Minister for Older People
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Will Members please resume their seats. An earlier point of order related to written ministerial statement No. 5, which Kevin Brennan said had not been lodged. The House will wish to be informed that it has now been lodged.
Disability Benefits and Social Care
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I would ask the right hon. Lady to speak from the Dispatch Box.
Mrs McGuire
The hon. Lady knows full well that when the independent living fund was running into difficulty we established an investigation into it, we reformed the fund and we had Sheffield Hallam university carry out an independent review. She does not need advice from her Secretary of State on that one.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. To facilitate as many hon. Members as possible, there will be a six-minute limit on speeches, with the usual injury time for two interventions.
Welfare Reform Bill
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I have received a report from the Tellers in the Division at 10.14 pm yesterday on the Question that new clause 11 be added to the Local Government Finance Bill. The hon. Members for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) and for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) have informed me that the number of No votes was erroneously reported as 309 instead of 299. I will direct the Clerk to correct the numbers in the Journal accordingly. The Ayes were 225 and the Noes were 299, so the verdict is not altered.
Clause 93
Benefit cap
Chris Grayling
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 47.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
With this it will be convenient to consider new clause 1 and amendments (a) to (j) in lieu of Lords amendment 47.
Mr Byrne
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. This has been an important debate, yet the Government have ensured that no time was available to discuss Labour’s amendment and to put it to the vote before the knife fell at 5 o’clock. They declared financial privilege on the amendment in order to stop it being debated in the House of Lords. What advice would you give me, Mr Deputy Speaker, on how to ensure that this place is able to vote on Labour’s benefit cap?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Further to that point of order, I call Mr Iain Duncan Smith.
Mr Duncan Smith
Far be it from me to suggest an answer, but the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) might like to reflect on the fact that his party did not vote on the programme motion.
Mr Deputy Speaker
My response to the original point of order is that I am operating under the programme motion that this House voted for; I can do nothing other than that.
Clause 10
Responsibility for children and young persons
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 1.
Mr Deputy Speaker
With this it will be convenient to consider the following:
Lords amendment 2, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 3, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 4, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendments 5 to 14, 16, 20 to 22, 24 and 25.
Lords amendment 26, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendments 27 to 46 and 48 to 72.
Lords amendment 73, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendments 74 to 110.
Maria Miller
As Mr Speaker has indicated, Lords amendments 1, 2, 3, 4, 26 and 73 impinge on the financial privileges of the House of Commons. In disagreeing to the amendments, I will ask the Reasons Committee to ascribe financial privilege as the reason to the House of Lords. Notwithstanding that, however, the House of Commons has an opportunity to debate the substance of the amendments, and to provide the Government’s full rationale for rejecting them,
Lords amendment 1 concerns elements for disabled children. Let us be clear about the impact of the amendment. It would force the Government to reduce support for severely disabled children and, moreover, would go against our commitment to increase support for such children to £77. I believe that our original policy, as agreed in this House, is the right one, because it targets support for disabled people not on age but on need, and removes the cliff edge of financial support that is currently faced by young adults and their families.
In these difficult times, we must make tough choices about where to target our limited resources. The choice that the Government have made is to protect the money that is available to support disabled people in universal credit, and to use it more effectively to ensure that the people who face the biggest challenge are given more support. I repeat that all the money is recycled to support disabled people. What we are doing is thinking about the whole life of an individual, and removing the current artificial division between childhood and adulthood. I hope that that reassures my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), who spoke earlier about the importance of supporting disabled people. We have ensured that we can protect the money that is so important to them.
As we have reiterated throughout our debates on the Bill, we are overhauling existing support. It does not really make sense to look at any one aspect of universal credit in isolation: it provides families with a new package of support to meet a range of needs, and for that reason we need to consider the overall impact of the offer rather than concentrating on any of its individual components.
A parent with a disabled child and who is working 20 hours a week on the minimum wage is likely to be £73 better off in work under universal credit, rather than only £13 better off under tax credits. About 30,000 more families with a disabled child are in work than are out of work, so it is right for us to target support in a way that helps working families. An out-of-work family with a disabled child can receive just over £8,000 a year in benefits for their child once universal credit has been introduced. That compares with just over £4,000 for an out-of-work family with a non-disabled child, and about £1,000 for a family who only receive child benefit. Our impact assessments and modelling demonstrate that, overall, families are more likely to be better off on universal credit, and that there will be no significant change for disabled children living in poverty.
As all Members know, increasing spending is not an option. We simply cannot maintain the existing rates for disabled children if we are to increase the rates for severely disabled adults. That would cost £200 million, which we simply cannot afford. This is a critical point. If the amendment were agreed to, it would not be possible to increase the addition for the most severely disabled people to £77. Let us be clear: the decision to be made is whether we should maintain rates for moderately disabled children at the expense of raising the limits for severely disabled people. We strongly believe that the fairest approach is to align support between children and adults. We take an holistic view of an individual’s life. In summary, what is fair and right is to simplify benefits within universal credit, and to focus limited resources on the basis of need, not age.
Let me now turn to the amendments that deal with child maintenance:
“we should use every lever at our disposal to make reaching a voluntary agreement more attractive than coming into the Child-Maintenance Enforcement Commission.”
Those are not my words, but those of the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, now Lord, Hutton, to a Select Committee of this House in 2006.
Let me make four brief points to put the debate in context. Conflict when families break down is bad for children, as we all know from our constituency casework, and we all know that all too often that conflict can be embedded and entrenched as a result of problems to do with the Child Support Agency.
The role of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission has changed fundamentally. It is no longer about recovering, pound for pound, the benefits payments made to lone parents. Instead we have a benefits system that gives more than £6.5 billion in welfare payments directly to lone parents, both those in work and those not in work. In the past, change has been piecemeal. That has created the current failing system, which costs taxpayers £500 million every year; has nil-assessed more than 250,000 people, some of whom really should be receiving support; and has 100,000 clerical cases. It would not be putting it too strongly to say that we have inherited a real mess from the Labour party. The reform that we are undertaking is long overdue.
My concern is that the amendment from the other place is not about improving the situation; if anything, it would make the situation worse. It is about attempting to divide parents into those who deserve to be charged, and those who do not. Our reforms are about creating a behavioural change for the benefit of children, and about helping parents to work together. The amendment from the other place would make that approach unworkable.
Living Standards
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I remind the House that there is a six-minute limit on speeches.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. In order to fit in more Back-Bench contributions the time limit is being reduced to five minutes, and it is likely to be reduced further because of the number of interventions being made.
Teresa Pearce
What I am saying is that child poverty in my constituency will increase as a result of this Government’s plans.
Inequality is often most obvious in the context of housing. Every week my postbag is full of letters from families who are living in overcrowded, shoddy, private-rented flats, and whose dream of a decent home seems to drift further away every month. I would welcome any initiative that helps to remedy that, but, sadly, I do not think that the measures announced by the Government, such as underwriting mortgages for families to buy new-build homes, will help families in Erith and Thamesmead.
The indemnity scheme involves taking a lot of risk on to the public-sector balance sheet. That is bad for taxpayers and could be worse for those who take up the scheme. The scheme applies only to new build, and it is widely acknowledged that new build is often marketed at a premium above market value of about 2% or 3%, so a 95% mortgage will, in effect, be close to a 100% mortgage, and if house prices fall buyers will face negative equity and the taxpayer will have to cover any losses. A better way to help families and first-time buyers is through extending stamp duty relief.
Time and again, therefore, the Government show whose side they are on: they cut corporation tax while increasing VAT; they cut housing benefit rather than tackle the unscrupulous landlords who are profiteering from housing benefit while their tenants live in substandard properties. As for the Chancellor, it is clear that not one of his post-election assertions has turned out to be correct: inflation is up; growth has stalled; the eurozone has crashed; the structural deficit is bigger than previously thought; and unemployment continues to rise month on month as the private sector fails to take up the public sector slack, although the Chancellor was certain that it would do so. It appears, too, that everybody else is to blame. The Chancellor has blamed the royal wedding, the weather, civil servants, Brussels, employment tribunals, trade unions, banks, bank holidays, people living longer, energy prices and, of course, the Opposition. We have a Chancellor who wants the power but not the responsibility, and I fully expect him to say at the next Budget, “It’s not my fault—”
Pensioners and Winter Fuel Payments
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Three people have indicated that they wish to speak, and the wind-ups start at 7.18 pm. If they can divide the time among themselves, everybody will get in.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It gives me great pleasure to speak in this House on behalf of the elderly and those in need, and to address the issue of the winter fuel payment.
I read a statement the other day that said:
“The world is getting older. The UN has called the current global ageing trend a situation ‘without parallel in the history of humanity.’ Here in Northern Ireland, our very own society is ageing…An ageing demographic like this carries significant consequences for the fabric of our community. It changes how we plan the way we live; education systems, health and social care, work life, family life. It affects older people now and in the future.”
I am aware of the clear demographic changes in my constituency of Strangford, to which many people move to retire—it is a beautiful place to visit at most times, but it is also a nice place to retire—and where the issue of winter fuel payments comes up over and over again. It comes up because—let us be clear about this—winter fuel payments are not a luxury, but something that goes to pay for fuel, which, for most elderly people in my constituency, means oil. Therefore, the cost is greater than anywhere else. It is no exaggeration to say that literally hundreds of my constituents have spoken to my offices about this issue, and it is clear what they are telling me: winter fuel payments are critical for them to get through the winter.
Age NI has a vision for Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom:
“To create a world in which older people flourish,”
and:
“To enhance and improve the lives of older people”.
Those are the words of Age NI, but they should apply everywhere in the United Kingdom, and be taken on board by all the elected representatives in this place as well.
Age NI has three themes—health and social care; poverty; and equality and human rights—but this evening we are focusing on poverty. Poverty affects health and social care, and winter fuel payments and poverty affect equality and human rights as well. Although there are many ways of helping—my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) spoke earlier about the pension credit, and the Minister responded in an intervention—we need a way of speeding the system up. The system needs a sense of urgency; I cite the number of times that I have to phone through to the pension credit system to ask for something to be done only for me to have to return to the problem a week later or perhaps the week after that. The system also needs less bureaucracy and paperwork.
The autumn spending review is an opportunity to put older people at the heart of Government policy and to plan for an ageing population. Northern Ireland has some 300,000 people of retirement age, who make up 17% of the population, and the trend is upward. Unfortunately, the figure will be 24% or 25% in a few years. The largest increase will be in what is sometimes referred to as the “older old”. It is not an “Irishism” to say that: it refers to those who are 80-plus, who feel the pain of winter more than most. Other Members have underlined that point today, stressing the importance of all those who fit into the pension bracket, but especially those who are 80-plus, of whom it is estimated that there will be some 130,000 in a short period of time. Again, that is a concern.
Two fifths of single pensioners and one fifth of pensioner couples have no income other than their retirement pension and state benefits. Whenever we put the issue in perspective, we see that the winter fuel payment means a whole lot to those people. Some 44% of my constituents are in fuel poverty. By the way, the same proportion of those entitled to draw the pension credit—44%—are not claiming it. When the Minister responds, I will be keen to hear her ideas about how we can ensure that they apply. One of the figures underlining this issue that came up in research is that average weekly unclaimed benefits are estimated at between £1.2 million and £2.3 million, which is a vast amount of money. It is important that we address those issues.
Some 23% of older people across certain parts of Northern Ireland are living in poverty, whereas the figure is 16% in the UK. The Minister referred to how we gauge the extra money in the winter fuel payment to reflect the temperature. I made the point in a Westminster Hall debate earlier this year that I drove from Greyabbey to Newtownards in my constituency, speaking to people along the way, and found different temperatures all the way up the road. Obviously the temperature is lower closer to the coast, but in certain parts of Ards it was below zero, while over in Ballygowan and Comber it was minus 3º or 4º. That is an illustration of how the temperature can vary within a 50 to 60-mile radius.
Why is it crucial that the winter fuel payment is made? Because a failure to do so will mean more referrals to the health service, with elderly care accounting for 21% of all the programme of care expenditure. I will not go into all the figures that others have mentioned, but I will make this point. It is important to make a “pre-emptive strike” when it comes to health, particularly through the winter fuel payment, which plays a clear role. For every death from cold, there are eight hospital admissions and 100-plus visits to GPs and health centres. When we add that to the figures, we know what we have to do about the winter fuel payment—it helps to avoid lots of those issues, too.
Elderly care expenditure per head for Northern Ireland is £2,086, while in Scotland it is £2,313 and in Wales it is £2,109. I would also like to make an important point—the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) made this point too—about Alzheimer’s and dementia. In some 26 years as an elected representative, I can never recall a time when so many people had dementia or Alzheimer’s. We therefore need to enable our senior citizens to enjoy a level of health that will not cost more later on. The winter fuel payment makes that contribution. The Government have stated that they will restore the earnings link for the basic state pension—that was indicated earlier. The income-poverty figures show that 23% of older people live in poverty, while the figure is 16% for the UK. Some 15% of people in Northern Ireland live in severe poverty—the figure is 9% in the UK, up 3% in the last year—while 30% of single women over 75 live in poverty, and 42% of those homes are condemned.
The winter fuel allowance is the biggest topic in my three advice centres. For those who qualify, the situation is simple. The price of oil has increased—indeed, it has never been as high. If the Government have any intention of reducing the winter fuel payment, balancing the books will not happen. Many OAPs have no income other than the state pension, as I said earlier. This was an issue last winter; it was an issue for me at the parliamentary elections a year and a half ago; it was an issue at the Northern Ireland Assembly elections back in May; and it is an even more critical issue today. I urge hon. Members to support our proposal.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I call Mr Weir, who is to resume his seat no later than 18 minutes past 7.
Youth Unemployment
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Many Members wish to speak. The winding-up speeches will start at 6.40 pm, so there is not a lot of time. Although there is a four-minute limit on speeches, I ask Members to speak more briefly than that if they can do so. I also ask Members to show restraint in making interventions, so as to avoid doing others out of an opportunity to speak.
Nigel Adams
I would love to but I need to crack on; we have only got four minutes each.
This Government also promised 50,000 extra apprenticeships in 2010-11, but the figure has been surpassed and we have seen a record year—an increase of over 50%. In fact, in my constituency 850 people are on apprenticeships, an increase of 67% in the last year. Only by proving to business and the private sector that it is worth their while investing in youngsters can we fulfil our long-term goal of reducing unemployment, and I am confident that, via apprenticeships, we are taking the right steps towards that aim.
Hon. Members can do more than their bit to help young people and others back into work. That is why I organised a jobs fair in my constituency, and I know that many of my colleagues have done something similar. More than 1,100 jobseekers came through the door—both unemployed, and employed but looking for new opportunities. It was evident to me at my jobs fair that vacancy statistics from Jobcentre Plus do not necessarily reflect the actual climate. Its figures for October 2011, published in the Library, would have people believe that at least three jobseekers apply for every vacancy advertised in my constituency—a deficit of employment. However, many of the work and training opportunities offered by the 52 different organisations that turned up to my jobs fair were not advertised in the Jobcentre Plus system, and never are. I am also pleased to say that the feedback from the jobs fair was very positive, and lots of people have received interviews and job opportunities and have started work. Indeed, I have visited some of the youngsters who have started work.
I am confident that the Government have a credible plan for getting this country’s finances back on track, reassuring businesses and reducing regulation. Labour should take note that—
Derek Twigg
I will not, because I have very little time remaining.
Finally, in my constituency we have done a great deal of work with the local authority and local businesses, with the help of the previous Government, to bring forward important projects, such as the Mersey multi-modal gateway, the new Mersey gateway bridge, the Daresbury science and innovation campus and a number of other important projects. Some of those are supported by the Government, but they were developed under the previous Government, which had a growth policy to encourage jobs in areas of high unemployment that need development and need to see—
Pensions Bill [Lords]
Nigel Evans Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. As Members can see, this is a popular debate. Although I am not introducing a time limit at this point, if Members do not exercise restraint themselves, one will be introduced.
Jonathan Evans
I am aware that the Forum of Private Business does not like the fact that the Government have not made more adjustments in this area, and of course the Government would like to have a situation in which all parties were on board at the end of the review, but the proposal of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill has virtually no supporters, save perhaps for those within the union movement—surprise, surprise. The reality is that the proposals we are taking forward are overdue, but there has been too much misinformation about this change. Ultimately, I want to see a situation in which no woman has to wait more than a year longer than she had expected to wait, but the linking of that issue with a 25-year lead-in to the equalisation of pensions at 65 by those engaged in this campaign has been deliberately misleading and has not served the interests of all the people who have written to us.
Welfare Reform Bill
Nigel Evans Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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John McDonnell
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. We have just finished the Report stage of the Welfare Reform Bill, but we have failed yet again to reach major parts of the Bill, particularly amendments on the cap on benefits, which I totally oppose and think are a disturbing element of the Bill. As the Leader of the House is here, may I say to him through you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that we are exhibiting to the general public that the House is not working if we are not reaching major parts of such an important Bill. I would hope that the Government would consider pausing, as they did with the NHS Bill, and thinking again in the light of today’s debate.
Mr Duncan Smith
Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. It might be of assistance to the House to remind those who were not in the Committee that every single clause was debated there, and we have also had two days on Report, which is almost unprecedented.
Mr Deputy Speaker
This seems to be a continuation of the debate on the programme motion, which was decided on Monday. It was agreed by the House so this is not a matter for the Chair. Let us now move on, in the short time we have, to Third Reading.
Third Reading
Amendment of the Law
Nigel Evans Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Byrne
Well, let us go through it, shall we? The deficit plan that we put in place would have involved £57 billion-worth of discretionary action—[Interruption.] Will the Secretary of State just pause for a moment? I know that he has read all 40 pages of chapter 6 of the Budget that was published in March last year, but let me just remind him of their contents: £57 billion-worth of discretionary action; £19 billion-worth of tax rises; and £38 billion of cuts, £18 billion of which would have fallen on capital, and £20 billion of which would have fallen on current expenditure, of which £12 billion would have fallen in Whitehall, £5 billion would have fallen on lower priority projects and £3 billion would have been achieved through a pay freeze and asking public sector workers to—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I just want to clarify that the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) meant that the right hon. Gentleman was inadvertently misleading the House.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Please resume your seats. As Members can see, more than 40 colleagues have applied to take part in today’s debate, so there is a six-minute limit on speeches, with the usual injury time for two interventions. As happened yesterday, persistent interveners will be moved down the list. I also remind Members of Mr Speaker’s instruction to them not to approach the Chair during the debate to find out where they are on the list. Those who can finish their speeches in less than six minutes will be helping colleagues. I call Mr Peter Lilley.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
The cornerstone of this Budget is undoubtedly the need to tackle the deficit. Spending £50 billion a year just on debt interest, which is double what we spend on transport, was clearly intolerable and could not go on. If we had not tackled the deficit, we would have found that an Irish, Greek or Portuguese economic future awaited us all, meaning more cuts, more public billions down the drain and higher interest rates, which would have hit everyone with a mortgage, everyone with an overdraft and every business dependent on bank borrowing. There is no point pretending that the cuts are not painful, but interest rates of 7%, 8% or higher would have been extremely painful, too, so I am glad that the Chancellor did not take that risk.
I am also very glad that the Chancellor is well on the way to fulfilling a Lib Dem election pledge to take more than 1 million people out of income tax, benefiting 24 million more by raising the income tax threshold. That will take nearly 2,000 of my constituents out of income tax altogether and benefit nearly half the population of the town.
There are also many welcome measures in the Budget for business and for investment. The cut in corporation tax will help small businesses in my constituency; I hope that we will benefit from some of the 40,000 new apprenticeships for young people not in education, employment or training; and it would be churlish of me not to mention the redoubling of the Swindon to Kemble line, which will be good for Cheltenham, good for business and good for the environment.
Good for the environment, too, will be the tripling of the endowment to the green investment bank to £3 billion, and the news that that bank will in due course be able to borrow on its own account. That is an important signal to green investors, and it will help us to lay the foundations of a low-carbon economy. So, too, will the commitment to a floor price for carbon, and, although £30 a tonne by 2020 is a pretty modest ambition, it gives an underlying message and confidence to those investing in green industry and green jobs.
I hope, however, that the measure will not lead to an accidental, back-door subsidy to the nuclear industry—not just to new nuclear but to the existing nuclear industry, which already costs us £1.5 billion of public money a year to clean up and close down. That is important, because any subsidy to the nuclear industry would run counter to specific pledges made in opposition by both Conservative and Liberal Democrat spokesmen, and I know because I was one of them.
I have a few other slight worries about the Budget. Not all red tape is bad, and I am concerned about the relaxation of the rules to be able to request flexible working. In my experience as an employer, I found that flexible working generally increased staff commitment and productivity. Progressive and innovative companies are trying to do more of it, not less.
My biggest worry about the Chancellor’s speech is about planning. He said that
“we will introduce a new presumption in favour of sustainable development, so that the default answer to development is yes.”—[Official Report, 23 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 956.]
It may have been a shame that he did not have the space or time to explain that statement more fully, because, on the face of it, it is rather alarming. Not all development is sustainable, so how can the default answer possibly be yes?
I hope the Chancellor was guilty of no more than radical oversimplification, but one or two other statements in “The Plan for Growth” give cause for alarm. It states that the Government will enable
“businesses…to bring forward neighbourhood plans and neighbourhood development orders.”
There are many definitions of a neighbourhood, which was not clearly defined in the Localism Bill, but I am pretty sure that a business is not a neighbourhood.
“The Plan for Growth” states also that the Government will
“localise choice about the use of previously developed land, removing nationally imposed targets”.
I do not welcome nationally imposed targets, but it is important that localities are able to prioritise brownfield sites over greenfield, and any qualification of that ability would not be helpful.
Possibly the most alarming news of all in “The Plan for Growth” is:
“Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) will be able to play a vital role in supporting local authorities plan for key sub national infrastructure… providing a powerful voice for business in the planning system”.
My constituents generally think that business has a pretty powerful voice in the planning system already, as it usually deploys battalions of barristers and consultants, but “sub national” worries me, because it has unfortunate echoes of Labour’s old regional spatial strategies.
People in the parish of Leckhampton with Warden Hill in my constituency know a bit about regional spatial strategies. They fought a battle against the south-west RSS for many years, and they are still fighting to protect the last substantial green space in the parish from disappearing almost completely. Such green spaces next to urban populations are vital for people’s health and physical welfare. They are opportunities for recreation; important for local food production; they absorb carbon dioxide and particulate pollution; and they are the most visited parts of the country and treasured by local people. Once lost, they are gone for ever, but they are exactly the spaces being targeted by developers, who in the past were supported by Labour’s myth that endless growth in urban extensions was sustainable. It simply was not.
The Localism Bill offers local communities real hope and the prospect that they will have a voice in the future of their own areas—
Welfare Reform Bill
Nigel Evans Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. A lot of Members wish to participate in the debate, and we have introduced a six-minute time limit on Back-Bench speeches, with the usual amount of injury time for up to two interventions. Clearly, however, Members do not have to take interventions, and if they do not, that will allow more people to speak.
Jenny Willott (Cardiff Central) (LD)
I welcome the Bill, especially the introduction of the universal credit system. It is a huge improvement on the current over-complicated and burdensome benefit system, which has spiralled out of control under a number of previous Governments. I think that several elements of the Bill require further work, and I look forward to their being discussed today and during the Bill’s later stages, but I do not consider that a good enough reason not to give it a Second Reading.
I am glad that a couple of earlier proposals have already been reconsidered. Both have been mentioned by other Members. I am delighted that the Government listened to Liberal Democrats, the Select Committee and others throughout the United Kingdom who called for the proposal for a 10% cut in housing benefit for those who have received jobseeker’s allowance for a year to be dropped, because it was unfair. It is very good news that the proposal has indeed been dropped, and I am sure that Members on both sides of the House welcome that.
I am also glad that the Government are listening to those who are concerned about the removal of the mobility component of disability living allowance from those in residential care. A number of Members have mentioned that today, and I expect that it will be mentioned again before the end of the debate. I am pleased that the proposals have gone back to the drawing board, and I hope that the Government will take account of the serious concern that many Members have expressed and will, I am sure, express again during the Bill’s subsequent stages.
I welcome wholeheartedly some measures that are in the Bill, as well as the absence of some measures that are not. As I said earlier, those that I welcome include the introduction of universal credit, which will finally end the absurd circumstances in which people can be better off on benefits than in work. I am sure that many Members have met people who are frustrated and desperate because they know that although their lives would be better if they were in work, financially they would not be better off in work. I think that everyone should welcome the fact that universal credit will put right that wrong.
A number of Members have expressed concern about the changes in employment and support allowance. As the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) pointed out, and as the Secretary of State acknowledged earlier, there is particular concern about the decision to time-limit contributory ESA. I hope that during the Bill’s passage the Government will consider, for instance, whether the period before the cut-off should be longer than a year, whether it is appropriate to include the 13-week assessment period in the calculation, and whether those with certain conditions could either be entirely exempt from the cut-off or be allowed extensions at the discretion of Jobcentre Plus staff. A good many people will be affected by the limit, especially if, as is currently planned, it is applied retrospectively.
I mentioned the controversy surrounding disability living allowance. As I have said, I am delighted that the proposals affecting those in residential care are being reconsidered. However, concern remains about the increase from three months to six months of the period before people are eligible to apply for the allowance. I understand the logic of trying to ensure that it is given only to people with long-term conditions, but in the case of sudden-onset conditions such as cancer, strokes or accidents, the greatest financial need is at the start. I hope that thought will be given to whether people in those circumstances can be helped to deal with the serious financial implications of such conditions.
I agree with the hon. Member for Aberdeen South that a huge number of issues could be raised in relation to the Bill, but today I can focus on only a few of them. The last issue that I want to raise is the total cap on benefits. Again, I understand the rationale. Many working people with low incomes find it very difficult to see others receiving more money from the state than they themselves can earn, and I understand their frustration and resentment. However, we have yet not been given enough detail to establish the precise impact of the Government’s proposal.
Some people also resent the fact that families, particularly large families, are living on benefits, but the choices made by parents are not the fault of their children. By the time the Bill has completed its passage, we must ensure that any cap has been set at an appropriate level, that there is no prospect of children being pushed into poverty, and that families—especially in London, where housing costs are so high—will not be disproportionately hit. Given that the housing benefit cap is £400, a total benefits cap of £500 could leave a large family with just £100 a week to cover all their other living costs. I hope that the Government will consider excluding housing benefit from the calculation, or, preferably, excluding child benefit. Given that child benefit reflects the size of families, that could have an impact on child poverty. I am very concerned about the implications of that policy, and we will need to know the impact on children, in particular, before I can agree to support it.
Most of the Bill is well thought out with a strong sense of principle, and I wholeheartedly support the overwhelming majority of its measures. I welcome the moves to simplify the benefits system and to create a more individually tailored welfare system, but I also have concerns, and I hope the Government—