Jobs and Business

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Friday 10th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

That is an extraordinarily naive question in the wake of the phenomenal financial crash that we have had. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is familiar with the economic literature, but the econometric data suggest that after the banking crash that Britain experienced we should have lost about 50% of our GDP. We have done well to avert that. We face a difficult set of circumstances. It is a remarkable success story that in an economy that is still recovering from such a long economic heart attack, we are generating significant private sector employment growth. That is positive. Alongside that, we have seen the growth of about 250,000 new businesses, which will be the source of employment growth.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Many of my constituents are in those new private sector jobs, but the hours are limited. Many of them want to work more than the 16 hours or so that they have been given. Has the right hon. Gentleman counted how many of the new jobs are part time, with no prospect of becoming full time?

[Vince Cable]

The vast majority are in full-time work. The figures show that quite clearly. It is better to be in part-time work than out of work. I hope that there will be some recognition of that.

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[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman makes the same point I was making. The Government are pursuing that matter through the civil courts and there are substantial penalties. It is an HMRC task, but I take the point that we should perhaps make the message more easily available. Employers should not get away with the idea that they should ignore this.

Let me say a bit about a difficult area of policy in which issues of unemployment and low pay intersect: migration, which is one of the most important reforms that the Government will introduce. I was hesitant about raising the subject because it is essentially covered by the Home Office, but substantial economic issues are also involved and it is important to refer to them. I was provoked into feeling that we should debate the issue in this context because a couple of days ago I was on the radio on the “Jeremy Vine” programme. I was following a female voice that was ranting on about millions of illegal immigrants and the negligence of the Government in letting them all in and not deporting enough people. I thought at the time that it was some fringe party that regarded Mr Nigel Farage as a sort of soggy, left-wing liberal, but I then realised it was the Labour shadow Home Secretary, and I tried to understand where she was coming from. It says quite a lot about the Labour party’s current values that it feels it necessary to apologise for letting in foreigners, but is still reluctant to apologise for wrecking the economy.

I vividly recall a conversation I had with a constituent, shortly before the last general election. She was taking me to task for what she said were millions of illegal immigrants in the country and, rather recklessly perhaps, I decided to debate the subject with her. I asked, “How do you know?”, and she said, “Well, I see them in the high street the whole time.” I said, “Okay, but how do you know they are illegal?” She looked at me and said, “Mr Cable, why are you being so difficult? You know exactly what I mean”, and pointed up the road to the Hounslow mosque. Unfortunately, beneath a lot of the arguments about numbers, that is the prejudice we are trying to confront. We must, I think, make the case—I certainly intend to make it—for managed immigration that has a positive impact on the country, while at the same time providing the necessary level of reassurance.

[Meg Hillier]

Will the right hon. Gentleman update the House on his discussions with the Home Office about visas for students? The attitude of the Home Office is sending out messages that UK plc higher education is not open for business, and competition from Europe, Australia and other places is mopping up our student intake.

[Vince Cable]

I spend a good deal of time discussing that issue with the Home Office, and I will come on to students in a moment as they are a crucial category.

In order to clear the decks for an honest discussion of this problem, we must confront the reality that some of the facts, or factoids, used in this context are deeply unhelpful. All parties and commentators use the concept of net immigration as a way of measuring what is happening on that front, but at the heart of that concept lies a logical absurdity. One reason net immigration rises is because fewer British people emigrate—one would have thought it rather a good thing that people feel comfortable living in this country and want to stay here. Net immigration declines if more British people emigrate, which one would have thought is rather a bad thing. We often operate, therefore, with a concept that gives us misleading and unhelpful conclusions.

Similarly, the biggest item in immigration—this relates to the previous intervention—and the biggest category of people regarded as immigrants are overseas students. Of course, overseas students are not immigrants; that is not why they come here. A few stay on—indeed, I probably contributed to immigration statistics 50 years ago when I married someone who was then a student at the university of York. For the most part, however, people come to the UK to study and then go home. They are not immigrants, but by way of a quirk—not in our statistics, but those of the United Nations—they are regarded as immigrants and we must acknowledge that in our debates.

Setting aside prejudices and anxieties, it is important to acknowledge that in some key areas immigration makes an important and positive contribution to the UK. The first category is the one we have just been discussing: students. Overseas students contribute about £9 billion a year to the UK economy. They also contribute in other ways, but education is one of our most successful export industries. The Government have tried to curb abuses that were taking place. People were using bogus colleges as a route to illegal immigration, and those have been closed. Once we have established the principle of legality, students make a positive contribution, and I would see a negative trend in students coming to the UK as a problem rather than an achievement.

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[Vince Cable]

That is true and the core of the policy. There is no cap on legal immigration for students, not just for universities but also properly accredited colleges. There is also a right to work subsequently in graduate-level employment, and I hope that that information will be made more widely available.

The second crucial group of people are those with key skills. The Government exempt intra-company transfers from the cap on immigration. There are many key individuals in management, banking and engineering specialties, and in a highly specialised economy we will have more and more demand for services of that kind. The Home Secretary has gone to considerable lengths to remove some of the impediments surrounding visas for people who are needed by British industry and are an important part of our economy.

[Meg Hillier]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way yet again. I am MP for Shoreditch and what the Prime Minister calls Tech City. Business after business in that area has raised concerns with me about the challenge of getting visas for key coders and programmers whom they cannot recruit in the UK because we have not yet skilled-up enough—an issue for the right hon. Gentleman’s Department. Because of the Home Office cap, businesses are struggling to get those people in. Does he have any words of comfort for those businesses about his negotiations?

[Vince Cable]

Yes, I do. It is, of course, important to train people in the UK where possible, and one of the drivers behind the apprenticeship programme is that of ensuring we build up our scandalously neglected skills base. Where there are genuine vacancies, it is important that people are able to move freely. If the hon. Lady is able to bring cases to my Department, we will try to work with the Home Office to ensure that those people are able to come.

The third group of people are not immigrants at all but visitors. We wish to maintain our reputation as an economy that is open for business, and millions of people come to the UK to do business, shop, visit family and friends, or as tourists. It is important that they can do that with as few visa restrictions as possible, and where there are visa restrictions, we must ensure they are dealt with quickly and effectively. The Government are currently working hard, particularly with countries such as China, to ensure that the system works better.

Finally, there is the issue of the so-called single market within the EU. When the single market was introduced, it was made clear that one core element is the so-called four freedoms: the freedom of trade in goods; the freedom of trade in services; the freedom of capital movements; and the freedom of worker movements. They are at the heart of free trade. I am often baffled by people outside the Chamber who clamour for free trade with Europe but denounce the free market, because they are the same thing.

Modern trade relationships—there are very few restrictions on physical trade in goods these days—frequently involve people moving backwards and forwards. That is the nature of modern trading relationships, and we must uphold it within the EU.

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[Mr Umunna]

I will make more progress.

Ultimately, for employment schemes to work, there need to be jobs for people to go into, created by businesses, and for that we need to create the conditions for businesses to expand and for wealth to be created. We need to create an environment in which businesses can grow the top line. On many occasions, the Business Secretary has pointed to how our economy is structured, which he says stands in the way of progress. I agree that we need to restructure our economy, to increase our exports and to diversify the sectors contributing to GDP—there is consensus on that—but I must say to him that blaming the Government’s predecessors starts to wear thin after three Queen’s Speeches and after three years in government. It is time that he and his colleagues took responsibility for their actions.

I have always thought that to achieve both rising and shared prosperity, we need to rethink the relationship between the Government and markets and to be far more discerning about the kind of capitalism we want in this country. We need to set aside the neo-liberal dogma propagated by some Government Members that markets are automatically efficient and best left alone. There is a lot that active Government can do to improve the healthy functioning of markets. Importantly—this is a key point—markets cannot set a strategic direction for our economy; they cannot set a direction for how we will compete and pay our way in the world—Governments working in partnership with business can do that.

Making that a reality requires a modern industrial strategy—the kind of strategies that our competitors are prosecuting with good effect—and an agenda in which the role of the Government is not to step back, but to step up; to work with businesses to create better outcomes at home; to ensure that we can pay our way in the world; and to ensure that growth is more broadly based across sectors and geographically across regions as well. We must also empower consumers as drivers in making markets work more efficiently, not only for themselves but for producers. That helps to provide the foundations for UK businesses to succeed in other markets.

[Meg Hillier]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government’s approach to funding for lending has been the polar opposite of what he has just described, and has in fact fuelled the housing market rather than helped businesses such as mine in Shoreditch? It has done nothing to deal with day-to-day finances and only touched potential loans, rather than things such as overdrafts. What would his approach be were he in the Secretary of State’s position?

[Mr Umunna]

My hon. Friend is right to identify some of the risks with the funding for lending scheme. The problem is that it has reduced the cost of borrowing for existing business borrowers without increasing access to finance for those other successful, profitable businesses. The other problem—this is why we advocate setting up a regional banking network, to which I shall turn in a minute—is that the scheme sees as its delivery mechanism the very high street banks that have been the problem. In fact, the transmission mechanism for many of the schemes that the Government have introduced since they came to office has been the high street banks, which have been the problem.

I will continue to discuss industrial strategy in more detail before touching more briefly, due to time constraints, on consumer issues. I do not think that the Business Secretary would disagree that in opposition he did not really share our view of the need for an active industrial strategy or even of the need for a Department, which he now runs, to be its champion—he argued for his own Department to be abolished at the time. After two years in government, however, he appears to have come round to our way of thinking, and we saw his embryonic industrial strategy published last September.

An industrial strategy consists of different elements. I have welcomed some of the sector-specific interventions that the Business Secretary has announced since the Queen’s Speech—in aerospace and with the ongoing interventions and assistance in automotive—and we will scrutinise the Bills in the Queen’s Speech closely to ensure that they support those key sectors. Another such sector is our creative industries, which were disappointed not to see a communications Bill in the programme for this Session. The point is that so much of what we have seen coming from his Department or the Treasury has been rather “piecemeal”—to use the Secretary of State’s own language—and does not meet the scale of the task at hand. As ever with this Government, if we speak to any business organisation, we hear that the problem is one of delivery.

I will focus on a few key areas and the extent to which the Queen’s Speech moves things forward. I will start where the Business Secretary finished. Of course, we must reform our banking sector, not only so our banks are made safe but primarily so that the financial services sector better serves the real economy. We have said, and he referred to this, that we should have better regulated the banks during our time in office. We did not, however, and that is a source of regret. Listening to the Secretary of State lecture us on that, I should say to him that mea culpa in that respect is due across the political spectrum. The tripartite regulatory regime that we put in place in the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 enjoyed widespread support. In the House on Second Reading of the Financial Services and Markets Bill, the Business Secretary said:

“I want to express broad support for the Bill, whose philosophy and whose architecture of financial regulation reflect a broad consensus. I appreciate the extent to which there has been broad and extensive consultation with practitioners and with Parliament, and the fact that the Government have responded to very many of the anxieties that have been expressed.”—[Official Report, 28 June 1999; Vol. 334, c. 55.]

He went on to say:

“Like the Conservative Opposition, we shall approach the issues constructively. There is no reason to hold back the Bill.”—[Official Report, 28 June 1999; Vol. 334, c. 58.]

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[Christopher Pincher]

I hope that it will. We shall see. However, there is certainly an argument for deregulating, and as the hon. Gentleman surely knows, the Bill will need to do what it says on the tin.

The Queen’s Speech also refers to measures to support intellectual property. If we are to focus on and support the extremely important design businesses in our country, we need to help them to protect their intellectual property from countries and businesses that would rather borrow, steal and copy knowhow than buy it.

I hope that the measures will help my constituent Mr Ken Clayton, a photographer who fears that changes proposed, he says, by civil servants will mean that photographs on Facebook and on BBC websites will be automatically stripped of their metadata and will become “orphan works”. As a result, he says,

“individuals and companies will be free to use such photographs with no reference to the person who took the photographs and will be able to license them without any payment to the photographer.”

I hope that when we come to debate the Bill, Mr Clayton will be reassured by it.

The Secretary of State, who is no longer in the Chamber, made a very balanced speech about immigration and the role that it plays in relation to jobs. Although the last Government created many jobs—some 1.5 million, I believe—a staggering 98.5% were soaked up by migrant labour. If we are to get the many people in the country who are trapped in dependency back into work, or in many instances into work for the first time, we must not only reform welfare so that it will always pay to work, but deter those who may wish to come to this country and provide a low-cost alternative, which would be a cost to our work force, and would put a strain on our infrastructure, services and housing, which would be a cost to the taxpayer.

I hope that, while the Opposition may ask some searching questions when the immigration Bill is debated—as they have tried to do this morning—they will support it in the end. I think that if they do not, they will find themselves on what the broad mass of the British people consider the wrong side of the argument.

The Secretary of State referred to the importance of infrastructure. I am pleased to note that the Energy Bill is to be carried over. After a decade of neglect, it is essential for us to invest in our energy infrastructure—in power stations, especially nuclear stations, and in the transmission infrastructure that conveys energy around the country. It is important for investors to see that both major parties in the House, and indeed our Liberal Democrat coalition colleagues, support the regulatory system.

[Meg Hillier]

The hon. Gentleman has made a good point, but does he not agree that the withdrawal of some of the potential funders of our future nuclear provision was partly caused by wobbles in the coalition Government on this issue? Has he any stronger messages for his coalition partners?

[Christopher Pincher]

That is rather rich coming from the hon. Lady, given that for years there was no proper investment in our energy infrastructure and a moratorium on the building of a fleet of new nuclear stations. I hope that the time that it has taken to get the Energy Bill into this House and then into the other place is symptomatic of a desire on both sides of the House to build a robust Bill that will stand the test of time. We need it to make clear to investors that the regulatory changes we have made and the framework we have established will not change, and that they can put their money behind it.

I also hope that the Bill will help the shale gas industry and bust the myths surrounding it, because shale gas is capable of creating create new jobs in our country. Providers such as Cuadrilla say that they want more than an end to the moratorium, which has in fact now ended, and a new licensing round, which is to take place. They also want the Government to support their reasonable planning applications. That will mean we do not have so much wrangling about planning, so that exploratory drilling can be done to find out whether we have beneath our feet 200 trillion cubic feet of shale gas—perhaps there is more—which will be enough to cater for our needs for a century. That would help reduce our exposure to the volatility in international hydrocarbon markets, and would mean we had stable energy prices for domestic consumers and businesses, which would be good for jobs.

I will not end my speech without mentioning High Speed 2, to which the shadow Secretary of State referred, calling for the project to be implemented more swiftly. There will be time enough to discuss the hybrid Bill and its provisions. There is no doubt that the development of HS2 as a major infrastructure project will create jobs—if we shift concrete up and down the country, we will create jobs—but I trust the Government will also recognise the jobs and businesses that may be damaged by HS2: those that are in its direct route. In my constituency there are many such companies and businesses, including Joy McMahon’s racing stables, Packington hall farm and manor, which has been managed by the Barnes family for generations, and Jonathan Loescher’s accounting businesses. These are all small businesses, and they are all now blighted by the proposals to build that railway line. I therefore hope the Government will introduce their HS2 paving Bill swiftly and ensure that it contains clear, quick and commensurately generous compensation measures so that such businesses in my constituency—and in that of my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), who spoke eloquently and passionately about HS2 yesterday—are properly compensated.

With that caveat, I shall conclude by saying I welcome the job provisions in the Gracious Speech. They will contribute to the development of a more modern and flexible work force in this country. They will ensure that we have the skills for work and the right attitude to work, and I trust they will bring forward another army of entrepreneurs who want to work for themselves.

Housing Benefit Entitlement

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Phil Wilson]

That is a very good point, and it is something that I will come on to later in my speech.

As I was saying, a married couple with a three-bedroom house, which they have lived in for a long time, will need to top up their rent from another source if they want to stay in the home and obviously, since the family is receiving housing benefit, any sources of additional income are extremely limited. That is something that this cynical Government are fully aware of.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

In my constituency, which is very young, there are a number of families who have two children of the same gender living in a three-bedroom property. Under the new rules, they would only qualify for a two-bedroom property. What would my hon. Friend’s advice be to them? Or perhaps I should ask what the Minister’s advice would be to a family who have a 15-year-old boy and a 12-year-old boy, with the 15-year-old about to turn 16 in a few months’ time, but in the meantime—from April onwards—the family will have to find that extra rent. Will that drive the family into the hands of moneylenders, or do the Government have a plan?

[Phil Wilson]

We should wait until the Minister responds to the debate to find out exactly what the Government propose for that situation, but I do not think that it will be very much really.

Basically, the hypothetical family who I am talking about could be forced to leave the family home, and that is exactly what it is—a family home, not just a house. They will have no space for their grandchildren, who will not be able to stay with their grandparents. For families who are forced to downsize because of the cuts in housing benefit and who are in need of a one-bedroom property, the National Housing Federation has found that, although approximately 180,000 social tenants are under-occupying two-bedroom homes, less than 85,000 one-bedroom social homes are available.

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[Phil Wilson]

That is not the way to treat the armed forces, especially when they are on active service in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The Government say that they are trying to save money, but that is impossible for the great majority, who will be forced to choose between their home and a basic standard of living. There is a shortage of one-bedroom properties. If people choose to move into the private sector, rents and housing benefit claims might be higher. The changes hit right across the board, including members of the armed forces, the disabled, the vulnerable and sick people who sometimes, but not always, need a carer.

[Meg Hillier]

In my constituency, private sector rents are so much higher than in the social rented sector that moving is not an option for people in such circumstances. Does my hon. Friend agree that in my constituency, and I am sure in other constituencies too, many people do not understand that the change will happen from 1 April, or from when their tenancy renews? Does he foresee a big social problem arising from the Government’s lack of ability to communicate this invidious policy?

[Phil Wilson]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. As MPs, we are seeing a great increase in benefit casework. As we get closer to 1 April, the casework will get even harder.

The under-occupancy rules are the manifestation of the Government’s appalling manipulation of the welfare debate. The language is the same old narrative that we have had down the ages: to secure their own position, the Tories pit one section of the community against the other. Once, it was the deserving poor and the undeserving poor; now it is strivers versus shirkers.

This legislation is unbecoming of a civilised society: it is born of ignorance and raised by prejudice. What is deserving of a civilised society is a new house-building programme, decent jobs, a growing economy and one nation in which we truly are all in it together. The legislation is wrong and should be repealed at the earliest opportunity.

Atos Work Capability Assessments

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

I offer my hearty congratulations to the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher). He has long been known as a champion in this area. I listened carefully to what he had to say and I am afraid that my experience, and that of the people I have been talking to, mirrors much of what he is saying.

I would like to address the debate from the perspective of people with autism. There is a great deal of concern on both sides of the House, and among our constituents, about the way this process handles people with autism. The National Autistic Society, which provides advice to so many of us in this House and on which we rely a great deal, believes that the work capability assessment should be delivered differently so that it is fair and appropriate for claimants with autism.

More than 2,000 people have signed a National Autistic Society petition to Atos, which was launched following the “Dispatches” and “Panorama” investigations, with which many of us are familiar, into the company last year. The programme claimed that Atos was working to internal targets on the numbers of people being put into the work-related activity group, the support group or as being fit for work. Atos has indicated that it is open to working with the National Autistic Society and other charities, including in the context of this petition, but I have a specific question for the Minister. Will the Minister provide assurances that no such targets are in place?

There have been key concerns with the face-to-face assessment process. The work capability assessment model can certainly prove to be challenging in the context of claimants with autism. Most people with autism have difficulties with social interaction, and some will also lack insight into their difficulties. They may also have difficulty understanding the questions being asked and with communicating a response. Even travelling to the assessment centre and engaging with the process may be difficult to understand and create great anxiety. Therefore, face-to-face assessments may not always result in a fair and accurate assessment of claimants’ ability to work. The NAS has had a lot of inquiries relating to the quality and appropriateness of the WCA for claimants with autism, and that feeds into a broader picture of widespread concern.

There is also concern about the awareness of, and training for, assessors. In the cases of claimants with autism, including high-functioning autism and Asperger’s syndrome, difficulties in the workplace may not be obvious and may not become apparent in the course of a face-to-face assessment. That could be due to the hidden nature of the disability and a desire to appear more able than they really are to an assessor, or to other difficulties with this form of communication associated with the condition. It is therefore a strongly held view that it is vital that claimants with autism are assessed by professionals who have received autism-specific training. That would ensure that assessors have a better understanding of autism and routinely make reasonable adjustments as part of their assessment.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Gillan]

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I have only a short time to speak.

I think people are pleased that the Government have committed to having mental and cognitive champions, but I believe that people are concerned at the number of champions, their level of training and their expertise in autism. Our understanding is that there about 60 across the UK and it remains unclear what, if any, expertise they have in autism.

On collecting evidence, the NAS has consistently called for a tiered approach to assessment, both in terms of the WCA and the assessment process, for the personal independence payment under the new benefits system. I hope that the Minister, who has met recently with the NAS, Mind and other organisations, has listened carefully, and I am looking for reassurance in his response that all these points will be taken onboard.

In summary, I have a few questions for the Minister. What steps will the Government take to ensure that Atos collects existing evidence relating to a claimant’s capability to work, which would create a more cost-effective and streamlined system? Do WCA assessors receive autism-specific training? If so, of what does it consist? How many of the mental and cognitive champions currently operating at Atos assessment centres have specific autism training? How will he monitor the effectiveness of the introduction of those mental and cognitive champions?

I am sorry I could not give way to the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), because I know she has a great track record and a special interest in this matter, but I hope that she will make her own speech. I hope that I have reflected in my contribution the widely held concern about this process among those least able to speak for themselves, and I hope that the Minister will respond positively.

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[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

My caseworker, like those of many Members, is inundated with cases that are tragic and heart-rending. The telephone line to my office is often clogged with crying people. They often ring several times a day, as they are unable to cope with the stress that they are facing. Many have mental health problems, and are unable to cope with the paperwork. They are unsure what to do with it, and they ring me to ask for help in the most tragic and personal way.

[Meg Hillier]

My hon. Friend raises the issue of people with mental health problems. Does she agree that that is an area of great concern, along with other conditions that can fluctuate, such as HIV and AIDS? Such conditions are difficult to assess in a 15-minute interview. Does she also agree that it is the framework of the assessment that is at fault, and that Atos might have something to answer for as well?

[Mrs Moon]

It is absolutely clear that the framework of the assessment is unable to clarify realistically whether someone is able to work. The assessment is not valid for the purpose for which it was set up, unless that purpose was deliberately to deny people access to benefits.

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[Valerie Vaz]

I agree with my hon. Friend.

My constituents cannot understand why, although 40% of appeals are upheld, the Minister’s predecessor said that the system works. When I asked him, in a written question, how many people in Walsall South had been declared “not fit to work”, his response was:

“Please note that constituency information on the work capability assessment process is not available.”

It is no wonder that the Government have no idea why my constituents are suffering, but I will tell them now.

SD has cancer and is undergoing radiotherapy; she has been declared fit for work. SH suffered seven strokes, and also suffers from type 2 diabetes and a liver condition; she has had to appeal against a decision. KH was placed in a work-related group; she has incontinence of bowel and bladder as well as diabetes, and is partially sighted. CS has received zero points despite having a spinal disc prolapse. SA suffered a stroke and is blind, but has still been declared fit for work. LM has arthritis of the spine, and has had to appeal against a decision. Stephen Nye was so angry that he came to see me on behalf of his father, and said “I want to let you know what is going on. Sick people are being persecuted: the assessment system is flawed, and they are being harassed by the jobcentre.”

[Meg Hillier]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the tenor of the debate about “strivers and skivers” says a great deal about what the DWP intended when it set up the assessment system—as do my sheaf of papers relating to constituency cases and the list of cases that she is reading out?

[Valerie Vaz]

I entirely agree, and I do not subscribe to the “strivers and shirkers” nomenclature.

MD came to see me with her husband, who is blind and deaf. They told me that the work capability assessment did not take account of the issues faced by blind and partially sighted people. I wrote to the Minister’s predecessor, who replied that Professor Harrington had had considerable engagement with the Royal National Institute of Blind People, Sense, and Action on Hearing Loss. However, that was only at the time of the professor’s third review—it should have happened before the assessments had even been devised—and only at the time of his second review did he suggest the introduction of sensory descriptors and an additional descriptor addressing the impact of generalised pain and/or fatigue.

I am pleased to say that, at their annual conference, GPs called for the scrapping of the computer-based work capability assessment. They should know: they make the medical assessments every day, and they see the sick and the vulnerable every day. There is no common sense in these assessments, and there is no humanity or dignity for the most vulnerable members of society. I urge the Minister to listen to those who have to undergo these assessments, and to instruct Atos to start again.

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[Bob Blackman]

I agree. One reform we could quite reasonably ask the Minister and Atos to introduce would involve ensuring that the assessor was qualified to assess the type of problem from which the individual suffers. That could take the form of a referral by the Atos assessor to a proper medical professional in a given field where there was expertise. That would save the individuals from the trauma of the appeals process and would save money as it would mean that the medical professionals could properly undertake an appropriate assessment. I urge the Minister to consider that as a way of improving the system.

It appears to me that there is a tick-box mentality among the Atos assessors. I could refer to a stream of cases in which people have conditions that come and go and have good days and bad days. When Atos assessors make the assessments, those people can often be having a good day and the tick boxes do not allow the right decision to be made.

[Meg Hillier]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Bob Blackman]

I will not, because I have given way twice and I want to conclude.

The clear point is that there needs to be a fundamental reform of the process. It is right that we should assess people to see whether they are capable of work, but the people subjected to horrendous trials and tribulations as a result need further support and deserve to have the whole process reconsidered so that it can be improved for the benefit of all.

[Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

The number of MPs who want to speak today and the passion that has been shown are testimony to the fact that the system has not worked, is not working and ought to be scrapped. I hope that the Minister is listening, because that is clearly a strong concern on both sides of the House.

The key weakness of the system is the perfunctory, mechanical, inhuman and rushed process of assessment. I have to point out to the Minister that as the system has been handed to the private sector, the more perfunctory the process of assessment, the greater the profit made by Atos and the assessors.

[Meg Hillier]

Other Members have raised the issue that Atos is a private company. I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that it would be helpful if the Minister could reveal the profit margin, as this is public money being spent by a private company, which one would expect to make a profit. Would it not also be useful if the Minister could tell us whether there has been any change in the profit in the years for which Atos has been doing the assessments?

[Austin Mitchell]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. That was one of my concerns as a member of the Public Accounts Committee and it was to have been part of my passionate penultimate ringing declaration when I intended to ask the Government to tell us how much profit has been made, but I can now omit that from my speech.

The system is perfunctory and totally inadequate. I will not repeat the cases that have come to my surgery after the assessment—that has been done brilliantly by some of my colleagues—but it is clear that the assessment fails patients with mental health conditions, particularly schizophrenia, which are very difficult to assess and treat. It fails when conditions are intermittent and emerge one day only to fade away the next. It fails on degenerative conditions, too. The system of assessment does not take into account any of its own inadequacies in those areas.

In the Public Accounts Committee, I was able to voice a suspicion that there was a quota for the number of disabled people that should be shaken out in what appears to be an enormous attempt to do that rather than to provide them with the support and help that they need and with encouragement to go back to work. The process is more concerned with shaking them off benefit than with treating their cases properly. We were assured by Atos and the Department that there was no quota, but I think we can guarantee that any medical assessor for Atos who finds that the total or a high proportion of the number of people he is examining are not fit for work will not advance his career in assessment, his career in Atos or his contact with the Department. Inevitably, there are those pressures on the assessors.

As our Committee was told, 38% of the cases that go to appeal—I advise all my cases to go to appeal—are successful in reversing the verdict. That demonstrates its inadequacy and the enormous cost in the reassessment process at appeal, a cost that is not taken into account in the Government’s estimates of the savings produced by the system. Those reassessments are usually done with the help of the patient’s own doctor, so I do not see why their doctor’s view cannot be invoked and used at an earlier stage in the process. After all, the Government are giving more power to the doctors and claiming that they represent the patients. The doctors know the long-term conditions—they are treating the patient—so why are their views not taken into account by Atos at the start?

Our PAC report on the system was pretty damning—one of the most damning we have done. Our concerns included the rate of profit, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) has mentioned. The Minister should tell us the rate of profit made by Atos and what efforts the Department is making to reduce that and to ensure a more efficient service and more efficient assessment processes. We were concerned, too, that this is a monopoly contract with no great risk to Atos. The monopoly is continuously reinstated and Atos is put back in power. Monopoly processes go slack, and if such tasks are going to go to the private sector—I do not think that they should—the companies should be subject to competition and to more regular reviews. The weakness of the assessment system shows that Atos is not working effectively. There should not be a long-term monopoly in this area.

If the Minister reads Twitter at all, as I do avidly—normally to see people abuse me—he will see the widespread concerns about people’s treatment by Atos. If he listens to this debate, he will hear the same. If he listens to the disablement groups, he will hear the same. Instead of backing an inhumane system and refusing to change it or tighten the terms and conditions under which Atos operates, it is time that the Minister showed some concern and changed the system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guto Bebb]

The hon. Lady’s point is important, because although we all subscribe to the principle of a review, when a condition has been assessed as demanding unconditional long-term support there is a question about whether an annual review is justified. That is an issue that a constituency MP who takes case work seriously would not ignore, so I take her point on board.

There are a couple of aspects that I welcome, but about which I still have concerns. One is the way in which the system deals with patients who suffer from mental health problems. Mental health services are often the Cinderella service of the NHS, but when it comes to people who have difficulty accessing work and feeling confident to do so, the way that Atos deals with such patients has been less than acceptable. I understand that the Department and Atos are putting in 60 champions, but given the number of issues that I have seen in my own constituency, I question whether 60 will be sufficient for the whole of the United Kingdom. The way in which we deal with people with mental health problems is not acceptable in the health service and it is not acceptable at this point in time in Atos, even though the problem has been recognised and work is being done to try to deal with it.

The other matter, which has been touched on by several hon. Members, is the issue of people with chronic long-term illnesses. The problem that I have seen in my constituency surgeries is that quite often somebody may turn up at an assessment centre and on that particular day would be capable of a certain type of work, but the situation could be completely different the following day. The problem with the system that we have put together is that it does not take into account those long-term chronic conditions that could result in somebody occasionally being able to take on work, but not on a long-term basis. That is another weakness in the system.

[Meg Hillier]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that people with HIV/AIDS, where the side-effects can cause many day-to-day problems, are not properly assessed in the work capability assessment?

[Guto Bebb]

I entirely accept that point. The same is applicable to cancer patients, for example. However, there is a counter-argument that often people who suffer from HIV/AIDS or who are dealing with cancer would enjoy the opportunity of working. My father, who passed away owing to lung cancer, was working until three weeks before he died, and there is no doubt that being able to work for such a long period was a contributory factor to the way in which he fought the disease. We need to make sure that we do not categorise everybody who has a long-term chronic illness as incapable of any type of work.

On a specifically Welsh issue, despite the promises made by Ministers in the Welfare Reform Bill Committee when I tabled an amendment to allow assessments through the medium of Welsh, I have encountered numerous examples where assessments have been requested through the medium of Welsh but that service has not been provided. An excellent example was that of a young woman in my constituency who had a stroke at the age of 42, I believe. As a result, she largely lost the ability to communicate through the medium of English. Despite numerous requests for the service to be provided in accordance with the promises made by the Department, as yet we have not been able to ensure that she has that service through the medium of Welsh, which is her right under the Welsh Language Act 1993.

I subscribe to the general views expressed in the debate that the system is not performing as it should and that there are real concerns about the way that Atos is performing. However, I believe that what the Government are trying to do is right, as it is important that we recognise that we have a higher number of long-term unemployed in the United Kingdom than any comparable western state in Europe, and we need to question why that is so.

I do not think it is necessarily wrong, harsh or unreasonable to say that people who could work should be supported into work, but we need to do that in a way which recognises the dignity of individuals going through the system. Despite my support for the welfare changes that this Government are making, the examples that I have seen in my own constituency surgery leave a lot to be desired. We should not throw out the baby with the bathwater, but we need to make sure that the recommendations that have been made time after time are implemented as soon as possible. We owe that to the constituents we represent.

Welfare Reform (Disabled People and Carers)

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

At a recent AGM of Hackney carers association, carers raised concerns with me about many things. One was the carers allowance, which is only £55.50 a week. I want to ask the Minister to comment on the proposal by some bodies that that should be increased. Many carers in my constituency have been on low incomes for long periods of their lives already. It is not as if they have reserves to fall back on.

I wanted to touch on the general issue of disabled households typically being poorer, often because disability has meant being able to work less over time. Many carers have had to give up jobs to care. I am a former working carer, and I cared for two disabled adults. Annie, who sadly died in October, went to live with her sister, who was also a working carer. The Minister needs to understand that the pressure on carers is immense. As many hon. Members have mentioned, the cumulative impact of many changes can be very complicated.

When I cared for two disabled adults, at one point I dealt with 13 different agencies just to get the basics of care, support and medical support in place. Happily for me, at that time we were not dealing with many changes in the benefit system. I am not saying it was all perfect, but it was at least a stable system. All the changes coming hard on the heels of one another add stress to carers who must navigate through the system in addition to all the other challenges of being a carer. We live in a world now where people should be able to work and care, but we make it more difficult for them to do it. When I was a working carer my husband’s cousin was a carer for her sister. We worked because we had to—to pay bills and pay for our families. There was no option for us. Many people have taken the option of not working, and that has considerably reduced their household income.

I want to touch briefly on the work done by Contact a Family in my constituency, and ask the Minister to comment on the disability addition under universal credit, which seems to cut the weekly tax credit for families with a disabled child from £57 to £28. The issues for families with children are immense. If we do not get this right now, it says bad things about what our society wants to do for disabled people. Those families want to ensure that their children have the best start in life to increase their chances of independent living later on. Without proper support in the early stages, families can break down under the immense pressure. As we know, many marriages struggle under the strain of coping with a disabled child. I urge the Minister to comment on that point and to look more widely at the work of organisations such as Contact a Family, which, by the way, is quite supportive of some of the Government changes, but has some particular points that I urge the Minister to consider.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

1. What his plans are for the future of housing benefit for people under 25 years old.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

8. What his plans are for the future of housing benefit for people under 25 years old.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

In June, the Prime Minister instigated a debate about the merits and risks of taxpayers continuing to meet the £2 billion bill that automatic entitlement to housing benefit for people aged under 25 brings. More work is required, and that discussion and debate is still going on.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I repeat what I said in my first answer: there is a discussion and debate. The policy debates are likely to go ahead, but I have no plans as yet to implement any policy—there are further discussions to be had.

[Meg Hillier]

When the Secretary of State is having those further discussions, perhaps he will take account of experience in my constituency, where around a third of residents are under 24. Nationally, an estimated 400,000 households are headed by someone under 25 who claims housing benefit, half of whom have dependent children. When he is having those discussions, will he consider the impact on children of his policy proposal?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

That would go without saying—all impacts on various groups will be taken into consideration. The main point I would make is that, no matter what else, if we were to implement such a policy, we would have to take into consideration categories of people who might find it incredibly difficult, such as those described by the hon. Lady. There would not necessarily be carte blanche—there would be nuances and changes. However, as I have said, discussions are ongoing, and as she can see, no policy exists at the moment.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend is right. There is a range of interventions that we can make to help people get back into work, and mobility is one. Welfare reform and universal credit are another, because they will ensure that people are better off working than not working. We want to see which levers and which policies work, to get as many people as possible into employment.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

As the Minister indicated, some information about the Work programme will now be made available to local authorities on a confidential basis, but there is no accountability without transparency. When will he see the light and allow all of us who have an interest in ensuring that people can get work through the Work programme to have access to information about its performance?

[Mr Hoban]

I remind the hon. Lady that, as I said earlier, information is already shared with local authorities on a confidential basis. [Interruption.] We need to maintain the confidentiality of the data to ensure the integrity of national statistics. [Laughter.] The Opposition may treat national statistics cavalierly, but it is absolutely right that we protect the data to get the best information out there. There are no constraints on employers, local authorities or Work programme providers working together to share information, to get the most effective possible scheme in place.

Benefits (Terminally Ill Patients)

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

As MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, I am privileged to represent a number of organisations that are national leaders in their field, one of which is St Joseph’s hospice, which, founded by the Sisters of Charity, has for 109 years provided support for east enders who are dying.

St Joseph’s works with patients to help support them in their final months of life. It offers end-of-life care in its hospice and day hospice, and at home, for terminally ill people, their families and carers. It has a great deal of experience in ensuring that patients get the benefits to which they are entitled.

St Joseph’s has recently alerted me to serious problems with the administration of benefits for people who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Hackney citizens advice is also helping a number of people who are diagnosed as terminally ill who are not receiving consistent support and advice when applying for benefits, particularly employment support allowance.

I want to outline the scale of the issue; what is supposed to happen when someone who is terminally ill claims benefits; and the experience of national and local providers and individuals. If I may, I also want to suggest to the Minister some ways in which the situation can be improved.

Nationally, Macmillan Cancer Support and Citizens Advice work together to support cancer patients with benefits and debt advice. From March 2007 to March 2011, they helped more than 39,000 cancer patients with over 190,000 issues. Out of those 190,000 issues, 78% were related to welfare benefits in general, with employment support allowance cases totalling 10,659, or around 8% of cases.

Over the same period, Citizens Advice and Macmillan caseworkers gained more than £77 million for their clients. More than £71 million of that was through ensuring that clients received all the benefits to which they were entitled. Behind those big numbers are vital payments to families of people who are dying and unable to support themselves financially without the support of the state.

Let me explain to Members of the House who may not be aware how the system of claiming is supposed to work. To be “terminally ill” in order to qualify for benefits, a person must have a progressive disease and their death must be reasonably expected within six months. That is certified by a general practitioner or specialist using a medical report called a DS1500. Once someone is given a DS1500 form, they automatically qualify for disability living allowance at the higher rate.

Employment support allowance is the benefit for people under 65 who are unable to work because of their illness. Under special rules, people who are terminally ill and not already receiving one of those benefits are entitled to swift access at the very highest level of support from one of those options. Some who are still working will qualify for both, but not necessarily at the same time.

Macmillan Cancer Support tells me that in its experience nationally, the system for disability living allowance has worked well. The disability and carers service is able to fast-track payments and usually does so. The service is well attuned to the needs of someone with a terminal illness. However, when it comes to employment support allowance the picture is different. To claim for ESA, the person must advise the jobcentre personally that they are terminally ill. In some cases, patients are not aware of their prognosis; in others, they are too ill to advise their jobcentre. Why, therefore, can local jobcentres not just accept the DS1500 form from a doctor, welfare adviser or relative as proof of the right to ESA, as can be done with DLA? Why can a check not be done on the DLA database by the assessor from the Department?

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is setting out the situation powerfully and clearly. My constituent Mr McGowan, of Blantyre in Lanarkshire, is in the latter stages of his life. He has a terminal illness, severe dementia, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease, he is bedridden and he cannot even swallow. He recently received a standard letter from the Department for Work and Pensions asking him to get in touch so that he could be given guidance about how to get back to work. Given that the DWP knows all the people who are terminally ill, because they have filled in the DS1500 form, is it not irresponsible and distasteful, as well as deeply upsetting for those concerned and the relatives looking after them, for the DWP to send such standard letters, when the data already exist, and people know they should not be in that position?

[Meg Hillier]

I completely agree, and it would be simple to solve the problem. Simply sharing the data would mean that individuals and their families do not have to go through the distress that such letters can cause.

There are times, of course, when a patient who is diagnosed continues to receive income from their employer. That can mean that they do not need to claim ESA until months later, when their paid work stops. They can have their DS1500, but by the time they stop their paid work, it will be out of date. As we know, people have been asked to get an up-to-date form from their doctor.

Macmillan tells me that there have, unfortunately, been cases where jobcentre staff, on seeing the form or requesting it, have disclosed to a terminally ill patient their prognosis. Imagine someone’s shock at learning they are going to die from a member of staff at the jobcentre or from a stranger over the phone. That underlines why the support needs to be particularly sensitive for people who are dying.

Recently, there has been a serious backlog of claims. St Joseph’s has had patients who have died while waiting for their benefits claims to be assessed. I support calls by St Joseph’s and others for the Department to introduce a fast-track approach for end-of-life patients, as with DLA.

Macmillan operates a national helpline and tells me that the situation varies across the country. Some jobcentres say the patient has to make a claim themselves, and some say that is not necessary to start a claim. That variation suggests that, with some focus, the problem could be sorted. I put it to the Minister that we need a step change in how the service is delivered for those who are terminally ill.

The Minister will have been briefed about the guidance that he and his ministerial colleagues have issued to workers on the front line. Whatever the edicts of Whitehall, my concern is that his guidance is not fully understood or is not being followed at a local level. The human impact is immense, and I hope he shares my serious concerns.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has concentrated on people with cancer, but I have a constituent who developed cerebellar ataxia, which is a chronic and progressive illness resulting from the degeneration of nerve tissue in the spinal cord. It leads to muscle weakness, loss of co-ordination, vision and hearing impairment, slurred speech, heart disorders, progressive staggering or stumbling, and frequent falling. My constituent was initially disallowed her ESA. An assessment restored it. Since then, despite the fact there is a letter from a consultant, she has been told she must regularly have a work capability assessment. That is not only deeply distressing and unpleasant for her, but it is a complete waste of public money.

[Meg Hillier]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, and I am sure the Minister is ever alert to the impact of decisions on the public purse. One of the things I would say about this issue is that it is not necessarily the case that getting this right for terminally ill patients would cost the public purse any more money; this is simply about making the system work better.

My hon. Friends have raised some individual cases, and I would like to highlight some from my constituency. These involve real people who have experienced stress and worry about money in their final months of life. Mrs A is a constituent of mine who has asked me not to identify her in the House. Her husband died six months ago, and she contacted me to tell me of his experience. Despite having a terminal illness—not cancer—he was called in for a back-to-work interview after six months on ESA. Incredibly, the assessor found him fit for work. They claimed that this was on the basis of health checks that my constituent, who accompanied him to the assessment, tells me they did not even make.

A debate in Westminster Hall secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) on 1 February highlighted serious issues with Atos assessments. I will not repeat those concerns here but this case underlines them, although it is worth echoing a point that he made at the beginning of that debate. I have no problem with work assessment. My issue is with the treatment of people who will clearly never go back to work because of a long-term progressive illness and who have the paperwork to prove it.

Six months later, Mr A’s case has only just gone to appeal. The assessor claims that Atos did not know my constituent was terminally ill. My recently widowed constituent is still dealing with the appeal. She said to me, “My husband worked all his life. He probably worked longer than he should have done given his health.” He was entitled to support. The treatment that he received and the stress caused by losing his benefits should not have been experienced by him in his last months of life; nor should his widow have to continue to battle after his death.

St Joseph’s has told me about two recent cases where there have been issues with assessments. A patient who was blind and terminally ill from a brain tumour was asked to attend a medical assessment. Fortunately, the hospice social worker wrote to the medical team to explain the terminal illness and point out that he was blind and could not get to Wembley independently. As a result, the assessment was cancelled.

Another patient had been found fit for work and was appealing with the help of another agency. He was terminally ill and had been awarded disability living allowance under the special rules. All the paperwork was in place, so he should never have even been called for an assessment, let alone have been deemed fit for work. When St Joseph’s stepped in and contacted the appeals section to inform it of this, his benefit was reinstated promptly. However, there is nothing to substitute for that good advice at a late stage. The system needs to work better before organisations that are attuned to this, such as St Joseph’s, Macmillan and others, step in.

Marie Curie told me that the DWP confirmed to it, on 20 January this year, that the time limit on ESA would not apply to people who were terminally ill because they were automatically placed in the support group rather than the work-related activity group under the Work programme. Under the Welfare Reform Bill, people in the support group will not have their access to ESA time-limited. This should mean that someone who is terminally ill should not be called for a work capability assessment. Will the Minister confirm that fact? Will he also tell me what he and his colleagues are doing to ensure that front-line staff are aware of it, and not putting our constituents through the pain and upset that he has heard today?

St Joseph’s hospice has raised with me a number of other problems that its clients have faced. Often a patient has missed out on benefits for a long time before being advised at the hospice about his or her entitlement, as other agencies miss the implications of terminal illness on benefits or give incomplete advice. The Minister needs to be aware of this issue, as it needs to be tackled. Hospital staff do not always refer a patient, even when help is available at the hospital.

If ever there was an area where timeliness and joined-up government was necessary, this is it. St Joseph’s can work with agencies, such as the pension service, to refer those over 60 for help claiming and completing forms. Everything does not always go smoothly, but there is a real need for a similar joined-up approach to helping those under 60 with life-limiting illnesses.

The debate over the future of welfare has been raging in both Houses and in the country since the last general election and before. There are many disagreements between the Opposition and the Minster, but we can surely agree that one core element of our benefit system is that it will support those unable to support themselves through sickness or disability.

I have highlighted just some of the cases that have been drawn to my attention. There are, I am sure, cases where patients or members of their families have died before a claim has been processed and where people might not be aware of their rights. I hope that the Minister will take on board these concerns and the impact on terminally ill patients and their families. This problem can be solved, and solved quite quickly.

What training is provided to jobcentre staff, and does the Minister have any plans to change it? Given that I have picked up on the fact that there are quite significant regional variations, how is best practice shared across the country? I urge him to ensure that no more patients face a bureaucratic maze in ensuring that they can support their families in the final months of life, and that no more widows such as Mrs A have to deal with a system in bereavement that should be supporting them when they need that support most.

The system is a lottery. If someone is lucky, they will find an adviser who can help them negotiate the system. They might find a Department for Work and Pensions adviser who understands and can fast-track their application. However, many are not getting the service and the benefits to which they are entitled. They are among those who need the support most, and they need it immediately. Add to those problems the current backlog and the lack of a freephone number, and the costs for patients already struggling with money are increasing.

The Minister must acknowledge that all is not well. I want to hear what he will do to solve those problems. Has he, for example, considered a central service, so that anyone who is terminally ill is dealt with by someone who is sensitive to their support needs? Again, I am not asking for more money; I am simply asking for the reconfiguration of the existing service, which is already being paid for by taxpayers. I urge the Minister to act now, to ensure that terminally ill people and their families are able to spend their last days without the worry that they will have to justify their entitlement to benefits.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Webb]

I will not, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind. This is the hon. Lady’s debate, and I have only a few minutes in which to respond.

Unlike other claimants to employment and support allowance, individuals who are terminally ill are paid the support group component backdated to the date of claim. So, the assessment period, during which those making a standard claim would be paid at a lower rate, does not apply. Once we have identified that someone is terminally ill and put them in the support group, their payment at the higher rate is backdated to week one; they are not paid the lower 13-week assessment rate. That is quite properly an additional source of support. Similarly for disability living allowance, individuals are fast-tracked to the highest rate of the care component, which is currently worth £73.60. They do not have to satisfy the normal entitlement conditions for the care component, or meet the usual qualifying period of three months. These have all been features of the system for some time, and they are designed specifically to assist terminally ill people.

The hon. Lady also, quite properly, raised the issue of people finding out in an inappropriate manner that they are terminally ill. It is totally unacceptable for someone to find that out from a jobcentre or over the phone: that simply should not happen.

[Meg Hillier]

I thank the Minister for that categorical statement. Would it not be easier for DWP assessors simply to check the disability living allowance database? They would not then have to ask for a form, which would make life a lot easier for the patient.

[Steve Webb]

Absolutely. Atos was awarded the contract to do the face-to-face assessments some years ago. In regard to data sharing, it would be aware that a DS1500 form had been completed for a claimant, so it should not need to ask for another form to be completed. I would be keen to hear about any individual cases in which that has none the less happened, when it should not have done, and we will follow them up. The intention is that, whenever possible, these matters should be dealt with on the basis of paperwork and forms that have already been submitted, rather than calling people in for a face-to-face assessment. As the hon. Lady says, calling them in is inappropriate and unnecessary, and it also costs money. There is no reason why anyone would want it to happen, and we are keen to ensure that it does not.

We also recognise that some people do not know, or do not wish to know, that they are terminally ill. The provisions for DLA allow a claim to be made for such people under the special rules by a third party, and such a claim will be handled sensitively to ensure that the prognosis is not revealed to the terminally ill person. For both benefits—DLA and ESA—processes are in place to ensure speedy access to benefits and minimal form filling. I shall talk the House briefly through the process involved. The claim is sent for urgent medical advice from medical services, which have 48 hours to provide advice on whether the individual meets the terminal illness criteria. Performance data over the last year on the typical turnaround time for these applications show that medical services are providing advice in an average of 1.2 days for ESA claims, and an average of 1.5 days for DLA claims. In general, therefore, these claims are being turned round very quickly, and rightly so.

To provide this advice, medical services can contact the claimant’s GP, or the treating health care professional, to check whether they are already receiving DLA due to terminal illness. Advice is then provided to a decision maker, who makes a judgment on the balance of probabilities and has some discretion. The whole process should take no longer than a week from start to finish. Claims for employment and support allowance are currently taking just over seven working days, and claims for disability living allowance are taking just under six working days.

Appeals have been mentioned, and I would be the first to accept that it is taking too long to deal with them. These matters are handled by the tribunals service, under the Ministry of Justice, and we are working closely with the service to try to reduce the backlog. Some progress has been made. For most of this year, the number of new cases coming in has been lower than the number of appeals cleared, but I freely accept that it is still taking too long.

There are a lot of reassessments taking place at the moment, involving people who have been on incapacity benefit for a long time, and the volume of appeals is inevitably rising as a result. When someone appeals, they stay on benefit in the meantime. I am talking now about general decisions on IB, rather than those for terminally ill people. Appealing enables the benefit to continue, so there is quite a strong incentive to do so, and the volume of appeals has greatly increased.

We are taking steps to address that. First, we are dealing with appeals more quickly. The volume of appeals processed by the tribunals service has been 66% higher in the first seven months of 2011-12 compared with 2009-10. There is much greater throughput, therefore. Secondly, we must try to get the decisions right in the first place. That is in everybody’s interests. I am proud of the Harrington review process, which analysed the very flawed work capability assessment. Professor Harrington produced his first report, and the Department accepted all his recommendations and has been implementing them. Professor Harrington has reported back, saying the Department is doing a pretty good job in taking on his recommendations. He has now produced a second round of recommendations. As I have said, the key is to get these decisions right in the first place, and we are finding that the rate of successful appeals against WCA decisions is significantly lower than under the old personal capability assessment.

[Meg Hillier]

That is all very well for the bulk of cases, but the key point in today’s debate is that those who are terminally ill should not have to go through an appeal in the first place. Speed of delivery is also important. We are hearing of serious delays for people with a terminal illness. Will the Minister move on to the element of his remarks that deal with that?

Work Capability Assessments

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Tom Greatrex]

I do not know why the hon. Lady says “Ah!” from a sedentary position as though that was some great revelation, because no one has suggested anything else. After the pilots, the Select Committee report highlighted issues that should then have been dealt with, but rather than dealing with them, the Minister decided to roll out the process. That is the root of the problems, such as the huge backlog of appeals, the huge cost to the public purse of dealing with those appeals and the huge anxiety and concern of many people. Many people have worked for a number of years and now find themselves, through no fault of their own, unable to continue in their previous line of work, and they would appreciate help to get into work; many others, frankly, are no longer able to work. The process was rolled out without its problems being addressed first, and given how the system is operating, those concerns are now coming home to roost.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Some of us who were Members before 2010 expressed concern to the previous Government. A serious issue in my constituency is the higher incidence than the national average of mental health problems, and some of those people affected have come to see me. One brave gentleman explained exactly how he had gone through the process, which involved a half-hour interview and a tick-box approach that did not take into account the challenges of mental health. As with many of my constituents with mental health problems, he would really like to work, but that short, sharp, tick-box system is not how to help people. I am sure my hon. Friend agrees.

[Tom Greatrex]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Such issues were among those identified. My contention is that those problems should have been dealt with before the system was rolled out further, and we are now dealing with the consequences of those decisions.

The Atos half-yearly report for 2011 was very upbeat. It noted that operating margins had increased year on year to €166 million—an 11% increase from the first half of 2010. Its operating margin in the UK in 2011 was a healthy €34 million. The outlook for the second half of 2011 was similarly rosy: Atos expected profits to increase by 6.2%. I say all that not to congratulate Atos and marvel at how successful it has been, but to preface my next remarks.

Recommendation 13 of Professor Harrington’s first review was

“better communication between Decision Makers and Atos healthcare professionals to deal with borderline cases”.

In their initial official response to Harrington’s 2010 review, the Government accepted that recommendation, noting:

“Decision Makers already contact Atos healthcare professionals to discuss individual case issues in some instances… we will ensure this happens more often… Agreed measures will be adopted nationally during 2011.”

In a letter that I received from the DWP dated 1 November 2011, I was advised that good progress had been made on that key Harrington recommendation. The DWP letter claimed that

“Atos Healthcare Professional deployment in Benefit Centres has been trialled and has proven to be an effective way of improving communications to discuss borderline cases.”

However, on 20 December 2011, just over six weeks later, in answer to a written question that I had tabled, the Minister advised that

“at the end of the trial, Atos health care professional capacity pressures meant that the initiative could not be continued. From the start of December, DWP and Atos have agreed the implementation of a telephone helpline so that Decision Makers can speak directly to health care professionals to obtain medical advice in specific cases. This is an interim arrangement until Atos are in a position to reintroduce the deployment of health care professionals in benefit centres.”—[Official Report, 20 December 2011; Vol. 537, c. 1082W.]

That is a hugely significant development. This may have been due to when I tabled the question or when the Minister chose to answer it, but he slipped that answer out just before the Christmas holidays. The fact that Government policy is not being followed by a company in receipt of £100 million of taxpayer funding a year will startle many of my constituents and, I am sure, the constituents of many other right hon. and hon. Members.

I should be grateful to the Minister if he gave me answers to a number of questions. What exactly does the phrase “capacity pressures” mean? Does it mean that Atos cannot recruit the right number of health care professionals to undertake its work? Is it unable to fulfil its contractual obligations because of the amount of work that it has to get through? What discussions has he had with Atos about those capacity pressures? Does he believe that they undermine the ability of Atos to fulfil its responsibilities under the contract? What other services have been withdrawn as a result of capacity pressures in Atos? I am sure that if he is not able to answer, I will find a way of crafting written questions to get the answers from him.

To me, the phrase “capacity pressures” implies an undermining of the way in which the Government sought to deal with these issues, which was by saying that Harrington’s recommendations would be implemented in full. If that is not happening in the instance to which I have referred and perhaps in other instances because of capacity pressures in Atos, is that not a damning indictment of the failure of the system as it is currently set up?

Living Standards

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

This Government are having a big impact on poorer people. We see that particularly clearly in my constituency, where 21% of households have an income of less than £15,000 per annum. Indeed, we have the dubious honour of being beaten in that regard by only one other London borough. As of March this year the majority of young people in my constituency—just over 58% of those aged up to 19 years—lived in households in receipt of means-tested benefits. In Hackney, 39% of adults live in households receiving benefit, and that proportion rises to a staggeringly high 71% when we combine those in social housing and lone parents with two or more children.

I would therefore be very concerned about the impacts on real people of the policies of any Government. In this House, we often hear esoteric debate about the impacts of quantitative easing and the big economic arguments. However, although it is important that we deal with the deficit, we are not accountants. Rather, we are politicians, and we need to challenge Government about such impacts on people and we need to bring people with us.

I want to tell Members a little about some of the people in my constituency, therefore. Many Members have spoken about the many financial pressures facing people, and I might add that businesses in Hackney central, my area’s main shopping centre, tell me that footfall is down by about 40%. Things are hard for them too, therefore, as greater pressure on household incomes means people have less money to spend.

Some families facing financial pressures in my constituency will also face a shortfall in housing benefit from next year, and they will have to cover that by finding some money from their other income. Where will they find that money, however, given all the other price increases, such as for food and energy?

This week, I met a young mother who works at McDonald’s. She does the 5 am to 9 am shift so that her husband can look after the children, and she works 16 hours so that she can get help in the form of tax credits, but the Chancellor’s announcements of this week will have an impact on that.

My constituency may have higher than average deprivation figures, but there is no lack of aspiration. In the last week alone, I have met two middle-aged women who used to work in schools before losing their jobs, but who are keen to get new jobs—to do any job in order to work—and I met a young African woman, immaculately turned out and at a good school, who is keen to go on to university, but her home is minimally furnished, with clothes stored in suitcases and the household investing only in necessities, as their income does not stretch to purchasing items that Members of this House would expect to be able to have.

We need to focus on the impacts on real people, and I therefore welcome the Government’s support for disadvantaged two-year-olds. All Members regardless of party allegiance agree that early intervention is crucial, but the key question is how we do that. Other Government measures are having a disproportionately great impact on poorer households, of which I represent many.

[Andrea Leadsom]

Is the hon. Lady aware that an all-party group inquiry into Sure Start found that fewer than 10 children’s centres had closed? Local councils have shown huge commitment to the ongoing success of this important matter.

[Meg Hillier]

It is easy for the Government to talk in figures, but many centres have been run down to the bare minimum and are helping just a few families, whereas before it was a universal service, which was one of the benefits.

The children in my constituency who turn up at school without breakfast because of their alcoholic or drug-addicted parents—the same children who turn up malnourished at the end of the school holidays—are the young people whom we should be helping to have a better future. All the Government’s actions—all the talk as though the Government are accountants—do not help those families. Whatever our party, we should not be hoodwinked by academic and esoteric debate but should govern for the people we represent and remember that not all of them enjoy the same advantages as we in this place do.

Youth Unemployment

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

In my constituency, unemployment among 20 to 24 year olds is now at nearly a quarter. Members across the House should be alert to the cohort challenge, because a whole cohort of graduates is being hit hard. The unemployment rate for new graduates in the third quarter of 2010, according to the Office for National Statistics, was 20%. One in five recent graduates who are economically active and looking for work is unable to find it. That is almost double the rate from the start of the recession, which was 10.6%.

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point, which echoes that made by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart). We know that if people are out of work when they are young, they are more likely to be low paid in the course of their career, more likely to suffer ill health and more likely to be unemployed again. That is why the Prince’s Trust and others are right to focus their attention on the crisis of youth unemployment that is unfolding in our country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

I speak as someone who knows what it is like to have been made redundant, and I have also seen my father lose his job in his 50s. I can tell hon. Members that there are not many things worse than when a breadwinner comes back home to his family to tell them that he is out of work and there is no income. I also recall that as a 17-year-old I was asked, somewhat prematurely, to leave school, and I found myself having to look for work. My first job was not the one that I would have ideally wanted, but it was work and it provided my first wage—£48 a week, as I recall it. Getting a start is crucial for young people and I always tell the youngsters I talk to that being in the workplace is much better than not being in work at all, because they have to get something on their CV.

It is easy to go for the headlines and talk down our economy, but I would like to take a moment to talk up this Government’s efforts to improve youth employment chances, not just through job creation, but through their support of the apprenticeship scheme programme. Just over two months ago, the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning announced cuts to bureaucracy to encourage employers to take on a large number of apprentices, and this serves as a proven way to fill the skills gap in our economy. As someone who has owned and run businesses, and actually created employment before entering this House, I am all too aware of the damage caused by excessive red tape and bureaucracy. It is vital that we reduce regulation in order to encourage businesses to employ youngsters. I am pleased that the Government have set about tackling this via the red tape challenge.

[Meg Hillier]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Nigel Adams]

I would love to but I need to crack on; we have only got four minutes each.

This Government also promised 50,000 extra apprenticeships in 2010-11, but the figure has been surpassed and we have seen a record year—an increase of over 50%. In fact, in my constituency 850 people are on apprenticeships, an increase of 67% in the last year. Only by proving to business and the private sector that it is worth their while investing in youngsters can we fulfil our long-term goal of reducing unemployment, and I am confident that, via apprenticeships, we are taking the right steps towards that aim.

Hon. Members can do more than their bit to help young people and others back into work. That is why I organised a jobs fair in my constituency, and I know that many of my colleagues have done something similar. More than 1,100 jobseekers came through the door—both unemployed, and employed but looking for new opportunities. It was evident to me at my jobs fair that vacancy statistics from Jobcentre Plus do not necessarily reflect the actual climate. Its figures for October 2011, published in the Library, would have people believe that at least three jobseekers apply for every vacancy advertised in my constituency—a deficit of employment. However, many of the work and training opportunities offered by the 52 different organisations that turned up to my jobs fair were not advertised in the Jobcentre Plus system, and never are. I am also pleased to say that the feedback from the jobs fair was very positive, and lots of people have received interviews and job opportunities and have started work. Indeed, I have visited some of the youngsters who have started work.

I am confident that the Government have a credible plan for getting this country’s finances back on track, reassuring businesses and reducing regulation. Labour should take note that—

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to be called to speak in this important debate. I know the Opposition like to make their Wednesday afternoons political theatre, but there are many people on the Government Benches who are concerned about youth unemployment and have ideas about how the situation can be improved.

As the MP for Blackpool North and Cleveleys, I represent the fourth most deprived Conservative-held seat in the country. That is no badge of honour. It is with no sense of satisfaction that I report that year on year youth unemployment has risen 36% since September 2010. I take no pleasure from the fact that even on the figures that were fed to The Times by the Labour party, the number of long-term youth unemployed has risen from 75 individuals to 100 individuals since May 2010, but I point out to Labour Members, as they seem to have failed to understand earlier, that there are 276 constituencies where youth unemployment has fallen or remained static since May 2010, according to the same figures as they obtained from the House of Commons Library.

I am sure that everyone who speaks in the debate will say that apprenticeships matter, and they matter to me. I have taken on one apprentice, Nathan, in my constituency office, and he is excellent. Many on the Government Benches have done the same, but we in the House obviously cannot solve the problem alone. I am delighted that, thanks to what the Government have been doing, the number of apprenticeships in my constituency has risen from 300 to 940.

[Meg Hillier]

All hon. Members would agree that apprenticeships are a good thing and that we want more of them, but what would the hon. Gentleman say about the issue that I have picked up on on doorsteps throughout the country, which is that young people with A-levels, and sometimes with degrees, are going for apprenticeships that would normally have been available to young people with lower levels of qualifications, thereby pricing them, so to speak, out of the market? Does he share my concern about that and will he raise the issue with Ministers in his Government?

[Paul Maynard]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that issue. It brings together a number of points that Members are likely to make this evening. First, we should welcome the fact that better qualified individuals are now seeking apprenticeships. We should not say that apprenticeships are only for those who are not academically inclined. Secondly, the Labour party now disapproves of older people seeking to take on apprenticeships. It was a Labour Government who commissioned the Leitch review, which wanted to see more older people going into apprenticeships.

I represent a seaside town. I know the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) does not understand the economics of seaside towns, so I shall try to explain to him that one of our fundamental problems, as the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) pointed out in The Guardian interview that I saw in the debate pack, is that of generational worklessness and the potential for generational exodus, even—people not finding opportunities in seaside towns and having to leave.

For members of the third generation who do not have a job and cannot find a job, the inclination to go out and look for a job, and even seeing that part of their life involves going out to work, is lost. Part of the solution is getting the older generation into apprenticeships and into work as much as the younger generation. That is why, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) tried to make clear, the problem did not start in May 2010. It did not start even in May 1997 or May 1979. There has been a gradual structural problem of worklessness, particularly in post-industrial societies. Tourism and hospitality are not like coal mining or the steel industry, but they have none the less gone through a period of decline in my constituency and we have seen employment and opportunities fall as a consequence, so there is a challenge.

The shadow Secretary of State mentioned the Prince’s Trust, which does a fantastic job in my constituency. Three times a year it takes a group of 12 young people from deprived backgrounds. I have been to one of the thank you parties at the end of a session and heard the powerful tales of how they got into the situations they found themselves in. Many brought their problems to Blackpool from outside the town. Many came from broken homes, broken families and disappointed backgrounds, yet they have struggled and managed to succeed.

What frustrates me about the debate is not so much the usual political to and fro, the misuse of statistics and Members trying to portray things as good or bad, but the Labour party’s failure to understand that this is not about who is to blame. It is about trying to understand why worklessness occurs in our society, why young people are unable to enter employment and what we need to do to get them there. The Government are making progress. I would of course like it to be faster, but we are putting the building blocks in place and I welcome that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lorely Burt]

I will not, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me.

I agree that we could work up a programme to give national insurance relief to small companies taking on new workers, maybe even in the form of a rebate after the first complete year of employment. I have got lots of other ideas, which I hope colleagues in the Treasury will consider. Again, I agree with the Opposition: we need more incentives to stimulate private business to rev up the engine of growth.

It all boils down to growth, but it must be growth in the private sector, not growth led by creating jobs that do not exist, which is what one could argue the future jobs fund did. The Minister has outlined all the steps we are taking to create jobs and prosperity. The motion says only two things about youth unemployment: that long-term youth unemployment is up, and that we should not have scrapped the future jobs fund. Well, youth unemployment is up, but it grew under Labour by 40%—going from 664,000 unemployed 16 to 24-year-olds in May 1997 to 924,000 in May 2010. According to the latest statistics, that figure is 991,000. I hope that a Labour Member will intervene to explain to me how that equates to a 68% increase because, according to my mathematics, that seems more like 7%.

[Meg Hillier]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way, especially given that time is short. Does she not agree that, out in the real world, people do not want the bickering. What they are concerned about, as we should be, is that an entire cohort—for example, graduates—is experiencing a higher rate of unemployment. We should be addressing the whole cohort issue, because we are condemning an entire group of young people to lower incomes and worse life chances as a result of Government policies.

[Lorely Burt]

I am sure we agree on the seriousness of the situation and all the different groups of young people who are affected. Unfortunately, the hon. Lady did not answer my question, but never mind.