Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mike Amesbury and Steve Baker

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baker]

I am most grateful to the hon. Member. We do recognise elements of what he said, and indeed we have had those conversations most recently with the Irish Government at the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference. It is the Government’s position that we should not create a loophole through the ETA scheme, but we do need to ensure that we communicate clearly with everyone the need to register and comply with immigration requirements. He may know that we have created an exemption for third-country nationals who are ordinarily resident in Ireland, and of course the requirement does not apply to citizens of the UK or Ireland under the common travel area, which we will continue to honour.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

5. What recent discussions he has had with community groups on the potential impact of changes in the level of funding for education in Northern Ireland.

[The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr Steve Baker)]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I are acutely aware of the challenges facing the education sector in Northern Ireland. He has met member organisations of the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action to discuss these issues, and I have been engaging with stakeholders about the wider cost of division in education, which a report by researchers working independently at Ulster University recently estimated was an extraordinary £226 million per year. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree that it would be preferable for the Northern Ireland Executive to be restored so that they may make decisions on the issues that matter to the people of Northern Ireland, including the right level of funding for education.

[Mike Amesbury]

The Department of Education in Northern Ireland has announced that it will not proceed with proposed cuts to early years, extended schools and youth service programmes, which is broadly welcomed by community groups. Will the Minister confirm whether the Northern Ireland Office took direct action and advised on how guidance should be interpreted?

[Mr Baker]

We are always willing to work closely with the Northern Ireland civil service, but the hon. Gentleman knows that we have put in place an Act of Parliament to formalise arrangements by which decisions are taken by Northern Ireland civil servants during this governance gap. We will continue to work closely with civil servants, but if he would like to discuss a specific concern more closely with me, I will be glad to meet him. The answer to the problem is something that I think the whole House agrees on: it would be preferable to have locally accountable, devolved Government restored as soon as possible to take those decisions.

Social Security

Debate between Mike Amesbury and Steve Baker

Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mike Amesbury]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I will come on to that later in my speech.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I am listening very closely to the hon. Gentleman, and, having skim-read the order, I concede of course that some of the increases are very modest, but my hon. Friend the Minister set out the overall cost of even those increases. What would the Labour party do? How big would its increases be and what would the overall cost be to the taxpayer?

[Mike Amesbury]

Unfortunately, the Labour party is not in government, but I will say to the hon. Gentleman that the cuts have amounted to £4.7 billion per year, so the so-called investment that the Government propose pales into insignificance against that.

As we have heard from the Minister today, the Government intend to end their four-year freeze on benefits by proposing to uprate working-age benefits in line with the CPI rate as of September 2019, which was 1.7%. We welcome that slight step forward. Remarkably, for a range of benefits and not just universal credit, this will be the first cash increase in basic entitlements since April 2015. It is important to point out that there has not been any recent change in policy from the Government: the freeze was always due to come to an end in April this year, as announced by the previous Chancellor.

If we scratch beneath the surface of the increase, we find that, after adjustment for price increases, the four-year benefit freeze has actually meant a cut in the real level of benefits by 6%. In many cases, that has come on top of earlier cuts. The 2015-16 benefits freeze followed uprating by only 1% each year in the three years prior to its introduction. There is, therefore, now a yawning gap between the level of benefits offered and essential living costs. Those political choices have consequences, with child poverty, homelessness and in-work poverty at alarming levels, as evidenced in the recently published Joseph Rowntree Foundation UK Poverty report.

Indeed, under this Prime Minister, children will receive a miserly increase of 75p per week in child benefit, and the second child just 55p per week.