Oral Answers to Questions

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Pat McFadden]

It is estimated that the child poverty strategy we published on Friday will lift more than 500,000 children out of poverty by the end of this Parliament. Critically, most of the children in poverty are living in households where someone works, so setting up the working against the non-working is completely contrary to the facts on child poverty.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

In the Budget last month, the Chancellor put up taxes in order to spend £16 billion more on welfare. The Government chose to make working people worse off in order to spend more on benefits. The sickness benefit bill is now set to skyrocket to more than £100 billion by the end of this decade. The Secretary of State likes to blame us, but his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), cancelled our reforms, and Labour Back Benchers stymied the Government’s. Working people are saying to me, “Why bother? I’d be better off on benefits.” The country cannot afford that. The Secretary of State must know this—he is no fool—so when is he going to come up with some welfare savings?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. At the mayors council on Thursday, we were discussing this very point about ensuring that all parts of the country benefit from employment opportunities for their local people.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I was sorry that the Secretary of State could not answer the question from my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) earlier. Fortunately, there are people who can help. For instance, UKHospitality has told us that 100,000 people will lose their jobs because of the Budget. That is on top of the 150,000 jobs already lost since Labour came to power. At this rate, there will be queues forming outside jobcentres. Can she tell me what preparations the Government are making to cope with the influx of benefit claimants from all these job losses?

--- Later in debate ---

[Pat McFadden]

My hon. Friend is right to point out that the issue of youth opportunity is also an issue of inequality, and that the rate of NEETs is often highest where deprivation and inequality are highest. That is why it is essential that we have an active policy, through the youth guarantee, to offer training, work experience, subsidised employment and more apprenticeships for young people.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)]

Since the Chancellor delivered her Budget, it has come to light that benefits have been extended for the parents of teenagers with disabilities or illnesses. Although on the face of it that may seem kind and compassionate, it is also contradictory. Parents and carers are no longer required to ensure that their teenagers are attending an educational setting at all to receive additional child benefit, which means that young people living with neurodivergent conditions such as ADHD are being enabled to stay at home and out of education, training or even work. This flies directly in the face of the Prime Minister’s words after the Budget:

“if you’re not given the support you need…or if you are simply written off because you’re neurodivergent or disabled, then it can trap you in a cycle of worklessness and dependency for decades.”

May I ask the Secretary of State how extending access to benefits for conditions such as ADHD in teenagers before coming up with a plan to ensure that young people remain in full-time education and training delivers on the Prime Minister’s point?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I think it is absolutely right and proper that this Government have the child poverty taskforce to look at not just the issue of the two-child limit, which is obviously very important, but all the other measures we need to have in place to support families. As the Employment Minister, I am particularly pleased that we have measures in the strategy to help parents into work—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Sorry about this. I do not want a complete conversation to be going on across the Chair. Mr Jopp, you are better than that. Being a Whip, you know that you are meant to set an example, not the opposite.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I was saying that it is important that there are measures in the child poverty strategy to help with childcare in particular. It is not just that; we have free school meals and the breakfast clubs. There are also the issues of temporary accommodation. The statistic the hon. Gentleman perhaps wants me to give is that I understand 100 children a week were pushed into child poverty through the two-child limit that the previous Government introduced in 2017.

--- Later in debate ---

[Torsten Bell]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important question. I, like her, have met and listened to lots of those affected by the lack of indexation on pre-1997 accruals within the PPF and the FAS. I can assure her that, assuming the Pension Schemes Bill receives Royal Assent, the uprating will take place at the next PPF uprating, which means January 2027 on current estimates.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Father of the House.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I am very grateful to the Minister to be in receipt of the triple lock, but it is not an effective way of tackling pensioner poverty and it is bankrupting the country. I am sorry not to be party political, but can we not have a consensus between the parties that we should phase out the triple lock, concentrate resources on pensioners in real poverty and have an agreement on dealing with benefits generally to get people back into work? We should work together.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Stephen Timms]

The hon. Gentleman will know that the carer’s allowance has an earnings threshold, which we have increased very significantly—the biggest increase in the earnings threshold that there has ever been. We are also looking, in the longer term, at introducing a taper to carer’s allowance, instead of the cliff-edge earnings threshold that is still there at the moment. That will not be a quick fix, but once it is in place, I think it will help with the concern he raises.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats welcome the fact that the Government have accepted the findings of the Sayce review into carer’s allowance overpayments, but what assurances can the Minister give that the Government will stop hounding carers about overpayments? Will the Government also apologise?

--- Later in debate ---

[Pat McFadden]

My hon. Friend is right to say that youth hubs can deliver vital help to get young people back on track. This is about getting the jobcentre out of the jobcentre, if you will, and making sure that we meet young people where they are in the community. We are expanding youth hubs; there will be a total of 360 around the country. Locations will be announced in due course, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will keep campaigning for one in his area.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

The Chancellor’s Budget put a cap on salary sacrifice for pension savers at just £2,000. That was to raise an extra £4.8 billion in 2029, and it will affect 3.3 million savers and 290,000 employers. What research has the Pensions Minister done to understand and quantify the negative effects that this will have on pension savings?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)]

As my hon. Friend says, it is against the law to impose age restrictions on jobs unless they can be objectively justified. The Equality Act 2010 provides legal redress. There is also practical help available through the Equality Advisory and Support Service, which his constituent should certainly give a call, and we have 50PLUS champions working across the whole of our jobcentre network.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)]

Disability News Service has stated that both the Treasury and the DWP have refused to clarify the £1.9 billion of cuts to disability benefits set to take place over the next five years that were quietly sneaked into the Budget the other week. Will the Minister now set the record straight and advise us on how those cuts, which amount to almost £2 billion, will occur and on what impacts they will have on people with disabilities?

--- Later in debate ---

[Torsten Bell]

As the Secretary of State set out to the House a few months ago, the decision to which the hon. Member refers is being retaken by the Department, and we have committed to updating the House on that decision in due course.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I warmly welcome the child poverty strategy published last week, and I congratulate past and present ministerial teams on all they have done on that strategy. Can my right hon. Friend give details on when he expects to publish the targets, the detailed metrics and the monitoring and review framework? Those are essential if we are to reduce child poverty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

Employers across the construction, care and manufacturing sectors have warned that Skills England’s dumbed down reforms mean that apprenticeships will not be recognised by professional bodies. Today’s announcement of 50,000 apprenticeships is meaningless if employers will not recognise those standards, so will the Secretary of State guarantee that reformed apprenticeships will still meet those standards? That is a particular concern in the construction industry—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. These are topical questions. I am trying to get everybody in but the hon. Member is not helping me. Hopefully, he asked at least three of his questions.

[Pat McFadden]

The hon. Member is right to say that apprenticeship standards are highly valued. Our constituents value what an apprenticeship means. As we take the scheme forward, it is important that the public and employers have trust in the high standards that an apprenticeship offers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call Jim Shannon to show us how to ask brief questions.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The highest level of pensioner poverty in the UK is in Northern Ireland. One way of lifting pensioners out of poverty is through pension credit applications, which require a one-to-one conversation. Will the Minister undertake to ensure that pensioners are able to have such conversations during the term of this Government, so that they can be lifted out of poverty?

[Mr Speaker]

For Jim, that was brief.

[Torsten Bell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his brief question. Pensioner poverty halved under the last Labour Government. It went up under the previous Conservative Government, but it is going to come down again under this Government.