Women’s State Pension Age

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

The important point is that we must carefully consider the report in its entirety—not just one aspect of it, but all aspects. I have undertaken to the House to do that without undue delay.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

The ombudsperson was established to decide when things were not necessarily illegal, but had been done in a way that involved malpractice and was wrong, and to decide when a person in the middle needed to come forward and say, “You need to sort this out.” That is exactly what the ombudsperson has now said: their judgment is clear that maladministration happened. There was a question as to whether what was done was illegal or not; in the event, it was not. Rather than hiding behind court judgments, will the Minister apologise on behalf of the Department for the maladministration? Also, will he at least commit to a remedy? I am not saying what that remedy has to be, but will he give reassurance that a remedy will be found? Those are two easy things that he should be able to do now.

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Gentleman suggests that we are hiding behind the court cases. I have explained the relevance of those cases and the conclusions to which both the High Court and the Court of Appeal came in 2019 and 2020. We are not hiding behind anything; in fact, as the hon. Gentleman knows, because I read out the quote earlier, on Thursday 21 March—last Thursday—the chief executive of the ombudsman said on Sky News:

“The Government, the DWP, completely co-operated with our report, with our investigation, and over the period of time we have been working they have provided us with the evidence that we asked for.”

Draft Child Support (Management of Payments and arrears and fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2024 General Committees

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Latham. Without rehearsing all the arguments ad nauseam, let me say that we support the measure and think it is good that it removes the application fee. The Minister has already explained why that is positive, and we agree with him.

I will not detain colleagues for long. I want to make three quick points and ask the Minister some questions. If the hon. Member for Stroud and the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee are successful in securing a Backbench Business debate, more colleagues will be able to rehearse the issues for longer. A large number of cross-party colleagues would like the country to learn the lessons from their casework. I am one such Member, so I support that initiative for a Backbench debate, and hope that we can discuss these issues again without too much delay.

Following discussion of the measure in the other place, we know that the Government anticipate that the removal of the fee will have the positive impact of increasing the number of agreements. We also know, however, that the Government think that the fee is not the sole reason why there are not as many agreements as we all want. As the Minister has explained, it is very important, for anti-poverty reasons as well as basic fairness, for payments to be made to parents, but the fee is not the only problem. In response to a question asked by my colleague in the other place, the Minister explained in writing that 35%—more than a third—of receiving parents without arrangements said that they wanted a payment arrangement with the other parent. Although we know, as the Minister has explained, that the removal of the fee will have an impact, there is more to do to ensure that more parents secure an arrangement.

What research are the Government undertaking with parents who have experienced the system in order to ensure that it works better? What is the plan? A wide range of MPs and stakeholders know that the system does not work perfectly. It would be good if the Government could say more about how the removal of the fee will help. Furthermore, their own research identifies parents who want an arrangement, so could the Government share their plans for how those parents get one? Could we hear a little more about that research?

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point about the need to know the details of the Government’s research. When the parent who should be paying is self-employed, or employed via a company that their new partner owns, there are often a lot of disputes about how much they actually earn and their household income. Does she agree that it would be interesting to know whether the Government have researched any of those problems, which seem to cross my desk regularly, and to hear their solutions? This measure is good, but it does not really touch the sides of some of those big issues.

[Alison McGovern]

I am coming to that, but my hon. Friend makes the point well. I am sure that the Minister and many colleagues would recognise that there is a broader agenda here about making the service much more effective for parents. I think everybody across the House will be anxious to hear more about that from the Government.

Secondly, I have been in touch with Gingerbread, the organisation for single parents—everybody on the Committee will know it well—about these regulations. It raised a couple of things with me, particularly in relation to the point that the Minister made about survivors of abuse. As he mentioned, previously the fee was waived for survivors of abuse. Gingerbread tells me that that enabled the CMS to know how many survivors of abuse were using the service. It is important that that is calculated, and that the service knows about the body of its service users who are survivors of abuse. When the fee is removed, how will the service know how many of its users are survivors of abuse, so that it can ensure an effective service for those people?

As you will know, Mrs Latham, we have gone on a big journey over the past decade on financial abuse and understanding how, unfortunately, abusers often use arms of the state to continue that abuse, even after separation, and even once protection is in place for the victim of abuse. The Child Maintenance Service is therefore on the frontline in protecting parents who have experienced domestic abuse from experiencing further abuse. If the Minister can say a little more about what training the service has planned, and about Gingerbread’s important question on how we will monitor how many parents using the service are victims of abuse, we would all find that helpful. Gingerbread also points out, quite rightly, that we might anticipate that more people will apply to use collect and pay, so it would be good to know how the Department is planning to ensure that that increase in demand is met.

Finally, we all understand the rationale—the Minister set out the case precisely—for writing off small arrears, particularly when the cost of pursuing them would far outweigh their value, but as the Minister also set out, we want writing off small arrears to increase the effectiveness of the service. Gingerbread says that it is not uncommon for its helpline to receive calls from people who are owed tens of thousands of pounds. Those are the arrears that we want tackled, so will the Minister say how writing off these nugatory amounts will enable the service to become more effective? That is what we all really want. If we can have a debate on this in Back-Bench time, I hope that we will hear from a huge number of colleagues, from right across the House, about what parents have experienced in trying to get debts paid. It is no small thing and can be an extremely frustrating experience.

It would be useful if the Minister could say more about, first, the Government’s research—what they hope to publish and what they hope for—so that we can understand the effectiveness of getting these agreements in place and what parents might find most helpful, beyond removing the fee. Secondly, perhaps he can say more about victims of abuse—how we will monitor them and make sure that the right training and resources are in place in the service. Finally—this is the major point—we all want an effective service. In the end, this is about all our kids in this country. This is about making sure that they do not grow up in poverty, and that their parents have enough money in their pockets to look after them. If the Minister could explain what the plan is to ensure effectiveness, that would be very helpful.

Draft Cessation of EU Law Relating to Prohibitions on Grounds of Nationality and Free Movement of Persons Regulations 2022

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2022 General Committees

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

I understand why the Government are bringing in these regulations: they want to tidy up the statute book and put the final nail in the coffin of any rights that EU and EEA citizens might have had in this country. The problem with their policy approach is that it is a race to the bottom. Rather than raising the standards and rights of other nationals who are here, they are treating EEA nationals in the appalling way that non-EEA nationals have continued to be treated in this country.

Let me give an example of how non-EEA nationals are treated. One in my constituency is here on a spousal visa. He has fallen on hard times—he has lost his job—and his spouse is a care worker on minimum wage. Neither can apply for housing assistance, because if either of them did, they would immediately have their visa removed. He is a spouse, and so is likely to be here for the indefinite future, but as he has not yet been here for five years, he cannot apply for indefinite leave to remain. They have four months of rent arrears, and are facing eviction, but the council cannot help them.

It is now proposed that we give that same treatment to EEA nationals. That is abhorrent. We should be raising, not lowering, standards. I am dreadfully disappointed that the Government are taking this approach of a race to the bottom—a race to a nasty, brutish Britain. But that of course is what the Conservatives want, and what they are doing.

Health and Social Care Levy (Repeal) Bill

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise to support new clauses 1 and 2, and I suspect we will soon vote on new clause 1. Let us be clear: the economic issues we are now facing—rising interest rates for homeowners, and a crashing of confidence in the British economy—are partly because the Government will not produce proper, transparent plans about how they are managing tax and spend.

New clause 1 would force the Government to publish proper documentation on how they will manage that expenditure. We cannot scrimp and save any more on social care, and while it is right to reverse this tax, which was pernicious and hurt the poorest the most, the Government’s failure to outline how they will raise the revenue and properly spend it will cause more chaos and more lack of confidence in the Government. It will contribute to the ongoing crisis in interest rates, and it will end up hurting hard-working people in this country again. Although the reversal of this tax is welcome, without proper analysis the danger is that people in this country will still pay, but they will be paying not through tax to the Government, but through pernicious interest rate rises to lenders and banks. That would be worse than the current situation.

Social care needs to be funded. Brighton and Hove City Council spends £154 million a year on adult social care. That is care for older and disabled people—social care in all its forms. It only raises £160 million through council tax and the precept, so it has only £10 million discretionary funding, although of course it gets grants for schools and other non-discretionary funds. That is the same up and down the country. It is no good just finding Treasury money to support an expanding need for social care; it is a scandal that any penny of council tax is going on adult social care at all. No voter I ever speak to thinks it is appropriate for council tax to be spent on adult social care. Council tax should be for council services, universal services, and ensuring that our local areas are better, more prosperous and thriving. Every person I speak to thinks that social care should be centrally financed. Yes, councils should deliver it, just as they do with education and other services, but the grant must be fully funded by the Government. That the Government have not outlined how they will do that, or have even a long-term plan to do that, continues the pressure and burden on councils and is wrong.

Not only is it wrong, but there is another way of doing it. That is why new clause 2 is so important. It starts to set out the alternatives, and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) stated that we should be looking at taxing income from wealth. It is a scandal that generations after generations have squirreled away wealth, hiding it away like Monopoly money on a Monopoly board, and they are then able to generate money from doing almost diddly squat. That is wrong when hard-working people are toiling and paying a higher rate.

There are other ways that the tax could be raised, such as abolishing the upper earnings limit and the scandal of people who earn more than £50,000 paying only 3.25%—less once the levy is abolished—on national insurance. That rich people pay less national insurance as a percentage of income than poorer people is a national scandal. Rather than a progressive tax, it is an innately regressive tax. The poorer someone is, the more they pay; the richer they are, the less they pay as a percentage. If that was abolished and we had a flat tax for everyone, that would have raised £10 billion more than this failed tax U-turn. The Government would have been able to fund all they wanted. It would have been fair, and it would not have hit poorer people. There were many alternatives and the Government did not pursue any of them.

Last week I visited my local A&E at Royal Sussex County Hospital. Fantastic nurses and doctors were working their socks off, and the management were trying to cope with reducing resources. What did I see? Tens of people in beds in corridors, and more than 30 people in waiting chairs, waiting not to be treated in A&E but to be moved on to adult social care or other wards in the hospital. One person had waited for 23 hours, and another who had been discharged the day before had been waiting in A&E for four days. Why is that? It is because our social care system is failing. People are leaving in droves because there are no national terms and conditions and no decent pay. It is a disgrace that care workers earn less than £10 an hour in Brighton and across the UK. They are on poverty wages yet they do such important work.

We need a proper plan for how social care will be paid for. It is no good for the Government to remove this pernicious tax and then come forward with no plans, no ideas, no nothing. This Government have run out of ideas, and Conservative Members have run out of a future for this country. All they are in now is a quick “grab as much as they can” in the next two years, before they lose the election. It is not right for this country. We need them to move aside because Labour has the ideas. Labour has the plan for adult social care, and for everything.

[Richard Fuller]

New clause 1 was tabled by the hon. Member for Ealing North (James Murray), and he raised two specific points. One was on the direct cost that HMRC will incur as a result of this Bill, and he is right; there will be some additional costs. It costs to make these changes, and there will also be costs in future months from additional calls that may come into HMRC. Those numbers have not yet been fully quantified, but I will write to the hon. Gentleman with those costs when we have them. I do not think this was the intent of his question, but on the changes to dividend tax rates, the 1.25% cut will be implemented from April 2023 and is not taking place this year.

Overall funding for health and social care services will be maintained at the same level as if the levy was in place, and we will do that without the tax increase. The Chancellor and the Government are committed to fiscal sustainability, ensuring that debt to GDP falls over the medium term, and the Chancellor will set out further details in his medium-term fiscal plan on 31 October. Strong growth and sustainable public finances go hand in hand, and maintaining fiscal discipline over the medium term will provide the confidence and stability to underpin long-run growth. In turn, faster growth can promote confidence in the UK economy and lead to higher tax revenues without the need to raise levels of taxation. That broader context of the medium-term fiscal plan in the round is the right way to assess these changes, not via the specific measures in new clause 1. I therefore urge the House to reject the new clause.

I will make a point to my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), who rightly spoke about the importance of prevention. To reassure him, the Department’s spending review settlement provided £2.3 billion over the spending period to transform diagnostic services and funding to enable local authorities to invest further in prevention through the public health grant.

I turn to new clause 2, tabled by the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) and supported by the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), who I was interested to hear advocating flat taxes—I look forward to further discussions with him about the merits of flat tax rates. There are key differences between the tax bases of earned income, capital gains and unearned income such as dividends. For example, employers also pay national insurance contributions on employment earnings, which broadens the base of revenue from national insurance contributions across employers, employees and the self-employed. In practice, if the taxation of dividends and capital gains were aligned with the taxation of earnings, we could expect to raise less than the levy was forecast to do due to the size of the tax bases and the significant behavioural responses by both tax bases. One of the key points that the hon. Member for Leeds East misses is such behavioural changes when we seek to change certain taxes in a significant way.

Unlike the Opposition, the Government are committed to lowering taxes, not raising them. We have already committed to reversing the 1.25 percentage point increase in dividend tax from April 2023, as I said, to drive growth and investment, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer will publish the medium-term fiscal plan on 31 October. I therefore urge the House to reject new clause 2. With thanks to those hon. Members for tabling their new clauses, I hope that they are satisfied with my explanations and that the hon. Member for Ealing North will not press his new clause to a Division.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

Compensation (London Capital & Finance plc and Fraud Compensation Fund) Bill

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister. As he said, the Bill does two things: it enables a Government compensation scheme for the victims of the collapse of London Capital and Finance, and it authorises a Government loan to the Fraud Compensation Fund—part of the Pension Protection Fund—to be paid for through a levy on the pensions industry. Let me take each of those of turn.

I will start with clause 1 on the LCF compensation scheme. The Minister set out the background and I do not need to repeat it in this short debate, but it involves 11,500 investors losing a total of about £237 million. Some £56 million has been paid out by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme to just under 3,000 of those investors, covering those parts of LCF activity that came under the remit of the Financial Conduct Authority’s regulated activities. The Bill aims to compensate the rest up to 80% of the £85,000 FSCS limit, meaning pay-outs of up to £68,000 for those eligible. This is expected to cost the taxpayer about £120 million.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Talking about the cost to the taxpayer, I wonder if my right hon. Friend continues to be shocked by the fact that a Member of this House, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), received over £85,000 from subsidiaries that were mis-selling, like a company in my constituency that defrauded my constituents. That money has never been paid back, but that Member received money from the taxpayer, and actually we should be looking at ourselves—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order.

Draft Chemicals (Health and Safety) and Genetically Modified Organisms (Contained Use) (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 General Committees

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

[Seema Malhotra]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mims Davies]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Mims Davies]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Mims Davies]

Draft Chemicals (Health and Safety) and Genetically Modified Organisms (Contained Use) (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 General Committees

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hosie.

I thank the Minister for her opening remarks. The regulations are needed to address deficiencies in retained EU law on chemicals and GMOs legislation arising from the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. The Minister has outlined the regulations, but I will cover them briefly in my remarks.

EU law has played a vital role in ensuring that the framework that regulates chemicals and GMOs operates coherently and effectively. That framework includes regulations such as the biocidal products regulation that the Minister mentioned; the classification, including of hazards, labelling and packaging, or CLP, regulations; the regulations concerning the export and import of hazardous chemicals; and the GMO regulations, which lay down measures for the contained use of genetically modified micro-organisms with a view to protecting human health and the environment. We support this instrument, which ensures that retained EU law relating to chemicals and GMOs continues to operate coherently at the end of transition.

The Minister also outlined, as does the explanatory memorandum, why, if the changes were not made, several chemicals regimes in the scope of the instrument would not be consistent with the withdrawal agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol when the transition period ends. The reasons for the instrument are clear, but I want to focus on several concerns about its effective implementation and the transfer of functions to the HSE.

The first concern relates to HSE duties as it becomes the GB regulatory authority. Leaving the EU and the European Chemicals Agency means that the HSE will take on new responsibilities. From 1 January, businesses that wish to apply for an active substance to be approved, or for a biocidal product to be authorised in Great Britain, will need to apply to the HSE instead of the European Chemicals Agency. As the Minister said, the territorial extent of this instrument is Great Britain except for certain provisions. The HSE will take on the functions that the ECHA performs where these are still relevant in Great Britain. For example, it will co-ordinate the active substance evaluation process for Great Britain. It will also introduce its own processes and systems for receiving and processing applications.

The Minister said that she has confidence in the HSE’s capacity, but she will appreciate why I am asking questions about it. The new demands pose concerning questions about whether the HSE is adequately funded, staffed and resourced to deliver its new responsibilities, particularly on top of the additional work it has undertaken due to covid. Since 2009-10, funding for the HSE has been cut by £144 million in real terms: by more than half since Labour was last in Government. Although in May the Government announced £14 million more funding for it, that still leaves a substantial cut.

We know from a response to a parliamentary question that the Government have recruited only 37 full-time equivalent inspectors since March. What review has the Department for Work and Pensions undertaken with the HSE about its resources, systems and processes, and how it will effectively carry out its extra duties, such as confirming the hazard classification and labelling of chemical substances after the end of the transition period?

Is the Minister confident that the HSE will be able to cope with that increase in responsibilities? What assessment has she made of any new specialist skills that may be required? Could there be an economic impact on the chemicals, pharmaceuticals or plastics industries if there are any delays in required work being carried out by the HSE? Has that risk assessment been done as part of any review that the Department has undertaken? There may be a need for further recruitment, and difficulties have been experienced in the past year in finding necessary specialists. Can the Minister therefore guarantee that any extra staff will be in place by the first week of January, ready for EU exit?

With the HSE potentially having to navigate and regulate stand-alone GB schemes and parts of the EU chemicals schemes simultaneously, there will be additional pressure on it. At the same time, staff will be making new regulatory decisions for UK’s entire food and chemicals markets, with limited access to EU data. Not having adequate resources and systems will also put the incredibly hard-working HSE staff under enormous pressure, which is why we and the Government must not ignore this.

None of us wants questions about the HSE’s capacity to deliver an effective chemicals regulation regime into 2021 and beyond. Indeed, this issue has been raised before, and in February this year the Government said that they

“are making sure that the HSE…have the resources and evidence they need to ensure the safe management of chemicals and to protect public health and the environment.”—[Official Report, 26 February 2020; Vol. 672, c. 159WH.]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making a good point about the HSE. In the European context, both the HSE and the Environment Agency fed into chemicals regulations. Is there a danger that not also increasing funding for the Environment Agency to be able to be feed into the new HSE regulator will leave an area of regulation or expertise lacking?

[Seema Malhotra]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution, which I am sure the Minister noted. It relates very much to the next point that I was about to make.

In February 2019, Mary Creagh, the then Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, also raised concerns about how the new functions would be taken on within the UK and the budget in relation European Chemicals Agency funding. That is not to say there should be direct comparison of EU-wide budgets and what the UK needs, but the HSE and other agencies involved need to be sufficiently equipped in order for our scientists to deliver safe and effective products on to the UK market. For the new work now required of the HSE, other agencies within Northern Ireland and others across industry that will be involved in a proportion of the new work that will be now taken on, what assessment has been made of the level and type of additional resources required?

My second question before I conclude relates to the Northern Ireland protocol. I thank my colleagues in the other shadow departmental teams for their input on this. The Northern Ireland protocol will mean that a number of areas of law in Northern Ireland will remain aligned with the EU after the end of the transition period, as the Minister commented. Changes to the standard policy approach for unfettered access are needed for highly regulated goods, such as chemicals. This will require a strong focus on transparency requirements to ensure that UK regulators are provided with the requisite information, in parallel to that provided to the EU. With regards to unfettered access and the forms required for highly regulated goods, what estimate has the Minister made of costs to business of the additional transparency requirements, and how many exports does she expect will be covered by them?

In conclusion, the amendments to the 2019 regulations relating to the withdrawal agreement, including the Northern Ireland protocol, are necessary to ensure that retained EU law relating to chemicals and GMOs continues effectively from January. However, I would welcome reassurance about the planning and resourcing for the new functions that the HSE, particularly, and other agencies will take on.

This is one of around 20 statutory instruments that will need to be tabled before the House rises for recess. Will the Minister update us on the timetabling for the remaining SIs relating to the Northern Ireland protocol? With only two weeks until Christmas, she will understand concerns that there may not be enough time for all these to pass through the House before the end of the year with the necessary scrutiny. If she is unable to update us today, perhaps she will be able to forward that information to me after.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mims Davies]

I am happy to respond to the hon. Lady. In fact, I must point out that owing to more demand in relation to covid the HSE budget in 2019-20 was £129 million, and there will be an extra £1.6 million for the functions in question.

On recruitment and readiness, the HSE has identified a total of 147 posts to be filled by the end of the financial year. It reports good progress on filling those posts, with 108, or 73%, filled. It is confident that that means it will be ready in relation to the transition period. Of the 73% of posts filled to date, the vast majority will start in January, with the remainder commencing in post before April.

Several campaigns are ongoing and due for completion in 2021. We are concluding the recruitment of the outstanding posts and recruiting 117 brand new posts in the chemicals regulation division, relating specifically to EU exit. That represents a 45% increase from the baseline staffing, since January 2020, and I hope that the hon. Lady will see that it demonstrates a significant commitment to taking on the new functions that are required. I believe, in fact, that we had about 900 applications when the recruitment opened.

I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to those at the HSE who have done a remarkable job through the pandemic and covid this year. The HSE has called in or visited 78,000 businesses as part of its work on spot checks. It has a significant compliance rate and staged spot checks in more than 41,000 businesses in relation to covid issues.

As to taking on the new functions and being ready to work with industry, there has been significant engagement with industry on the next stage, including 22 comms events just this month with the chemicals industry. Since January we have engaged with more than 6,000 attendees from across the chemicals section. There is significant information on the HSE website, the chemicals section of which gets over 50,000 views a month, and over 226,000 e-bulletins go out to subscribers. There have been extensive conversations and communications with the sector, and I have joined with Ministers from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and from DEFRA to engage with that sector and with stakeholders.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I am really pleased to hear that the Government and HSE have been engaging with businesses. However, I am still hearing concerns from businesses that are worried about re-registering pre-existing chemicals that have already been registered, and any potential need to prove that new levels of testing have been met, particularly animal testing. Can the Minister give an assurance that no new tests will be required for pre-existing chemicals by the HSE, and particularly no new animal tests?

[Mims Davies]

On animal testing, the relevant legislation affected by the instrument is the biocidal products regulation. That regulation contains mandatory data sharing provisions that are maintained in retained EU law and will apply in Great Britain, with amendments to make clear that the HSE will operate this process, rather than the European Chemicals Agency. The UK has been at the forefront of opposing animal tests where alternative approaches could be used, and we will retain the last resort principle. I hope that satisfies the hon. Gentleman.

Turning to divergence, GB will be free to make decisions on key issues. However, that does not mean we will disregard evidence, discussions and decisions made at EU level, nor any impacts on Northern Ireland. Horizon scanning and monitoring will be part of the UK chemicals framework as a whole.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I appreciate what the Minister just said. What would be useful, maybe in writing, is an absolute confirmation for the industry and for animal rights organisations that any pre-existing chemical that is currently registered under the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals regulation, and will need to be re-registered with the HSE, will not require any new levels of testing due to moving their registration over. Of course, it will be difficult for new chemicals that come on board later, but just so that we can be absolutely sure, will the Minister say that no existing registered chemical will require any new levels of testing? That would give me and the industry reassurance.

[Mims Davies]

I am happy to reassure the hon. Gentleman that the REACH regulation is not included in this SI. DEFRA has the policy responsibility for REACH regulation and is bringing separate legislation forward on this. I hope that satisfies the hon. Gentleman.

Universal Basic Income

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Yesterday the Prime Minister responded to me when I asked what someone on minimum wage, who will have a third of their wage cut, should do. He said, “Oh, that’s the point of universal credit,” in the way that he does. I think he was getting confused with universal basic income. That would be the point of a universal basic income—so that as wages fluctuated down or there were particular problems, there was an automatism; so that there was always a basic floor and an income stream that people could rely on.

The reality, as we know with universal credit, is that there is an application system that is particularly difficult, and the work component has been re-imposed on universal credit in this country since lockdown. It is not just a payment made to support people unconditionally, and we know that the stress of the waiting period causes huge anguish for many of our communities. People do not see universal credit, or jobseeker’s allowance, or the dole—or whatever name it is given—as something that is their right or that they deserve. They see it as something that they are being judged on to get, and many proud people leave it until it is too late. They leave it, thinking, “I will use my savings; I will do the good thing for society and not go immediately and ask for support.” That means that by the time they are knocking on the jobcentre door, they might have already used up what little resources they had—resources that the Government expect them to live on while they are waiting for an application. How could we avoid a system that is degrading, causes mental health problems and causes people to rely on food banks? Surely we should explore some sort of system of universal basic income. It would, after all, do exactly what the Prime Minister promised; it would actually fulfil that pledge.

Universal basic income is not a replacement for universal basic services. We need the NHS, we probably need a separate way of dealing with housing, we need lifelong learning—we need those things to go along with it. However, it is a liberating factor for those things that the Government really should not be providing. My view is that the Government should not be providing food parcels—neither the Government nor charities. Charities do it in large part. In Brighton, most of those charities are also supported by the local council through cash amounts for them to go to the cash and carry. That is not dignified. It is not dignified that people have to go and get a bag of pre-sorted goods to live on that week. I do not think that is acceptable. That is where a cash transfer is important, because cash has a liberating element in those circumstances. It has a dignifying element in those circumstances, because when a person walks into the supermarket, they are able, on a par with everyone, to engage and purchase the things they may like.

Nor is a universal basic income a substitute for a decent industrial strategy. We need strong trade unions pushing for greater conditions for workers. We need to ensure decent relations between employers and trade unions to make sure we have industrial harmony. We need to make sure that the national minimum wage is being pushed up so that it becomes a real living wage. All those things are needed. However, if we do not deal with the transitions, particularly in a society where we have more transitions and less stability in the job market, we might be helping those fewer and fewer people in full-time and stable work but not enabling people to develop full-time and stable work positively.

I am a universalist. I generally believe that giving things to everyone pushes the quality up, not down, because the pressure is that everyone understands their value. That does not mean that everyone pays in equally. One of the critiques that we hear is that giving all this money to everyone means giving rich people money. I do not know how those people think the pay-as-you-earn system works, but in a person’s payslip for the month they pay x amount of tax—x is given to the Government. If UBI were set at something like £100 a week—I pick that number from the top of my head—that would mean £5,000 a year. Under the current tax system, anyone earning more than £26,000 would be a net contributor. That is an interesting number, because £26,000 is about the average wage in the south-east, although it is slightly higher in Brighton. Actually, that would be very positive, because those earning more would be paying for it. Of course, the tax system would have to be redesigned to make it balance. Those enabling figures are an automatism.

In the ’90s, the Scandinavians developed what was called flexicurity. It was adopted, of course, by the European Union—we can have arguments about our leaving, but that is not why I raise it. I raise it because it was about looking forward and saying that the job market was changing. The Scandinavian countries recognised that they needed a more flexible labour market. Jobs for life were not necessarily going to happen, and were not necessarily desirable. Companies were saying that they needed the ability to be fleet of foot. The pact that was made was that if there was to be a more flexible workforce—the ability to hire and fire more easily—there needed to be greater protections. Some of that was about free lifelong learning. The pillars were a flexible labour market, lifelong learning, labour market policies and a strong trade union-business pact. The final pillar of the European model was a model social security system with adequate minimum support for all.

I know that the Government are slightly allergic to things that come out of Europe, but we should learn from that decent, forward-looking principle of how the labour market needs to look in the future. I do not want creative people to be forced to go into cyber-security, as the latest Government advert suggests, if they want to make ends meet. I want them to be free to develop new creative industries that provide billions of pounds of revenue to our country. If they are not given support to do that in difficult times, there is a danger that we will lose whole sections of our industry. I genuinely think that UBI is an opportunity to put some of that flexicurity model into practice.

UBI will not be perfect—there are problems with all systems—but I believe that it encompasses some of the principles of the failed universal credit system. It encompasses the idea that people can transition. Conditions could be put on it and infrastructure could be put around it, but I am not sure that would be particularly helpful.

UBI also has the ability to rebalance our generational problem. We have the clear problem at the moment that many younger working-age people—people under 30 or even under 40, so not that young in some accounts—feel that they are getting a rum deal. They feel that they will never reach pension age because it will increase on and on. They feel that the state has abandoned them in housing and welfare—under-35s have lower rates in housing, et cetera. They feel almost infantilised by the current system. That generational pact has broken. I think that part of the problem with coronavirus is that a lot of young people are not convinced that there is a generational pact in society, because they do not feel that the state or society has actually bothered to care for their concerns. They feel that huge amounts are given to pensioners. That is not necessarily true—our pension is rather low—but that is the feeling among lots of people.

A universal basic income would of course differentiate between ages. It would be slightly lower for children and would then increase for working-age people and again for pensioners. It would be a continuum, which would rebalance that understanding of a generational pact that everyone gains from. That would really transform our society for the better, which is why I hope the Government will at least explore some real, decent pilot schemes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

This is a real priority for our Secretary of State and it will involve building on our work to enable care leavers to make advanced UC claims, access to the youth application support programme, early access to the Work and Health programme and extensions to second chance learning, and we will work with employers to create more opportunities to build on this partnership with Barnardo’s.[Official Report, 18 October 2018, Vol. 647, c. 10MC.]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

T6. I had a constituent with severe learning impairment who, being unable to read the letters she received about the transition to PIP, had her DLA payments suspended. How can the Secretary of State justify a managed migration for disabled people when the Government cannot even get the basics right of communicating with people?

[The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)]

I advise the hon. Gentleman’s constituents to use the telephone service or for one of their friends or family members to call up, because it is absolutely essential that people who have any sort of disability that prevents them from accessing their benefit have those barriers overcome: so pick up the phone and the support will be available.