Women’s State Pension Age
Nigel Mills Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
Having seen the report, I think this issue has gone on long enough and we now need to choose a compensation scheme and get it finished. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the Government will have made their mind up before the autumn fiscal event, so that we can see it set out by that date and know how much the costs will be?
Mel Stride
Whether there will be an autumn statement at all, and the date thereof, is not within my remit—indeed, I am not certain whether an autumn statement is pencilled in for any particular date, or otherwise. The most important thing is that we recognise—this message should go out loud and clear from the Dispatch Box today—that there should be no undue delay in coming to the appropriate conclusions on this matter.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nigel Mills Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Mel Stride
I have already referred to the 200,000 additional jobs that the OBR suggests in its forecast, but the hon. Lady cannot get away from the fact that we have record levels of payroll employment in our country, and near record low unemployment. Let us contrast that with Labour’s record: it always leaves unemployment higher than when it comes into office. Economic inactivity was higher than it is now in each year of the previous Labour Government, and we had more people in absolute poverty after housing costs under Labour as a direct consequence.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
We are bringing forward a number of important reforms to our welfare system at pace. Phase 1 of our universal support has already been activated, and phase 2 will be later this year. Next month we will announce 15 WorkWell areas—about a third of England—that have been successfully selected, and will be rolled out live this autumn.
Nigel Mills
I thank the Secretary of State for listing all those reforms. The data is clear that after 13 weeks out of work, the chances of someone finding work starts to fall off rapidly. Therefore, there is a need for more intensive and tailored support. Could he update the House on the additional jobcentre support roll-out, and when my constituents might get access to those benefits?
Mel Stride
We are keen to do that. AJS, to which my hon. Friend refers, has been rolled out in parts of the country at six weeks, but shortly will be extended and strengthened for two weeks at the 13-week stage of the unemployment journey. That is part of the more intensive conditions that we apply to ensure that we help—and in many circumstances, require—people to go back into work.
Child Maintenance Service
Nigel Mills Excerpts(1 month, 4 weeks ago)
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Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
I congratulate the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), on arranging this debate.
It is not too naive to say that we would all like parents who separate to reach an amicable arrangement on access and maintenance for their children, so the state does not have to get involved at all. However, I suspect that is somewhat unlikely to happen in every case, hence why we need to have this service. The problem is that the service is not sufficiently effective. It creates more need for itself because some parents think that they can get away with it and try not to pay, so we force the family through the system to try to fix the situation.
If there was a general feeling that a parent who did not pay their maintenance would get caught and have to pay more, we might actually push more parents to reach an amicable arrangement rather than try this route, and we would not end up having to be the referee or the battering ram that we were desperately trying to avoid in the first place. I remind the Minister that having a service that actually works is not inconsistent with the Government’s overall aim of not getting involved unless they really need to: that would stop some of the demand in the first place.
The cases that most frustrate me are the ones that are superficially easy. The parent who should be paying is in employment and has a relatively stable income, which we can see through a real-time information feed, and they either do not pay at all or do not pay regularly. It is incredibly frustrating to see how long it takes for any enforcement action to be taken in that situation. We see scenarios where that person does not pay for a bit, finally gets some threats and starts paying for a couple of months, and then stops paying again, and the whole process has to start again. It is effectively just a game that they are playing. We end up with huge arrears building up, the parent with care struggling financially and the child losing out.
I hope that, now we have administrative liability orders in place that can be brought in much more quickly, we can stop those situations from arising. I certainly hope the CMS can monitor how fast arrears are building up and how quickly the orders are being put in place, so that we can show real progress and so those arrears do not get to the stage they have been getting to in the past.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I am grateful to my colleague on the Work and Pensions Committee. He and I were at the roundtables we had in Greater Manchester where we heard from both paying and receiving parents. There were harrowing stories of parents who were in arrears. We heard a story of someone who unfortunately had died. Is he as concerned as I am about the reports around the deaths of both paying and receiving parents, and the fact that that has not been adequately considered in the handling of those parents by the CMS? What does he think we should be doing about that?
Nigel Mills
I agree with the hon. Member that those stories were incredibly concerning. That reinforces the point that if we get this right early, and everyone knows what they should be paying and it is enforced, hopefully some of that stress goes away. The Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham, rightly made the point that we should be looking at the thresholds and the calculations to ensure that they are fair on all parties.
The other situation that frustrates me concerns when somebody has arrears and is sent the demand. I have seen cases where someone is sent five demands in a week, all with different numbers and vastly different by thousands of pounds. I naively assumed that when somebody is sent a demand with arrears, a calculation is made on the system to come to that number and that when somebody asks for it, CMS can just press a button and it will be emailed over, so the person can work out how it has come to that number. That is not the case. It takes weeks and weeks. The chief executive said before the Select Committee that it is a 12-week turnaround.
How can the CMS send a demand out for arrears without calculating it? When that person finally gets the calculation, they think, “I’m paid monthly, and there is a certain percentage I have to pay. I get paid two grand a month and pay 15%. That is £300. I have paid £200, so I owe £100”—a simple calculation. What they get is 16 sides of calculations and, for some reason, it is done by weekly income. It is totally unfollowable. I would seriously urge the Minister to look through some of these calculations, if he has not done so. There must be a better way of doing it, so that everybody understands what they owe and can check it to prove whether it is right. It cannot be that complicated.
Finally, will the Minister look at where child maintenance arrears sit in the universal credit deductions? They sit a long way down, and below debt owed back to the Department. If we really think this money is essential for child welfare, we should be letting the parent with care have that money before we take it back to pay debts owed to the state, and it should be much higher on the list.
Social Security
Nigel Mills Excerpts(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
I welcome the rises in benefits and the state pension. It would have been unthinkable not to raise benefits by inflation and equally unthinkable not to increase the state pension in line with the triple lock. The Government have done the right thing—these are the right decisions—and I will happily support these orders in the unlikely event of a Division.
I agree with the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), that this is not the most exciting piece of parliamentary theatre, even though we are spending tens of billions through these orders. The House is empty, these instruments go through on the nod, we cannot amend them, and the whole process creates a load of uncertainty for people who have to live on these benefits. I agree that, if we are going to find the money to put these benefits up—quite rightly by the two highest amounts in my 14 years in this place and probably going back a lot further—let us just change the process and have a default increase by CPI and in line with the triple lock so that we do not have to go through all this uncertainty. In what scenario now are we not going to increase benefits and the state pension by CPI or the triple lock?
If any future Government want to do something different, they could just bring in a Bill, as George Osborne did in the early years of the coalition. The House would be required to give its assent to that change, but we would not have to go through the uncertainty and the annual campaign to get to where we all think we are going to get to anyway, which does not help anybody. It would spare the Minister this afternoon’s excitement and the confusion of what is in which of these orders, which he might appreciate. I will leave that one for the Minister and see whether he is remotely tempted by it.
With the crazy process we currently have, we have come to the right answer, but I still do not really believe that we are in a sensible position. We have to use September’s inflation for an April increase in benefits, and we have to have an uprating order quite a while after the Chancellor has announced it in the Budget. The Work and Pensions Committee recommended that the Government bring these orders before the House earlier than February, so I commend the Government—we are still in January. I suppose that is positive progress, although I do not quite know why we could not have done this in November, to get that certainty.
I hope, as the years go by, one year we will get some good news, and the Minister will say, “We have so many people on universal credit who we know we can uprate far more quickly, but actually we can use a much later inflation number because the amount of manual processing we have to do for the old benefits is much less of a work demand than it used to be.” We could then move to using December’s inflation figure to bring the benefit increase much nearer the actual cost of living and avoid the horrible situation we have currently where we are effectively six months behind, and, in the meantime, there has been a huge spike and people cannot afford to pay their bills. Perhaps the Minister could update the House on whether we are any nearer the prospect of a slightly more sensible process where we are not using out-of-date information to give people a rise in benefits that is already six months old, which exposes a load of risk in that situation.
There is also a lot of noise about the triple lock being unsustainable and suggestions that we will have to get rid of it because we cannot afford to give pensioners that level of increase. I cannot think of any justification for ever giving people who are reliant on a state pension and who have no possibility of going back to work an increase of less than inflation; it would be an intolerable situation to put people in. I think we have established over many long and painful years that giving pensioners less than earnings is not a very attractive position. We had that for a while, before the coalition Government quite rightly reversed it as one of the first things we did when we came to power 14 years ago.
I do not know why we have to have speculation around the idea of taking away the link to inflation or earnings—it is utterly impossible. I suppose we all wish that the 2.5% was a relevant consideration for us, but it looks like it might be a few years before we have to worry about that part of the triple lock kicking in. The problem is that the rise in earnings and the rise of inflation have got out of step and are in two different financial years. We are therefore effectively giving that increase twice, because we give it on inflation in year one, and then, when pay rises catch up in year two, we end up giving it again, and we have accidentally given a much higher amount over a period than either inflation or earnings. If that is what risks the long-term future of the triple lock, does the Minister think that a rolling two-year or three-year average would fix that? If that is the price of making the triple lock safe in the long term, I would pay it. I would not choose it, but if that stops the uncertainty over the whole thing being affordable, it would be better. Perhaps the Minister could help us with a better process for future years.
I fully support these orders and I will happily vote for them in the unlikely event that we get to a vote.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nigel Mills Excerpts(4 months, 1 week ago)
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Mel Stride
We will continue to bear down on the level of unemployment. As the hon. Lady knows, economic inactivity has reduced, and we have 300,000 fewer people in economic inactivity than at the peak during the pandemic. We have a plan. Is it not the reality that the Opposition have no plan and no ideas as to how to get those numbers down? We do, and it is working.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
In 2022-23, fraud and error fell by 10%. We are investing £900 million in addition to that which we have already put forward to prevent £2.4 billion of fraud and error by 2024-25.
Nigel Mills
I thank the Secretary of State for his answer and welcome the measures the Government are taking. On the new powers to search through bank accounts to look for fraudulent transactions, can he confirm that the Government will seek to use them only where fraud is suspected and will not, as some people have suggested, search every state pensioner’s bank account to look for something that almost certainly will not be there?
Mel Stride
I thank my hon. Friend for what is a very important question, because there has been a great deal of scaremongering about what exactly these powers are about. I can make it categorically clear from the Dispatch Box that these powers are there to make sure that, in instances where there is a clear signal of fraud or error, my Department is able to take action. In the absence of that, it will not.
Mel Stride
As the hon. Lady will know, these are matters for the Treasury, and specifically for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He and I have conversations on these matters and others. Announcements will be made in due course, but of course the household support fund will be in place until the end of March.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
Autumn Statement Resolutions
Nigel Mills Excerpts(5 months ago)
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Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
It is real pleasure to welcome a much more optimistic and extensive statement than I had thought. A few weeks ago, we heard stories that inflation was higher and stickier than we thought, interest rates were forecast to be higher for longer, and it could be a miserable statement to sit through. Then, we heard stories that we may not be able to increase pensions by the triple lock and benefits by inflation. Then, we heard the rumours that our priority was inheritance tax, and I thought I would be here opposing the autumn statement, but fortunately I can wholeheartedly welcome it.
My constituents will be particularly pleased by the support to pay their bills: the national living wage is up by nearly 10%, the state pension by 8.5% and benefits by the full rate of the consumer prices index from September. More unexpected was the increase in local housing allowance back to the 30th percentile, which is much needed. The system has been creaking, and we need to maintain it at that level. The Government should be commended for all those measures. On a local note, I welcome the investment zone announced for Derby, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. We look forward to seeing the full detail, but it looks to be positive for local growth. Businesses in my high streets and the hospitality sector will welcome the business rate reliefs that were announced.
I want to touch on three topics: the corporation tax changes, the pension changes and the various measures to make work pay. To give some certainty, we should have a long-term, predictable plan for what our tax system should look like, so I welcome the 2% reduction in national insurance down to a nice, round, easy-to-calculate 10p in the pound. That fits quite well with the 20p income tax rate, so we have a nice, neat 30p in the pound and people understand what they are paying. They know that if they earn more than £50,000, that goes up to 40p, and they have to add the 2p national insurance, or a bit less. That is a clear and predictable way of taxing people’s earnings.
Now, we need to work out where the starting points in the bands should be, because that has gone a bit out of control. We were trying to get to the stage where someone could earn the minimum wage and not pay any income tax, but that is now thousands of pounds away. I urge the Government, having made this welcome step, to set out a plan for setting a much higher starting point for paying income tax and national insurance. It should be heading back towards a point where someone working full time on the minimum wage does not pay much tax.
Equally, on corporation tax, the plan we had 13 years ago for a stable business tax system appears to have drifted away. I support the full expensing, but that is a pretty radical and permanent change to our corporation tax system. There is a huge compliance need for businesses to track all their fixed assets and split them between the general pool, the long-life asset pool, the short-life asset pool, the vehicles and the structures rules, working out what is a non-allowable structure and what is not. All those things are hugely complex. We are now allowing full expensing for the vast majority of spend. We should think about whether we need all those rules, or whether we could sweep them away and just have some anti-avoidance restrictions. What should we do with the legacy situation? It will be a bit bizarre to have full tax relief for the capital I have spent this year, but still having to work out and claim relief for what I spent 15 years ago, which is still working its way through the pool. That looks to be a long and unwieldy system. Could we find a way of running off those legacy balances a bit more quickly, so we can lose that complexity?
On the pensions changes, I support the pot for life approach that the Government are consulting on. The counter argument is that it takes away the link between employers and their employees’ pension, but the simple fact that we had to auto-enrol 10 million people into a workplace pension suggests that those employers were not bothered about the pension they gave their staff, because they were not giving them one at all. Trying to boost the individual’s engagement with their pension savings is a prize worth having. If someone moves job to an employer with a good pension scheme, they can choose to stay there—they do not have to stay in their pot for life. I think that we will need a clearing house to avoid costs on employers, because otherwise small employers with 12 employees will be left trying to work out how to pay 12 different pension schemes a month. That sounds a bit too complex.
I have been banging on for years that auto-enrolment has got stuck being cheap and easy for employers, but does not produce the best returning pension for savers, so I welcome the references in the Green Book to a new duty on employers to think about the quality of their pension scheme for their scheme members. That will help move auto-enrolment in the right direction to the best staff pension.
I largely welcome the various welfare changes. Clearly, it is right that a welfare system be conditional. People who can work and look after themselves and their families should do so, and to those who cannot we should give as much support as we possibly can. That is an undisputable foundation of the welfare system. However, it has gone a little out of kilter. Far too many people are successful at being out of work for life. We need to find a way of changing that. However, I would warn the Secretary of State to be cautious about the message that people get, because they tend to hear the bad news, not the good news. All the good news about extra support and the chance to work guarantee are drowned out by noise about stricter assessments. People still do not trust the system as they should. We should be careful not to lose the good messages in the necessary bad ones. The evidence shows that if people feel supported, trust the work coach they are working with and feel they have a predictable journey that supports them, they will engage with it. If they are worried that if they make a step and it does not work, and they are reassessed and tell the work coach, that will be used against them next time, they will not engage. We must tread carefully.
I accept the need to ensure that the work capability assessment is getting people in the right place. Only people who are never fit for work should be declared not ever fit for work. That has to be right, but I urge some caution in that language. I note the rather strange thing at the end, quite rightly reinstating the rule that if someone does not comply with the terms of the benefit, they lose the benefit. That rule was there pre-universal credit, and it is right, so I am not sure how it will cost £10 million a year to reintroduce it. Perhaps we have not scored that yet, and we will see that detail in future.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nigel Mills Excerpts(5 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Guy Opperman
The hon. Member will be aware that there has been £94 billion of cost of living support over and above the 10.1% increase in benefit rates. That support is over 2022-23 and 2023-24. For example, the winter fuel payment will be paid to the tune of £600 or £500 over the next few weeks.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
Would the Minister agree that the journey we have been on with benefit rates for the last decade and a half has perhaps been a little haphazard, and it is pretty unclear to most people exactly what basket of goods and services benefits are actually meant to buy? If the Minister does not agree with the case for an essentials guarantee, will the Government commission their own study to work out if benefits are at the right level?
Guy Opperman
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, which is clearly a matter for the Secretary of State and the Chancellor when they make their decisions on uprating, and I am sure they will take that on board. There are always ongoing discussions about how one assesses this process but, with respect, this is the system we have had for some considerable period of time.
Work Capability Assessment Consultation
Nigel Mills Excerpts(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Mel Stride
I respect the hon. Gentleman; having appeared before the Select Committee, I know how seriously he takes the matters that he has raised. However, I cannot accept being described as bearing down on those who are
“on the make and on the take”.
If he can find any example of myself or my Ministers making those assertions, I would like to see it. In the absence of that, I hope that he will be big enough to withdraw those comments.
The hon. Gentleman does not like the assessments, but we hear nothing about alternatives or what the SNP’s plan is to replace assessments. If there are inherent problems with assessments, presumably the logic is that he is not going to assess anybody at all. So we do not know what his plan is. He refers to conditionality, so let me make a point about that. There are those whose health and disability situation is such that I passionately recognise that they should not be expected to undergo any work to look for work or to carry out work itself. As a compassionate society, we should be there to support those people, and we will continue to do so. But where somebody can work, there is a contract between the state and the individual: if people are to be supported and they can work, it is right that they should be expected to do so. In those circumstances, the conditionality should apply.
The hon. Gentleman made specific reference to Access to Work. That programme provides up to about £65,000 for each individual involved to bring forward adaptations to the workplace to accommodate that individual into employment. It is a huge commitment on the part of this Government, and I can inform him that the latest figure I have is that 88% of those applications are being processed within 10 days.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
It is greatly welcome that we are trying to get the assessment to give people the outcome they deserve, but it is intriguing to make what sounds like a fundamental change to an assessment that we are going to try to scrap in a few years’ time. Will the Secretary of State set out how many of the 2.5 million people he cited as being in this situation he thinks would not be in the same group after these changes? How many of them will have a chance to be reassessed before we scrap the assessment entirely?
Mel Stride
I dealt in my statement with my hon. Friend’s question about why we are doing this, given that we will be getting rid of the WCA in due course: I said that there is no reason why we cannot bring forward these benefits earlier, even though we are going to be removing the WCA altogether. As for the numbers impacted, we know that about one in five people on those benefits do want to work, given the right support. Until the consultation is concluded and we know the exact nature of the policy changes that we may or may not be making at that point, we will not be able to assess the numbers exactly.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nigel Mills Excerpts(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Tom Pursglove
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her interest in this issue. Through the White Paper reforms, we have advocated for a number of tests and trials, including one that focuses specifically on better capturing fluctuating conditions. I would be keen to have conversations with her about that. The Government are committed to working with charities and those that are interested, including disabled people, to ensure we get those reforms right.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
I agree with the importance of having a timely assessment. Last week, a constituent raised her case with me: she filled in her renewal form nine months ago, but has been given less than two weeks’ notice for an assessment next week. Surely we need to have assessments when the form is fresh and accurate, not nine months later?
Tom Pursglove
The waiting time for PIP decisions has come down considerably in recent times, but I am not complacent about that, as we want to go further in seeing those waits reduced. For example, being able to apply online is an important part of that journey, as well as improving interfaces and making sure people provide all the right information up front. If we can provide better support for that, it will help us make decisions sooner, which can only be welcome.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)
The HSE’s focus has been on raising awareness of RAAC—reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—through its engagement and stakeholder groups via the public sector, and this was actually raised in a bulletin back in April 2021. I will look into the point my hon. Friend has made, but I am certain there has been clear guidance to those who need it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nigel Mills Excerpts(10 months, 1 week ago)
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Laura Trott
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will welcome the figures that I just announced on the uptake of pension credit. We will not have the eligibility figures for a while—hopefully, they will be out later this year. I hope we will see a rise, but in the meantime we are doing all we can—as I know is true across the House—to get as many people as possible to apply for pension credit so that they qualify for those important cost of living payments.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Laura Trott)
The Pension Protection Fund publishes data on the funding of defined-benefit pension schemes. Average funding of the schemes was 113.1% in 2022 versus 104.3% in 2010—a significant improvement.
Nigel Mills
Does the Minister accept that we have spent 20 years—probably quite rightly—working out how we get more money into pension schemes to pay for the promise, and that now we need to work out what we do with the money in there that is in excess of what we need? Does she accept that in those 20 years we have seen pension funding increase probably at the expense of current workers, who get a much lower pension? Is there anything we can do to use the surplus to support the pension incomes in retirement of those current workers who will get a far less generous pension?
Laura Trott
As I would expect from a member of the Work and Pensions Committee and the head of the all-party parliamentary group on pensions, my hon. Friend makes an interesting point. In my time as pensions Minister I have tried to reduce the gap between DB and defined contribution pensions. I would be interested to talk to him about any further suggestions.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Laura Trott)
I do not think they are. Also, the triple lock is very proudly a Conservative policy.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
With interest rates looking to hit around 6%, are the Government considering making the support for the mortgage interest scheme a little more generous, perhaps by raising the cap or the interest rate, so that it provides the safety net that people expect?
Mel Stride
As my hon. Friend will be aware, the Treasury has made it clear that there will not be a significant fiscal intervention around mortgages. Unfortunately, that would serve only to complicate the effectiveness of the measure and the monetary policy effects that the Government and the Bank of England are looking to achieve to halve inflation by the end of this year.