Draft Social Security (Contributions) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2022
Debate between Lucy Frazer and Steve McCabe(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Lucy Frazer
I am happy to do that. As I mentioned, those women will be of an older generation, of an older age, but I am happy to get the specifics, if the hon. Gentleman wishes me to do so.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
Will the Minister tell me how many of the women who will see the increase are also women we might describe as WASPI—Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—women?
Lucy Frazer
The hon. Gentleman is right to point that out. It is a point that I have considered with my team. He is right that there will be an impact on some WASPI women. He knows that the decision on those women was a decision to equalise the state pension age. It dates back to 1995. That was the decision taken at that time on fairness, and fairness is the point that I am moving to now.
We need to ensure that the draft measure is fair across the board. Women who pay the reduced rate will benefit from the record investment in our NHS and social care system brought about by the new levy. Therefore, to exempt those paying the married women’s reduced rate from the health and social care levy would give them an unfair advantage compared with others.
I will briefly touch on the timeframe for introducing this draft instrument. I appreciate that the introduction of the measure is slightly delayed, such that we have had to accelerate our consideration of it. I reassure Members that we have written to both the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee to explain the reasons for the delay. The reason is that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs had previously identified a different legislative vehicle for this draft measure, but it turned out not to be a viable option.
Courts IT System
Debate between Lucy Frazer and Steve McCabe(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Lucy Frazer
As a diligent MP working for her constituency, my hon. Friend raised the particular issue of the Chelmsford courts with me yesterday, and I was pleased to tell her yesterday that Chelmsford Crown court was included in the sites that were fixed last night. We are currently working on, and perhaps might even have fixed, the combined family and county court, and hope that they will be online. I can confirm to my hon. Friend that this incident was not the result of a cyber-attack.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
Does the Minister accept that it is not quite fair to characterise this as a single or unusual event, and that her Department has been receiving reports of failures in the criminal justice secure email service for at least six months now?
Lucy Frazer
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. In fact, there were two separate incidents in relation to the HMCTS-MOJ site: one that occurred on Tuesday night, which was fixed by the weekend; and a separate incident that occurred on Sunday, which we are continuing to work through. The issue he identifies in relation to the secure system is, again, separate and unrelated. Some 75,000 people were affected by that, which is only 12.5%. By Monday, we had restored user access to 40,000 of those people. We restored access to the remainder on Tuesday, and we have dealt with the issue. I hope people will identify that issues are occurring, and HMCTS is working through the night to resolve these issues. As I have mentioned, we hope that they will be fully resolved by tomorrow morning.