Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nicholas Dakin and Steve Webb

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. We have expanded the scope of the budgeting loans scheme to include funeral costs, which were not previously eligible. If someone is short of cash to meet funeral costs, they can borrow money through the social fund if they are eligible for a budgeting loan, as well as applying for the grant that we pay, which averages £1,200.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

16. What assessment he has made of the effect of the under-occupancy penalty on household incomes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nicholas Dakin and Steve Webb

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey) was right to draw attention to the rising tide of real concern and anxiety among those threatened by the bedroom tax. How many households will be directly affected by the bedroom tax?

[Steve Webb]

We published a full impact assessment as part of the Welfare Reform Act 2012, which deals with this and also breaks it down on a regional level, so the figures are already available to the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nicholas Dakin and Steve Webb

Monday 10th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

It is important to stress that NEST is not an end in itself, but a means to an end, and the end is making sure that all employees under auto-enrolment have access to good-quality, low-cost pension provision, not necessarily through NEST, but because of the effect of NEST in the market. As things stand, in the early days of auto-enrolment, which starts in about 10 days’ time—I will therefore not change the rules right now—the early adopters of auto-enrolment are getting good-quality, low-cost pensions because there is huge competition, but we need to ensure that that remains the case.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Why does the Minister not stand up for lower-income savers, stand up to Brussels and make the case for setting NEST free now?

[Steve Webb]

We are, at the moment, continuing with Labour’s constraints on NEST, and the reason is that those constraints were designed to encourage NEST to focus on low-income savers. It has therefore innovated on, for example, products and on language and has been a good thing. If we think that NEST is unable to achieve the job it is there for, we will change the rules, but the early evidence does not support that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nicholas Dakin and Steve Webb

Monday 5th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is a powerful advocate on behalf of her constituents on this terrible condition. We accept that this process is taking longer to conclude than we had hoped. I can assure her, however, that my noble Friend Lord Freud is continuing in active discussion with the insurance industry and others, and that we are determined to bring forward our proposals as soon as possible.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Is “as soon as possible” within the next six months or the next year?

[Steve Webb]

Rather than set an arbitrary deadline, we are keen to conclude as rapidly as possible. One important step forward has been the setting up of the employers’ liability tracing organisation. Often, people worked for firms many years ago, making employer liability insurance difficult to come by. This tracing service is helping people to get the insurance payouts to which they have every entitlement.

Living Standards

Debate between Nicholas Dakin and Steve Webb

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Steve Webb]

I have four minutes to respond to more than 30 speeches. Out of deference to Labour Members, I will do so.

The shadow Home Secretary talked about the position of women, and it is important that we deal with that point. The difference between this Government and the Labour Government is that we are taking 1 million people out of tax, the majority of whom are women, whereas her Government abolished the 10p tax rate, from which the majority of the losers were women.

There has been much discussion of the gainers and losers from the Government’s policies. I refer the House to the chart on page 4 of the Treasury document, “Distributional analysis to accompany the Autumn Statement 2011”, which ranks households by expenditure and shows the smallest cash losses at the bottom and the biggest cash losses at the top—progressive changes in difficult times.