Department for Work and Pensions

Debate between Neil Gray and Justin Madders

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders]

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for her intervention. I do sometimes wonder what kind of country we live in when vulnerable people feel the cards are so stacked against them that it is not even worth their while to appeal. Those are the people who come to see me. I do not know what happens to the people who are so beaten down by the system that they just give up, which I feel is the unintended consequence—or possibly the intended consequence—of this policy time after time.

We know that the cost of successful PIP appeals was £27 million last year. ESA is not included in that figure, but 74% of those claims were successful, too. Let us not forget the figures I uncovered towards the end of last year, which show that the Department is not even turning up to four in five appeal hearings. We know what would happen if my constituents did not turn up to four in five appointments with the DWP: they would be sanctioned straightaway.

I also hear from parents whose children are not eligible for free school meals because their household income is just a little too high, and they are struggling to provide their children with a school lunch because they cannot afford it. Many of these families are struggling to make ends meet.

We now come across parents who are eligible for help but who are not getting it due to the complicated application process and the long waiting times. I have constituents who, in the period before the first universal credit payment is made, are desperate for support but are told that they are not eligible for free school meals. Surely we can do this better and provide eligibility for free school meals when the universal credit application is made, rather than waiting until the first payment comes through.

Briefly, on access to benefits for people at the end of life, the current special rules for terminal illness—SRTI—exclude many people with terminal illnesses. I am meeting the Minister next week to discuss this, and I hope we have a constructive conversation, but I raise it now so that people are aware of some of the difficulties and of the money and time being wasted on inappropriate and unnecessary assessments.

Only 45% of people with motor neurone disease are claiming personal independence payment under SRTI. The majority of people in that situation are still using the standard claims route, which is inappropriate for their situation. They are required to fill in a long form, attend a face-to-face assessment and then wait weeks before the benefits are received.

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for his speech. Is he aware of Social Security Scotland’s plans to ensure that all medical evidence is available to decision makers at the application stage, so that a correct decision can be taken without the need for often demeaning, demoralising and horrible assessment processes such as the one he describes? Will he support my call for the UK Government to follow Scotland’s lead?

[Justin Madders]

The hon. Gentleman makes a helpful suggestion. Certainly those who have, by definition, a very short time to get these matters sorted due to terminal illness should have as much of the process done at an early stage to avoid such difficulties.

It is highly insensitive that people who have been diagnosed with what can be a devastating condition that will end their life, possibly within 12 months, have to face this extra hoop-jumping when they should be focusing on spending what time they have left with their loved ones.

The majority of people with motor neurone disease are awarded the enhanced rate of PIP anyway, so we need to make it easier for them to claim through SRTI instead of the standard route, which many are currently going down. There are a number of helpful suggestions that we can discuss with the Minister next week.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) spoke passionately and eloquently about the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign. She rightly drew attention to the scandal, which will not go away. The WASPI women are there, and they are growing in number. She is right that, while the Tory leadership candidates continue to spaff cash up the wall with spending promises on tax cuts for the most well off in society, for big corporations and for whatever else they decide when they wake up in the morning, it is damning that not one penny has been committed in the leadership hustings to the WASPI women.

Ultimately, it comes down to priorities, and it is clear that WASPI women are not a priority for this Government and will not be a priority for the new Prime Minister, either. The hardship, the injustice and the erosion of the contributory principle that underpins the welfare state are clearly not a priority for this Government, and it is to their shame that they continue to ignore this campaign in the face of overwhelming evidence that a real injustice is being done.

Permitted Development and Shale Gas Exploration

Debate between Neil Gray and Justin Madders

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

There is no doubt that shale gas exploration, or fracking, has caused great concern up and down the country, but what is also of concern is the feeling that this Government are trying to move the goalposts and lock people out of being able to express their concerns. People from many different communities and, indeed, with many different political perspectives have been united against this heavy-handed and undemocratic approach, including people in my own area. On 18 October last year, Labour, Conservative and independent Cheshire West and Chester councillors voted unanimously to oppose the Government’s approach, and that cross-party consensus is building in communities throughout down the country. It is high time the Government stopped this dash for gas and listened to what communities are saying.

[Neil Gray]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Justin Madders]

I am sorry, but I do not have time.

By transferring responsibility for these decisions to a permitted development or centralised system, the Government are, in essence, making it easier to apply for permission to carry out fracking than to apply for a two-storey side extension to a semi-detached house. Friends of the Earth has warned that the plans

“pervert the planning process and could make England’s landscape a Wild West for whatever cowboy wants to start drilling and digging up our countryside.”

The Campaign to Protect Rural England calls it

“an outright assault on local communities’ ability to exercise their democratic rights in influencing fracking applications”

and adds that it

“reads like a wish list from the fracking companies themselves.”

If we are truly going to take back control, we should have a genuine democratic procedure, not a stitch-up that benefits a few private interests.

The Prime Minister has said that our climate is the most precious thing that we can pass on to the next generation, and we would all agree with that, but how can those fine words possibly be consistent with these proposed changes? The Committee on Climate Change has stated categorically that supporting unconventional gas or oil extraction is incompatible with meeting our binding targets under the Climate Change Act 2008. We have spent months in here trapped in a Brexit mess of our own making, and all the while the impact of climate change both at home and abroad is happening around us. Are we so wrapped up in our own squabbles that we fail to fully appreciate the enormity of this?

Last month, February, was so hot I was walking around for several days in a T-shirt, which was very nice at the time, but actually the Februarys I remember growing up in were pretty inhospitable. So while I was warmed by the rays of the sun I was haunted by the thought that once again we were experiencing unseasonably warm weather, and then I thought about the constituent who told me their daffodils had arrived in December, the recent reports that the world’s insect population is declining rapidly and the fact that places as nearby as Spain have lost 1 million hectares to the desert in recent years.

I fear that when we put all that together it is clear that we are sleepwalking into a climate catastrophe, and that unless we really begin to face up to the fact that we need to shift away from carbon-producing energy sources and we need to do it now, we will be the last generation to enjoy the benefits of industrialisation and it will it be the next generation who suffer the consequences of our selfish inaction.