Oral Answers to Questions
Mel Stride Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
First, on behalf of the whole House, may I welcome the hon. Member for City of Chester (Samantha Dixon) to this House, and wish her every happiness and a productive time in the House?
The Government have maintained the uplift they provided in the local housing allowance in 2020, at a cost of almost £1 billion, targeting the 30th percentile of rents. Those who need assistance with housing costs also have recourse to the discretionary housing payments administered by local authorities.
Gerald Jones
I welcome the Secretary of State’s comments about my new colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Samantha Dixon), but that is as far as I can go.
The local housing allowance is a lifeline for tenants to access the private rented sector. The Government have accepted the need to uprate most benefits in line with inflation, so why have they chosen to freeze the local housing allowance, which will have a disproportionate impact on constituents in my constituency of Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney? Will he commit to reviewing that situation urgently?
Mel Stride
As the hon. Gentleman will know, annually I review all benefits, including LHA—indeed, around this time next year, I will do precisely that. It has to be borne in mind that we are currently spending almost £30 billion a year on housing allowance and that figure is expected to increase to around £50 billion by 2050, so there are cost considerations.
Afzal Khan
The ongoing impact of the freeze on LHA is that more people are effectively being priced out of the private rental sector, with more and more housing becoming unaffordable. Research by Crisis showed that just 4% of three-bedroom homes advertised in Manchester were affordable on LHA rates. Tenants are forced to use increasingly larger proportions of their income on rent, at the height of a cost of living crisis. Will the Minister commit to annually raising the local housing allowance in line with inflation?
Mel Stride
As I have just indicated, I will review that in just under a year. There are of course the discretionary housing payments, which are administered by local authorities for those who feel that they need additional support, and I also point the hon. Gentleman in the direction of the significant cost of living payments that we are providing at the moment to support those in most need.
Dame Nia Griffith
As my hon. Friends have said, the very least the Government must do is to raise the local housing allowance to keep pace with the real rate of rent inflation. The Department has also cut the funding of last resort, namely, that given to the Welsh Government to provide discretionary housing payments—a cut of 18% last year and a whopping 27% this financial year. Will the Secretary of State now commit to reversing that latest cut, so that local councils in Wales can at least offer some help to those in most dire need and avoid further evictions?
Mel Stride
I would just say to the hon Lady that there is the household support fund as well, which she did not mention. That is there to provide support in the circumstances that she described, along with the discretionary housing payments that I set out and the fact that, in 2020, we did indeed raise LHA to be in line with the 30th percentile of local rents.
Rachel Hopkins
The reality is that a family in one of the cheapest three-bedroom homes in Luton have faced a shortfall of about £2,300 over the last year, and that gap increased by £650 from five months earlier. That proves that the growing gap between housing benefit and the cost of the cheapest private rents is forcing people into poverty. When the Secretary of State chose to freeze local housing allowance for another year, did he consider how that might make more and more families across the country homeless?
Mel Stride
I did of course very carefully consider the points that the hon. Lady has made, just as I very carefully considered the extent to which there should be an uprating of benefits more generally; they went up by 10.1%—the level of the consumer prices index at that time. I also considered very carefully what the uplift in pensions should be and, again, that was 10.1%, the level of CPI. For pensioners, we also stood by the triple lock.
Dan Carden
In Liverpool, the shortfall between housing benefit and the cheapest rents has now risen to £1,360 over a year. Outside London, private sector rents are rising across the country at an average of 11.8%, yet no one from the Conservative party seems to recognise that rent increases also cause inflation. Conservative Members are frequently eager to call for pay restraint and for benefits to be held down but never for landlords to heed the same advice. My constituents now face homelessness. Does the Secretary of State recognise that high housing costs and completely inadequate housing benefit lie at the root of the cost of living crisis and that the choice for the Government should be between capping rents and raising support?
Mel Stride
The hon. Gentleman rightly raises inflation, which we are all having to contend with at the moment. That is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor came before the House at the time of the autumn statement and set out a clear plan as to how to bring inflation down. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that it will be half its current level in a year’s time. A large amount of support has been put forward, with the £650 cost of living payment this year to those low-income households that he describes, covering some 8 million people up and down the country.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
May I also warmly welcome my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Samantha Dixon) to her place?
Fifty-nine per cent. of private renters on universal credit—844,000 households—have rents above the maximum level that local housing allowance will cover. That means that they have to make up the difference, which, as we have heard, is often substantial, either by reducing spending on other necessities such as food and heating, or by getting into arrears, risking homelessness. With homelessness already rising, local authorities predicting how much more they will have to spend and the Government only today announcing an extra £50 million having to be spent on the homelessness prevention grant, does the Secretary of State accept that what the Government are saving through the freeze on housing allowance is merely popping up in additional spending elsewhere and that it is time to get a grip?
Mel Stride
As I set out, the amount being spent on housing and housing support is almost £30 billion a year. That has grown strongly over the last decade or so and is on a trajectory to reach £50 billion by 2050. The Government are therefore putting huge support into that area. In addition to LHA, there are, as I have said, discretionary housing payments. When it comes to the homeless, we have brought forward a £2 billion package to help to resolve those issues.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
In 2022-23, the Government provided £37 billion in cost of living support. We also uprated benefits, pensions and the benefit cap, as I described in previous answers.
Elliot Colburn
I welcome the steps my right hon. Friend has taken to support Carshalton and Wallington residents. Will he join me in welcoming the work of Wallington Jobcentre Plus in putting on advice events with local charities, especially in St Helier and Roundshaw? Will he commit the Department for Work and Pensions to supporting me when I put on my cost of living advice fair, which I hope to host very soon?
Mel Stride
I thank my hon. Friend very much for his question and put on record my support and thanks to Wallington Jobcentre for its extraordinary work, which I know is encouraged by him. I will certainly look at what the Department can do to support his job fair.
Sara Britcliffe
I praise the Secretary of State for his work to help those on benefits get the support they need this winter, but does he agree that with inflation running high, a symptom of Putin’s barbaric war in Ukraine, we need to ensure we get support to households on low and middle incomes, too? Will he work with me to ensure we protect constituents such as mine in Hyndburn and Haslingden?
Mel Stride
My hon. Friend makes an important point. She is perhaps referring to those who are not necessarily on benefits but are still struggling. I would point to the £400 payment, which has gone out through fuel bills; the increase in the personal allowance over the years, taking many of the lowest paid out of tax; the recent increase in the national living wage to historically high levels; and the energy price guarantee, which has been rolled out to support those struggling with their energy bills.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
Given the cost of living crisis, or emergency, we are living in, it is deeply worrying that the Government have still chosen not to uprate local housing allowance, despite there being no change since 2016. Even those on the lowest income will face challenges in relation to being on housing benefit and universal credit. Could the Secretary of State say how much additional resource is being given to local authorities to pay for additional housing costs via the discretionary housing payment? Can he set out the Government’s rationale, because I do not believe he has answered why they are still freezing local housing allowance?
Mel Stride
On the discretionary housing payments, I believe the figure is about £1.5 billion over the last few years, but I will get—[Interruption.] There was a recent announcement about further moneys which are included in the figure I have just provided to the hon. Lady. I will look to get a more precise answer, but it is of the order of £1.5 billion.
Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Research shows that nine in 10 disabled people are worried about their energy bills this winter. People with disabilities have been one of the hardest-hit groups during the cost of living crisis, yet many are being denied crucial support. One of my constituents is a disabled single mother who is currently undergoing chemotherapy. She told me that the mobility element of her personal independence payment has recently been removed and that without it she is really struggling. With many disabled people worrying about rising costs and unable to afford basic essentials, do Ministers really think they have done enough to support them through this cost of living crisis?
Mel Stride
I am very sorry to hear the details of the hon. Lady’s constituent; if she writes to me, I will be happy to look into the matters that she raised. More generally, it is only fair to say that the Government have done an extraordinary amount to support those who are disabled, not least into work, beating all the targets that we set to get 1 million more disabled people into employment. As for the cost of living payments, along with various other payments, there was a £150 payment to 6 million disabled people up and down the country.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
This Christmas, the £66 energy voucher will be the difference between heating and eating for many of my constituents, but many on prepayment meters are still waiting for their vouchers. Ministers have been warned countless times about the gap in payments, so what are the Government doing to ensure that those on prepayment meters do not miss out?
Mel Stride
The vouchers that are administered by the energy companies come under the remit of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, rather than the DWP. None the less, that is a concern right across Government. We have been liaising with BEIS, and I am satisfied that the Secretary of State there is totally aware of the situation and has been in close contact with the companies to see that things improve. My understanding is that very much a minority of the payments are affected, but for everybody who is affected, that is clearly a serious matter.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
I am glad that the Secretary of State has expressed concern for my hon. Friends’ constituents. He is keen to explain just how much money the Government are spending, but let us look at what the results of 12 years of Conservative Government mean for the money in people’s pockets, especially those on low incomes. We have double-digit inflation and 2.5 million working-age adults out of work, and more than 2 million emergency food parcels were handed out in this country last year. Could that be the reason that the public in Chester looked at the Government’s record and gave the Tories their worst result in that seat since 1832?
Mel Stride
I am rather surprised that the hon. Lady raises unemployment, in particular. Under Labour, we saw unemployment rise by nearly half a million; female unemployment go up by a quarter; youth unemployment rise by 44%; the number of households with no one working in them double; and 1.4 million people spending most of their last decade on out-of-work benefits. That is not a record to be proud of.
Amy Callaghan (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
A recent report for the Aberlour children’s charity found that the DWP deducts an average of £80 a month from Scottish families on universal credit to cover debts such as advance payments caused by the five-week wait. Does the Secretary of State think that it is acceptable that 56% of our constituents claiming universal credit have been left with such tiny sums of money that they have been forced to go without food or to eat just one meal a day? Will he consider replacing the advance payment loans with a non-repayable grant?
Mel Stride
On deductions from universal credit, the hon. Lady will know that, during the pandemic, when things were extremely difficult, we paused that entire process. As a matter of principle, it is important that, when claimants are in debt, arrangements are made such that they can work their way through that and come out of debt. That often means deductions—I say “often” because it does not always mean that, and our debt management team are always very aware of the circumstances of those with whom they are dealing. We also reduced the maximum amount that can be deducted—first, from 40% to 30%, and now to 25%—so I am satisfied that the balance is broadly correct, but wherever there are individual instances where somebody feels that they are not being treated appropriately, they always have recourse to appeal.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
Dealing with fraud is, of course, a key mission for the Department. We have recently announced two tranches of additional investment totalling £900 million to prevent more than £1 billion-worth of fraud by 2024-25.
Vicky Ford
At difficult economic times like this it is particularly important for us to protect taxpayers’ money, so I welcome the Government’s further investment to tackle fraud, but what efforts are they making to address organised crime in the benefits system?
Mel Stride
My right hon. Friend has raised an extremely important matter. Unfortunately, fraud does not happen just at the level of the individual, but involves organised crime as well. Since July 2019, the Department has secured the removal of 1,500 social media accounts, many of which were related to organised crime, and since May 2020 it has suspended 170,000 claims.
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
Since my last appearance at Question Time, there has been the benefits uprating we have been discussing this afternoon. I am very pleased to have had a 10.1% increase across the board, including for pensions as we stood by the triple lock.
I also had the great pleasure of appearing before the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, which was particularly looking at the issue of economic inactivity. I urge all Members to read the transcript of those exchanges. I thank the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) for giving me almost two and a half hours of the Committee’s attention.
Gary Sambrook
I was kindly asked in April to open the new jobcentre in Kings Norton, which has since enabled 973 people to get back into work. Will the Secretary of State set out how we can help jobcentres such as those in Kings Norton and Longbridge in my constituency do even more to get even more people into work? Will he visit Kings Norton so we can both thank the jobcentre’s fantastic teams that have got so many people back into work?
Mel Stride
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The talented and hard-working people at Kings Norton jobcentre do an extraordinary job, and I know he has personally done a great deal to encourage them. This is why overall unemployment is as low as it is. I will certainly consider his request for a ministerial visit.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State will know that employment is lower than before the pandemic, that 2.5 million people are out of work for reasons of sickness—a record high—and that half a million young people are not in education, employment or training. There is a £1 billion underspend on Restart and other schemes, so why not use that money to help the economically inactive get back to work?
Mel Stride
As the right hon. Gentleman will know, we look at our budgets on an ongoing basis. Where we have an underspend, such as on the Restart scheme, it is largely because the Government have been so successful in lowering the level of unemployment. Compared with 2010, youth unemployment is down by almost 60%. It is 29,000 down on the last quarter, and 77,000 down on the year.
Jonathan Ashworth
The Secretary of State will have seen the Office for Budget Responsibility’s projection that we are likely to spend more than £8 billion extra on health and disability benefits. We are getting sicker as a society, yet only one in 10 unemployed disabled people or older people are getting any employment support. Does he think that is acceptable? How will he fix it?
Mel Stride
On assisting the disabled into employment, this Government have an excellent record through Disability Confident. Our work coaches do a huge amount of work to ensure that those with disabilities are in work. The right hon. Gentleman will know the Department is currently undertaking a large amount of work on economic inactivity. I heard his recent comments, which were very interesting, and my door is always open to conversations about working together.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
Amy Callaghan (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
Recent figures from the Department for Work and Pensions, acquired from an answer to a written question from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), show that the Department took £2.3 million from claimants in Scotland, at an average of £250 per sanctioned household. Sanctions against young people in Scotland have almost doubled since 2019, undermining the significant investment the Scottish Government are making in tackling child poverty. Does the Secretary of State stand by the practice of sanctioning the most vulnerable and leaving them hungry?
Mel Stride
As we focused on in our earlier exchange, the most important thing is that there is a proportionate response to those who are in debt, for whatever reason. It is appropriate that we help people out of debt, and reductions—or deductions—are part of that process. As I explained to the hon. Lady, the maximum that can be taken from the universal credit standard payment is now 25%—it used to be 40%. We are very careful to assess every case on its individual merits, to take into account the circumstances of those impacted.
Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Mel Stride
I recognise the extraordinary work that my hon. Friend has done over many years to campaign for those in social housing, private housing and also, indeed, those who are homeless. I fully support his Bill. It is absolutely right that we clamp down on these rogue landlords. I think I recall him saying in this House how he had examples of those who were supposed to be supporting people living in their accommodation simply knocking on the door, calling up the stairs to say, “Are you alright?” and then leaving. That is completely and utterly unacceptable. I look forward to the progress of his Bill.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
Mel Stride
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising Mr Hudson’s situation. If he would care to write to me, or have Mr Hudson write to me, I will be very happy to make sure that it is thoroughly looked into.
Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
Can my right hon. Friend give the House an update on the new disability action plan that the Government are preparing at the moment?
Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
We were grateful for the answers that the Secretary of State gave at the Work and Pensions Committee meeting last week, and we are looking forward to him returning on 11 January. He has been pressed this afternoon, repeatedly and rightly, about local housing allowance, and I have heard his answers to those questions. Next year will be the fourth year that the local housing allowance has been frozen at its current level, during a period when rents have risen sharply. Does he recognise that the case for rebasing local housing allowance, so that it reflects actual local rents, is becoming a very pressing one?
Mel Stride
Once again, I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the opportunity to appear before his Committee last week. He raises again the LHA. In 2020, it was, of course, raised to be in line with the local 30th percentile of rents at a cost of approaching £1 billion. He is absolutely right that, clearly, the higher the rate of inflation, and house rental inflation in particular, the more pressure that is put on that particular allowance. All I can undertake to do is to look at this matter very closely the next time I review these particular benefits, which will be in about a year’s time.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
I raised 11-year-old Harry Sanders’s disability living allowance appeal at the last DWP questions, but despite a letter from the Minister, for which I am grateful, his parents are still waiting for a tribunal date. Will the Minister look again at Harry’s case, understand why the long wait is causing such anxiety and work with me to resolve this matter as soon as possible?
Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
The Secretary of State mentioned the reduction to 25% of the deductions to universal credit to claw back overpayments or advances, but deducting 25% of money that barely covers the essentials is far too much. A report by Lloyds Bank Foundation says that even at 25% the deductions are pushing people into other debt and leaving them without enough to live on. The Secretary of State will also know that the Work and Pensions Committee has recommended pausing debt recovery during the cost of living crisis. Will the Secretary of State now pause that debt collection and, when it resumes, resume it at a lower level?
Mel Stride
The hon. Lady will know that the level of 25% she refers to has been decreasing through time; it was 40% not that long ago, then 30% and now it is 25%. It was paused altogether during the pandemic, and the experience then was that debt started to increase among claimants, in many cases in a way that was not helpful to the claimant. It is an important principle that, where people are in debt, we work with them to make sure we get them out of debt through time, but I accept that we need to do that with great care, hence the various elements of the process that I described earlier.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
What measures are the Government taking to speed up repayments to the 200,000 pensioners who have yet to be compensated for the historical underpayments in the state pension?
State Pensions and Benefits: Review of Rates
Mel Stride Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
The Social Security Administration Act 1992 places an annual statutory duty on the Secretary of State to review the rates of state pensions and benefits after consideration of trends in price and earnings growth in the preceding year. I have now concluded this review for the tax year 2023-24.
I have decided that state pension and benefit rates should increase in line with the consumer prices index (CPI) for the year to September 2022. This means that they will increase by 10.1% from 10 April 2023.
I will deposit the full list of the new rates in the Libraries of both Houses in due course, but I am pleased to announce here the increases to some of the largest benefits. The full rate of the new state pension will increase from £185.15 to £203.85 a week. The basic state pension will increase from £141.85 to £156.20 a week. The standard minimum guarantee for a couple in pension credit will increase from £278.70 to £306.85 a week. The enhanced rate of the daily living component of personal independence payment will increase from £92.40 to £101.75 a week. The universal credit standard allowance for a couple where one or both are over 25 will increase from £525.72 to £578.82 a month; the limited capability for work and work-related activity amount will increase from £354.28 to £390.06 a month; and the child element for those born on or after 6 April 2017 will increase from £244.58 to £269.58 a month.
This decision will increase expenditure on state pensions and pensioner benefits by £13 billion in 2023-24 compared to no change in these rates for the same period. It will meet the Government’s manifesto commitment to apply the triple lock to the new and basic state pensions. It will also extend CPI protection to those who rely on the standard minimum guarantee in pension credit at a cost of £700 million above the statutory minimum requirement.
The decision will also increase expenditure on reserved non-pensioner benefits by £9 billion in 2023-24 compared to no change in these rates for the same period. This includes benefits for those with additional disability or care needs and increases to universal credit which provides essential support to people on the lowest incomes while they seek work, seek progression in work, or are unable to work.
In view of the exceptional situation that currently pertains with respect to fuel costs, I have also decided to freeze the standard fuel cost deductions in housing benefit, rather than increase them in line with the normal convention of the fuel element of CPI.
I can also confirm that the local housing allowance rates for 2023-24 will be maintained in cash terms at the elevated rates agreed for 2020-21.
I have also completed my periodic statutory review of the levels of the benefit cap which, since 24 March 2022 and under Section 96A of the Welfare Reform Act 2012, I am obliged to undertake at least once every five years. I have concluded that each of the four benefit cap levels should be increased in line with CPI for the year to September 2022. This means that they will increase by 10.1% from April 2023. The annual benefit cap levels will therefore increase as follows:
to £25,323 for couples and lone parents in London and £22,020 for the rest of Great Britain
to £16,967 for single people without children in London and £14,753 for the rest of Great Britain.
Social security is a transferred matter in Northern Ireland.
[HCWS374]
State Pension Triple Lock
Mel Stride Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
Can I open by saying that it is a pleasure to at last stand opposite the right hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) in debate at the Dispatch Box? We have heard a lot of sound and fury from the Opposition Benches, but not much illumination and light. Indeed, the entire speech was predicated on a perceived answer to the question that he has put in the motion—namely, that we will short-change pensioners in some way—and that is far from necessarily the outcome we will see.
The right hon. Gentleman’s speech started pretty well—he read out the motion and so far so good—but it was on the intervention of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), who claimed him as a close friend, that he started to go down hill and lose his politics bearings. I should just correct my right hon. Friend, who I think was being over-harsh on Gordon Brown by suggesting that, in 1999, Labour put up pensions by 50p. It was, of course, 75p—a full 50% more than he suggested.
Sir John Hayes
I am immensely grateful to my right hon. Friend for correcting the record. I did say we were friends and I was trying to be generous to the right hon. Member for Leicester South, but adding the extra 25p would have come as cold comfort to the pensioners who suffered under Labour. We should remember that the triple lock was a Conservative policy, which is why we must stand by it.
Mel Stride
I thank my right hon. Friend, and given the impact his intervention had on a speech that deteriorated very rapidly thereafter, he will now be my secret weapon in every debate now; he will be there, poised.
Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I am actually quite offended by the idea that this is theatre and knockabout because my constituents do not see that way. Can I bring some facts to this debate? The Labour Government took 1 million pensioners out of poverty. This Government have put half a million into poverty. Does the Secretary of State not feel that this is just outrageous, and that he needs to make it clear today that the promises of his manifesto will be fulfilled?
Mel Stride
I will of course come on to the issue of the impact of the Government’s huge commitment to pensioners over the years on issues such as poverty that the hon. Lady has raised. However, may I begin by saying that I am slightly surprised the right hon. Member for Leicester South should have come forward with this motion at all? He was present at departmental questions just a few days ago, when the question about what the Government would do in respect of the triple lock, and indeed the uprating of benefits, was put on many occasions to me and my fellow Ministers, and we gave a very clear, rational and sound response. It is that a fiscal event will take place soon—on the 17th of this month—and, as he will know, it is completely out of order for Ministers under those circumstances to start giving a running commentary on what is expected to be included in that fiscal event. Indeed, in the event that he was in my position, stood up and pre-announced measures that were coming forward in the Budget, he would rightly be required to resign from his position. No doubt that is something that, in my case, would please him no end, but I am afraid I am not going to give him that pleasure.
Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)
On the autumn statement coming on 17 November, which is next week, it is accompanied by a full forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility. Is that not the responsible time to talk about the uprating of pensions and benefits? It is irresponsible of the Opposition to bring this forward ahead of the full OBR forecast.
Mel Stride
My hon. Friend is entirely right. That is precisely the point I am making. It would be entirely irresponsible for any member of the Government to prejudge or give a running commentary on anything that may appear in that statement.
Alan Brown
Can the Secretary of State outline why it would be irresponsible to confirm that the Government are keeping a manifesto commitment and promise?
Mel Stride
As I have set out, we are facing what is being called a Budget. It is a major fiscal event and many decisions will be taken within it. It would not be right for a member of the Government at the Dispatch Box to prejudge what may be included in it.
Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State to his first Department for Work and Pensions debate. Surely he is not suggesting that the current Prime Minister was irresponsible when he said last May that the triple lock would be honoured for next April. Will he confirm that, if the triple lock is not honoured for next April, it will be almost without precedent, going back 50 years or more, for the state pension not to be uprated at least in line with inflation?
Mel Stride
I welcome the question from the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee. As a former Pensions Minister, he will know that, in the situation we are in at the moment, right hard up against a major fiscal event that is about to set out major tax and spending decisions, it would simply not be right, as I have said on countless occasions, for any member of the Government to prejudge and pre-empt the measures that the Chancellor will be coming forward with.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
The Secretary of State talks about prejudging, pre-empting and following due process, but he knows that, if the Department was intending to suspend the triple lock, his officials would already be preparing the relevant legislation, as was brought forward by then Pensions Minister, the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), when the triple lock was last suspended. In the interests of being transparent and following process, can the Secretary of State see whether those officials have been instructed to draft that legislation?
Mel Stride
That is simply an ingenious way—I congratulate the hon. Member—of asking precisely the same question. I have noticed that Members do that in this House from time to time, sometimes quite effectively.
The process is extremely clear. I have a duty under legislation to assess the triple lock and the uprating of benefits and, taking into account the September CPI figures and the average wage increases in the preceding period, and in conjunction with the Chancellor—because these decisions have a major impact on the Department’s annual managed expenditure—to come to a decision. That process is ongoing and will be concluded by the 17th, when the hon. Member will have the answers to all the questions he asks.
Let me focus on part of the central charge from the shadow Secretary of State regarding what this Government have or have not done for pensioners over a long period. As has been pointed out by Conservative Members, the triple lock was brought in under a Conservative-led Government in 2011. As to what has happened to the pension in that intervening period, the basic state pension has increased by £2,300, outperforming inflation by £720. We spend £110 billion a year supporting pensioners through the pension and £134 billion if we take wider measures into account. That is more than 5% of the entire output of the economy dedicated to supporting our pensioners.
Gary Sambrook
Talking of wider measures, pension credit can be worth up to £3,300 for individual pensioners, and it can open the door to many other benefits such as free NHS dental treatment and other cost of living measures. There are 800,000 people in the UK, many of whom will be in Birmingham, Northfield, who could claim pension credit but do not. Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to encourage as many people as possible to claim pension credit?
Mel Stride
That is a truly constructive intervention because, as my hon. Friend points out, not everybody who would be qualified for that benefit has applied. About 70% of those who we believe are eligible receive pension credit, but 30% do not. My hon. Friend the Minister for Employment did an extraordinarily good job in June in encouraging people to sign up to pension credit, through the campaign that the Department launched, and I believe there was an increase in take-up of 275% due to his efforts. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Gary Sambrook) is right: this is important not just for the benefits that we think of, and the credit itself, worth £3,300, but in terms of recent measures that the Government have announced, the £650 of support, which is available to pensioners only if it is unlocked by access to pension credit. It is an important credit to apply for.
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)
The £650 cost of living grant to those on pension credit is great, and would have been a great incentive to get that other 30% to 40% to sign up for pension credit. We know that some people feel that they should not do it, and we need to persuade them. Unfortunately, however, unless someone applied successfully by 19 August, they can no longer get that £650. My campaign to extend that deadline to 31 March has been running for a couple of months, and I have had some positive responses. Will the Minister consider meeting me to talk about the possibility of extending the deadline to the official end of winter, so that we can convince people to take it?
Mel Stride
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention and I recognise the solid and important work that she has done in this area. I can correct her, and hopefully please her, by saying that the deadline is 18 December, because pensions credit can be applied for three months retrospectively, which would bring it into the reference period for the £650 payment.
Anne McLaughlin
The 19 December deadline only allows people to get £324. I will be getting my constituents to sign up for that on the basis of the £324, but I am asking whether somebody who applies until the end of March can get the whole amount of £650, which is a bigger incentive than £324.
Mel Stride
I thank the hon. Lady for that clarification and I accept the point she makes. I would be happy for the Minister for Pensions to meet her to discuss the issue she has raised.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
The key point my right hon. Friend is stressing is that a huge amount has been done consistently by this Government to help pensioners since 2011—innovations that the Opposition opposed at the time or certainly did not come up with, including benefits for women who can claim pension years when they were bringing up children, and auto-enrolment with 20 million new people. I hope that the one-off payment my right hon. Friend just alluded to will be valid for a bit longer, and there is the increase of £3,200 per pensioner on the state pension alone. Does my right hon. Friend agree that today’s debate is largely designed for the Opposition, and about the shadow Minister who was behind the 1999 75p increase—[Interruption.]—trying to park his tanks—
Mel Stride
Thank you, Mr Speaker. The points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) are well made. This Government have done a huge amount over many years to do what we can.
Mel Stride
The hon. Lady asks from a sedentary position why poverty is going up, and I will come to poverty in a moment. There is no doubt that my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester is right: for a long time the Government have stood up for the interest of pensioners as one of our prime priorities, and we know why. Many pensioners are particularly vulnerable. When economic conditions are difficult—as they are at the moment—it is hard for them to adjust their economic circumstances, to re-engage with the workforce and so on, so it is important that we have that duty.
I turn to poverty. Since 2009-10, 400,000 fewer pensioners are in absolute poverty—before or after housing costs—and the proportion of pensioners in material deprivation has fallen from 10% in 2009-10 to 6% in 2019-20. Over the much longer sweep since 1990, relative poverty has halved, but there is still more to be done.
Alan Brown
Does the Secretary of State accept that poverty analysis figures lag real time and that poverty figures are going up? We only have to look at how an estimated 6.7 million households are in fuel poverty. Will he remember that when he stands at the Dispatch Box and talks about figures coming down?
Mel Stride
Those figures are simple facts about what has happened to absolute poverty across the period that I quoted.
I turn to an important issue: the economic circumstances in which the country finds itself.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mel Stride
In a moment. That is a difficult situation, largely visited upon us through a major pandemic that shut down a substantial proportion of the economy, followed by a war between Ukraine and Russia. That, of course, has had a huge impact in terms of inflation, the cost of energy and people’s bills. It is only right that we are honest with the public and honest in the House about the ramifications of that situation. On 17 November, we will see some difficult choices brought forward by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on both tax and spending. We have to understand why that is. They will be brought forward because the country must demonstrate that it will live within its means and act fiscally responsibly. As a consequence, we see bond yields and interest rates softening, which will be good for mortgage holders, good for businesses who are borrowing and good for the servicing costs of the Government and their national debt.
Those hard choices must be made, but within them the Government have a core mission to look after the most vulnerable. Those who say that we do not do that are simply wrong. The evidence bears out my statement. The £650 cost of living payment that we have discussed is there for pensioners through pension credit and is there more widely for 8 million low-income households up and down the country. There is the £300 payment to all pensioner households. There is the £400 reduction in fuel bills, which comes through the bills themselves. There is a £150 reduction for those living in houses in council tax bands A to D—many of them will be pensioners—and a £150 payment to those who are disabled. That is on top of the household support fund administered by local authorities, who perhaps have a better grip of local need than those at the centre, which was recently expanded by £500 million to over £1 billion. Of course, there is also the energy price guarantee holding average fuel bills for the average family at £2,500, saving £700 across the winter. All those measures and more are clearly indicative that the Government care about those who have the least and are there to protect them at every turn.
David Linden
Going back to what the Secretary of State said earlier, one would think that before covid and the war in Ukraine everything was hunky-dory and there were no problems at all. The reality is that the cost of living crisis is not recent but a result of 12 years of Conservative austerity. [Interruption.] If only Conservative Members got so outraged about pensioner poverty. When he talks about the hard fiscal decisions that will have to be made on 17 November, does he understand that my pensioners in Belvidere are shocked that the Government are not doing enough while lifting the cap on bankers’ bonuses?
Mel Stride
I am surprised by the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. When a pandemic comes along and contracts the economy by a greater level than at any time since about 1709—the year of the great frost—and a war breaks out that has a huge impact on energy costs in electricity, oil and gas, very few of our constituents up and down the country would not accept that those have been major contributors to the inflation and other challenges that we face. Only yesterday, the International Monetary Fund stated that about a third of economies in the world will be going into recession. We are not an outlier; we are right in the middle of the pack of nations who are suffering the consequences of the events that I described.
Margaret Greenwood
The Secretary of State has been telling us that the Government are committed to protecting the most vulnerable and looking after pensioners, but that will ring hollow to pensioners in my constituency who are devastated at the squeeze on public services. They see libraries closing—places they rely on as social hubs where they can go and interact with people—and the local authority having problems providing the social care that they need. Those issues really affect them. I know that they do not come under his Department, but will he commit to speaking to the Cabinet about them?
Mel Stride
The hon. Lady raises a perfectly legitimate concern. We are all concerned about public services, and certainly those of us on the Government side care deeply about public services, but we must be honest with the British public in saying that times are extremely difficult and there will be some tough decisions.
Mel Stride
The hon. Lady shakes her head, but economically there are really three choices: we can either raise taxes, cut spending or borrow more money. The Labour way, we know, is to borrow, borrow, borrow. Unfortunately, we all know where that leads. [Interruption.] The shadow Secretary of State needs to calm down. He is getting a bit excited. What we need—
Mr Speaker
Order. Mr Ashworth, you need to calm down. [Interruption.] No, no. I will make the decision on who needs to be calm, and it is you who is going to be calm.
Mel Stride
Mr Speaker, you are a man after my own heart. We are on the same page and I could not agree with you more. Thank you very much indeed for that timely intervention.
That brings me to my closing remarks.
Mel Stride
I will not.
I respect the fact that the right hon. Member for Leicester South brought forward the motion and, to the extent that it underlines the absolute importance of standing up for our pensioners, I welcome it. Government Members will always be there to support pensioners. We always have been in the past, we are now and we always will be.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mel Stride Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I also associate myself with your remarks regarding Paul Pelosi and the Speaker in the United States. Our thoughts are with them both.
It is a huge honour to stand here as the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. In so doing, I pay tribute to all those who have preceded me, in particular my right hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), who was an outstanding Secretary of State and also an outstanding Minister of State for disabled people.
The cold weather payment’s design ensures that support reaches those most vulnerable. The energy price guarantee is supporting millions of households with energy costs from now until April 2023. This is on top of the cost of living support worth more than £37 billion for around 8 million households on means-tested benefits.
Nick Smith
Mr Speaker, may I associate myself with your remarks about the Pelosi family?
I congratulate the right hon. Member on his appointment. The £25 cold weather payment rate has not been updated since 2008. In today’s money, it should be worth £37. Parts of Blaenau Gwent are more than 1,000 feet above sea level, and the constituency itself is one of the most deprived in the UK. Will the Secretary of State look again at the criteria for this scheme? Surely areas with bad weather, higher energy costs and lower incomes should get a fairer deal.
Mel Stride
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s question, because these are very important payments. They are automatic, as he will know. Typically, they are received within 14 days and they are targeted at those who are most vulnerable. His point about the particular local conditions and the elevation of parts of his constituency are well made and I would be very happy to have further discussions with him about that. I should point out though that I believe there are 72 different weather stations to serve as reference points for different temperatures, so it may be that there is one very close to the area he describes.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend to his new position. Will he tell the House what progress his Department is making to increase the uptake of pension credit, which means that more vulnerable elderly people will be eligible for cold weather payments?
Mel Stride
My hon. Friend is right to raise this very important benefit, pension credit. He will be aware that the Department has been fully engaged in encouraging pensioners who will qualify to take up this benefit, and it is important that they do, because it is worth more than £3,000 a year and it is a gateway benefit for other benefits in turn. I pay tribute to the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), who has done a great deal to push greater uptake, including a week of effort back in June when the uptake increased by 275% in that week.
Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
The labour market has recovered strongly since 2020, with payroll employment up on the pre-pandemic level in all 12 regions of the United Kingdom. We have comprehensive support in place to help people to find, progress and stay in work, with additional support for groups we know are more likely to be inactive, such as those aged 50-plus and people with a disability.
Sally-Ann Hart
Work is the best route out of poverty, and it is concerning that claimants of, and public spending on, working-age benefits have increased significantly since 2019. There is more that the Government can do beyond the conditionality regime, so can the Secretary of State confirm that implementing universal support, which is designed to help those facing barriers to work and to overcome the complex challenges holding them back, will be considered?
Mel Stride
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend that work is the best route out of poverty, and in that regard I commend her for her private Member’s Bill, which the Department is pleased to support. Our low unemployment rate demonstrates our extensive support for those moving into work; universal support has been replaced, as she may know, by Help to Claim, which provides tailored support to individuals making a universal credit claim across England, Scotland and Wales.
Daniel Zeichner
The economy is plagued by labour shortages, from care to hospitality. On Saturday, 200 bus services in Cambridge were cancelled because of a lack of drivers, leaving health workers unable to get to and from their places of work. After a decade of zero-hours and short-term contracts, it is no surprise that people want out—they do not want to be at work because it is too tough. Is it not time for the Government to recognise that good workplace rights are not just good for workers, but good for employers and good for us all?
Mel Stride
I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. He is right to raise the issue of economic activity. That will be a major focus of mine as Secretary of State: we have 9 million people who are economically inactive, and we desperately need to get as many as we can into the workforce, not least because under this Government we have very low unemployment, very high levels of employment and 1.25 million vacancies in the economy.
Stephen Crabb
I congratulate my right hon. Friend and send him my best wishes for his time in this important job. May I suggest that he has a look at some research published earlier this year by the Prince’s Trust, which found that there are hundreds of thousands of young people not in education, employment or training, many of whom are economically active? They want to work, but many of them are living with physical or mental disabilities. Does he agree that the right support would enable them to stay in touch with the labour market and prevent patterns of worklessness from setting in at a very young age?
Mel Stride
I recognise the great work that my right hon. Friend did as a Secretary of State. There are 820,000 young people out of work and not in full-time education, and he is right that there are many things this Government can do, and indeed are doing, with our youth offer. That includes our youth employment programme, youth employability coaches and 150 youth hubs across Great Britain.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman, who is one of my neighbours, to his new post and congratulate him on his appointment. What estimate has he made of the number of people who would like to work but currently cannot do so, because they are among the hundreds of thousands waiting on record-long NHS waiting lists?
Mel Stride
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his warm words. That is a question that would probably be best answered by the Department of Health and Social Care, and I would be happy to look into that for him. We know that there is a long tail of people who would otherwise like to work but who are long-term sick—some 2.5 million in total—and, to go back to my earlier answer, it will be a prime focus for our Department, working with the Health Department, to see how we can assist and support them back into the workplace.
Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)
I wish my right hon. Friend and his team every success in leading this vital mission in Government, helping people into work and protecting the most vulnerable. As he says, with more vacancies than people unemployed, and with 9 million people—and rising—economically inactive, does he agree with British business that labour shortage is one of its greatest obstacles? What is his plan to unlock the talents of those who have not recently looked for work?
Mel Stride
My right hon. Friend’s analysis is entirely right. We have an overheated labour market and a high number of vacancies, and the key issue that businesses up and down the country constantly raise is a lack of staff to be taken on. Broadly speaking, economic inactivity breaks down into several sectors, although I will not go through all of them; we have already touched on the 2.5 million long-term sick, and we have 900 disability employment advisers within the Department for Work and Pensions. We also have 1.2 million people who retired early, for whom we do have some schemes, but we need to give further attention to coming up with new ways forward for that group.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
At last week’s Work and Pensions Committee meeting on the plan for jobs and employment support, Tony Wilson from the Institute for Employment Studies highlighted the role of Scotland’s local employability partnerships in providing tailored support that reflects local circumstances. In the light of recent analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies showing that health-related economic inactivity in the working-age population has had its largest increase since the end of 2019, will the UK Government consider following Scotland’s approach of providing more customised support and helping people into work, instead of the Department’s punitive sanctions regime?
Mel Stride
We already have a local skills improvement plan, but I would be delighted to listen to the hon. Lady’s thoughts; we are always happy to share best practice, and to learn from her experience and that of the devolved Administration in Scotland.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
I welcome the new Secretary of State and all the new Ministers to their positions. We have heard Conservative Ministers, not least the many Prime Ministers we have had in recent months, crowing about low unemployment, but the new Secretary of State will know from his time chairing the Treasury Committee that sometimes it is important to look at the figures yourself. There are 1.2 million people unemployed in our country, but also 1.8 million inactive people who say they want a job. Taken together, that is a disaster for our country. I want to know what it is about years and years of Tory misrule that always leaves 3 million people on the scrapheap.
Mel Stride
I have taken a personal vow not to engage in too much Punch and Judy politics with the hon. Lady during Question Time, so I will not talk about what happens to unemployment when different parties get into power; I will leave that for another day. She is absolutely right about the key challenge around economic inactivity. That is why the Department doubled the number of new work coaches in the last two years; there are an additional 13,500 people working to support the exact people whom she rightly identified as needing that assistance to get into work. As I said, I intend to put considerably more energy into the whole issue of economic inactivity, and to bring announcements on the subject to the House in due course.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
I begin by recognising the important work that the right hon. Gentleman carries out as Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee and thank him for the co-operation that he showed me when I was a fellow Chair of a Select Committee. I look forward to appearing before his Committee before too long.
As the right hon. Gentleman will know, universal credit is but one factor in addressing food insecurity. The Government have provided significant support with the £37 billion cost of living package.
Sir Stephen Timms
I congratulate the Secretary of State on his appointment and warmly welcome him. We already have a date in the diary for him to come before the Committee and we look forward to that.
Current large-scale food bank dependence is shameful. It was up by 46% in August and September on a year previously, according to the Trussell Trust, and it is reported in the press today that hospitals are seeing a big rise in malnutrition cases. The family resources survey also says that food insecurity among universal credit claimants fell from 43% to 27% after the £20 a week uplift was introduced. Does not all that show how crucial it is that the Prime Minister keeps the promise he made as Chancellor to uprate benefits next April by 10.1%?
Mel Stride
I am not going to pre-empt my decision on the uprating of benefits or indeed the triple lock. We will need to wait until at least 17 November when my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will come to the House with his autumn statement and those details will be known at that point.
The right hon. Gentleman raises the family resources survey. One statistic that caught my eye was that the percentage of households with UC claimants who are in food security rose from 57% in 2019-20 to 73% in 2020-21. Any element of food insecurity is too much—I recognise that—which is why this Government and this Prime Minister are absolutely determined to use whatever we have at our disposal to work on those figures and to improve them. That includes the various interventions that we have already discussed during these questions.
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
I am currently conducting my statutory annual review of state pensions and benefit rates. The outcome of that review will be announced in due course.
Kenny MacAskill
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. The Trussell Trust is reporting that 40% of universal credit claimants are skipping meals due to budgetary constraints. Does he accept that with the full energy crisis costs yet impacting them and, indeed, with winter still to arrive, it would be perverse if bankers’ bonuses were to be uncapped while pension benefits were not to increase at least in line with inflation?
Mel Stride
The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the various answers given from the Dispatch Box about the support that the Government are giving, particularly to those who are most vulnerable, across winter. In respect of food and food banks, that is pertinent. However, I am afraid that he will receive the same answer about when the House will come to know of the uprating that may be applied to pensions and benefits more generally, and the pensions triple lock. That is a decision for me as Secretary of State, of course in conjunction with discussions with the Treasury, and those figures will be available at the time of the autumn statement on 17 November.
Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)
I very much welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment that compassion will be at the heart of Government. It is so important that we support the most vulnerable in society. With that in mind, does my right hon. Friend agree that we can show that compassion and support by uprating benefits in line with inflation?
Mel Stride
I am afraid that, unfortunately, I need to refer my hon. Friend to my previous reply.
Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
I am honoured to have been appointed as the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. I can inform the House that I have two early key missions: to focus on those who are economically inactive, as I have been suggesting already at the Dispatch Box; and to pursue with vigour the Prime Minister’s personal commitment to us being a compassionate, caring Department supporting the most vulnerable, which, at the end of the day, is a hallmark of a civilised society.
Luke Pollard
I welcome the Secretary of State, a fellow Devon MP, to his position. Will he agree to meet me and Barnardo’s to discuss the concerns of care leavers from Devon, whom I recently hosted in Westminster, who without a rent guarantor cannot afford a deposit on a rental property of their own. Will he consider a pilot to help those young people get a better start in life?
Mel Stride
I thank my hon. Friend—I will call him an hon. Friend, certainly—and colleague from Devon for his question. I know of the excellent work he has been carrying out with Barnardo’s in that area. I would be delighted to meet him and Barnardo’s, and whoever else he feels appropriate, to discuss those issues.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the new Secretary of State to his post. I also welcome the new Ministers and welcome back returning Ministers. I listened carefully to the Secretary of State saying that he wants a compassionate approach, so may I press him further on the point that numerous Members have put to him? He will know that not sticking to the triple lock for pensioners will mean a real-terms cut in their pension of hundreds of pounds. He will know that not inflation-proofing universal credit will mean an average household will lose £450 and that a household with a disabled person in it will lose over £550. Why does he no longer agree with himself when he said, on 4 October, that this is
“one of those areas where the Government is going to have to think again”?
Mel Stride
I reassure the House that I always agree with myself. That is not the same thing as saying that I am always right, incidentally, but at least I am always consistent in that respect. We will have to wait—sorry, I should say that it is a pleasure to serve opposite the right hon. Gentleman and that I look forward to many months of constructive engagement with him.
It is very important that we do not overlook the huge amount that the Government are doing to target assistance at the most vulnerable. In the cost of living support package alone, there is £650 for 8 million of the most vulnerable households, £300 for pensioners on pension credit and £150 for those who have disabilities. That is very important.
Jonathan Ashworth
The Prime Minister tells us that we do not need a general election because the 2019 manifesto gives him and the Conservative party a mandate. Given that that manifesto committed to the triple lock, why can he not give pensioners the reassurance that they deserve? Let me ask him about a second point: can he give a categorical assurance that, in the autumn statement, he will rule out means-testing personal independence payments, carer’s allowance, attendance allowance and disability living allowance for children?
Mel Stride
The right hon. Gentleman is inviting me, in a whole host of areas, to break with what has been a very long-standing and quite correct convention that Ministers simply do not provide a running commentary about what may or may not be in a major fiscal event. However, he has my personal assurance that when and as it is appropriate to pass him information of that kind, he will be the first to know.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
Mel Stride
The hon. Gentleman has been in the Chamber during questions for long enough to know that I cannot comment on the uprating or otherwise of benefits. However, he should take into account the numerous positive tax changes that there have been over the years for the hard-working constituents he refers to—not least the very significant increase in the personal allowance since 2010 and the change to the taper under universal credit, which makes a difference to many millions of people up and down the land.
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
My constituent suffered months of worry and stress because his employer failed to pay any pension contributions into his workplace scheme. Raising it with his boss made him fear for his job. The regulator gives no feedback on investigations, so will the Secretary of State consider whether the current £400 statutory penalty notice and regulatory powers are sufficient to ensure that employers fulfil their pension contributions duties?
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Does the new Secretary of State—whom I welcome to his place—still agree with his statement that cutting maternity rights will be good for business?
Mel Stride
Given that I never made that statement, I do not agree with it, no.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—sorry, Mr Speaker. [Laughter.] I will not be called next time, will I?
The Government have done a great deal to help people with their cost of living challenges, but elderly residents in my constituency are troubled by reports in the newspapers suggesting that we may not meet our manifesto commitment to retain the pensions triple lock. Pensioners face a triple whammy of dwindling savings value due to low interest rates, rising costs due to inflation and, owing to their age, an inability to go out and earn any more. Will my right hon. Friend please confirm that we will increase pensions in line with inflation?
Mel Stride
I admire my hon. Friend’s persistence on this matter, but I am afraid I must give her the same response that I have given on numerous occasions this afternoon, namely, that we will have to wait until at least 17 November for an answer. I understand the particular pressure that pensioners are under because they are often unable to change their economic circumstances, as others within the labour force can; but we will have to wait.
Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)
A number of my constituents who work for the DWP have told me that they are not being given the enhanced holiday pay that they were promised in return for working overtime consistently. In response to my inquiry, the DWP has told me that current legislation provides no definition of regularity. Will the Minister please address this issue?
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
This morning I attended the York cost of living summit and heard about the impact that food poverty, heating poverty and housing poverty are having on my constituents. One issue is the rate at which the benefits cap is set. By 2027, it will not have been reviewed for 11 years, so will the Secretary of State make representations to the Chancellor to ensure that it is reviewed before 17 November?
Mel Stride
I am in the process of reviewing just that matter and many of the others that we have discussed, so we will have to wait, but it is one of the matters that is under review.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
We look forward to the Secretary of State appearing before the Work and Pensions Committee. Can he give us an assurance before he does so that the Department will publish the systematic evidence-based review of food bank use that it promised to publish and place in the Commons Library two years ago, so that we can debate the policy issues required to eliminate hunger across these islands?
Mel Stride
I look forward to appearing before the hon. Gentleman and his fellow members of the Committee. He raises a specific point, and I will look into it and come back to him.
Compensation (London Capital & Finance plc and Fraud Compensation Fund) Bill
Mel Stride ExcerptsTuesday 8th June 2021
(4 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Compensation (London Capital & Finance plc and Fraud Compensation Fund) Act 2021 View all Compensation (London Capital & Finance plc and Fraud Compensation Fund) Act 2021 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con) [V]
This is a very important Bill. It seeks to compensate for some significant wrongs. As part of our ongoing inquiry into London Capital & Finance and the FCA’s response to it, the Treasury Committee has heard many harrowing stories of those who, in many cases, lost life-changing amounts of money as a consequence of what happened.
The Treasury Committee has been involved in the LCF situation for some time. My predecessor, Baroness Morgan, initiated the inquiry by Dame Elizabeth Gloster through approaches by the Committee to the Treasury and the FCA. I take this opportunity to offer my thanks, on behalf of the Committee and of the LCF bond holders, for the very thorough report that she and her team produced, for the witness session she attended as part of our inquiry and for the courtesy and information that she provided to me outside that witness session by way of correspondence and discussions over the telephone.
Dame Elizabeth Gloster carried out some excellent work. As a consequence of her report, the level of the failings on the part of the FCA is very clear. Indeed, the answers to the key questions put by the Government to Dame Elizabeth as part of the directions for her inquiry were clear: the permissions granted to LCF were not appropriate to the business it carried on; the FCA did not adequately supervise LCF’s compliance with the FCA rules and policies; and the FCA’s handling of information from third parties regarding LCF was wholly deficient. The FCA had appropriate rules to regulate the communication of financial promotions by LCF. However, the FCA did not have in place appropriate policies. Numerous red flags were examined by the Committee, but they had been missed over a long period.
There were wider failings within the regulatory system, and we have heard some of those from the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden). The FCA’s approach to the perimeter was limited. It did not take a holistic view of the perimeter and therefore there was inadequate supervision of unregulated activities. The halo effect, which the shadow Minister also raised, was without doubt a wider systemic problem within the FCA.
Our inquiry is ongoing. We have taken evidence from Dame Elizabeth, from senior personnel at the FCA, including Andrew Bailey, who was the chief executive officer of the FCA during the appropriate period, and my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. We will have much to say in our report, which will be published no later than the end of this month.
Looking ahead, the speakers so far have rightly asked how we make sure that this does not happen again. That lies within the transformation programme that the FCA is now undertaking. The Committee will be showing a close and careful interest in the progress of that transformation programme.
By way of intervention, I note the observation of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) about the importance of those responsible for shortcomings being held accountable. We will no doubt have something to say about that in the report.
The whole issue of compensation leads on to the issue of the general view that there should be personal responsibility for investments, as well as Government backing, and we will need to look at that. I am terribly short of time, so I will leave it there. I welcome the Bill.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
We now go to the SNP spokesperson, Peter Grant, who I am sure will be acutely aware of the very limited amount of time that we have left for the debate.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mel Stride Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Mike Penning
I do not accept many of the points that the hon. Lady makes, but what I do accept is that it is unacceptable for people who are in desperate need to wait, which is why I acted with Macmillan really fast to bring the time down from 28 days to inside 10 days for people with terminal illness. We are now looking at the other cases and working with as many of the charity and other groups as we can to make sure that we get the figure down. If they work with us, we can work on this together. The Opposition keep moaning about the policy, but the previous Administration left people on the disability living allowance for years, with only 7% of them ever having a face-to-face assessment. That was an appalling situation.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
3. What assessment he has made of recent trends in employment figures.
Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
4. What assessment he has made of recent trends in employment figures.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
The recent trends are remarkable: there are more people in work than ever before, youth unemployment is down 91,000 since the election, the claimant count for 18 to 24 year-olds has fallen for 30 consecutive months, and we have seen the largest annual fall in long-term unemployment since late 1998. I also note that in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), the claimant count is down 33% and the youth claimant count is down 41%.
Mel Stride
As my right hon. Friend has pointed out, youth unemployment in my constituency is substantially down since the last election, not least due to his efforts to ensure that work always pays. However, does he agree with me that approaches to incentivising work are always best if they are universal, unlike the Opposition’s proposal for means-tested youth allowances, which would punish hard-working families and those people who do the right thing?
Mr Duncan Smith
Yes, the reality of what we have been trying to do is to make sure that people can get into the jobs that are available. What they do not need—and what is quite ridiculous about the Opposition’s proposal—is to try to take everybody who is below level 2 up to a level 3 qualification. Some people who do not even have a GCSE in maths, for example, are expected now to do training courses to take them to level 3 before they go into work. The reality is that we are getting them work-ready and giving them the training they need. That is why there are record employment levels of some 30.5 million, which beats what we were left by the last Government.
Housing Benefit
Mel Stride Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Sandra Osborne
That is one thing that causes a great deal of anger among those affected, and also among the general public in my constituency, who happen to be very caring people. When she sums up the debate, will the Minister confirm whether the Government intend to retain the Scottish welfare fund?
We are here to talk about the sheer ineffectiveness and shambolic implementation of the bedroom tax. What kind of policy requires mitigation for more than half the people affected? Some 70% of applications have been approved for discretionary payment, with more applications all the time in one of my areas. The revised budget will be fully spent by the end of the year—there is no big surplus, as was inferred earlier.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
What I am not clear about is this: what does the hon. Lady say to the 1.5 million people on the housing waiting list or to the 250,000 people living in overcrowded accommodation—perhaps having to sleep on the floor or on sofas—when her party is advocating a policy that uses taxpayers’ money to provide a surplus room for others?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Long interventions will not help us to get through this debate. There are too many interventions. People should not just come in and intervene; they should enter the debate.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mel Stride Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
As the hon. Gentleman should know, we are bringing forward tougher sanctions on those who come here just to take benefits, rather than to work. Of course, British citizens working abroad are more likely to have gone abroad with a strong work record in the UK, so when they come back that is taken into account. If the hon. Gentleman is worried about a particular case, perhaps he would like to write to me and I will take it up. The sanctions are fair because they stop people coming to countries such as Britain just because they have better welfare systems than theirs.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
T5. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on all the work he has put into getting people back into employment, but I was visited this weekend by one of my constituents, Paul Vachon, who has been unemployed for more than 12 months and is highly skilled. His major concern is that, because he is close to the point of retirement, his employability is diminished. What are the Government doing to encourage and support those such as Paul who are seeking jobs at the point when they are about to retire?
Esther McVey
My hon. Friend raises an important question about how we support all people back into work. It really is important that advisers have the flexibility to offer skills and job-search support to people of all ages, including those who might need extra support on the Work programme and, equally, those in local areas that might have an over-50s digital group or 50-plus work clubs. We need to make sure that everybody is getting the support and I would be more than happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the matter further.
Welfare Spending
Mel Stride Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Mel Stride
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the progress that he has made in controlling welfare expenditure, particularly given that under the previous Government, the costs rose by no less than 60%. However, there is always more to do. Will he outline what we are doing to clamp down on welfare fraud?
Mr Duncan Smith
My hon. Friend is right about the situation that we were left. We are already bearing down on the problem. The figures show that we are making inroads into welfare fraud. Universal credit will have a much better record in this area, because we will be able to use real-time information to check up on who is in work and what they are earning on a monthly basis, rather than having to wait until the end of somebody’s time on tax credits at the end of a year and reconcile the figures over a long period. Under the current tax credits system, £5 billion has been written off as a result of fraud and error, and it looks like another £5 billion will also be written off.
[Official Report, 28 January 2013, Vol. 557, c. 658.]
Letter of correction from Iain Duncan Smith:
An error has been identified in the oral answer given to the hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride).
The correct answer should have been:
Oral Answers to Questions
Mel Stride Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
The Department is looking closely at how we can assist people to take more work while on universal credit. We do not have the final results of that, but I am happy to sit down with the hon. Lady at any time and discuss her concerns. She is right about one thing: rather than parking people on a specific number of hours, universal credit will allow people to work more hours and get more money, rather than losing it, thereby getting themselves and their children, if they have any, out of poverty.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
8. What steps he is taking to control welfare spending.
Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)
17. What steps he is taking to control welfare spending.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
The Government have undertaken major reforms to limit Britain’s welfare spending, which over successive years ran out of control. Under the last Government, welfare bills had increased by 60% by 2010, costing every household in Britain an extra £3,000 a year. Last week, the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill was passed by this House. It will save £1.9 billion, restoring fairness for taxpayers in the process.
Mel Stride
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the progress that he has made in controlling welfare expenditure, particularly given that under the previous Government, the costs rose by no less than 60%. However, there is always more to do. Will he outline what we are doing to clamp down on welfare fraud?
Mr Duncan Smith
My hon. Friend is right about the situation that we were left. We are already bearing down on the problem. The figures show that we are making inroads into welfare fraud. Universal credit will have a much better record in this area, because we will be able to use real-time information to check up on who is in work and what they are earning on a monthly basis, rather than having to wait until the end of somebody’s time on tax credits at the end of a year and reconcile the figures over a long period. Under the current tax credits system, £5 billion has been written off as a result of fraud and error, and it looks like another £5 billion will also be written off.[Official Report, 1 February 2013, Vol. 557, c. 8MC.]