Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. That is one of the reasons why we need an independent review to investigate such matters.

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her new role on the Front Bench—she has done far better than me. When she and I served on the Work and Pensions Committee, we investigated this matter and found no evidence of benefit sanctions targets in the jobcentres we visited. I have two outstanding Jobcentre Plus offices in my constituency, and I have seen no evidence whatsoever of any targets there. How can she stand at the Dispatch Box and say that there are targets for sanctions when, to the best of my knowledge, there is no evidence that they exist?

[Debbie Abrahams]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks. I understand that his wife has previously worked in a Jobcentre Plus office. To reiterate my response to the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), the whole point is that there is some evidence and that we need a better understanding, which is why we need an independent review.

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Let me say this to the House: go past my nephew’s house in Bridlington one morning. His curtains will be closed because he is simply too weak to get out of bed until midday. This 40-year-old man had to give up a career in electronics because he was too weak to lift and move electronic equipment. Go to my sister’s council bungalow in South Shields. She won’t be out of bed in the morning either; she will be waiting for a carer to come and help her out of bed, because she struggles to move in the morning. A woman who has just turned 60 and served this country as a nurse in the Army, the national health service, and the ship-building industry, now relies entirely on others to help her live, and on the state to help her survive. These are real people; these are the people who the Conservative party are making the scapegoat of austerity. These people are being made to pay for the failure of the global economic collapse—not the rich, the wealthy or the well-to-do, but ordinary, poor, sick, vulnerable, disabled people in this country. That is a disgrace, and regardless of the outcome of this debate, the Labour party will not leave this issue, or those people, alone.

[Graham Evans]

This is a very important debate. In the last Parliament I had the privilege of sitting on the Work and Pensions Committee, and it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson). I am sorry to hear about how his family have been affected by Duchenne muscular dystrophy. A member of my family suffered with that condition and died aged 21 after many years of suffering. It is a dreadful disease, but this Government’s reforms are not about inflicting anything on people with diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Reforming welfare is crucial to achieving a sustainable welfare system that is fair to the most vulnerable in society and also to the hard-working taxpayers who pay for it. Without sound public finances, there can be no economic security for working families, and the country cannot pay for the hospitals and schools that we rely on. Those who suffer most when Governments run unsustainable deficits are not the richest, but the very poorest.

[Ian Blackford]

We have heard much from Government Members about sustainable welfare spending, but how would they define it? Is not the heart of the problem the fact that through the things they are doing, the Government are pushing many children into poverty and redefining poverty? Is it not the case that when we change the definition, we change the truth?

[Graham Evans]

I think I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. This is about choices and what we spend our money on. There is no such thing as a magic money tree, and if Scottish nationalists are not happy with these measures, perhaps they will inform the Scottish people how much they will pay in tax—we never hear that from the SNP. If they do not agree with welfare reform, they should tell the House and the people of Scotland how much they will put up taxes.

The Bill continues on from the Welfare Reform Act 2012, restoring the ethos that it always pays to work to the heart of the British welfare system. The 2012 Act set in place a benefit cap.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that this debate is between growth or cuts to get down the deficit? We are taking a lot of money from the poorest people—those on tax credits and welfare—but those people spend all their money consuming things while richer people save some of it. The macroeconomic impact of the cuts—especially across the country outside London—will be deflationary, undermine growth and increase debt. Is that not economically illiterate?

[Graham Evans]

The hon. Gentleman has a fine record of representing his constituents. That argument is often made by Opposition Members, but I do not necessarily agree with it. The most important thing is for people to get into work and to get into higher paid work.

The Welfare Reform Act 2012 wanted to reduce the benefit cap to £26,000, or £500 a week. That is a net figure. If tax and national insurance are taken into consideration, the cap is actually £36,000. The Bill expands on the 2012 Act, lowering the cap, rightly, to £20,000 per household, or £23,000 in the London area. The changes restore fairness to the welfare system: they are fair for the hardworking taxpayers, who have to pay for the welfare, and ensure that work always pays. The savings from the benefit cap will be used in conjunction with other measures to fund 3 million apprenticeship places to secure the future of our young people.

This is about choices. This House takes very seriously the security and defence of our country—we are committed to spending 2% of GDP on it. I am absolutely delighted that Labour Members are also committed to that 2% target, but if they are committed to 2% of GDP for defence, and to spending on welfare and overseas aid, where will the savings be made? If they want savings to be achieved through an increase in taxes, they should please tell the British people how much more tax they will have to pay.

I sat on the Work and Pensions Committee investigation into benefit sanctions. We hear a lot of noise from Opposition Members about benefit sanctions, but the truth is that the condition has always been applied to the payment of unemployment benefits. The concept of conditionality enforced by financial sanctions dates back to the 1980s. It is nothing new, even under 13 years of a Labour Government. Conditionality remains a necessary part of the benefits system and is still one of the most effective tools for encouraging engagement with employment support programmes at the jobcentre. Some 70% of claimants say they are more likely to follow the rules if they know they risk having their benefits stopped. Sanctions are used only as a last resort and in a very small percentage of cases. Only 6% of JSA claimants and 1% of ESA claimants have faced sanctions in the past year, and the number of sanctions issued has fallen by a third.

[Geraint Davies]

In Swansea, the area that I represent, 65% of JSA claimants have been sanctioned at some point in the past two years, according to the citizens advice bureau. That is intolerable.

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[Graham Evans]

Swansea is a fine city and the hon. Gentleman represents it very well. That may be the case in Swansea, but I can only speak about the Jobcentre Pluses that the Work and Pensions Committee investigated. We did not see any evidence of targets. In my constituency, I have two Jobcentre Pluses. They are outstanding and do a fantastic job. We have almost full employment in Weaver Vale and the surrounding area. The centres do a great job of trying to get the people who are unemployed into jobs. If hard-working taxpayers who pay for benefits and welfare did not turn up to work on time and do a good job, they would be sanctioned—they would be sacked. There has to be fairness. Finding a full-time job is a full-time job. There is the claimant commitment. All I am saying to the House is that in my experience I have not seen any target culture in the Jobcentre Pluses I have visited.

[Emily Thornberry]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Islington Law Centre in my constituency has a 100% success rate in overturning sanction decisions?

[Graham Evans]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention. She makes a powerful point. She represents north London and I represent a seat in the north-west. When the Committee investigated Jobcentre Plus, one of the things I used to argue for was best practice. There are some outstanding examples of Jobcentre Plus practice. Perhaps the north London jobcentres need to look at best practice elsewhere in the Department for Work and Pensions.

[Emily Thornberry]

The point is simply this: the hon. Gentleman may be right, so will he support our call for an independent review of sanctions across the country, so we can see where there is good practice and where there is bad practice?

[Graham Evans]

The hon. Lady raises a good point, which others have raised, too. I would encourage the Select Committee to do a further investigation into Jobcentre Plus. My personal experience is that it does an outstanding job. I carry out job fairs in my constituency and I am organising my fifth one since I became an MP, during which time I have seen unemployment halved in Weaver Vale. One thing I learned from working with the jobcentres in Runcorn and Northwich was the number of high-quality and well-paid jobs available.

Let me provide an example. Waitrose came to town—to Northwich. It is under no obligation to give interviews, but when it came to Northwich, it said it would interview 25% of local people on the books of the local jobcentre. In the end, it interviewed 70%, and I am pleased to say that more than 50% of those it took on for the new Waitrose in Northwich were local people. I spoke to many of the people employed there. There were lots of young ladies, and ladies not quite so young, who had been unemployed for many years. They now have themselves a fantastic career with a John Lewis partnership. I asked them why they were unemployed for so long, and they said that the training given by Jobcentre Plus and the local Cheshire West and Chester work zone was what made them job-ready, able to do well in interviews and capable of producing a good CV.

The last time I checked, Waitrose was delighted with the quality of the workforce—one that, as I say, had been unemployed for a very long time. Some of the jobs are part time, but some people want that, and they are good-quality jobs and very well paid. This is exactly the sort of Jobcentre Plus activity that I hope goes on in everyone’s constituency. I was going to say more about Jobcentre Plus, but I shall give that a miss as I have already made the points.

Everyone with the ability to work should be given the support and opportunity to work. The previous system wrote too many people off and left too many trapped in a cycle of welfare dependency. Over the last five years, the number of people in Weaver Vale claiming jobseeker’s allowance and universal credit while not in employment fell by more than 1,000—a 51% drop. I am not saying that my jobs fairs had anything to do with that, but they probably helped in some way.

This Government’s long-term economic plan is working for Weaver Vale, getting people off a life on benefits and back into work. I have not heard of an alternative to our long-term economic plan recently—or at all, in fact. Employment has been this Government’s real success, with 2 million more jobs—and 1,000 created each and every day during the last Parliament.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

I question this “long-term economic plan”. Is it the one intended to cut the deficit entirely by 2015 or the one to cut it by 2020? Which one of those long-term economic plans is it?

[Graham Evans]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good point. The long-term economic plan I am talking about is taking this country from the depths of despair we experienced in 2010. If we carry on the way we are going, we will be the biggest economy in Europe. I have to confess that I have a vested interest as I have young children and I am interested in their future. Do we all want to leave a credit card debt of £1.4 trillion? As long as we carry on with the deficit, we are adding to that debt. It is all about choices and paying down the deficit, which we will do by 2019-20. It is about paying down the debts of my children and the hon. Gentleman’s children so that they will not be saddled with our credit card debt.

We understand that the route out of poverty is not through welfare; poverty can be left behind through work. International development is a recognition of that. When we as a country give 0.7% of our GDP to overseas development, we look for ways to help countries to stand on their own two feet. Helping communities and individuals all comes through work.

The OBR has predicted that a further million jobs will be created over the next five years, but this is the party of ambition, and we want to go further. This Bill is working to a target of full employment and puts an obligation on the Secretary of State to report on progress towards that target. I wholeheartedly agree with that.

This Bill is a major stepping-stone, moving Britain from a high welfare, high tax, low wage economy to a lower welfare, lower tax and higher wage economy. It continues the work of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in the last Parliament, making work central to Britain’s welfare system. These reforms are transforming the lives of some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in our communities and giving people the skills and opportunities to get on in life and stand on their own two feet.

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[Natalie McGarry (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this crucial debate. I congratulate and welcome to her place the shadow Minister for disabled people. She made a fantastic contribution.

I support amendment 56, which was introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford). The proposed changes to the employment and support allowance and the potentially devastating cuts to the work-related activity group are of particular interest to me as the disability spokesperson for the SNP.

This Government say that the Bill will support our economy and improve support for those who need it, but it is clear that it is a deeply damaging and divisive piece of legislation which will harm workers, families and communities and will exceed even the worst excesses of the Thatcher Government. The Tories’ approach to social security has been deeply destructive, and has damaged the vital social fabric that binds our society together. Liz Sayle of Disability Rights UK says that the language used in this context conveys a sense of suspicion of disabled people, as though they were trying it on to get free transport and handouts. That suspicion is completely misplaced, but is reinforced by the policy and rhetoric of this Government.

This Government’s cuts are systematically undermining the life chances of working people, especially children and young people across the UK. It is an ideological attack on the most disadvantaged—a war not on poverty, but on the poor. But despite my fervent opposition to the Bill, and my vocal opposition to this Government’s policies, I want to take the opportunity to reach out to Members right across the House. I understand the desire to support people into work, and to create a system where social security supports those in need and encourages those who can work to do so. That ambition, I believe, is shared by all of us across the House. However, I cannot see how Members on the Government Benches can say with any integrity that this Bill furthers our common aim.

We already know that many people who are currently unfit for work are dubiously placed in the ESA work-related activity group, and that DWP policies already force WRAG claimants to meet arduous bureaucratic requirements simply to receive the financial support they rely on. We already know that the UK Government’s austerity programme is impacting disproportionately on those living with disabilities and sicknesses and that it impairs their ability to work. We also know that there is absolutely no evidence that these policies of cuts will have a positive impact on moving those in the WRAG group into work. There is no evidence from the Government, despite repeated requests for it to be produced. It is therefore absolutely shameful that, without any evidence, the Conservatives should have disabled people in their sights yet again, promising to cut nearly a third of ESA support for new claimants in the work-related activity group.

It is also deeply distressing for many claimants that the Government intend to freeze ESA WRAG support for the next four years, failing to protect this important social security payment against the rising cost of living. When it comes to people with long-term sicknesses and disabilities, however severe, and the support they need, the Government simply do not get it, and for too many it seems that the Government simply do not care. We talk about language, and we have a Secretary of State who has shockingly made a distinction between disabled people and “normal” people. We have a Government that have continually introduced policies that isolate disabled people and distance them from their communities and support, risking institutionalising people in their own homes.

It is quite unfathomable why the Conservatives think that those with illnesses and disabilities should not have their special requirements and challenges recognised in the level of support and care that they receive. By reducing ESA for WRAG claimants to the level of the general jobseeker’s allowance, the UK Government are undermining the entire purpose and principle of ESA, which was always intended to support those with particular challenges in entering employment more gradually than those on jobseeker’s allowance.

By targeting disabled people for the latest cuts, Government Members do nothing more than demonstrate an utter unwillingness to listen to the needs of disabled people and disability organisations. As a disability spokesperson for the SNP, I spent the past few months speaking with and listening to people across the UK. I heard from organisation after organisation, I heard statistic after statistic, and it is clear the harm this Bill will cause. I cannot see him in the Chamber this afternoon, but who has my counterpart on the Government Benches, the Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People, been talking to? An echo chamber?

According to a new survey conducted and released today by the Disability Benefits Consortium, almost one third of people on ESA who were surveyed say that they cannot afford to eat on the levels of ESA that they receive now. Do the Tories intend to starve those people into work? To me, that is not just morally repugnant but economically incoherent and illiterate. Inclusion Scotland has said that the proposals are

“a direct attack on the living standards of disabled people, their families, carers and children and will result in hundreds of thousands more being plunged into poverty and destitution”.

To talk about levels of destitution in 2015 is an outrage and we cannot simply stand by and let these people’s lives be sacrificed on the altar of fiscal responsibility. Surely no civilised society would penalise the disabled and disadvantaged in the pursuit of an ideological austerity obsession.

I know that my constituents will find it difficult to fathom how the Government can introduce such harmful proposals and I sincerely hope that Government Members at least have significant concerns about them, too.

[Graham Evans]

I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. I welcome her to this place; she makes a powerful point and a huge contribution. Disability and carer benefits for working age people in 2014-15 were £11.4 billion and in this new financial year of 2015-16 they are £11.5 billion. The hon. Lady is talking about cuts, but the spending has gone up, not down.

[Natalie McGarry]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. These are real-term cuts and many people have disappeared from the system because of its complexity and because of their fear of it.

With every Bill in this Session, we have a chance to act in concert, to set out the direction of our country and to make it clear what and who is important. I look to all Members, on both sides of the Chamber, to look to themselves and to their consciences and not just to their Whips. I implore Members from all parts of the House to put themselves in the position of the half million people who will be affected by these cuts—I am talking about those with mental ill health, learning disabilities, autism, Asperger’s and all the families involved—and vote in solidarity with them. They are real people, so Members should vote for amendment 56.