PIP Changes: Impact on Carer’s Allowance Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Work and Pensions
Marsha De Cordova
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PIP Changes: Impact on Carer’s Allowance
Marsha De Cordova Excerpts(5 days, 22 hours ago)
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Sir Stephen Timms
Yes, the earnings threshold will in future be set at 16 times the hourly rate of the national living wage, and that will continue indefinitely. In addition, the Chancellor announced in the Budget last year that we will look at the idea of an income taper in carer’s allowance to replace the cliff edge, which, as the hon. Member rightly says, is a feature of it at the moment. We are looking at that assessment.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
I thank my right hon. Friend for how he is responding to this urgent question. The Conservatives, after 14 years in government, broke our social security system and created a hostile environment for disabled people, and therefore it is for us—Labour in government—to fix our social security system. I would like to press my right hon. Friend on this: 30% of disabled people already live in poverty, and the proposed changes to personal independence payment could see more being pushed further into poverty and many being pushed out of work. Indeed, the Government’s impact assessment highlighted that 150,000 people could lose carer’s allowance or the carer’s element. May I press him again to think about how we ensure that we support ill and disabled people as we fix the mess that the Tories have created?
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that we were left with a broken system. May I pay tribute to her for her work on the all-party parliamentary group on eye health and visual impairment, which focuses on supporting people into employment? That is the crucial element of this package. We will invest substantial sums, rising to £1 billion a year by the end of the Parliament, in supporting people who are out of work on health and disability grounds into work, and I very much look forward to working with her in that endeavour. When somebody who is out of work moves into a job, the likelihood of their being below the poverty line is halved, so there will be a very positive poverty impact from that commitment.