DWP Estate

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Given that Margaret Ferrier may speak for 20 minutes, the Minister may wind up for 10 minutes and there are eight speakers, each speaker will have about eight minutes. If any Member goes over that time, I will have to impose a time limit, which will reduce the time for everyone else, so perhaps Members will bear that in mind as a matter of respect and consideration. If time restrictions are introduced, I will let Members know.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the future of the DWP estate.

It is an honour to serve under your Chairmanship, Ms Dorries, and a pleasure to see so many Members here to discuss this important issue. I am sure there will be plenty of excellent contributions and that the Minister will be given plenty of food for thought.

The Minister will be aware that this is a major issue in the Glasgow area, particularly at the moment owing to the announcement by the Department for Work and Pensions of the closure next year of half the jobcentres in the city, which is a morally outrageous plan. I hope that today’s debate is an opportunity for Members not only to discuss this serious matter, but to engage in a frank discussion about the DWP estate across the UK. I also hope the Department will listen intently to what is said here today.

This debate is not about cost considerations, spreadsheet figures or departmental proposals drawn up by people who are likely never to have visited the centres earmarked for closure. In essence, it is about how changes to the DWP estate will impact on lives, not in some abstract way but in a real sense. What might seem entirely rational and reasonable on a sheet of paper will have a profound impact on people’s lives, including those of my constituents in Cambuslang who use the jobcentre there, which unfortunately is one of the eight set to close.

My immediate concern is Cambuslang and the seven other jobcentres in Glasgow that are set to shut their doors. However, it is clear that the city is being used as a guinea pig for the reduction of DWP offices elsewhere. This matter is not just for me and my hon. Friends who represent Glasgow constituencies to worry about: all Members should be concerned. The closure of half of Glasgow’s jobcentres will be a troubling precursor to a brutal round of cuts in jobcentres across the UK. The Government will implement them without any consideration of the far-reaching and in some cases devastating implications for low-income families. In Glasgow alone, about 68,000 people who are in receipt of jobseeker’s allowance, employment support allowance and universal credit will be impacted by the closures. The cuts are so harsh and so brutal that they have achieved something that does not happen as often as it should: political consensus and almost cross-party condemnation.

At the weekend, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) co-ordinated a letter to the Secretary of State for Scotland calling on him to take action on the jobcentre closures. I signed that letter with every other Glasgow MP; Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon; Scottish National party Members of the Scottish Parliament; Scottish Labour Members and Scottish Green party Members, as well as Labour and SNP leaders on Glasgow City Council. Despite voicing concerns on social media when the closures were first announced, Glasgow’s two Tory MSPs decided not to sign the letter.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Owing to the number of lengthy interventions, I now have to impose a time limit of five minutes on speeches.

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[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Madam Chair.

First of all, I congratulate the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) on presenting her case so very well. When I saw the title of this debate, I felt that I had to come along and make a comment, primarily because the future changes to the Department for Work and Pensions estate will affect my constituency. The changes are a devolved matter and I will explain some of the issues for us in relation to it. Perhaps the Minister will find herself with a direct role in this if things do not go according to plan in the elections.

I remember my time as a councillor and as a Member of the Legislative Assembly in Northern Ireland, when the idea of a private finance initiative was first brought to my attention, with regard to building a new hospital at the Ulster hospital site. It must be the Ulster Scots in me, but I just could not bring myself to see how that could be value for money and I opposed it on that ground, and on the ground that it was putting local people out of work. I have a great problem with PFI. The fact is that we are scrambling to find people now that the contract has finished, and we cannot do anything because we do not own anything. Of course, as you will point out, Madam Chair, PFI is not directly the issue that we are considering today, but it is one that we cannot ignore and I wanted to make a point about it on the record.

I know that, on paper, the people to office ratio may allow for an office to close, but we do not live on paper; we live in the real world, where transport systems, and rural and urban issues, come into play. Let me give a Northern Ireland perspective. I say again that the Minister’s responsibility is clearly to the mainland of the United Kingdom, but if the elections in Northern Ireland in two to six weeks do not deliver the democratic process that we wish to have, direct rule will become a reality. If that is the case, responsibility for this issue will fall upon the Minister’s shoulders.

Ballynahinch social security office is out to consultation, with a view to the closure of the premises. The office is long overdue an upgrade, to both its interior and exterior, but it seems that the Department responsible simply cannot afford it, or at least that is what it is telling us. It is impractical to expect or insist that all claimants who use the Ballynahinch office should instead use the Lisburn office or the Downpatrick office, which on paper are less than 20 miles away. That does not seem far, but in reality it is a journey that many find difficult to make. In addition, both those offices are already oversubscribed and fully utilised.

The public transport links to Downpatrick or Lisburn already have problems, and for many people on benefits making such a journey would be another cost and another outgoing that they do not need. Some of those who attend Ballynahinch have severe mobility and access issues, and it would be harmful to their needs if the Ballynahinch office closed.

Let us look at some of the finer detail of the Ballynahinch SSO. Last year, it had 6,172 referrals for jobseeker’s allowance not including phone call inquiries, which could easily double that number. There were also 7,406 jobcentre referrals, and it is imperative that that figure is highlighted in the consultation process. Very often people say that a jobcentre only provides benefits, but it does more than that: it is training people for jobs, as a number of hon. Members have already said.

All those who have an interest in this service must take the time to do their part, in order to see the retention of this office in Ballynahinch. In the four months prior to the start of the consultation, JSA inquiries were as follows: in May 2016, there were nearly 500; in June 2016, 596; in July 2016, 448; and in August 2016, 550. All those cases were dealt with by the Ballynahinch jobseeker’s allowance staff alone.

The jobcentres in my area also have close contact with three local high schools. The point about schools is an important one; it has already been made by others and I make it in relation to my area. Those schools will be affected by any potential closures of jobcentres.

The new personal independence payment system is coming in. Staff need to be trained to use that system, and the increase in workload is quite phenomenal. I cannot speak for others, but I can speak for my own office and its staff—the number of PIP referrals that the office is getting is incredible. The staff’s workload has probably doubled as a result, and I cannot say any more than that. People applying for PIP need to speak to staff who understand their problems, and who have both compassion and a good knowledge of the system. We also have to address the issue of those people who may not have educational achievements or the ability who come to the office. There is also the issue of the reduction in footfall for local businesses; there is a knock-on effect for them as well.

The hon. Member for Glasgow East (Natalie McGarry) referred to the equality impact assessment and I will, too. Thought must be given to the equality impact assessment, as the rural town of Ballynahinch cannot afford to have the local jobcentre moved. That cannot be considered as “rural proofing”.

On paper, this decision about my jobcentre may be a no-brainer, but in reality we will leave hundreds of people without the support they need to find a job or to access other help, or to get advice about benefits. I am sure that this case is replicated in many ways in other hon. Members’ constituencies, which shows that, while we must cut outgoings, in doing so we cannot and must not cut people off from the help and support they need.

Again, I thank the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West for raising this issue, and I ask the Minister for a reasoned opinion on what is being proposed for the DWP estate, and to ensure that, when it comes to making these decisions, we are there for the people who need us most.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

I call Chris Stephens to speak. Mr Stephens, you can have an extra minute or so.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

Thank you, Madam Chair. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) for a barnstorming speech in protection of jobcentres.

Perhaps to continue the theme of the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald), I have also researched not only my own written questions and the answers that I received but the written questions put by my hon. Friends. The answers we have received put me in mind of the infamous press conference by Donald Rumsfeld, the former US Defence Secretary, when he used that memorable term:

“There are things we don’t know”.

That phrase reminds me of the answers that we have received from the Government. When asked about the actual travel time for an individual to get to a jobcentre, they “don’t know”; as for the number of benefit claimants using each jobcentre, they “don’t know”; regarding the catchment area for each jobcentre, they “don’t know”; when asked about the bus routes to jobcentres, they “don’t know”; regarding the planning application that has been made in relation to Anniesland jobcentre, they did not know about it; that the landlord of the property housing Castlemilk jobcentre had offered to reduce the rent on the site, they did not know; and as for the impact of these changes on disabled people and women, they “don’t know”.

All these points are important, because if the Government do not know all those things, why are they so certain that jobcentres should close in Glasgow? And why is it that no other announcements have been made by the Department for Work and Pensions in relation to the closures of jobcentres? Is it because of the public backlash that the DWP has already seen in Glasgow, or is it because the DWP now knows, through the Glasgow experiment, that there is a lack of evidence to close other jobcentres across the UK? Or is it because the information that the DWP does not have for Glasgow is required elsewhere?

Yesterday, we were told in the main Chamber that work is the way out of poverty, but what consolation is that to the people in Glasgow who will find that the very places to find work are no longer there to support them?

If the Government do not have the information that I referred to at the beginning of my remarks, why are they only consulting publicly on three of the eight jobcentres earmarked for closure? If the closure of a package of eight jobcentres is announced, the whole package should be consulted on. What consolation is that consultation for those working in other Government Departments who are being made redundant? Is the Government’s vision to reduce the workforce in other Departments and for that workforce to then find that they cannot find a jobcentre, because they have been closed? That seems to be a perverse vision of ensuring that work is a way out of poverty.

The plan to close 50% of the jobcentres in Glasgow is a moral outrage. Some 68% of the people in Glasgow in receipt of jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance and universal credit will be impacted by the closures. These closures will result in more people having to pay the telephone tax—the premium rate charges to call Departments. There is support among Members on the Government Benches and the SNP Benches for ensuring that the telephone tax is ended.

The cost of the jobcentre closures will be borne by the people the Government should be assisting. I recommend the submission from Parkhead Housing Association, which makes the very point that travel will impose extra costs

“on people living off of the minimum the government states is required for day to day survival.”

It is the people on low incomes who will be affected. It is unacceptable that tens of thousands of people will now travel further and incur additional costs to access social security. These individuals are seeking work or employment support. As the civil service trade union, the PCS, has said, the impact will be

“on women, vulnerable children and people with disabilities already hit hardest by government cuts.”

There must be an equality impact assessment. We must have a guarantee from the Government that the results of any equality analysis will be considered in the eventual decision. The Government have behaved in a disgraceful manner. They did not consult the Scottish Government before the announcement, nor did they consult the local authority. There have been inadequate responses to written questions, with that familiar answer “Information can only be provided at disproportionate cost” often being given. What is disproportionate is to close 50% of the jobcentres in Glasgow when the expectation is that that figure will be 20% elsewhere.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Mr Stephens, you were allowed 10 minutes as the SNP spokesman. If you want to go on, you can.

[Chris Stephens]

I could have gone on.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Would you like to go on?

[Chris Stephens]

Okay, I will.

As well as impressing the comments of Parkhead Housing Association on the Minister, I want to raise the comments of the Glasgow citizens advice bureau. It said:

“The increased numbers will put pressure on staff who have no leeway if someone is five or ten minutes late. They will be recorded as missing an appointment and sanctions will be applied. Some people have to sign on weekly and in some cases people can be called in daily. Even at once a week the bus fare is almost 10% of a young person’s Jobseeker’s Allowance.”

That is a true cost of closing the jobcentres in Glasgow for those who seek the support of the state.

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[Margaret Greenwood]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. The comments from the hon. Member for North Swindon were totally relevant, then.

It is immensely important that the DWP estate is managed with due respect for the impact that any changes might have on claimants, their families, their communities and those who work there. For those who work there, the concerns are about job losses, the down- grading of posts and increased case loads. Will the Government comment on how they will manage the estate for the future? What are their plans for future technology, the changing roles of DWP staff and the introduction of in-work conditionality, which will require that those in work demonstrate that they are searching for more work? How will that will impact on the people in Glasgow who are having their jobcentres removed?

The changes are important for the people of Glasgow, but they are also important for the rest of the country, as has been clearly stated. I am short of time.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Ms Greenwood, you have 10 minutes for your speech as a Front-Bench spokesperson.

[Margaret Greenwood]

Thank you. There have been several comments on the level of unemployment in the area. The latest claimant count shows that 5,810 people are registered as unemployed at the eight jobcentres threatened with closure. I would be interested to hear what will happen when those centres close. I understand that the remaining jobcentres in Glasgow will have to deal with twice the volume of claimants as a result. That is especially a concern for the Shettleston jobcentre, which will take on the case load from three of the jobcentres that will close. Can the Minister provide us with a breakdown of the expected increase in case loads for those jobcentres that will remain open? What will be done to help the DWP staff who have to deal with that increased workload?

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[Caroline Nokes]

I am sorry, I will not.

Equality analysis involves us considering the likely or actual effects of proposals on people with protected characteristics as part of our decision-making processes. Employment is, of course, the joint responsibility of the UK and Scottish Governments. As hon. Members mentioned today, my hon. Friend the Minister for Employment is travelling to Scotland, where he is meeting members of the Scottish Government. We welcome the chance to work with them. Indeed, DWP officials have been working closely with them on this process.

We are building contingency into the system, building on lessons learned in 2008. More flexible arrangements and new contracts are being brought forward. Last night, we debated DWP policies in the main Chamber. It was a wide-ranging debate, which included the question of Glasgow jobcentres. My hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) stated, and I cannot disagree with her,

“There is too much clinging on to bricks and mortar when the real questions should be what works and what will get more people into work.”—[Official Report, 17 January 2017; Vol. 619, c. 888.]

Hon. Members would do well to reflect on that. It is about the service we deliver—[Interruption.]

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Please allow the Minister to speak.

[Caroline Nokes]

The claimants must come first in the service we deliver to them. We must also deliver value to taxpayers in Scotland and across the rest of the UK.

The Department’s services always have and always will adapt to social trends, and it is right that we reflect the digital revolution. These proposals are the result of careful analysis and planning. I appreciate the concerns of the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West about the proposed closures, and I thank her again for securing the debate. I think the rationale for the proposals is clear. The overall number of people claiming the main out-of-work benefits has fallen by more than 1.1 million. The changes are about reducing floor space, not the number of dedicated frontline staff helping claimants back into work.

[Alison Thewliss]

There are six minutes left.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. There are six minutes left because the official spokesman for the Scottish National party did not take his full 10 minutes to speak. I call Margaret Ferrier.

[Margaret Ferrier]

Thank you, Ms Dorries. I would like to thank—[Interruption.]

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. I will address the chuntering from your Back Benchers. Time limits on speeches are limited to Back Benchers, not official spokesmen or Front-Bench representatives.

[Margaret Ferrier]

Thank you, Ms Dorries. I thank all hon. Members for their contributions to my debate. However, I did not get any answers to any of the questions I asked, and I am not sure whether any other hon. Member did either.

State Pension Age: Women

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

There has been much agreement in the Chamber today about equalisation, but I am probably unusual in that I am not actually sure I agree. Maybe, when the majority of men become carers, and when all men have a menopause, I might, but I am not sure I do now.

I feel very sorry for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, because he has come to the Dispatch Box to pick up a mess that has been created by others. We knew equalisation was taking place, but the former Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), decided he would move things from 2026 to 2020.

I am terribly sorry to say this to the Secretary of State, but I am one of the WASPI women. I am also one of those who were not written to and informed about this, and I think the DWP knows where I live—I have made that point before. Many of these women were not informed and not able to plan, and that is because the former Chancellor wanted to save £30 billion.

I understand that the former Chancellor may have wanted to save that money. I also understand that the SNP is never going to be able to achieve anything in this debate. It is never going to be in power. When it makes financial claims, as it is trying to at the moment, that absolutely shows how unprepared it would ever be to be a party of government. The claim about the £30 billion is ridiculous, and the SNP is doing the WASPI women an injustice.

The crude way the former Chancellor tried to slip this £30 billion saving under the fence by moving from 2026 to 2020 without informing women was wrong, and many women are suffering as a result. I am not saying that, financially, we can achieve what most people are asking for. However, in the spirit of fairness, amelioration and pouring some oil on troubled waters, would the Secretary of State please go away and have a look at whether we can do something just around the edges, for some of the women, or perhaps the older women, in this group—I am 21 May 1957, by the way. I do not mean that we should deal with all of it or do something for everybody, but that in the spirit of fairness, there may be something we could do.

Obviously, I have constituents who are in this situation, and I have heard from lots of the WASPI women. I am actually appalled at some of the comments I have seen on social media, and I have stopped engaging with the WASPI women on social media—not the core campaigners, who are a very decent bunch of ladies—because some people have hijacked their cause for social media and unpleasant purposes. However, I have engaged with many of the WASPI women, and their stories are very difficult.

I do not know how many women in the Chamber or the House are of my age, but I would not like to be in the position where I thought I was going to get my pension but then had to get another job, because nobody would employ me. Who would employ a woman facing her 60th birthday? Despite the fact that we have a lot of skills and life experience, and that we are probably very good employees, it is difficult for women of a certain age to get employed. You become faceless when you reach a certain age.

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving such a powerful and impassioned speech, but could I correct her in saying, “Who would give me a job at my age?” I gave two ladies in my office who are in exactly that age group a job, because—I think this is what the Secretary of State was driving at—there is a change in culture.

[Nadine Dorries]

I thank my hon. Friend. I actually have a member of staff in my office who is older than I am, but I also know of many friends who are being made redundant and have lost their jobs. Recently, in fact, a whole group of people in a company—all women over a certain age—were made redundant, and they all know that it was because of their age. It is not the case that most employers want to take on women in their 50s and 60s—it just does not happen.

[Melanie Onn]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Nadine Dorries]

No, because it takes up other people’s time. If the hon. Lady wants to speak, she should put in to speak. [Interruption.] I am sorry, but it is a fair point—a lot of people want to speak.

I ask the Secretary of State please to go away and have a look at this, because that would be a generous and healing statement on the part of the Government. We would be able to show that we are a kind, considerate and caring Government—because we are—in doing something for these women and making things a bit better for some of them, going forward.

ESA and Personal Independence Payments

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered employment and support allowance and personal independence payments.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Dorries. First, I wish all my constituents a happy St Andrew’s day. It is a privilege to bring the difficulties of many of my constituents to the House for consideration, and those of the people across the UK who have experience of trying to access support when they need it most through either employment and support allowance or personal independence payments. Since I became an MP, a large percentage of the constituency casework that I or my staff have dealt with has been a result of ESA and PIP issues.

Owing to the very nature of the benefit that they are trying to access, these people are vulnerable. Many are experiencing serious illness for the first time in their lives and are facing a huge process of adjustment. That is hugely stressful, and this process is hugely stressful for those individuals, who often feel dehumanised and part of a process. The assessment procedure only serves to make things worse. Of the ESA and PIP cases that my office has dealt with—I will discuss one particular case in detail today—many have involved complaints about the assessment process. These assessments are often inhumane, needlessly stressful and unfair to claimants. Many other cases have required intervention following unsuccessful personal independence payment claims, the vast majority of which have been overturned on appeal.

My constituency is sadly not an anomaly when it comes to appeals figures. The latest statistics on appeals against PIP decisions show that 65% of appeal decisions found in favour of the claimants. Not only does that highlight a deeply flawed system, but it clearly shows that a number of people who are subjected to these highly stressful and often prolonged, protracted processes to get the support that they need are ultimately entitled to that support. The statistic of 65% of appeals overturned evidences that, and unless the Government can tell me statistics to the contrary, I am going to assume that their system is not working. It suggests that the system needs to be radically reformed. The high appeal and overturn rate is unacceptable—and unsuccessful on the Government’s part, if they are trying to drive down the number of illegitimate claimants—particularly when it impacts so negatively on the claimants who require this support the most.

If you will indulge me, Ms Dorries, I want to turn to the case of my constituent, Donna. I have the permission of my constituent to raise this issue, and they have asked me to do so in order to illustrate the impact of the benefits system on their life and to highlight the serious inequality they face. Donna, who lives in Carluke, is a mother of two children. She has a supportive husband. She established a café called the Hope Café, which is a mental health charity, and she is an advocate and a champion for supporting those with mental health problems. I commend Donna on her bravery in opening up to me so fully about her experiences with the Department for Work and Pensions. She has given me permission to share her story in full, because she hopes that it will illuminate the effect of malpractice and the effect that the assessments had on her life.

Donna became seriously ill with severe depression and anxiety 10 months ago. She told me that her mental illness made her believe that her two young children, aged eight and 10, would be better off without her in their lives. She told me that her mental illness made her believe that she was useless and worthless and had no skills worth sharing with the world. It made her think that her close friends and family were ashamed of her for being weak. That is the mindset of someone in the grip of depression, and it is incredibly difficult to break out of. Months later, thankfully, she is recovering, and as her background is working in mental health, she is keen to use her personal story to highlight the flaws in the benefits system and hopefully improve the process for others.

Donna went through the application process for both personal independence payment and employment and support allowance, which she found, in her own words, extremely harrowing. She first contacted my office to ask whether we could intervene to support her, as she was required to attend capability assessments for ESA and PIP. Donna, being logical and thinking that this would be an end in itself, asked whether she could endure one assessment. We are aware that this is not how the process works. Instead, Donna underwent an employment support work capability assessment and was asked back for a further personal independence assessment. On both occasions, she endured the lengthy assessment procedures, because these are classed as two separate benefits and the assessments are carried out by two separate providers. She found both assessments incredibly difficult. She told me that the questions she was asked made her re-live the worst days of her life, and she felt that if she had not got the award, it would have been overwhelming. At points, it made her want to give up.

Let me make the point clear: people experiencing severe depression already feel worthless. Being rejected for financial support gives concrete evidence for what they believe, in their minds, to be fact. For many people, it is the last straw. Donna told me that she was not surprised that, as a result, the suicide rates that she deals with every day are increasing.

Donna told me that her illness affected not only her, but her whole family; however, she has been lucky to have great support from her family and friends. Many others are not so lucky. For many people, where would they be without family support? At the point of rejection from the benefits system, who are they supposed to turn to? Donna’s case highlights the fact that no consideration is given to the detrimental effect of the system on the already overwhelmed mental state of a person going through the assessment process. The reason they are in that position in the first place is often because of circumstances beyond their control. Consideration must be given to each individual applicant and their circumstances. The recent film “I, Daniel Blake” by Ken Loach highlights both the hard-hitting, honest and gritty reality and the brutality of this Government’s policies.

Donna also brought up the fact that assumptions are made about claimants based on the observations of the health care professionals. She asked for a copy of her medical assessment report and was disgusted that comments were noted about her appearance, personal grooming and whether claimants are tired or sweating. The comments were as follows:

“Looks tired…looks thin…underweight, clothing loose, dark circles under eyes ... unkempt, untidy … unwell … troubled … sweating … pale … facial expression showed no emotion but was tearful … restless … fidgety… difficulty coping due to anxiety … seemed agitated … poor rapport, poor eye contact … withdrawn … self-harm thoughts identified … no delusion … no obsessive ideas … unable to complete five rounds of ‘serial sevens’ … unable to calculate correct change when asked a sum … unable to spell ‘world’ backwards … unable to remember three objects first time … had insights into their illness.”

I ask the Minister: is this the kind of system that the Government have set out to achieve? Is this a system that offers fairness, dignity and respect? Where, ultimately, is the humanity in that process? Although many of those factors may be indicative of illness, many are circumstantial and subjective, given the particular illness that someone may or may not be assessing. For example, how would Donna’s entitlement have been affected if she had been immaculately dressed, had been having a good day or did not exhibit some of the behaviours outlined in that prescriptive list?

It has taken Donna 10 months to feel better. For seven of those months she has been awarded personal independence payment, and for the past four months she has been receiving employment support allowance. Access to those benefits has been vital to her recovery. Donna wishes to return to work when she can, and she can manage her own health. She knows her limitations, yet at this stage, due to her recovery, she faces the prospect of losing those benefits, which help her to sustain her family at this already difficult time. She is all too aware that if the support is removed too soon—which could mean pushing her back to full-time work—while she is at a vital stage in her recovery, she could end up right back at the beginning again.

Like physical illnesses, mental illnesses take a long time to heal, and there is no consideration of that in this process. Donna suggested that it would be helpful to her health to have a phased return to work—as a professional in this area, she knows only too well about recovering from depression—whereby she could still claim benefit and return to work slowly to build up her strength. Permitted work was explained to Donna, but as she knows only too well from her professional experience and from talking to others, as soon as a claimant lets the Department for Work and Pensions know that they are able to work for a few hours, they are ultimately called for reassessment and asked to go back to work full time. Donna told me that she would like to do a few hours a week volunteering, to get back herself back on her feet, but the criteria apply even to voluntary work. There is no middle ground.

Donna’s case illustrates that the work capability assessment is not fit for purpose. Sadly, that chimes with the calls from mental health organisations across the country, including Citizens Advice, the Disability Benefits Consortium, Mind and the Scottish Association for Mental Health. They have highlighted that the tick-box method of the work capability assessment fails to identify claimants suffering from debilitating mental health problems, and it certainly fails to take their needs into consideration.

I mentioned figures for personal independence payments earlier. Similarly, the latest figures show that 59% of initial ESA decisions were overturned on appeal. The Government have made one small concession on ESA by scrapping the retesting of chronically ill and disabled claimants—so one small part of the system now relies on common sense over bureaucracy—but that has simply fixed one part of an altogether broken system. Although exemptions from repeated assessments for chronically ill claimants and those with long-term illnesses are welcome, it is extremely disappointing that the Department for Work and Pensions and the Secretary of State have not considered that for PIP claimants.

I hope the Minister will take heed of the problems I have discussed with the work capability assessment and consider the effects that the process can have on the mental wellbeing of claimants. I respect the hard-working staff at the Department for Work and Pensions who ultimately are asked to administer this Government’s policy. My constituents and people up and down the UK deserve a social security system that is designed to offer people dignity, respect and fairness. It is time that the Government stepped up to their responsibility. We are all citizens, we are all human and we all deserve respect.

Let me add that when the responsibility for personal independence payments is devolved to Scotland—I am sure the Minister will come to this point—we will look to design the system appropriately. As she will be aware, it takes time to get the system right, because ultimately we are talking about the most vulnerable people in society. They deserve a social security system that gives them fairness, dignity and respect. I am sure we can all agree on that.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

I now call Mr Shannon—you are on the list, Mr Shannon. Did you put in to speak?

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I did indeed, Ms Dorries. Absolutely. I am more than happy to be called—I am just surprised to be called right away.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

You are first on the list today; I know it is unusual.

[Jim Shannon]

The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Whenever it happens, it is always good to be called. Thank you very much, Ms Dorries—I actually thought that the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) might have been asked, so I was looking at him, but no doubt he will participate at some stage.

I thank the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) for setting the scene well. We are back to discuss this matter again in Westminster Hall, and it would be remiss of me not to give a Northern Ireland perspective on where we are. I am grateful that the Minister is in her place and all of us in the House appreciate it when she responds. I will give my opinion today—and others will give examples—of where the system is falling down. I have to highlight those key issues because my staff and I deal with them every day of the week. We see people across the table from us with angst and anxiety and all the associated issues of stress, and we say, “How can we help them and do things better?” I will speak about some of those things today.

I have recently spoken about the changes to the employment and support allowance work-related activity group and what that means for people. The biggest issue is that the Government need to understand the difference between “ill” and “unable to work”. That, in a nutshell, is what the debate is about—the interpretation by the Department for Work and Pensions of what it means to be ill and what it means to those people who sit across the table from me every day and tell me they cannot work. The hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East referred to people being pasty, sweaty and anxious, and my staff and I see those things every day of the week.

In the last month, we have seen in my office a former ward sister, a former construction business owner and a social worker, all of whom are now on ESA. Let me be clear: I do not believe for a second that those people are choosing not to work out of laziness. Who would want to go from earning £500 a week down to £75? People do not, but that is what happens.

The inference from the Government in this whole policy is insulting—I say that with respect—and more importantly, is based on a false premise that cannot be allowed to stand. I have to challenge that in the House, respectfully and kindly, and say it to the Minister and Government directly. As hon. Members know, I do not criticise—I do not feel that that is necessarily what I do—but I need to highlight the issues and ask nicely for genuine compassion and understanding.

The rationale seems to apply to PIP applicants as well. PIP is supposed to be for the help that people need to work. Apparently, the PIP assessment is intended to provide

“a more holistic assessment of the impact of a health condition…on an individual’s ability to participate”

in everyday life. It covers sensory impairments, development needs, cognitive impairments and mental conditions, as well as physical disabilities. Those five categories cover everything—medically, physically, healthwise——that there can be. The assessment looks at the extent to which the individual is capable of undertaking various activities. For some activities, someone can score points to help to meet the threshold for PIP if they can undertake that activity only by using an “aid or appliance”. That could include such things as artificial limbs, colostomy bags, walking sticks and non-specialist aids such as electric tin openers and long-handled sponges.

I want to highlight two cases, one of which involves a young lady who has ulcerative colitis. My age is such that I can probably remember the day she was born. I have got to know her very well over the years due to her diagnosis with this unseen disease, and how it has affected her and other people in my constituency. She worked in the civil service but was granted medical retirement before 30 because her employer could no longer facilitate her working. A Government employer could not accommodate her ability to work one day and not the next, as her illness dictated.

I understand the reasons why the Government and the civil service had to take a decision and say, “Look, we are going to have to terminate your employment.” However, that is where the problem started, and I cannot understand how they expect someone else to employ her when they let her go. It should be understood why this lady is no longer able to work and why her employer, the civil service—she was Government-employed—had to let her go. Why is this young lady in this conflicted position? She is asked, in respect of PIPs, “What job can you do? Where can we find you some work?” Let us be honest: that wee lassie would love to work if only she had the opportunity, but she cannot because of her disability. She is on ESA and is dealing with the stress of the proposed changes. We should never underestimate the impact of the stress of this position. I stress that as strongly as I can, because I see that all the time. She rang to make an appointment for her PIP form to be filled out. How will she be assessed? That is the question I am asking. She is currently on the higher-rate DLA—deservedly so, by the way. Will that be taken away from her? Ministers would say no, but the experience we have had so far in my office is raising fear in our mind and the minds of constituents. I see that all the time.

The young lady’s condition has not improved one iota since her last DLA application. If anything, I would suggest that it has worsened, and there is real concern that the PIP changes will not help. The stress makes her even more ill. It is a vicious cycle that is repeated over and over again. The PIP is for people who need help for hygienic purposes and for safety issues, but the problem is that that is not being translated into the new proposals. I genuinely hold the Minister in the highest esteem. From her response, we need to understand how the system works and how it can help the people on whose behalf we are here to make a plea, so that we can take away the stress and hassle.

On 11 March, it was announced that the number of points awarded in the PIP assessment would be halved for aids and appliances for “dressing and undressing” and “managing toilet needs”. Why would the Government reduce the points for things that are needed? I cannot understand that. As a result, 290,000 claimants will no longer receive the daily living component, and a further 80,000 will receive the standard, rather than the enhanced, daily living component. Budget 2016 estimated additional savings of £1.3 billion a year by 2019-20. That is great but where does it leave my constituent, who needs help during the night?

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr Shannon, lots of people wish to speak. Would you try to keep your speech to about nine minutes so everybody has an equal amount of time? Thank you.

[Jim Shannon]

I did not realise that. I will try to go at my Northern Ireland speed, which is very fast. The young lady I was talking about needs her sheets changed at night, and often replaced entirely, as well as someone to come in and take care of her during her bad periods. Her DLA paid for a carer to help her. Will PIP do the same? The answer should certainly be yes, but the points system is not set up for illnesses such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. The Crohn’s and Colitis UK website contains a link to a PDF offering help and advice on the PIP for sufferers. The PDF is 70 pages long—that is how complex the system is and how much help people need to fill out the application. If that does not put off someone who is seriously ill, I do not know what would.

Is this what was intended by the Government’s welfare reform? Did they intend to make it so complex and intricate that many people will give up and live in sub-standard conditions, rather than get the help they need to live with their illness? We should be concerned about people retreating inwards, their lack of confidence and the problems they face.

Ms Dorries, you have given me a time limit. I just have two more paragraphs to get through very quickly. I wholeheartedly believe that the new system is failing people. I had a doctor on the phone to say that his patient’s decision was made without the assessor taking the time to request any information about the patient from the surgery. The doctor said, “Jim, if he doesn’t get this help he will have to go to a nursing home at 46 years of age.” The care packages that health trusts put in place are not sufficient to handle people who are not able to pay privately for the additional support they require. On their behalf, I again ask the Minister, most sincerely, kindly and humbly: please look at this benefit, remember why it was set up and understand that, for many, it is the difference between having support to live and simply being able to exist. Do not continue to push these ill people, many of whom suffer from mental health problems due to the stress and strain of long-term illness. In this House, MPs are called to protect and help the vulnerable, but that is not what this new ESA and PIP system does.

--- Later in debate ---

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Rather than commenting on the film, which is a dramatic portrayal, will the hon. Gentleman comment on the “Dispatches” programme? That was not fictional; it was an actual portrayal of the assessment process that people go through.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Mr Tomlinson, the same applies to you as applied to Mr Shannon.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I will not be long. I am glad that the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) intervened. I have a feeling that she will not let me intervene on her later, so I can link this in nicely. The “Dispatches” programme showed an isolated incident that was totally unacceptable. The individual was moved, and rightly so. That is why we have external inspectors. Remember that we are talking about 1.8 million people, and I urge her to take up my invitation to go and view an assessment. Hearsay is not the right way to hold Governments to account. This is so important that people in positions of responsibility need to invest some time in going to see what is actually happening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patricia Gibson]

Surrounded by such a wealth of opportunity, it is hard to keep up. Nothing in the system that my constituents experience is seen as an opportunity. It is seen as extremely negative, intimidating and humiliating. When the hon. Gentleman talked about the assessments, perhaps I misunderstood him, but if I have I certainly am not alone. One might think that these assessments always resulted in somebody’s entitlement or benefit being increased, but I can assure him that in my constituency that is almost never the case.

The hon. Gentleman, perhaps in the interests of trying to be helpful to the Chamber, talked about how we should go and see an assessment taking place. Perhaps this is just me—I have not done a survey or anything—but these assessments are not a spectator sport. We are talking about people’s lives. The people who go through them very often find them humiliating and damaging. If I were to go through one of those assessments, the last thing I would want is an audience. Perhaps I might want a member of my family, or a close friend, but I certainly would not want my MP, who would in effect be a stranger, although their name might be well known to me. I certainly would not want the occasion to become a spectator sport. We must be careful about MPs filling the galleries when people are having their lives exposed and deconstructed by strangers.

This is a debate about social justice. Employment and support allowance is a form of financial support for people with life-limiting conditions whose ability to live a fully satisfying life, something we would all hope for, is effectively removed. That should be remembered during debates such as this one—and during the assessments. The hon. Member for North Swindon has informed the Chamber that the assessors are there to help, and I am sure that they think so too, but claimants feel stressed. They are confronted by assessors who are, by definition, strangers and who have little or no knowledge of their condition. We have all heard stories: for those who have not heard them, Parkinson’s UK can keep them going all day. There are stories, for example, of people with Parkinson’s being asked by the work capability assessor, “How long are you likely to have Parkinson’s for?”

We know that the criteria for work capability assessment are flawed and that people whose conditions fluctuate are always at risk of what might, strangely—as it is all relative—be called a good day. Such things are not taken into account by the work capability assessment, and nor is the impact of pain and fatigue, or the degenerative nature of conditions such as Parkinson’s. As a result, too many employment and support allowance applicants are placed in the work-related activity group, instead of the much more appropriate support group, which recognises that the claimant is simply not well enough to work. I reassure the hon. Member for North Swindon that I know that the Government have reversed the need for repeated work capability assessments for the chronically ill—that is welcome, but it simply does not go far enough. It is a matter of great concern to all fair-minded people that from April 2017 people placed in the employment support work-related activity group will receive £30 a week less than someone in the same situation today. That makes the failure of the system more alarming.

Flawed criteria are a particular difficulty for people with conditions such as Parkinson’s in receipt of disability living allowance—I could mention a range of conditions but time forbids it—when they are being assessed for PIP. Under DLA, if a person could walk no more than 50 metres they would be eligible for support. For PIP that distance has arbitrarily—randomly, it seems—been reduced to 20 metres. That is such a short distance that it is not a useful or helpful estimate of a person’s mobility. Given the fluctuating nature of some conditions and the failure of the process to register such fluctuations, many people are losing their Motability vehicles, on which they rely heavily.

The hon. Member for North Swindon will be interested to know that recent investigations found that under DLA 82% of people with Parkinson’s received the full mobility payment, whereas under PIP that has dropped to 40%. That is a massive drop, and those people lose their vehicles within 28 days of an assessment decision being made against them. I do not see how anyone can come to this Chamber and say that that is acceptable. Those people are being isolated in their own homes and effectively punished for their illness. Their dependence on family members increases.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Will the hon. Lady apply the restriction of nine minutes to her speech?

[Patricia Gibson]

Yes, Ms Dorries.

--- Later in debate ---

[Natalie McGarry (Glasgow East) (Ind)]

rose—

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Ms McGarry, I did not get notification that you put in a request to speak, but I could call you for a few minutes if you concluded in three or four minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Penny Mordaunt]

Forgive me, but I will make some progress.

That kind of quality support can be reached only through stellar local working. That is why the Green Paper consultation is more than an information-gathering exercise; it is a call to arms. We have to build new commitments and shared outcomes locally. I urge all Members to help us in the consultation process and to come along to the drop-in event in the House on Monday between 3 o’clock and 5 o’clock. It will offer information specific to Members’ constituencies, guidance on how to run an event or get involved in one, as well as bringing partners together to respond to the consultation and thinking about what needs to be done in the local area. During the consultation process, we will continue to develop those networks, facilitated by the flexible support fund, and also busting some of the myths about what local services we will commission to support those on benefits.

I briefly turn to Motability, which the hon. Members for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Corri Wilson) and for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) particularly focused on. Members will know that a scheme has been set out—I am very grateful to Motability for doing that—to try to help with the transition from DLA to PIP. It is a challenging time for individuals. That scheme is the £175 million package that Members will be familiar with, which enables individuals to keep their car for seven weeks, allows them to buy back their old vehicle and offers a one-off payment of £2,000 to help to meet their continuing Motability needs. Motability is also helping to pay for new adaptions to non-scheme cars, with insurance thrown in. We are aware of how difficult it is—despite that mitigation and the other sources of transport subsidy that might be available—for an individual to be told that they will lose their vehicle with only a few weeks to make alternative arrangements.

There are other problems too. I want to outline one that is of particular concern to me. It relates to people leaving the country for extended periods longer than 13 weeks. That is a problem for students, but it is also a problem for someone who might want to take up a career opportunity, a sabbatical or other opportunities that require travel. Our systems must be able to support someone following their dreams and ambitions. They must enable a person to thrive, so this situation should not be left to stand. We have been discussing with relevant Departments ways to enable PIP claimants to keep their vehicle pending appeal, and we are exploring options to allow those who are not in receipt of the higher Motability component to have access to the Motability scheme. I am also exploring how claimants who are out of the country for extended periods can be better supported. We have a plan and the Treasury’s blessing. This week I have written to Motability to ask for its help in delivering that plan. I anticipate that the plan will require some changes to its processes, but I know that it will do all it can to help us in this matter, as it has in the past. We have a remarkable and unique partnership with Motability, and I hope in my tenure to maximise that.

I have spoken at length about the work-related activity group. Time is short but, briefly, we are looking at a range of measures to help to ensure that someone’s experience of these systems—that is fundamentally the heart of what Members have been discussing today—can be improved and that we are aware of all the issues. That includes looking at developing service user panels to create a real-time reporting mechanism on people’s experiences. We can use those panels to design our benefits systems. There are a raft of other measures that I do not have time to outline today, but they will help us to do that. I will bring forward measures shortly.

The final thing I will do before I hand over to the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East is reassure her that I will be there to assist when devolution transitions further powers to Holyrood. I am already talking to her colleagues there about how we can get the best outcomes for the issues she mentioned. Again, this comes down to all Members of this House—whichever part of the country we represent and whatever our political hue—working together to get the best outcomes in the systems. I hope that all Members will come to the drop-in session next Monday.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Six seconds.

[Angela Crawley]

I thank you for that, Mrs Dorries. I thank all hon. and right hon. Members—

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

AEA Pension Scheme

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I congratulate the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) on bringing this—

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr Blackford, I should have said that there is five minutes each for you and the Opposition spokesman and 10 minutes for the Minister, so if you could limit your remarks to five minutes, that would be great. Thank you.

[Ian Blackford]

I will do so, Ms Dorries, as I was intending to.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for West Dorset on securing this important debate. He has been assiduous in pushing the case, and his suggestion this afternoon of looking at amending the law as it affects the ombudsman certainly has some merit.

I also congratulate the right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey). He has very accurately shown what happened with the advice that was given, some of the deficiencies that were there, and the possible interference from AEAT in that process and the advice that was given.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Dr Monaghan) said in his concluding remarks, we need to remember that pensions are a contract, not a benefit. Those who have paid in to pension schemes deserve to get their due entitlement. It is the responsibility of the UK Government to ensure that there is confidence in the pensions industry throughout the UK. We all look forward to a time when people can save in pensions, secure in the knowledge that they will get their due entitlement. We need to have that confidence, and it is the Government’s responsibility to ensure that the Pensions Regulator and the ombudsman discharge their obligations to ensure that the consumer interest is protected.

It is clear that pension scheme members in this case, as we heard last week in a debate in the main Chamber on the BHS scheme, are not fully protected—they are not protected to the extent that they should be. Lessons must be learned and appropriate action taken. Whether that is done through the ombudsman or the regulator is a moot point and we can come back to it in due course. What needs to be remarked on today is that, with the AEAT scheme ending up in the Pension Protection Fund, those who worked for the company when it was in the public sector have, among others, lost pension entitlement. The Government cannot walk away from their obligation to what were public sector workers. That is not acceptable.

It is clear from its conduct that the UK Government Actuary’s Department has ducked its responsibility to the AEAT pension scheme members. Liability has to lie somewhere. As discussed in a Westminster Hall debate on this topic in March last year, the Government Actuary’s Department was the author of a leaflet designed to inform pension scheme members of their next course of action in the light of the creation of AEAT. According to evidence given to the Pensions Ombudsman Service, that leaflet suggested three options, but also said that it was unlikely that the UKAEA scheme would fail or that

“the benefit promise made by either the UKAEA scheme or the AEAT scheme would ever be broken.”

That was in my book an inducement and assurance to the scheme members. Who will stand behind the scheme members who were made those promises? Will the Minister accept that the Government at least have a moral and ethical responsibility?

Cross-departmental Strategy on Social Justice

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. Children’s experience of school demonstrates perfectly how their experiences transcend departmental lines. You—she, rather—will not be surprised that when I spoke to colleagues in my constituency who work in the education sector, their primary concern was not curriculum reform, exam success, assessment or even funding, but children’s mental health. That has an impact not only on health policy but on children’s education—and their life chances, for which the Department for Work and Pensions is responsible.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Ms Ansell, I am more concerned about the length of your intervention than your use of the word “you”.

[Fiona Bruce]

My hon. Friend puts that point very succinctly, and better than I have in my prepared speech. She speaks not only from long experience but from the heart. Her commitment to family concerns has become well recognised since she entered the House, and I thank her for that.

There are examples of good practice in the form of joined-up governmental thinking. The previous Social Justice Cabinet Committee found that when Departments took a strategic approach to working together on issues such as the dreadful outcomes for care leavers, on which the DWP’s work was backed up by the work of the Department for Education, the then Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department of Health, the Department for Communities and Local Government, and the Ministry of Justice and others, they could generate a wave of reform, not just a few isolated initiatives. For example, Jobcentre Plus advisers now know that when they have a care leaver in front of them, they will get extra support or flexibility, including early access to the Work programme; there are more funds for housing for those people and help for them to save through the junior ISA; and there is a care leavers champion in the criminal justice system. The list of co-ordinated Government action is long and should make us and our former coalition partners proud.

I and many others were deeply encouraged when Lord Freud explained during the Report stage of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill in the House of Lords that the life chances strategy would cover measures relating to

“family breakdown, problem debt, and drug and alcohol addiction.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 January 2016; Vol. 768, c. 1084.]

I welcome that. It would be wonderful for the kind of cross-departmental work and ministerial leadership that we have seen on support for care leavers to be applied to family life. When it comes to the knotty problem of family breakdown, I am an incurable optimist, despite my law firm background, but I doubt our ability to successfully reverse the epidemically high rates of divorce, separation and family dysfunction in our society unless there are clear accountabilities across the full range of Government Departments represented in the Social Reform Cabinet Committee.

I pay tribute to my noble Friend Lord Farmer for his commitment to promoting and strengthening family life and all he has done in this place. I also pay tribute to Dr Samantha Callan, who works with him, for the many years of work research and advice she has dedicated to this field, particularly but not exclusively with the Centre for Social Justice. She has laboured for years to emphasise the concern we should all have about the impact of family life on children in particular. At times she may have wondered whether anyone from Government was really listening, but I am optimistic that those years are behind us and that now there are people in the top levels of Government who are listening. My noble Friend Lord Farmer recently wrote in The Times that we need a Minister in every Department who is explicitly responsible for leading a strand of family-strengthening policy. I agree and would add that we also need a Cabinet Minister with overall responsibility for the family.

Better support for marriage by beefing up our slender tax allowance that recognises enduring aspirations to make a commitment in the teeth of the many financial pressures that can make marriage seem so unattainable would be good, as would be community-based support in family hubs for people to get advice when they are struggling with parenting and relationships. I hope the Minister has seen the report I recently produced as chair of the all-party group on children’s centres entitled “Family Hubs: The Future of Children’s Centres”, which proposed that and a number of other actions to strengthen family relationships in our local communities.

Support for action to ensure that prisoners maintain the family ties that can boost rehabilitation efforts and make jails safer would also benefit from a co-ordinated approach. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), our previous Prisons Minister, for all he has done to emphasise the importance of strengthening prisoners’ family relationships. Mental health services that work with all the family dynamics underlying children’s problems could be better co-ordinated, but without a level of steely-eyed determination I fear our life chances indicators in these areas will put us to shame.

As I said, I am incurably hopeful, particularly as our new Prime Minister is the only person ever to have had the title Secretary of State for the Family—albeit that was preceded by the word “shadow”, when we were in opposition. It is now time for family policy to come out of the shadows, take its rightful place in her new Cabinet Committee along with many other important areas of social justice—I am look forward to hearing about those from colleagues over the course of the debate—and be tackled unflinchingly with the energy and talent of all those around the Cabinet table.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Allowing 30 minutes for the Minister, the Opposition spokesperson and the hon. Member for Congleton to wind up, there are 25 minutes left for the remaining four Members to speak. I will let Members do the maths and work that one out for themselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double). It is noticeable that speeches from my hon. Friends have centred on the family. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), to whom I pay tribute—he has a new title now, which I forget; is it sheriff of Northstead?—quite rightly said, family is

“the best anti-poverty measure ever invented”.

I am sure that that will be endorsed by the new Minister, whom I welcome, and our new Prime Minister, who has made it clear that her focus continues to be fighting against “burning” social injustices. At the root and heart of injustice is the lack of opportunity to have the care of two parents and, indeed, to be part of a commitment of marriage.

The point of this debate, which I was involved in seeking to secure, is for the Minister to do a very straightforward thing: to confirm, as we hope is the case, that there is a cross-departmental strategy on social justice and that the Government will publish a life chances strategy. We look forward to the Minister telling us the date of publication of that strategy, which was mentioned in the Queen’s Speech:

“To tackle poverty and the causes of deprivation, including family instability, addiction and debt, my government will introduce new indicators for measuring life chances.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 May 2016; Vol. 773, c. 3.]

I hope the Minister will reaffirm that commitment.

The House authorities struggled when they saw the title of the debate. Who is the Minister responsible for this cross-departmental strategy? The title of the debate was deliberately designed to raise that question, because we need a clear answer on who is leading the way. Traditionally, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), to whom I pay tribute, led that charge, given his background with the CSJ and all the hard work done, not least in opposition. We need to know clearly that this strategy is owned across Government and that not only will a life chances strategy be delivered, but it will have real meaning—that it will not consist of good soundbites and a good press release and then gather dust on civil service shelves. That is important.

While I respect the Minister for responding to this debate—no doubt a lot of concerns focus on the Department for Work and Pensions—this issue goes beyond specific departmental responsibilities and affects all parts of Government. We know the family has to be at the heart of that, because it is in stable families that we can have social justice across Departments. When the life chances strategy is published, I will be doing a word search not only for “family” but for “marriage”. I want to see hits on both those words, because they are key determinants.

My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) mentioned Jobs, Friends & Houses, a cross-departmental approach with the charitable sector. May I take that a stage further? Although there is a question mark about who is responding to the cross-departmental strategy on social justice, we can be in no doubt about the impact of a lack of such a strategy. While there are great opportunities through local charities that bring things together, the impact is on those like Lucy. My test of the Government’s cross-departmental strategy is a “Lucy” test.

Lucy was a child who was sexually abused and placed in care. She later went on to suffer from depression, which caused educational failure. She began shoplifting to pay for a drug habit following a short spell in prison, and she lost touch with her grandmother, her remaining relative. The spiral of complex needs led to injustice for Lucy. She was able to buck the trend, but sadly there are all too many Lucys—58,000 are homeless with substance misuse and criminal justice issues. We must tackle this problem. Lucy is an example of the way forward. We must bring things together properly with a national strategy that enables the Lucys of this world to have joint commissioning from their council to avoid the silos between the Probation Service and the NHS, and to have a dedicated, named mentor and advocate. Lucy is now back in contact with her grandmother, out of contact with the police and on the road to recovery.

I appreciate, Ms Dorries, that you want me to conclude. Those individuals with complex needs do not understand cross-departmental strategies, but they understand when they fall into the gaps between departmental silos, funding streams and statutory responsibilities. We have to ensure that the strategy goes to the root causes of poverty and into entrenched areas so that we do much better for such people. We know we need more residential rehab, which has had 50% cuts. Areas such as Birmingham are not making any referrals to abstinence-based residential rehab. We have to ensure that the Lucys of this world get a better deal. To pay homage to the old Heineken adverts, this life chances strategy has to reach the parts that other strategies do not reach and the lives of the Lucys of this world.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

I will call the Minister at 15.58, so perhaps the Opposition Front Benchers will work out the timing for themselves.

Under-occupancy Penalty

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend, who has been a lawyer for many years, for bringing this important issue to the Floor of the House. Normally, people adhere to Court of Appeal judgments, but in the case of the bedroom tax, the Government are once again ignoring what the court said. In what way—the right, decent and honourable way—should the Government deal with the Court of Appeal judgment and listen to what is happening to the thousands of people out there who are suffering as a consequence of this now unlawful and illegal tax?

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Can we keep interventions short and not make speeches, please?

[Jo Stevens]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. The honourable thing would be to accept the decision of the Court of Appeal, but instead the Government are proceeding to the Supreme Court, where a decision is expected at the end of this month or early next month.

The bedroom tax and the tripling of tuition fees for students are two of the most painful scars left by five years of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition, and I will take every opportunity to continue to remind the House that the bedroom tax would never have been introduced without the eager help of the Liberal Democrats, including my predecessor. Nearly 500,000 households and almost 750,000 people have been hit by this cruel policy. Two thirds of the households affected by the bedroom tax include a person with a disability. The tax impacts on 60,000 carers—people who undertake demanding and challenging responsibilities and are punished for doing so. Some 57% of those who have to pay the tax have had to cut back on household basics such as food and heating—things that we all take for granted. The bedroom tax has had a corrosive effect on many different households, including the single parent who needs a spare room for when their children visit as part of agreed contact visit arrangements following separation or divorce; grandparents who help with looking after their grandchildren, allowing parents to manage shift working and other working patterns, or following family breakdown; and people with severe disabilities who use their spare room for their medical equipment or care, such as kidney dialysis.

Benefit Sanctions

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. There has been some confusion, which I will put down to the fact that SNP Members are new and may not yet be fully au fait with how Westminster Hall and Parliament work. It is normal practice, when a Member wants to speak, to catch the eye of the Chair and to rise. I left time, following the speech by Mr Gray, for other Members to rise, and nobody gave any indication that they wanted to. This is unusual, because the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson has already spoken, but given that we are okay for time, you may make some brief points, Mr Boswell. Although my daughters frequently accuse me of having eyes in the back of my head, I cannot read your minds and do not know that you want to speak.

[Philip Boswell (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) for securing the debate and for his insightful and informed speech on the subject. We represent neighbouring constituencies, and I see he has become as aware of and concerned as I have about the extent of benefit sanctions in the North Lanarkshire area and their far-reaching impact on not only the individual being sanctioned but their family, who are also affected.

I welcome the contributions made by all who have participated in the debate. I think I can safely say that every Member in this Chamber will have met constituents who have faced unfair benefit sanctions. The other week, I heard from a constituent who was faced with a four-week sanction after failing to attend a jobcentre meeting. The reason he missed the meeting was because he had a job interview—ridiculous! He is currently in the process of appealing the DWP’s decision, but in the meantime, he is faced with the prospect of trying to get by in the run-up to Christmas without any income whatever.

As has rightly been stated by many hon. Members, benefit sanctions have made a direct, substantial contribution to the increased use of food banks. From October 2014 to October 2015, the Coatbridge food bank has seen a 35% increase in referrals. According to Chris Baxter, the food bank’s manager, a substantial contributing factor to that increased use is benefit sanctions. I thank Chris and his staff for their efforts.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Please make your key points. You have a few minutes each. You cannot deliver your speech, I am afraid, because the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson cannot respond to your points.

[Philip Boswell]

Sorry; I was cutting out large sections of my speech, but I will be more ardent in my efforts.

[Emily Thornberry]

On a point of order, Ms Dorries. I do not know if this will help with your chairing, but may I make it clear that the Labour party sees entirely eye to eye with the Scottish nationalists on this issue? There is unlikely to be anything they raise that I would want to argue with them about.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Thank you very much for that.

[Philip Boswell]

In addition to causing a rise in food bank use, benefit sanctions contribute to the rising fuel poverty seen throughout these isles. According to Citizens Advice Scotland, benefit sanctions have directly contributed to the 130% rise in fuel poverty in Scotland, with 40% of Scots now living in fuel poverty—a statistic I find completely unacceptable.

Ultimately, benefit sanctions condemn the individuals faced with them to a cycle of poverty, given the impact on food poverty and high-interest debt, as many individuals take out long-term loans with high interest rates. Benefit sanctions also condemn the children of the people faced with them. We now live in a country where a growing number of people are punished for being poor—poor and paying for it—from the day they are born, and are provided with little means by which to escape poverty, so that they will always be poor. That needs to change, and ending the system of inhumane benefit sanctions is a first step in that direction.

Littlewoods and Telegraph Pension Funds

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I am proud to represent the seat of Mid Bedfordshire, but I am also proud to have been born and bred in Liverpool. I have secured this Adjournment debate because I am gravely concerned that the pensions of many thousands of people in Liverpool and elsewhere in Britain, including in my constituency, might be in danger and that if things go badly wrong the British people, via the Pension Protection Fund, will be called on to pick up the pieces.

We must not forget the lessons learned from the Robert Maxwell scandal. Potentially, billions of pounds of public money is at stake, placed at risk by the pension schemes of the companies ultimately controlled by two men, Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay, also known as the Barclay twins.

The twins are rich men, although perhaps not as rich as they appear to be, and they live in Monaco and in a pseudo-Gothic castle on the island of Brecqhou, off Sark, to avoid British tax. They do not pay their fair share of tax, yet their company, Shop Direct, formerly known as Littlewoods, is suing the British taxpayer for £1.2 billion in compound interest for overpayment of tax on a company the Barclay twins did not even own when the event took place. Some might call that greedy. I do. The Barclay twins are avariciously greedy.

The twins are notoriously reclusive, which is rather weird, as they own The Daily Telegraph, and they are notoriously aggressive in defence of their own reputations. Twice they have sued British journalists in France. The BBC “Panorama” journalist John Sweeney was convicted of criminal libel in France for comments he made on BBC Radio Guernsey. In 2005, The Times was sued by the twins, again in France. Some might call it hypocritical for owners of a British newspaper that regularly dishes out dirt to sue competitor journalists in a foreign jurisdiction. I call that hypocritical. When I wrote a critical judgment of their actions on my blog, they harassed my blog site host with midnight e-mails from lawyers in New York, France and London, forcing my host to close down my blog for a few hours. The Barclay twins are deeply hypocritical.

People who watched the “Panorama” programme “The Tax Havens Twins”, still available on YouTube, saw ordinary people on Sark give witness that they have been bullied by the twins’ representative on the island. The Barclay twins are also bullies.

The danger to public funds from the twins is fundamentally simple, although the details are murky and obscure, perhaps deliberately so. The twins’ companies, including Shop Direct and Yodel, are losing money hand over fist. Yodel has a loan with HSBC worth £250 million pounds, and if we add that to other loans we see that the twins’ companies owe about £l billion to the banks. That may all be with HSBC, and not just the £250 million as reported. In addition, Shop Direct has traded receipts from its loan book for a £1.25 billion facility with a clearing bank, believed to be HSBC.

On the rare occasion when profits are made, they are shelled out of the individual company and transferred to parent and/or grandparent companies often incorporated offshore in the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda and other offshore havens. In plain English, the twins’ businesses are losing massive amounts of cash, and when they do not they are hollowed out. If the pension funds suddenly needed a fresh injection of funds, how easy would it be for the pension trustees to extract that money from this complex maze of offshore accounts?

The answer to the question turns on the strength of the pension fund covenants. Again, the picture is not clear, and that is not good. Let us take the Littlewoods scheme, the Littlewoods plan, the GUS ex-gratia unfunded scheme and the unfunded scheme for members. I will refer to them as “the scheme” for short, and that scheme is worth £1.37 billion.

One of the problems highlighted by the Robert Maxwell scandal was that too many of the pension fund trustees were dependent on Robert Maxwell. How many of the Littlewoods scheme trustees are genuinely independent of the twins? One, maybe two. Of the eight trustees, I can identify five that are not. The Pensions Regulator recommends the appointment of a professional trustee for a large scheme. As far as we can tell, no such appointment has been made. It also recommends two independent trustees. Of the two that are in place, one has been there since 1997, the other since 2008—that is not independent.

With a pension scheme worth £1.37 billion, it is very worrying that the recommendations of the Pensions Regulator appear to have been ignored. That is at the heart of this matter. The dire financial performance of Shop Direct and Yodel, the £1 billion of loans, and the trade of the Shop Direct loan book for a further £1.25 billion give rise to concerns that the trustees must, by law, address. Minister, is that happening?

Recently, journalist Peter Oborne left The Daily Telegraph because, he said, the paper was defrauding its readers. He said that it had gone soft on HSBC because it did not want to lose advertising income. Mr Oborne understated the problem. The Daily Telegraph went soft on HSBC not just for fear of losing advertising money but because the twins’ companies are in so much debt to HSBC—at least £250 million, possibly as much as £1 billion in loans if HSBC is the bank behind the loan book deal. The Daily Telegraph owners may have a further £1.25 billion of reasons to be soft on the tax cheats’ bank. We are talking a cool £2 billion-plus here, not the £250 million that was recently reported.

As I have told the House, the twins are suing the taxpayer in the Supreme Court for almost exactly the same amount as the loan book agreement, which by the way, requires renewal every 12 months, making it very vulnerable. They have already received the simple interest and principal amounting to over £470 million so they have already taken a fair slug of our money. But it is not enough. These offshore, non-UK taxpayers would like the British taxpayer to transfer to their pockets the cost of four operational hospitals or 12 running schools. But they may not win their case in the Supreme Court. The twins’ companies underlying the pension funds may end up in a serious amount of debt, running into billions, just like Robert Maxwell’s companies.

If the twins win their case, how are to we ensure that the £1.2 billion remains on British soil to safeguard the scheme from future poor investment returns? As we know, that happens. It is why the Pension Protection Fund was established—to protect members and contributors from scheme shortfalls. I fear that the money will be siphoned offshore, leaving the taxpayer via the Pension Protection Fund to pick up the £1 billion-plus price tag if the group continues to perform financially as badly as it has been doing.

The Barclays winning or losing their £1.2 billion court case makes no difference to this scenario. If they win, they could siphon the money abroad and the British taxpayer will pick up the bill. If they lose, the British taxpayer picks up the bill by picking up any shortfall in the scheme fund. Can we depend on the Barclay twins to do the right thing should the scheme suffer a shortfall? We can only make that assessment based on their financial track record and character. We know that they are in serious debt. We know that they were criticised for their role in the Crown Agents scandal going all the way back to 1973. As Mr Paddy McKillen, the owner of three London hotels, can testify, they lack scruples. Mr McKillen’s American social security number was stolen in order to gain access to his financial information as part of an aggressive and hostile takeover of his business.

Let us take a look at the experience of the islanders on Sark. For years they have been bullied, blackmailed, threatened and terrorised. People have fled the island, others have woken to find flyers and papers with their personal information posted across the island. When the wife of the seigneur of Sark fell seriously ill, the twins’ man on the island attacked the seigneur, and all because the Barclays want control of the island and for it to be run as they see fit. The character of the twins can be summed up in three words: greedy, hypocritical and bullying.

What assurance can the Minister provide that if the Barclay twins win their victory in court and get £1.2 billion from the taxpayer, the money will stay here in the UK for the benefit of the scheme fund members, should there be a shortfall? What guarantee can he give that if there were a shortfall, the British taxpayer will not be funding the scheme via the Pension Protection Fund? Has the Pensions Regulator looked into this matter, given the poor financial performance and indebtedness of the contributing companies?

The Robert Maxwell pensions scandal happened because too many people— journalists, politicians, pension fund trustees and lawyers—held their tongue for fear of legal threats and intimidation. Today, the Government protect individuals against pension fund loss via the PPF, but that fund could not survive a hit to the tune of £1 billion. I know the Minister will be keen to provide reassurance that all is well with the fund, but all is not well when one considers the existing make-up of the fund trustees. We are not just concerned about today. Just under the surface, things are not well. I urge the Minister to use his good offices and impress on the Pensions Regulator the need to evaluate at the very least the composition and validity of the scheme trustees.

Today the foundations of the Barclay twins’ empire are cracking. Tomorrow the walls may come tumbling down. I hope that as a consequence of the dire financial circumstances of the Barclay twins’ companies, there will be no threat to the long-term security of the pensioners dependent on them. I hope I am wrong, but I fear I may be right.

[The Minister for Pensions (Steve Webb)]

I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) on securing this debate. I will focus my remarks on the Littlewoods and Telegraph pension funds and the matters that fall within my responsibility. I hope that I can respond helpfully to her concerns.

The security of pension scheme members’ pensions is always a matter of concern to me and to the House, and rightly so. It might help to clarify one or two points about the regulatory regime and the protection afforded to members, because it differs according to the type of scheme, and the risk of a shortfall differs according to the type of scheme. Within Littlewoods and Telegraph there are different sorts of pension schemes, some of which are at risk of shortfall and some of which are not. It might help if I put that on the record at the outset.

[Nadine Dorries]

May I clarify one point? Although the title of the debate is Littlewoods and Telegraph pension schemes, I deliberately did not speak about the Telegraph pension scheme because it came to my attention today that it is in the process of changing, for whatever reason, its fund managers, so I felt that it was inappropriate to comment on it.

[Steve Webb]

For the record, the Telegraph pension plan is what is called a defined contribution pension scheme, and it is therefore not capable of having a shortfall and there are no pension promises attached to the plan. There used to be a Telegraph executive pension scheme, which is now closed. I believe it transferred into the Telegraph pension plan, so my understanding is that none of the members of those schemes is at risk of shortfall, regardless of the position of the sponsoring employer.

The hon. Lady raised the Littlewoods and Shop Direct schemes. Both of those are salary-related schemes. The Shop Direct scheme, which is separate from the Littlewoods one, covers around 400 staff. I understand that it is closed to new members and for contributions by existing members. Under the regulatory regime, schemes are valued, their assets and liabilities are measured, and if there is a shortfall, plans are put in place to deal with it. I understand that the assets of the Shop Direct scheme at the last valuation were £120 million, with liabilities of £100 million. So the Shop Direct scheme is currently in surplus, which is relatively unusual for a scheme of this sort.

Let me say a little about how the Littlewoods pension scheme operates. The way in which such pension schemes operate is that there is a triennial valuation. The assets and liabilities are valued and the last triennial valuation of the Littlewoods scheme was in December 2012. Obviously, things have moved on since then and the figures arguably are different now. The last triennial valuation gave assets of £1 billion and a deficit—in excess, therefore, of the assets—of around £176 million. The way the regulatory regime works means that that amount does not have to be found overnight—obviously, the liabilities might run on for decades—so something called a recovery plan has to be put in place, and it has to be agreed by the trustees and the sponsoring employer and signed off by the Pensions Regulator. The company is currently five years into a recovery plan that will run until December 2021, and the fact that it was signed off in 2012 means that the regulator was content that it was appropriate to respond to the deficit and the scheme as it then stood. The Littlewoods pension trust has since been paying around £12 million a year into the scheme, in line with the plan, and I understand that from July 2016 that amount will increase to £15 million.

Obviously I cannot comment on the hon. Lady’s wider remarks on corporate structures and various other matters, but I can say that, as far as we are aware, the recovery plan has been adhered to, it was agreed and signed off by the regulator, and the payments in line with the plan have been made.

[Nadine Dorries]

The Minister has rightly detailed the assets, but can he clarify who would have first call on those assets if there was a shortfall in the scheme, if the company was in dire financial straits and if it had £2 billion of debts: the pension scheme or the banks?

[Steve Webb]

As the hon. Lady says, the pension scheme is underwritten by the Pension Protection Fund. There is a regulatory regime to ensure that companies do not hide money, for example. I will say a little more about that, because she raised the issue of money going offshore. Essentially, the regulator has powers to ensure that, when there is an insolvency event and a shortfall in the pension fund, companies cannot simply walk away with money that has been squirreled away elsewhere. The regulator has powers to ensure that money that should be accessible in the event of insolvency is accessible. If there is still a shortfall, the Pension Protection Fund comes into play. I will respond in a moment to her comment that the Pension Protection Fund is essentially a hit on the taxpayer, because the situation is slightly more complicated than that.

Let me return to a point the hon. Lady made about the governance of the schemes. The members’ interests in any pension scheme of that sort are meant to be protected by trustees. I agree that it is important that the trustees are properly appointed and that they do their job in line with the law. With regard to the Littlewoods scheme, by law there have to be member-nominated trustees. My understanding is that there are four such trustees on the Littlewoods scheme and two on the smaller Shop Direct scheme. As far as we can see, the membership of the trustee board is in line with statutory requirements.

All trustees, whether appointed by the company or nominated by members, have the same fiduciary duty to scheme members: however they got on board, they all have the same duty. If the hon. Lady has any reason to think that any member of the trustee board is not fulfilling their fiduciary duty to scheme members, I encourage her to give the names directly to the Pensions Regulator and provide it with evidence for that assertion. Those founded allegations would then be investigated. We certainly believe that trustees have an important job to do. If there are any concerns that they are not doing that job, she should certainly raise them directly with the Pensions Regulator, with names and evidence. The fact that someone has been a trustee for a long time does not in and of itself make them biased or unfit to be a trustee, but clearly the rules require at least a third of the board to be nominated by scheme members. They are not representatives of the members as such, but they all have a legal duty to all the members.

Let me move on to the regulatory regime that is meant to protect members. The key point is that every three years the scheme has to be valued: we measure the assets and the liability. If there is a shortfall, a plan has to be put in place, as it has been for the Littlewoods scheme. Three years later, a fresh action is taken, with assets and liabilities measured. If there is still a shortfall, a revised recovery plan is brought in. The idea is to strike a balance, ensuring that the scheme is properly funded and that, if there is an insolvency event, members are protected and the Pension Protection Fund is protected, but without killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

We do not insist on an excessively rapid filling in of pension scheme deficits, because it might undermine the solvency of the sponsoring employer, which is the best guarantee of getting the pensions paid. We try to strike a balance. A recovery plan is an agreement between the trustees and the sponsoring employer and it is signed off by the Pensions Regulator. As I have said, the last recovery plan is being stuck to so far, so whatever else might be happening in the corporate group or to the funds of the company, the obligations to the pension scheme, in line with the recovery plan, are being met.

The hon. Lady asked, quite properly, what happens if money goes offshore. I assure her that the Pensions Regulator has powers to act if it believes that money that should properly be available to the employer and then to the pension fund is somehow being concealed and removed from the country. The regulator can issue a financial support direction, which requires the employer or a connected or associated person to put in place financial support for the pension scheme. The regulator has demonstrated that it can take effective action against employers, even when an employer is based overseas.

To give an example from January and the Carrington Wire pension scheme, the regulator issued warning notices to two companies based in Russia and subsequently reached an £8.5 million settlement with them. In addition, the regulator has in the past also taken action against companies based in America, Canada and the Bahamas. Although I absolutely understand the concerns that money going offshore inevitably makes things more complicated—I accept that—the regulator’s powers and ability to act are not restricted to the UK. The regulator can take action in other courts and has successfully recovered money when that has proved necessary.

On the case under discussion, I stress that, as far as we can see, there is a recovery plan and the payments are being met. If the regulator had concerns that payments were not being met, it could take action, but as long as the triennial valuations are happening, the scheme is being properly governed and the payments are being made, that is what is required of the sponsoring employer.

The hon. Lady referred to the Pension Protection Fund as a risk to the taxpayer. To be clear, the revenue of the PPF comes from the assets of pension schemes where there has been an insolvency event. The assets go into the PPF, so there is then an investment return on them. The PPF also raises a levy, which is not taxpayer-funded; the levy is on sponsoring employers of remaining salary-related pension schemes. Obviously, the Pensions Regulator is trying to protect the PPF—we do not want any claims, if possible, on the PPF—but in the event of an insolvency the PPF pays members’ pensions with, roughly speaking, 100% for those who have reached scheme pension age and 90% for those who have not, with some limitations on indexation and some caps. Any shortfall between PPF-level benefits and the amount of money that goes in from an insolvent employer and their scheme is made up from the PPF. That money comes from the levy payers, who are sponsoring employers, and not from the taxpayer.

The only indirect impact on the taxpayer, I suppose, could be if someone’s pension is substantially reduced and they are so poor in retirement that they claim means-tested benefits. There could be a marginal impact on the taxpayer, but the way PPF works means that, if schemes end up in it, the cost—for example, through increased levies—is borne by other sponsoring employers. Of course, we care about that. We do not want other sponsoring employers—“good” and solvent employers responsible for final salary pension schemes—to face any bill in excess of that which they need to face. Of course, it matters to us that people meet their liabilities and recovery plans, but that is not something that will have a direct impact on the taxpayer.

It is entirely proper to seek assurances that we are on our guard and protecting the interests of scheme members. The people in place to protect the interests of scheme members are the trustees. We have looked at the composition of the trustees of these pension schemes and, on the face of it, there is nothing irregular or out of line with what they are legally required to do. However, if the hon. Lady has evidence to the contrary, I encourage her to share it with the regulator.

The funding position of many schemes is in deficit, and some have bigger deficits than in the Littlewoods case. As I have said, one scheme is actually in surplus, which is quite unusual. For a scheme in deficit, there is a process of recovery plans that must be adhered to. We take that very seriously, and we would not accept a sponsoring employer saying that it cannot afford to meet the recovery plan if it turns out that it has money stashed somewhere else.

We have powers to intervene in corporate restructurings. If the Pensions Regulator believes that a sponsoring employer is somehow artificially contriving the structure of its business to shield assets and generate insolvency, meaning that there is suddenly no money to be found, the regulator can take pre-emptive action by refusing to clear various forms of corporate restructuring or, more normally, by placing conditions on corporate restructurings, and that sometimes results in a corporate restructuring not happening.

I reassure the hon. Lady that we are not entirely passive in all of this: we do not sit and wait for things to go wrong. There is a systematic three-year valuation process, and there is a process for agreeing credible recovery plans. We do not let such plans run on into the middle distance in the vague hope that in 20 years’ time somebody will have some cash; we make them realistic so that the deficit is recovered in a reasonable period. We try to make sure that schemes are well governed. The regulator has a trustee toolkit to equip trustees and enable them to do their job properly, and it would act on any concerns about trustees not doing their job properly.

I hope that I have been able to respond to the hon. Lady’s concerns. As we have established, the Telegraph scheme is not of the kind that can generate a shortfall, so that issue does not arise. The Littlewoods scheme does have a deficit, but a recovery plan is in place, and as far as we can see it is being adhered to. If it was not adhered to, we would be in a position to take action, and we would do so. I hope that is helpful to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Under-Occupancy Penalty (North-West)

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant]

Absolutely, not least because one of the key things that all parts of the House agree about is that we need to get more people into work. Particular families and communities have historically found it much more difficult to get into work. The issue is not only about whether work pays—although that is key and is why we originally supported the national minimum wage, facing down the howls of those who said it would lead to mass unemployment—but the support mechanisms that someone has when they first go into work. Otherwise, benefits are seen as more reliable, and if someone thinks that, they will stick with them.

If someone has child care responsibilities or care responsibilities for an adult relative, they need other family members close by. All too often since the bedroom tax was introduced, we have seen people forced to move to areas where they have no support, which makes it more difficult for them to get into work. Perhaps we Opposition Members too often rant and rave at Conservatives for being cruel, out of touch and not having any interest in the working poor—that has not always been true of them, historically—but some of the policies advanced, particularly those of the Department for Work and Pensions, have effectively cut off a nose to spite a face. They have seemed like savings and cuts, but in practice they have just added costs to the social welfare budget, which is why the Chancellor had to announce last week that he was increasing the estimate for welfare spending for this year by £1 billion and for next year by another £1 billion.

People are living myriad different lives, with different congregations of families and different community set-ups, social understandings and cultural mores, and it is incumbent on Ministers, particularly DWP Ministers, to work with the grain of human nature, rather than against it. The policy fundamentally works against the grain of human nature and the housing market.

All too often the Government have presumed that, because they said in theory that the policy is all about dealing with the mismatch of some properties being under-occupied and many properties being over-occupied, they have to get the families that are overcrowded to move into undercrowded properties. If everyone could step on to the pavement on one day, immediately swap and move into the next property, that might be true, and if there was an exact match of overcrowded and underused in each area—whether geographical, local authority or housing association—that presumption might work.

The facts on the ground, however, as we know from all the different surveys that have been done over the past year, are that there is a total mismatch. People have no choice about moving, downsizing or going to smaller properties, particularly in the short term. It might take them two, three, four, five, six, or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield said, seven years to move, and that is why the measure is a tax. In the end, people have no choice and have to surrender that extra bit of money.

The £16 might seem like nothing to Ministers in a Department that thinks that pensioners might spend their pot on a Lamborghini, but that is a significant amount of money to my and my hon. Friends’ constituents, particularly when real wages have been depressed and the number of hours and amount of overtime that people are allowed to work have fallen. Many more people have been put on zero-hours contracts. In that environment, £16—or £25, if it is two rooms—extra cost a week is a significant amount of money, and that is why the policy is unfair. It might seem fair to put all the overcrowded people into the underused accommodation, but if no one has checked whether there is enough accommodation to do that, it ends up being unfair.

The evidence of the unfairness is that the Government have had to provide discretionary housing payment schemes for local authorities. With discretionary housing payments, the word I dislike most is “discretionary”, because it means that someone living in one local authority on one side of the road in the north-west might be granted a DHP, while someone on the other side of the road will not get that payment, for the single reason that they live in a different local authority.

There is an added problem with discretionary payments, which is that the local authority knows—let us say it is getting £1 million over a year—not to spend any in April, May or June. That happens every time the Government introduce such a system. The authority will start spending a little only in July, August and September, because it knows that the big numbers will come knocking on the door in December, January and February. That means that there is no consistency across the year.

The Minister revealed that fact—I do not think she intended to—when she was attacking one of my hon. Friends from Manchester about the discretionary housing payment system there. She said that it was outrageous that we were complaining about the amount available to Manchester last July and September, because the city had not spent that part of the year’s money. Of course the city had not spent it, because no local authority does. Local authorities are prudent and save money for when they will have to spend more, which is in winter, at Christmas and towards the end of the year. They have to save against what might be a particular rainy day. The Minister, by her own admission, has laid out that the policy is unfair.

As my hon. Friends said, the Government never expected everyone to move. They said:

“In many areas this mismatch could mean that there are insufficient properties to enable tenants to move to accommodation of an appropriate size even if tenants wished to move and landlords were able to facilitate this movement.”

If there was ever an ownership of the fact that the measure is a tax, that was it. It made clear that the Government know that many people will simply have to pay more money.

I disagree with the policy’s fundamental principles and also with how it was introduced. The Prime Minister more than once boldly stated at Prime Minister’s Question Time that no disabled people would be affected by the bedroom tax. He said that on countless occasions, but we know that two thirds of those affected, according to every survey that has been done in local authorities up and down the land, are disabled. The Prime Minister is closing his eyes to the truth, he does not know the truth or someone is not putting the truth in front of him. I do not know what it is, but the point is that the Prime Minister is completely and utterly misled. I am not saying that he has misled people; I am simply saying that he must be misled.

The other incompetence in how the Government have advanced the policy—we know the legislative incompetence: they brought forward the legislation quickly and then discovered a loophole some nine months into the process, or perhaps a little earlier—is that they are still going through this ludicrously bizarre process of denial about how many people are affected by the loophole. On one day earlier this year, the Minister for Welfare Reform, Lord Freud, said in the House of Lords that an insignificant number of people were affected, the Minister here replied to a written question saying that she did not have any idea how many people were affected, and the Secretary of State said that between 3,000 and 5,000 people were affected.

Yesterday, after the urgent question in the Chamber, the Minister let it be known that the Department will provide £2.1 million for local authorities to do the trawling. That is just for the process of trawling, and not for the payments that will have to be made to those who were illegally charged. She says, and said again yesterday, that the £2.1 million applies to 5,000 people. Sometimes she says it quite angrily and sometimes she says it more emolliently; we will see which version we get today, although it looks like it will be the angry one, given the furrowed brow I am getting. I presume that the Minister can calculate for me how much that is per person. Is a trawl really going to cost £420 per person? By her own admission, the Minister has yet again suggested that the 5,000 figure is not right. I do not know whether it will be 40,000 in total, but it certainly will not be just 5,000.

The Minister has regularly pooh-poohed the statistics that the Opposition provide, but we are only going by the freedom of information requests that we have made to local authorities. Let us look at how some authorities in the north-west replied when we asked them how many households had been affected. Burnley borough council said 60, Bury metropolitan borough council said 83 and Chorley borough council said 32. Eden district council said 30, while Fylde borough council said 80. For Lancaster city council, the figure was 35. Preston city council said 124. South Ribble borough council said 22, and Stockport metropolitan borough council said 126.

It is true that I do not have figures for all local authorities, because, despite our being long past the date by which they should have replied to the FOI request, only 15 out of 39 local authorities in the north-west have replied. Even so, there are 2,609 cases in the north-west alone thus far.

The Minister has criticised me several times, saying that the figure of 480 that I provided for St Helens is incorrect, but we have never provided that figure. We said that there were 178 confirmed cases in St Helens—178 cases where people have already been paid back. Not included in the figure for the north-west, however, is what Liverpool city council states it has already paid back, which is 1,300 households. It is absolutely clear that the 5,000 figure that the Minister cites for the whole country will probably be exceeded in the north-west alone.

It could be said that this is all neither here nor there and that it is dancing on the head of a pin and just about statistics, but what it suggests to me is that the Department for Work and Pensions simply has not done its homework and does not know. I would be quite happy were the Minister to stand up and say, “You know what? I really don’t know what the numbers are. They may be 40,000 or 5,000. Let us see what they are.” However, I object to the Minister’s simply going into denial and saying that nothing is happening because it implies a degree of callous disregard for what is going on in people’s lives. Incidentally, the total number of cases that we have received from local authorities is, with no spin from us, 23,309. That figure is based on the responses of fewer than half the local authorities asked, so it is likely that the final figure will be much higher than the Minister has suggested.

The danger is that if the Department has got this wrong, what else has it got wrong? I am absolutely certain that the Government’s predicted savings will nowhere near be met. Indeed, I suspect that the total effect, including people claiming other benefits, such as out-of-work benefits, will end up costing the taxpayer more. I hope that the Government will one day provide the full details.

So many areas of the policy have been incompetently laid out, not least what counts as a bedroom. Last year, the Minister tried to say that people should take a sledgehammer to walls and knock them down and that that would change the rules. According to the Department for Work and Pensions guidance, however, it does not. Liverpool city council was sent an e-mail by the Department that flatly contradicted what the Minister said in the House yesterday afternoon about who qualifies to inherit a tenancy. According to the e-mail, those qualified include any child or relative of a “polygamous marriage”. I thought that polygamous marriages were illegal in this country, but that is the advice that the DWP has provided to the council. Perhaps the Minister can respond to that specific issue.

Some people who have been illegally forced to pay the bedroom tax will now, because of the loophole, have been given discretionary housing payments. What is the Minister’s advice to local authorities? To how many people does she think that it will apply? How much is it costing? Is the Department paying it or do local councils have to pay it? Will individuals have to pay that money back or are the Government writing it off? If so, how much will that be?

We have already heard about some of the problems caused by the faulty policy. Thousands more people are in arrears, which is a real problem for local authorities and for social landlords around the country. Thousands more have been evicted—not only a tragedy for the families and individuals concerned, but also a problem for social landlords.

The policy fails to address some big, long-term issues and has made them worse. When I come up to Westminster from south Wales, it often feels that there is something of an economic recovery going on and I can see house prices rising magnificently, but my experience elsewhere in the country is completely and utterly different. My anxiety is that an economy that is already heavily overloaded towards London and the south-east will become more so. It is a problem for the people of London and the south-east as house prices get further and further out of reach for ordinary people in ordinary jobs. I worry that the Government’s policies will make that worse.

In the 1980s, contrary to my party’s policy at the time, I completely supported the idea of people being able to buy their own council house or social housing. It was actually first piloted by a Labour authority in Newport. [Interruption.] That is not in the north-west, as I think you are about to warn me, Ms Dorries.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

I was about to remind you.

[Chris Bryant]

I can read your mind.

What was a mistake at that time in the north-west and everywhere else in the country, however, was that local authorities were not allowed to build more social housing, and we are paying the cost of that now. The previous Labour Government did not get it right either, but unless we build more houses and provide more supply at a time when demand is increasing every year, partly because more households are breaking down into smaller units and partly because there are simply more people, we will fail in the future.

I end with two remarks. First, the Government should repeal the bedroom tax for the people of the north-west and the whole of the country. If they do not, we will, and we have costed that commitment. Secondly, we need to do something to tackle the root problem in housing benefit, which is that antisocial landlords, who often provide substandard housing, are effectively being subsidised by the taxpayer. That must be wrong and that we will change.

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[Chris Bryant]

I did not say that.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr Bryant, please do not interject from a sedentary position. Mr Bryant may not have said “on the back of a fag packet”, so perhaps the Minister will quote the words he did say to make the point. Mr Bryant, if you want to make an intervention, please do so, but do not interject in that way.

[Esther McVey]

Whether, in colloquial terms, the hon. Gentleman said that it was developed on the back of a fag packet, a cigarette packet or an envelope, it was discourteous, given the hundreds of hours of work that have been put in. I think he used the phrase “on an envelope in the shower”, but that was not the case, because many hours went into developing the policy. That might be how the Opposition make their benefits policy, because so far it seems they do not know what they are doing—what are they agreeing with, or not, and how are they helping the guarantee scheme, or not?

What the Government have done has had a profound effect on what is happening in the country: there are record rates of employment; youth unemployment has fallen for the past six consecutive months; there are record rates of women in work; and, as in the news today, the number of workless households is falling considerably. Far from our policy being made on the back of an envelope or cigarette packet, it is having significant effect. For a moment, I want to think about those people who have now got a job and are fulfilling their potential, supporting their families, getting their foot on the career ladder and working their way up. I meet such people every day, and they say how their lives have been transformed, so it is important that we listen to them as well.

As I said, 86 local authorities applied for extra money, although not all of them spent the extra £20 million, and not all councils felt that they needed it. Many of the Opposition scare stories did not happen at all and, despite the dire warnings, nor did the arrears. The report from the National Housing Federation stated that it is difficult to observe a rise in outstanding arrears. In fact, more than half of all working-age tenants in receipt of housing benefit were already in arrears before the new policy came into effect. While we are talking about people and their lives, moreover, there are lots of examples of people moving and downsizing. Among such people is Suzanne, from south Yorkshire, who had four children who are now grown up and have left home. She did not want to move, but she said that now that she has and has downsized, things are totally different. She has less of a heating bill—less in the way of bills altogether—can manage her cost of living and live within her means. It is key that we look at everyone’s requirements.

On the loophole that has been mentioned, we have been through this on various occasions. The person in question has to have been in the same house and continuously on housing benefit since 1996 to be part of the loophole. The Opposition were right: we did not know the entirety of the numbers. What we deemed to be roughly right, however, was the figure of £5,000, and we said that we would cover those costs, so we agreed with the local authorities—£2 million to do the extra work necessary. We agreed the amount of money to do the administrative work to support those people. Far from screaming and yelling, we have gone into the issue in our discussions. Indeed, we debated it yesterday, so I think it has been covered.

What is key is that we have to think about the policy into the future, and to support people who are in overcrowded accommodation, whether they are on waiting lists or already in social rented housing. It is about how we best go forward and provide support. We are dealing with the issue, which Labour did not want to do when in office—they were happy to see the housing bill double over 10 years and the waiting lists and overcrowding increase.

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[Chris Bryant]

The Minister is generous in giving way again—

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Will this intervention relate to the north-west, Mr Bryant?

[Chris Bryant]

How much will the total amount of money be throughout the UK and, in particular, how much will it be in the north-west? We need to know the amounts of money the Minister is talking about for writing down purposes.

Job Insecurity

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House believes that insecurity at work has increased under this Government, compounding the cost of living crisis facing families; further believes that the Government’s policies have made life less secure for people at work by watering down their rights, including protections against unfair dismissal and by abandoning an evidence-based approach to health and safety; notes that the number of employees working part-time who want to work full-time has grown by over 350,000 since the Government took office to over 1.4 million, alongside a marked rise in zero-hours contracts; recognises that insecure jobs add to pressure on the social security budget by making it harder for people to buy a home or save for their own pension; calls on the Government to reverse the trend of rising insecurity at work by reforming zero-hours contracts so they are not exploitative, addressing false self-employment by closing loopholes which allow it to take place, scrapping the failed ‘shares for rights’ scheme, strengthening and properly enforcing the National Minimum Wage, including by increasing fines to £50,000 and giving local authorities enforcement powers, and incentivising employers to pay a Living Wage through ‘make work pay’ contracts; and further calls on the Government to adopt a proper industrial strategy to help create more high-skilled, better paid jobs so the UK can earn its way out of the cost of living crisis with stronger and better-balanced growth.

It is a pleasure, Madam Deputy Speaker, to serve for the first time under your chairship. I move the motion at a time when our country’s economy has thankfully returned to some growth after three years—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Government Members will not be “Hear, hear-ing” later on, Madam Deputy Speaker. We are not out of the woods yet. In my constituency, the number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance has fallen over the past 12 months and I welcome that, but the number of young people claiming JSA for more than 12 months in Streatham has increased by 75% and the number of adults claiming JSA for more than two years is five times what it was in May 2010. That is a tragedy for them and their families; they are not patting the Chancellor on the back.

We are all too aware that the fall in the headline rate of unemployment in some areas, such as mine, is not matched across the country. In the north-east and the south-west, for example, unemployment is up compared with this time last year. It might surprise people to learn that in London our unemployment rate is 8.1% compared with a national average of 7.1%. For those of our constituents who are in work, living standards have never before been under so much strain. A living standards crisis has impacted on households all over the country, which is why the shape and nature of growth matter. Will the rewards from growth deliver better living standards and security for the people we represent?

[Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is incredibly generous to give way and I thought I might make an intervention to try to cheer him up a little. Center Parcs is bringing 1,700 jobs to my constituency in a project that has been on the table for long time—since I first became an MP nine years ago. It is happening now because Center Parcs has faith and confidence in the economy that means that it can go ahead with the project and create the jobs. I think that the hon. Gentleman will find that many employers will follow suit and the picture will be much brighter.

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[Vince Cable]

I will get on to regional variation. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman raises the issue of Wales, because I was studying the regional employment changes and Wales has done relatively well against almost every other region of the UK. Despite the terrible history of unemployment in Wales, its unemployment level is now at the UK average. Its increase in employment levels is greater than in any other part of the UK, including London and the south-east. There is a good story in Wales as well as many very deep problems, which I of course acknowledge.

[Nadine Dorries]

Does the Secretary of State agree that the Government do not create jobs? Many of the new jobs that have been created have come from the SMEs. The cost of living crisis will turn around quickly, and would do so even more quickly if the banks allowed funding to get to SMEs a little more quickly so that they can grow as they want to with the funding that they need.

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Lady is right, and it is one of the major casualties of the banking crisis that SME lending dried up. We are taking action on that through the business bank and in other ways. Restoring credit to the SMEs through the banking sector is a critical objective and it is a constraint on growth.

The shadow Minister’s conclusion was a good issue to embark on, and I just wish that he had spent more than two minutes and the last line of the motion on it. There is a real issue about how the recovery will be sustained. There are deep problems, including the lack of trained people and the rebuilding of supply chains. I would love to have a long debate with him about the industrial strategy, how we extend it, and what a Labour Government would do to reinforce it. I do not know whether the shadow Chancellor will come up with some more money, but I would be delighted to hear that it would have that kind of support. But the shadow Minister dismissed it as an afterthought in the last two minutes of a half hour speech, and I was, frankly, rather disappointed by that.

The shadow Minister chose to focus on jobs, and they are of course central. I want to address the issues of employment and employment conditions—