It is absolutely true that when universal credit initially started, the payments were not getting out in time and advance payments were not available. That is now being changed, and claimants are universally noticing a distinct difference.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
If the Secretary of State wants some empirical evidence, let me give her some: 55,410 people are on universal credit in Birmingham and food bank demand has increased by two thirds. Birmingham MPs, drawing upon our surgery experiences, have highlighted 13 different problems with the process. The Birmingham Mail has highlighted benefit delays of months on end. Unemployment in the inner city is not going down; it is actually going up. Rather than consider any further roll-out of managed migration, let us stop and fix the problems first before more families are plunged into poverty, homelessness and hunger.
Amber Rudd
I was in Birmingham last Friday, when I went to the Yardley jobcentre and saw for myself the remarkable work being done and some projects that are reaching people who had never been reached before. Under the legacy benefits, the second named person in a household who was not earning was basically ignored for years and was not invited to participate. We now have a system whereby the people who were ignored for years under the right hon. Gentleman’s Government’s system are being obliged to engage. I am facing the facts, so perhaps he should face them as well. He can have his own views, but he cannot have his own facts.
Oral Answers to Questions
Liam Byrne Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
Birmingham’s food banks have had their busiest year ever—70% of their demand is due to universal credit. Can I give the Secretary of State a choice? Either pause this crazy roll-out or come to Birmingham and help us to raise the tonne and a half of food we need each month to replenish the empty food bank stock.
Alok Sharma
We have had this discussion in a number of questions now. Can I be absolutely clear? The right hon. Gentleman should look at the report produced by the all-party parliamentary group on hunger, which said that the reasons for food bank usage are complex and myriad, and cannot be put down to any single reason.
The Secretary of State’s Handling of Universal Credit
Liam Byrne Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will remember that back in 2013 I warned that this was not a benefit that was ready for wide-scale roll-out. In my Birmingham constituency, we have the DWP telling my constituents that they cannot apply for housing credit through universal credit. They get sent to Birmingham City Council, which then sends them back to the DWP. There is still a level of chaos on the frontline that meant that one of my constituents told me that not only could they not afford to eat, she could not afford to put socks on her children’s feet.
Welfare
Liam Byrne Excerpts(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Stephen Crabb
Through her work in this place my hon. Friend is a powerful voice on behalf of many vulnerable groups. Epilepsy is an issue close to her heart and those of other hon. Members, and I look forward to discussing with them how we can better address that issue and support people with epilepsy.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
Last year, the Government tried to cut tax credits and that plan failed. This year, they tried to cut disability benefits and that plan failed. The House wants to know who is next. Let us be clear: has the Chancellor of the Exchequer told the right hon. Gentleman that his budget is now set to rise by £4.2 billion? It is a simple question—yes or no?
Stephen Crabb
Spending on welfare is rising, so, yes, the budget is increasing. I repeat that the Government have not got plans for further welfare savings beyond those that Parliament has already voted for, and we will focus on implementing them.
Universal Credit
Liam Byrne Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): Will the Secretary of State confirm that the facts in the National Audit Office report about universal credit, set out this morning, are true?
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
I start by reminding the House of the importance of universal credit. Universal credit is a major and challenging reform to transform—
Mr Duncan Smith
We would never accuse the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) of being less than cheeky—or, for that matter, of ever attempting to spin anything—but I stand by your judgment, Mr Speaker: a cheeky spinner he is.
Universal credit, I remind everybody, is an important and challenging programme to provide major benefits for claimants and the country as a whole, with a clear financial set of incentives that will get an estimated 300,000 additional people into work and make 3 million claimants better off. However, all major programmes involve difficult issues and difficult decisions, week in, week out. In 2011, I added to the programme and the original schedule—as the right hon. Gentleman knows, because we saw each other and I told him about this—the need for a pathfinder, which I said would start rolling out in April.
I added that provision because I was concerned that we needed to ensure that we tested the IT throughout. By the way, I have done that for every programme—from disability living allowance to the personal independence payment, and everything else. We need to make sure that we are right, and I was concerned that the existing programme was not quite right.
In the summer of 2012—or rather, before that, in early 2012—I instigated an independent review because I was concerned that the leadership of the programme was not focusing in the way that it needed to on delivering the programme as it had been originally set out. The internal report showed me quite categorically that my concerns were right: the leadership was struggling, a culture of good news was prevailing and intervention was required. That was very much backed up by the National Audit Office.
As a result, I changed the leadership team in October 2012 and brought in the brilliant Philip Langsdale, who had successfully delivered Heathrow terminal 2. He was one of the great IT brains in the UK. He made it very clear that the programme was deliverable, and that it needed to be reset so that it could be delivered on time and on budget. When he sadly died, I went to my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General and asked for David Pitchford—in the short term, while we looked for a replacement—who headed the Major Projects Authority in January. My right hon. Friend agreed to that, and the Cabinet Office helped us to put together the reset programme that had been started by Philip Langsdale.
I accepted the findings of the report absolutely in review, and have made certain that in the last few months we have been working to deliver the programme. It has been handed over to Howard Shiplee, who has now taken over. He wrote recently in The Daily Telegraph that he believed the programme was deliverable on time and on budget. The important thing about Howard Shiplee is that he is the man who delivered the Olympic park under budget and early. His clear indication is that he believes that we might do similar things here. He has made that very clear.
I should also like to remind the House that universal credit is not just succeeding but progressing. It is progressing because we have already started to roll out the pathfinders. I was in front of the Select Committee in July, when I explained that those pathfinders were already teaching us some important lessons. We are expanding those into six new jobcentres and dealing with them. Also, from October, around 100 jobcentres a month will begin using the claimant commitment with new jobseekers. That commitment will act as a contract between the jobseeker and the state. We are already seeing that this is driving people into work. Universal credit is not just about IT. It is massively about cultural change to get people back to work and to ensure that those who do go to work, particularly the poorest, benefit the most.
The NAO concludes on the programme:
“It is entirely feasible that it goes on to achieve considerable benefits to society”.
Every recommendation that the NAO has made in the report has already been made. The key lesson that I take is simply this. The previous Government crashed one IT programme after another, and no Minister ever intervened to change them early so that they delivered on time. We are not doing that. I have taken action on this particular programme. This programme will deliver on time and will deliver within budget.
Mr Byrne
Our bible, “Erskine May”, states clearly on page 201 that Ministers must give accurate and truthful information to the House,
“correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity”.
On 5 March this year, the Secretary of State told my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) that
“the implementation of universal credit…is proceeding exactly in accordance with plans.”—[Official Report, 5 March 2013; Vol. 559, c. 827.]
We now learn from the National Audit Office that the month before that statement was made, the Department began a 13-week reset programme. Four weeks earlier, the Department reduced case-load forecasts for next April by 80%. Five months before, the Department had largely stopped developing systems for national roll-out. It is inconceivable that the Secretary of State did not know about that, because the reset programme was organised by the man he personally brought into the Department. Furthermore, in a letter to me last month, the Secretary of State told me:
“I closely monitor the progress of this ground-breaking programme”.
The NAO must agree its facts with the Department. Paragraph 13 of the NAO’s report states:
“The Department is now reconsidering the timing of full rollout”,
and that plans have changed three times in four months. This morning, the National Audit Office told me that the NAO and the permanent secretary have agreed that statement, yet it flatly contradicts what the Secretary of State has said to this House. To hit his deadline at the end of 2017, he must now move more than 200,000 people a month on to the new system—the population of a city the size of Derby.
The Public Accounts Committee will no doubt consider next week the changed timetable, the IT shambles and the write-offs, the lack of counter-fraud measures, the shambolic financial control and the ineffective oversight. What I want to say to the Secretary of State, however, is this: he has let this House form a picture of universal credit, which the nation’s auditors say is wrong. The most charitable explanation is that he has lost control of the programme and lost control of the Department. He must now correct the record. He must now apologise to the House and convene cross-party talks to get this project back on track. The quiet man must not become the cover-up man.
Mr Duncan Smith
I must say that that was suitably pathetic, coming from the right hon. Gentleman. He knows very well—he has been in to see me on a number of occasions; I would like to say what he said, but it was unmemorable in every single case—that the reality is that this programme, as I said at the beginning, will be delivered in time and in budget. There is no major change to that. What I have done, and I did early on, is something that the right hon. Gentleman never did and Labour has never done. When I got concerned about the delivery schedule, I made changes and intervened, bringing in the right people to do that. I stand by that, and I will not take lessons from the right hon. Gentleman and his party. Let me just remind them of what happened when they were in office.
The benefit processing replacement programme was scrapped at a cost of £140 million, and no one apologised. The Child Support Agency wasted £500 million before the programme was scrapped—no Minister intervened; no Minister changed it. The Labour Government wasted £3 billion on benefit overpayments. The tax credit system was delivered at one go on one day and it collapsed, costing billions, with £30 billion lost in fraud. The programme that delivered the health service IT changes cost £13 billion when it was cancelled with no apologies.
The lesson that I have learned and that we Government Members learn, in conjunction with my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, is that we check these programmes while they are progressing and if changes need to be made, we make them. In making those changes, I stand by the fact that the purpose is to deliver this programme—on time and on budget, which is something that the Opposition never did in the whole of their time in government.
Disabled People
Liam Byrne Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House believes that the Government should publish, by October 2013, a cumulative impact assessment of the changes made by the Government that affect disabled people.
Five of my right hon. Friends and I have tabled the words of today’s motion, but the words in our argument were inspired by others and are supported by tens of thousands of people up and down this country.
This afternoon, I pay tribute to Pat Onions and her fellow campaigners, to the authors of the WOW petition and to the thousands of people up and down the country who have supported their campaign and will follow this debate closely. They want to send a message to the Government—the message that we have incorporated in our motion. Today we ask hon. Members on both sides of the House to support us and make sure that the message is heard, not just in the Department for Work and Pensions but in Her Majesty’s Treasury, as clearly as possible.
The Opposition believe that how the Government have systematically ignored and tried to disguise and bury the impact of their reforms on disabled people is a national scandal. Reform that should have been approached with care and finesse has been approached with all the finesse of a bull in a china shop. When people have cried about the combined pain of the changes, the Government’s response has been that of the three wise monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Frankly, we demand better of Her Majesty’s Government.
Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is making his position clear with great power and pugnaciousness. Is it not already clear that the chaos around the work capability assessment and the implementation of the personal independence payment is widespread? In the House last year, I cited dozens of cases of disabled people from my constituency who had awful experiences of revolving assessments. Is it not appalling that so many people are going through that process when almost a third of people are winning their appeals at tribunals?
Mr Byrne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I shall come back to his point slightly later.
The Opposition believe in reform of the benefits system and of support and care for disabled people, but we also believe in one thing more—that fewer, not more, disabled people should live in poverty in this country. During our time in office, we drove down the number of disabled people living in poverty from 40% to about a quarter. That was not an accident; it was because of the most ambitious series of reforms to help disabled people that we have ever seen.
There was the appointment of the first ever Minister for Disabled People, the Disability Discrimination Act and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. There were great programmes such as Supporting People, the new deal for disabled people, new strategies for disabled children and Valuing People, and, crucially, there was the Equality Act 2010. Poverty in disabled households fell under Labour and now that progress has gone into reverse.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
There is a fundamental difference in how the reforms have been heralded in the media, too. When we were in government and we put those reforms through, we did so in a careful and considered way, whereas because of how the current reforms are being pushed through, the media are characterising people in certain ways. A constituent who is on disability benefit for severe mental health problems came to my office the other day with his head in his hands saying, “I know I’m scum. That’s what I read every day. That’s the way I feel I’m treated.”
Mr Byrne
The whole House will have heard my hon. Friend’s powerful story. I am afraid that too often in the past three years we have had not the politics of national unity, but the politics of dividing lines—dividing lines after dividing lines. When has this country ever achieved great things when we have sought to divide one from another? We have only ever achieved great things in this country when we have pulled together, but I am afraid that that is not the policy of reform we see from this Government.
Today we have one third of disabled citizens in our country living in poverty. That proportion has increased every single year this coalition Government have been in power. That is a disgrace, and it is only surpassed by the Government’s attempts to make it worse.
Today I want to set out the great pressures that now confront disabled people and ask, in the words of our motion, that the Government, for the first time, put together
“a cumulative impact assessment of the changes”,
because the Secretary of State has an important duty to fulfil later this year. He has a duty before the autumn statement to set before the Chancellor of the Exchequer the combined concerted impact of the changes he is prosecuting on disabled people. These changes are big and they are well known. They affect the roof over people’s heads, the cash they receive, the care they enjoy, the help for their children and the help for their carers, and, of course, the systems that are currently failing to give disabled people the chance to lift themselves out of poverty by actually going to work.
Let me start with an issue that I know will be much in the news today: the hated bedroom tax. Two thirds of people hit by this tax are disabled. We know that council housing in this country is allocated according to need, and very often disabled people are given accommodation that is suited to their need. They may have a room that is available for a carer or for equipment, but the accommodation they were given was allocated according to need. Now disabled people face a tax on that spare room. Disabled people now face the distress of debt, being torn from their neighbours, and cut off from help very often if they are on disability living allowance. This is a cruel and unusual punishment meted out to the most vulnerable in our society, and this Government should drop it, and drop it now.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Government knew when they first introduced this tax that it would have this disproportionate and devastating effect on disabled people? Originally they had hoped to exempt them from the tax, but when they worked out how many would be affected, they simply buried their principles in the interests of expediency.
Mr Byrne
That evidence is now becoming well known, and we have had more evidence circulated by great organisations, such as Carers UK today, about the impact this tax is now having on some of the most vulnerable people in our community, including hundreds in the Minister’s constituency.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Byrne
In a moment. Perhaps when the Minister intervenes he can justify what Carers UK found:
“Three quarters (75%) of carers having to pay the ‘bedroom tax’ are being forced to cut back on essential spending on food, electricity and heating.”
Will the Minister justify that to the House?
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Byrne
In a moment. What is the Minister going to say to councils up and down the country surveyed by Channel 4 for tonight’s broadcast showing that one third of councils are having to deny help to disabled people because the provision of the discretionary housing payment fund is, frankly, insufficient? What is he going to say to those councils and what is he going to say to those disabled people in his own constituency?
Mr Byrne
I will give way to the Secretary of State in a moment, but first I want him to respond to this scenario. His own figures show that 660,000 people will be hit by this hated tax. He said when he came to the House that this would save £490 million. Let us assume that 50% of the people who move go into the private rented sector. That is going to cost his Department an extra £25 a week each. Let us assume the rest get another form of social housing. Every single move costs a registered social landlord £850. Then there is the cost of arrears, which RSLs say will double. Then there is £160 million-worth of discretionary housing payment on top. The truth is that if 40% of people move, this could well cost our country £580 million, which is £100 million more than the Secretary of State promised to save. What is his analysis of that? Does he now admit this will cost more than it saves?
Mr Duncan Smith
The right hon. Gentleman’s leader said categorically, in terms, that Labour would not reverse the spare room subsidy. [Interruption.] Yes, he has, in an interview. Now, however, the Leader of the Opposition’s spokesman is standing at the Dispatch Box saying Labour will reverse this. That is a commitment to spend £1 billion over two years, rolling out further down the road. That is a spending commitment.
Mr Byrne
The Secretary of State has just refused to deny that this iniquitous policy is going to cost £100 million more than it saves. If he wants to refute that, why is he refusing to give our noble Friends in the other place the detailed model his Department used in order to assess this and come to the conclusion it was going to save £490 million? If he wants to have an argument about whether this does indeed cost more than it saves, he should provide that detailed analysis and those figures.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
My right hon. Friend is making a crucial point about the cost of the bedroom tax, and I can provide him with some figures from Cardiff council. Since 1 April there are now 1,176 people in arrears and the council estimates that 900 of them have never been in arrears before. That is going to cost it £175,000 in additional costs, and its arrears bill has risen to £1.2 million, so the idea that this is going to save money is complete fantasy.
Mr Byrne
What is interesting about the Secretary of State’s response is that he cannot defend his Department’s failure, and he cannot defend his own failure of leadership in not giving us a cumulative impact assessment of these cuts because he fears what that will show. He fears it will show that this bedroom tax will cost more than it saves—and it is just one of a number of changes now coming together to hit disabled people, and hit them hard.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree on these two points? First, this dreadful tax is going to cost more than it saves. It is hitting 2,600 households in my constituency, and City West Housing is expecting arrears of at least £1 million this year. Even worse than that is the effect on choice and dignity: week in and week out, I am now seeing cases in which disabled people have to explain why they cannot sleep in the same bedroom as their carers. They are being assessed on the point of “Why can you not sleep in the same bedroom?” Last week I had a letter about some constituents which stated, “We see no reason why you cannot sleep in the same bedroom.” Case studies that Carers UK has provided to Members today, however, explain why for people with disabilities there is very often a really good reason why the carer cannot sleep in the same room or the same bed as the person they are caring for.
Mr Byrne
Absolutely, and that is why the Secretary of State must produce the impact assessment. All of us are now meeting people who are under such pressure that they are creating more cost elsewhere in the system. I will probably remember for ever the man I met recently in Redcar. The great Anna Turley introduced us, and this is what was said: “Yes, he has a spare room, and do you know what he puts in it? He puts equipment to help him with renal failure.” Now, because he is having to move, that opportunity for home care is disappearing, and the NHS is saying to him “We’re going to have to take you to and from hospital in an ambulance every single day.” That is not a cost saving for the NHS. That is a new cost. It is a straight cost jump from a failure of policy from this Government.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I just wish to get this clear, so that there is no uncertainty: it is now the policy of a future Labour Government to reverse the bedroom tax. I, like the Secretary of State, was under the impression that the Leader of the Opposition had said that that was not the case. So will the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) provide clarification? Will the Labour party, if elected, abolish the bedroom tax?
Mr Speaker
Order. These points must be allowed to come out in debate, and right hon. and hon. Members can speak on their feet but not from their seats.
Mr Speaker
Order. We must proceed, on both sides, according to established rules of debate, which include taking interventions or choosing not to do so. A Member cannot intervene, however strongly he or she feels, if the person who has the Floor declines to give way.
Mr Byrne
I will give way to the Secretary of State in a moment, because I have a number of other points I want him to answer. The whole House would wish that he, and not the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), was answering the debate, because it is his failure of leadership at the Department for Work and Pensions that means that disabled people in this country are in such trouble today.
Let me deal with the cash commitments that we need to move on to. The Secretary of State needs to listen to this, because he cannot pursue this agenda of denial right the way through this afternoon; the power of hon. Members’ contributions demands to be listened to. Let us just consider contributory employment and support allowance, a benefit that people have paid into for years. The Conservative party and, in particular, the Secretary of State, have never believed in the principle of contributory benefits. By the end of this Parliament, such benefits will be no more than a rounding error; 280,000 former workers will by 2014 have completely lost their entitlement to support worth £100 a week—thank heavens we won an exemption for cancer patients. The truth is that those with mental health conditions and stroke sufferers will be very hard hit by this change.
Let us then consider the idea that disability living allowance should be abolished and replaced by the personal independence payment. We believe that reform is important, and we welcome the Secretary of State’s more sensible roll-out plan, but surely it is wrong to take away someone’s DLA without even a passing glance at whether the removal of that benefit will push someone out of work, push them into the NHS or cause a carer to have to give up a job. We are talking about important safeguards that should have been written into the reform of DLA. And we now have the lunacy of a Government forced to consult on issues such as the 20-metre rule after—not before—they introduce the regulations, because they could not organise things properly. It is an utter shambles.
We welcome the idea of strong social care. I wish to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) for the work that she has done and the way in which she has influenced the definition of well-being in the Care Bill, which is passing through the other place. DWP Ministers must know that one third of social care users are disabled adults, and we must avoid changes that take that system backwards rather than forwards.
There will be other changes that affect carers and children. Carers UK tells us that 3 million carers have had to give up work; one in five carers have seen their work badly affected by caring; and four out of 10 fall into debt. Yet, according to the Government’s own figures, botched reform to DLA could see another 10,000 carers lose support. Parents of disabled children will suffer, too. Parents of 100,000 disabled children will suffer from plans for universal credit. I understand from the Secretary of State’s performance before the Select Committee this morning that universal credit is now, after half a billion pounds-worth of spending, going to appear in the grand total of 10 jobcentres from October, which is about 1% of jobcentres. That is a tremendous success for the Secretary of State, topped only by his success in giving us a Work programme that is worse than doing nothing.
Families with disabled children currently receive an extra £54 per week from child tax credit, but that will be reduced by half when universal credit is introduced, which means a loss of about £1,400 a year for a family with a disabled child—or £22,000 over the course of a lifetime. The Prime Minister has told the House that
“we are not cutting benefits for disabled children.”—[Official Report, 14 December 2011; Vol. 537, c. 793.]
I think Channel 4 FactCheck got it right when it said that
“the dial points pretty firmly to fiction on this one”.
The tragedy is that so many disabled people want to work, want to get themselves out of poverty, and the Government will not help. A single person on disability benefits will be under the poverty line by about £600 a year. Even three hours’ work a week lifts a disabled person above the poverty line, and 30 hours’ work a week lifts them above the poverty line by about £5,000 a year. At the moment the situation is so chaotic that someone going along to a work capability assessment is eight times more likely to end up in a tribunal than in a job. As for the Work programme, words simply fail me. It took some doing, but the Government did it: they have produced a Work programme that is three times worse than doing nothing—and that is on their own figures.
Last year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer found the money to hand out a very nice tax cut—a very large tax cut—to some of Britain’s richest citizens. So this year we want to know: what is the Secretary of State going to ask the Chancellor for on behalf of disabled people? We think we should help him get the pitch right. The only way he can get that down accurately is by bringing forward a cumulative impact assessment of the changes now hitting disabled people. How else will he know what to ask for? How many people are losing their homes? How many are losing their DLA? How many are losing their homes, their DLA and their ESA? How many will lose carer’s allowance on top? And how many more disabled people will fall into poverty as a result of these sweeping changes over the next couple of years? Surely the Secretary of State cannot justify proceeding with these reforms blind. Surely he cannot go into negotiations with the Chancellor later in the year, before the autumn statement, oblivious to what is actually going on.
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend may be aware of the work that Mind has done and the fact that about 40% of people applying for ESA are doing so because of a mental health problem. Work capability assessments are just not working, as we have all seen in our constituencies, and they need reforming.
Mr Byrne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course the employment rate among people with a mental health condition is the lowest of all; it is a disgrace and it needs to change. At the moment, however, we do not have a system that actually assesses people’s needs at the same time as we assess what benefits they should be entitled to. There is a complete disconnection at the heart of the system. The point we want to make to the Secretary of State gently this afternoon is that he presides over one of the great Departments of state; about 100,000 civil servants work for him. If this country can organise an Olympic games, help put rockets into space and organise complex armed conflict abroad, he ought to be able to work out a cumulative impact assessment of the changes affecting disabled people.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Fareham, who has been forced to answer this debate, has, curiously enough, told the House the following:
“The Government regularly produces analysis of the cumulative impact of all coalition changes…The publication of cumulative impacts is a coalition initiative”.—[Official Report, 5 July 2013; Vol. 565, c. 862W.]
Labour Members welcome that. So can we please have a cumulative impact assessment of the changes hitting disabled people?
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, historically, the Government party has always been against the welfare state? Successive Conservative Governments have tried to weaken the welfare state by making statements that are not really helpful to those who need it.
Mr Byrne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that, and, worst of all, what he describes comes with a nasty and divisive politics to boot.
If the Secretary of State needs any help with this job of producing cumulative impact assessments, plenty is on hand, as luck would have it. Let me read out the list of people who have half done the job for him: Demos, in its “Destination Unknown” pamphlet; Inclusion Scotland; the Campaign For a Fair Society; the Children’s Commissioner; Contact A Family; and The Hardest Hit. All those organisations have been able to produce cumulative impact assessments, and I am sure that if the Secretary of State asked them nicely, they would lend him a hand.
We believe that there must be vital reform in social security in the future, but that there must be a different way of organising reform. Someone in our country registers with the DWP as disabled every three minutes. The morality of this debate is very simple: disability is an issue that could affect any of us and is therefore something that affects us all. We should be learning from reform such as that pioneered by the Australian Labor party through comprehensive disability insurance, where one personal plan sets out a plan of action for benefits, back-to-work support, social care and help from the national health service and where one partnership comes together to deliver it.
I do not know how often the Secretary of State speaks to his opposite number in the Department of Health, but his right hon. Friend is taking through the other place a Care Bill that creates a definition of well-being that includes the idea that someone should be able to go to work and to get training and an education. The DWP is then missing from the rest of the Bill. The local authority and the NHS are obliged to talk to each other, but where is the DWP? Why is it not coming together with local councils and the NHS to deliver change? We should create a “tell us once” approach to collecting information and, crucially, we should transform back-to-work support by giving people the right to take that support in the form of a personal budget. I know the Secretary of State is still evaluating the “right to control” pilots in Barnsley and elsewhere and we look forward to his bringing forward the conclusions from that work.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
I am pleased to hear the right hon. Gentleman announce his intention to abolish the spare room subsidy. He also praised to the skies the Australian insurance model that has just been introduced. Is he therefore committing to the payroll tax increases funding that model in Australia? Have we just heard yet another spending commitment?
Stephen Doughty
When Lord Freud gave evidence to the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs and was questioned about the mental health impacts on people going through the reforms and the impact they were having on individual lives, he appeared to suggest that few conversations had been had with organisations such as the Samaritans and Mind. That is deeply concerning; does my right hon. Friend agree? A constituent came to me the other week and handed me a letter that said at the end, “I’d rather kill myself and then they will have one less mouth to feed.” That is the daily experience of the people who come to our surgeries.
Mr Byrne
That is the tragedy about which we are all hearing in our constituencies. I am sure that the Minister has heard the same thing from his constituents, because we know that some 890 people could lose their disability living allowance in his constituency. If people are in work and lose their DLA, they will lose some of their advantages in the tax credit system. If they are also hit by the uprating legislation and the bedroom tax and also lose their transitional support under universal credit, it will not be long before they are £5,000 a year worse off. How can we in this country, one of the richest nations on earth, justify giving a huge tax cut to millionaires and then saying to 890 people in the Minister’s constituency that if they want to go to work they might be £5,000 a year worse off? How on earth can the Minister justify that to the House?
The Government are putting some our most vulnerable people in the middle of a labyrinth and, frankly, if we are to succeed as a nation in the future we cannot go on like this. We must draw on every ounce of talent that is available to us in these islands. That is the only way we will become a nation that is firing on all cylinders. Today, we offer the Secretary of State no more than a humble step on the road—something that will help him in his negotiations with the Chancellor before the autumn statement. I hope that it is something he will be able to support. No one will be able to understand why he has set his face against it if he votes against it and leads his troops to vote against it this afternoon. I hope he accepts it and, if he does not, I hope this House will force him to.
Mr Hoban
But reform is needed, too, to make sure that we spend money carefully. We need to think about how we deliver services. That is why joining up care and health in a single budget is vital if we are to tackle problems on the ground, enable local authorities and the health service to work together, and really make progress.
Mr Byrne
The Minister is being characteristically generous in giving way. If he believes what he has just said, will he explain why the duty to co-operate in the Care Bill does not extend to the Department for Work and Pensions? Will he table Government amendments to the Bill to ensure that those duties to co-operate bite on local authorities, the NHS and his Department?
Mr Byrne
I think that the Minister would sort of accept that we were not introducing some of the biggest cuts to disabled people’s services or benefits for a generation, so the premium on a cumulative impact assessment was not quite as great then as it is now. He said to the House on 5 July that cumulative impact assessments were “a coalition initiative”, and I assume that they are an initiative of which he is proud. If he is so proud of them, why does he not equip himself with one before the Secretary of State goes to see the Chancellor, as he no doubt will, so that he can argue on behalf of disabled people before the autumn statement?
Mr Hoban
I do not want to spoil the excitement that is felt about the later parts of my speech—you are right to pull a wry face, Mr Speaker—but the challenge when one is trying to carry out a cumulative impact assessment that covers a wide range of policy areas for a defined group, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, as he was in the Treasury and in government, is that resources and information are not there to enable people to do it. That is the problem that the last Government faced, and we face the same challenge. Unlike that Government, we have produced a cumulative impact assessment at major fiscal events, but that cannot be disaggregated to the sort of level that the right hon. Gentleman is referring to. He knows that, because he has been through that process.
Mr Hoban
Bodies such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies have said that giving that level of detail is impossible and have stepped away from doing so. I know that the right hon. Gentleman has got into trouble on spending plans; he tried to dig himself out of a hole earlier and did not manage to do it, and there is a bit of chaff for him, but let us be very clear: this was a challenge when he was in government, and it remains a challenge.
Let me move on to employment. We all know that work brings self-esteem and dignity. It enables people, whether disabled or able-bodied, to look after themselves and their families. Nearly half of disabled people are in work. Only one in 10 working-age disabled people have never worked, and for those aged over 25 it is only one in 20. If we want to make a sustainable difference, we must do all that we can to help more disabled people who can work to get into mainstream employment and stay there. The spending review allocated £330 million to programmes and support for disabled people or those with a long-term health condition, so that they can move into and stay in work.
Mr Hoban
As I said, the cash benefits for people on transition are protected. We hear the figures published by Citizens Advice but we do not understand where they come from. They are not borne out by our understanding. Let me move on to talk about disability living allowance.
Mr Hoban
I want to move on. I have been very generous in giving way to the right hon. Gentleman, as he acknowledged.
We all know that some disabled people face extra costs as a result of the impact of their disability. The main source of financial support, disability living allowance, has not been fundamentally reformed since 1992. Our welfare reforms presented an opportunity to start afresh, keeping the best elements of DLA that people value, but bringing the benefit up to date to make it fit for the 21st century. The personal independence payment—PIP—is easy to understand and administer. It is financially sustainable and more objective. It will be better targeted on those in most need. Throughout the whole development, we have consulted widely with disabled people and have used their views to inform policy design. We have continued to listen and consult, ensuring that these reforms continue to be shaped by the views of disabled people themselves. In other words, reform is not static and this Government are committed to listening and acting where change is required.
Instead of simply cutting money from everyone, we chose the more difficult but principled option of modernising the benefit and focusing support where it is most needed. PIP will be awarded on the basis of a fair, consistent and objective assessment which will enable us to target support on those who face the greatest barriers to independent living. More than one fifth of PIP recipients will get both of the highest rates, worth £134.40 each week, compared with only 16% on DLA. That demonstrates that we are focusing support on those in most need.
Paul Maynard
I think that the hon. Lady misunderstands the actual point of PIP; it is to look at how people cope with their conditions. They are given ample opportunity to submit evidence and we help them to do that in my constituency surgeries. I hope that Labour Members do so, too, rather than store up a treasure trove of Atos scare stories that make people more scared of attending an Atos appointment than they were before.
Paul Maynard
I have given way enough times and the shadow Secretary of State has had his opportunity. If those on the Opposition Front Benches paid more attention to the “Fulfilling Potential” report, they might be a little chilled by what they read. Page 34 states clearly:
“Young people’s aspirations can decline in response to their growing understanding of the world”.
Listening to Opposition Members, I am sure that young people’s aspirations will decline because of the negative messages they are getting. The report states:
“By the age of 26 disabled people are less confident”
about entering into the world. I think we should be celebrating the fact that this Government are taking steps on a broad range of measures—not merely disability benefits—that the previous Government never had the courage to take.
For example, consider a young person who wishes to go to university. Under the Labour Government they were scared to do so because they could not guarantee that their care package would be made portable. With this Government’s Care Bill, we are doing just that. How can we put a price on aspiration? How can we quantify hope? What do I say to disabled people using an organisation in my constituency that has just introduced a “Safe Journey” card they can show on trams to ensure that it pulls away more slowly and they do not get flung to the ground? How are such things incorporated into the precious cumulative impact assessment? So much that can be done for the disabled community will never appear in any impact assessment, but it can be reflected in what we are doing with the “Fulfilling Potential” initiative.
I begin to despair at so much of what I hear from the Opposition Benches and it makes me truly angry. I pay tribute to the previous Government for their work to try to improve awareness of disability hate crime. However, I react with fury to the reaction of so many Opposition Members when the reporting of incidents of disability hate crime increases because of work done by this Government, and the previous Government, to create an atmosphere in which people are more confident to report such crime. We are told that an increase in the reporting of hate crime is evidence of the Government’s war on the disabled. I find that disgusting. It is personally abhorrent that people should campaign in a partisan way on the backs of those in the most vulnerable section of our society, to make a partisan point. That does nothing.
The contribution of disabled people to this country goes far wider than the amount they receive in benefits. I recognise, however, that we cannot talk of aspiration or fulfilling potential if we do not have a stable system of state support. We are trying to ensure that the right people get the right amount of money to match their needs, abilities and aspirations to work, live their lives and fulfil their ambitions, not match the labels hung around their necks by the Labour party.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)
I welcome this opportunity to put fact where there has been confusion and information where there has been misinformation from the Opposition; to explain the context of the welfare reforms, the vision and the collaborative work done with disabled people and their organisations; to reply to the points, one by one, that I have heard today; and to explain why the cumulative impact assessment is neither possible nor the correct approach, because doing one would provide inaccurate information—something, surely, that no one in the House would want to support.
To be clear, the Government’s overarching ambition is to enable disabled people to fulfil their ambition to be full and equal members of society. That is what we aim to do, so I am pleased to inform the House that, despite what we have heard today, under this Government, disabled people are already experiencing improved outcomes and reduced inequalities as against non-disabled people. Data published last week show that since 2009-10 disabled people have seen improved achievements at degree and GCSE levels and improved employment rates, and there is a reduced proportion of disabled people in relative income poverty. Inequality has also been reduced in a number of areas. The gap in outcomes compared with non-disabled people has narrowed for GCSE achievements, employment rates, income poverty for families with someone who is disabled, and in reported choice and control over people’s lives—something I would have thought the House would welcome.
Esther McVey
One thing I am sure we can all agree on is the complexity of disability and the very different life experiences that everyone lives through, so let me talk about the range of people we are dealing with: from people like Stephen Hawking, who has a brain the size of the planet but is very physically disabled, to people who are mentally severely disabled but physically very able, and everybody else in between—from fluctuating to sensory to cognitive. We have to support each one of those. We have to find individual, tailor-made support for each of those people and provide it in an holistic approach, and that is what we are doing, bringing together social care, health, education and all the benefits. What I will say, before—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Lady is not for giving way. It is up to her whether she wishes to give way, and I think she has signalled often enough.
Esther McVey
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. As I have been left with limited time and have many answers to give, I will not be giving way to the right hon. Gentleman, but I will raise some of his points. I would like to point out—he overlooked this—that we spend £50 billion a year on support and benefits for disabled people. That is a fifth higher than the average in Europe, double the rate in America spends and six times that in Japan.
The right hon. Gentleman made an unusual speech today, talking about his new single personal budget. As per normal, we heard no details whatever. How would it be funded? Would it be means-tested? Would he abolish PIP? The right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) was asked whether he would reverse the spare rooms subsidy—something he said he would not be doing—but obviously the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) thinks he is above his own leader. He is changing his policy on the hoof.
Esther McVey
I have said that I will not be giving way to the right hon. Gentleman, because he spoke rubbish for hours. We will go to—[Interruption.] Crikey! Temper, temper!
The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) asked various questions about the work capability assessment and Atos. I really do not get how Labour Members can forget that they introduced it in 2008 or that they gave the contract to Atos until 2015.
Oral Answers to Questions
Liam Byrne Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hoban
If my hon. Friend looks at the three main benefits—jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance and lone parent income support—he will see that, since the general election, there has been a reduction of 300,000 in the number claiming those benefits. That is a consequence of the measures that we have taken to get people into work, and of welfare reform.
Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State tell the House whether he thinks the bedroom tax is proving a runaway success?
Mr Duncan Smith
It is proving a success, because what it is doing—[Laughter.] No. What it is doing is finally shining a light on the previous Government’s failure to sort out the mess in social housing, with the housing benefit bill doubling in 10 years and set to rise by another £5 billion. I never hear from the right hon. Gentleman, or anyone else on the Labour Benches, about their failure, because they left so many people—a quarter of a million—in overcrowded accommodation and a waiting list that had grown to 1.5 million. When he gets up, perhaps he would like to tell us: is he going to reverse this policy or not?
Mr Byrne
If the Secretary of State thinks that the bedroom tax has been a success, he is living on a different planet. Back in 2011 the pensions Minister told the House that the bedroom tax would solve overcrowding, but this morning we heard on the BBC that there are houses lying empty from Teesside to Merseyside. They are not overcrowded; they are empty. Councils up and down the country are saying that arrears are up by 300%, and military families are saying that they have been lied to and cheated. When is the Secretary of State going to realise that this policy costs more than it saves and that this Government should be taxing mansions, not bedrooms?
Mr Duncan Smith
Let me tell the right hon. Gentleman something about empty homes. The previous Government left a huge amount of empty homes when they left office. There are now around 710,000 empty homes, which is 73,000 below the peak in 2008, which was under them. There are now 259,000 long-term empty homes, which is down 20,000 since they left office. The reality is this: the Labour party left a shambles, and never once did the people living in overcrowded accommodation hear anything from the Labour party about them. They are having to suffer while we subsidise to nearly £1 billion people living in houses with spare rooms. Perhaps he can say whether he, if he ever got into office again, would reverse that. Why does he not stop moaning about it?