Department for Work and Pensions

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making such important remarks. Does he agree that the impact of sanctions is detrimental to people’s mental health? We are facing a mental health crisis. If we want to support people getting into work, we need to make sure that they are not struggling on the breadline.

[David Linden]

The hon. Lady is spot on. Sometimes, Ministers overlook when they take those decisions—yes, they might be driven by focus groups and such things—that the state bears the cost. If somebody hits a period of mental ill health or is made homeless, the health service or the local authority will pick up the pieces. It is not without cost for the state. I would like Ministers to have the wider picture as they pursue sanctions, because the research shows that they do not work.

[Margaret Greenwood]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous. Does he agree that the issue of poverty is so concerning for small children because it impacts on the development of the brain and how well they will be able to learn? If a child has a good five years at the start of their life, that will see them through life. So many children in desperate poverty who do not know whether they will get enough food are also in receipt of the anxiety their parents are in, as they battle those stressful situations.

[David Linden]

I am proud that the Scottish Government invest in things such as the best start grant, the baby box and free school meals, to ensure that young people get the best possible start in life. My local authority in Glasgow is spending millions of pounds on holiday hunger programmes, to ensure that children who receive free school meals during school term time are still being fed. It is a damning indictment on the state that we have to spend money from local authority budgets feeding children because their parents do not have enough money. That is the situation we are in, in the fifth richest economy in the world.

Remarkably, as I am sure we will hear when the Minister responds to the debate, Ministers are still forcing more people into the sanctions regime, which further demonstrates the fundamental issue with the British Government’s attitude to those on low incomes: preventing vulnerable families from receiving the social security they are entitled to and, most importantly, when they need it the most.

Before I draw my remarks to a close, I want to turn to the local housing allowance. The freeze of LHA rates for three consecutive years is placing additional and needless pressure on tenants and housing associations, and is likely to increase poverty and inequality. That is why Ministers should protect household incomes and support renters by restoring LHA rates to the 30th percentile as a minimum. The SNP has long called for the British Government to fix those fundamental flaws in our social security system but, as is so often the case, it falls on deaf ears each and every time, to the extent that every time I take part in one of these debates, it feels like groundhog day.

The blunt truth is that the Scottish Government cannot change those policies while 85% of welfare expenditure and income replacement benefits remain reserved to this institution here in London. That includes universal credit. By all means, I am happy to take part in debates and make suggestions about how we repair the social security system, but it is difficult to conclude anything other than Westminster—whether the Tories or the pro-Brexit Labour party—has zero appetite to genuinely step in and sew up a system that is failing some of the most vulnerable people in society. For that reason, the only way genuinely to bring about that compassionate, fair and dignified social security system in Scotland is with the full powers of independence. Frankly, that cannot come soon enough.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman]

No.

The Government have never paid more for the pensions that we support in this country, we have never paid more for the benefit support that we provide in this country, we have never paid more for the housing support that we provide in this country, and we have never paid more for the disabled in this country. As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the national health service, let me also put on record my thanks to the NHS. I have had my life saved twice by the NHS, once after I collapsed in Central Lobby in 2011. I got into politics because of my attempts to save my local hospital, and I am proud to have visited Hexham General Hospital this week to see the amazing new maternity suite that has recently been opened.

Much has been said today about a variety of issues, but I want to try to put the debate in context. The Government clearly understand the pressures that households are facing. We are all familiar with the root causes of our higher costs, including the global factors: the illegal war in Ukraine brought about by Vladimir Putin, the aftermath and consequences of the pandemic, and the furlough scheme and the other support that we set out in great detail and the country provided at a time of difficulty. We are committed to delivering on our priority of halving inflation, which will help to ease those pressures for everyone and raise living standards.

Alongside that work, we continue to implement a significant package of cost of living measures to support the most vulnerable during 2023-24. We have increased benefits and state pensions by 10.1%, and raised the benefit cap by the same amount so that more people feel the benefit of uprating. For low-paid workers, we have increased the national living wage by 9.7% to £10.42 an hour; that represents an increase of more than £1,600 in the gross annual earnings of a full-time worker on the national living wage. That increase, and the increases that we made in the national minimum wage in April, have given a pay rise to about 2.9 million workers. To help parents, we are delivering a significant expansion of childcare support, including a 47% increase in the maximum amount of universal credit childcare payments. As I said in the House last week, that is a dramatic increase. In addition, where there are gaps in provision, notwithstanding the above cost of living payments, the £842 million extension of our household support fund into 2023-24 means that councils across England can continue to help families with grocery bills and other essentials.

[Margaret Greenwood]

Some universal credit claimants can apply to have the housing elements of their universal credit paid directly to the landlord. However, a report by the Child Poverty Action Group on the discovery phase of managed migration identified delays or errors in the setting up of direct payments and poor communication between the DWP, landlords and claimants, leading to people falling into arrears. That is clearly a serious state of affairs for anyone to find themselves in. Will the Minister tell us what the Government are going to do about it?

[Guy Opperman]

I will ask the Minister who is responsible for that to write to the hon. Lady. However, her intervention brings me to the issue of housing, which was raised by several Members.

In 2022-23, the Government are projected to have spent £30 billion to support renters. That is 1.4% of GDP. Members may have criticised that sum, but they should be aware that it represents the highest spending on household rental support in any country in the OECD. The next highest is 0.9% of GDP. That figure is clearly higher than the figure that obtained when we came to office. Moreover, there are 2 million more homes than there were then, and more homes are meeting decent homes standards. I could go on.

Employment now stands at 30 million. It is up 23,000 on the month and 73,000 on the quarter, and vacancies are down again—35,000 down on the month in May and 79,000 down on the quarter. Today I met representatives of UKHospitality and a host of hospitality providers at the Department to discuss some of the long-term vacancy issues that they wished to raise. I believe we can continue to work with jobcentres throughout the country to try and address that, and to increase the overall employment rate, which was up by 0.1% on the month and 0.2% on the quarter, with unemployment down by 0.1 percentage points on the month as of May. Economic inactivity is down by 0.4 percentage points on the quarter and down by 781,000 since the 2010 general election. It is clear that the pandemic had impacts, and the progress in certain areas is not as quick as one would like, but we have made huge efforts to turn that around, and all the indications from all the labour market statistics released by the Office for National Statistics in May are that the trends are in the right direction.

[Margaret Greenwood]

Will the Minister give way?

[Guy Opperman]

No, I will not. I have already given way to the hon. Lady.

Let me say something about cost of living payments. We are building on, and extending, the one-off cash payments that we provided in 2022-23, when we made more than £30 million worth of cost of living payments, including the £150 disability payment to 6 million people, £650 for more than 8 million households on means-tested benefits, and an additional £300 on top of the winter fuel payment for more than 8 million pensioner households. That put hundreds of pounds directly and quickly into the pockets of millions of people.

Criticism was made of universal credit as a principle. The first—and simple—point that I would make, which I think was acknowledged by the Chair of the Select Committee, is that the legacy system would in no way have been able to provide the degree of support that universal credit provided during covid, and it would in no way be able to provide an ongoing degree of cost of living support. Universal credit, as we see, provides a massive amount of support on an ongoing basis, which is targeted to help those most impacted by rising prices throughout this financial year.