Carer’s Allowance

Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Bobby Dean

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Colleagues have outlined the scale of the crisis, so I shall focus on a story of one of my constituents in Carshalton and Wallington. She was told that she had to repay more than £2,300 in carer’s allowance over- payments. This constituent already makes huge sacrifices to keep her family afloat, while caring for her disabled son. She gave up her full-time job to take on caring responsibilities and has limited her part-time hours to ensure that she remains qualified for carer’s allowance. It made me so angry to hear how meticulously she tried to manage her pay cheques each month, only to have it thrown in her face. She turned down pay rises, turned down overtime and turned down Christmas bonuses to ensure that she stayed under the limit. Her employers agreed to keep her on an advance rota to help her plan her earnings. Despite her diligence, she received no notice, no warnings and no forgiveness when one day the payments stopped and the bill came in for over two grand.

Here is the bit that really gets me. The repayment demand that she received is for the entire entitlement for each occasion when she earned too much. That means that the smallest indiscretions come with the heaviest of consequences. In one month, it was because she earned £28 too much. In another, it was £20. It gets worse: one November, she was £8 over the limit—not even an hour’s work in London. Finally, and most depressingly, she once dared to earn £2 too much. She owes the whole of the allowance back for each of those periods, and then a £50 fine to boot from the Department for Work and Pensions. This is nothing short of a national scandal, and the DWP should be ashamed of itself.

Today, the Liberal Democrats are calling on the Government to right this wrong, to stop pursuing hard-working carers for these innocent overpayments, and then to fix the system that let this scandal emerge in the first place. We need to taper the allowance, raise the earning limits and treat carers with the compassion they deserve.

I am conscious of time, so finally, I welcome and am encouraged by the Minister’s comments about the review. However, for it to be successful, carers need to play a big part and have full input. We also need to make sure that carers now in debt distress get some immediate reassurances and support and do not have to wait until the end of the review.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Dan Aldridge to make his maiden speech.

Sport: Team GB and ParalympicsGB

Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Bobby Dean

Thursday 10th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I have enjoyed this debate, the maiden speeches and hearing about all the local successes that added up to our national success at this year’s Olympic and Paralympic games. We might be a small island, but we punch above our weight.

My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon East (Natasha Irons) talked about the Paralympic coverage on Channel 4, which was fantastic, but others have mentioned how sport is increasingly going behind paywalls, which will limit people’s opportunity to be inspired. We need to make sure that the crown jewels of British sport, both domestic and international competitions, remain free to air as much as possible, even if only for a single fixture each season or the biggest fixture in that sport. We need to make sure that all sports are available on free-to-air, and we need to make sure that we do not push too many behind paywalls.

Grassroots investment is important to making sport, in all of its diversity, available and inclusive for all potential players. I am lucky enough to still play football on Saturdays. At the age of 34, I can find a standard that fits me, but others are not able to find a suitable standard. My wife is looking to play football but she does not have many options; she would have to play at highly competitive level or not at all. Inclusivity in women’s football does not seem to be happening in the right way at the moment.

There have been concerns about access to different sports by people from different backgrounds. There has been a worrying trend towards people from privileged backgrounds, who may have been educated at private schools, ending up as our elite athletes. Quite a high proportion of our competitors this year were from such backgrounds. We need to ensure a diversity of people, from all walks of life, get into sport so that everybody has the opportunity to make it at an elite level.

Finally, I pay tribute to an athlete who has done more for disability sports than most: I congratulate six-time paralympic gold medallist and constituency local hero David Weir on his inspiring career. I wish him a very happy retirement from international sport, as his last race was at the Paris games. David’s journey began in Wallington—more precisely, on the Roundshaw estate, in my area—and he first represented Sutton in wheelchair athletics at the London youth games. His talent quickly became evident as he won the junior event at the prestigious London marathon.

David’s path has not always been easy. At his first Paralympics in Atlanta in 1996, he remembers feeling disheartened by the meagre turnout of spectators for his sport, only being able to spot five or so people in the crowd that day. In 2002, David won his first London marathon. He reflected on that moment, sharing that he had no sponsorship deals or media coverage, and was left feeling overlooked and undervalued. Fast forward to the London 2012 Paralympics. As he did his victory gold medal lap around the track, he looked up at a roaring stadium full of thousands of supporters, highlighting not only his personal journey but the evolving landscape of disability sports.

Despite these achievements, David has been candid about the challenges that still exist. He continues to advocate for greater visibility and support for Paralympic athletes, noting that the gap between the perception of the Paralympics and the Olympics remains significant. In the community of Carshalton and Wallington, we are taking important steps. The David Weir leisure centre in St Helier offers inclusive cycling lessons for individuals of all abilities, fostering an environment where everyone can participate. Sutton and Epsom rugby club is to host an international visually impaired rugby tournament on the weekend of 23 November.

However, we cannot ignore the broader challenges that remain. Data from the Activity Alliance reveals that disabled adults are twice as likely to be physically inactive, compared with their non-disabled peers. Statistics show that many disabled individuals face barriers to spectating sports because of inaccessible venues and prevailing attitudes. That data shows we must ensure the legacy of Team GB includes a commitment to encouraging investment and support for disability sports. It is vital that we ensure everyone, regardless of ability, has the opportunity to engage in sports and physical activity. I know that David will continue to be a champion for this cause and I hope I can support the expansion of disability sports in my own small way in this House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Andrew Cooper to make his maiden speech.

Budget Responsibility Bill

Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Bobby Dean

2nd reading
Tuesday 30th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Blair McDougall) on that heartfelt speech. It was gracious of him to say that his was not the most beautiful of constituencies, but I think he is at least in the top 600 and possibly even higher after one or two whiskies. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes) on his maiden speech. The points he made about engaging with the public and making sure that we restore trust in this place are really important.

I am not going to speak about Scotland in my maiden speech. I am going to start by talking about where I came from. My parents are in the Gallery and I promised to stay grounded, so this is the place I want to start. I grew up on a council estate as the eldest of three boys. My dad worked long hours as a scaffolder and my mum worked two jobs, one in Burton’s by day and one as a cleaner at night. Things were not always easy, and times got so tough at one point that, as a young teenager, I moved into the care of my grandparents. I have found out in recent years that this is called kinship care. It is a pretty formal-sounding name, but it is basically where family agree to take on family. I am very grateful to my Nan and Pops for helping me back on to the right path, and I know that they would have been very proud of me if they had got to see this day.

Of course, it was not just family that got me here. I have had encouraging teachers, supportive friends, guiding therapists, a campaigning wife and a totally unreasonable bunch of people called activists who volunteer a silly amount of time to the cause. To all those that have been involved in my messy pathway to now, and especially to the people of Carshalton and Wallington who have put their faith in me: thank you. I am utterly humbled to be here and I do not take this responsibility lightly.

I had planned on describing my constituency of Carshalton and Wallington as a hidden gem, but since I started in this place a few weeks ago, I have kept bumping into staff that live there, so it is clearly a popular place. For those that do not know, Carshalton and Wallington is on the south London border with Surrey—or in Surrey, depending on who you speak to. I describe it as hidden because, despite being a London borough, you will not find us on the tube map. There are no London underground or London overground services in our borough, and this is an issue that I will return to at a later date. But my constituency is a gem. I am not going to say it is the most beautiful, but it is pretty beautiful. It has beautiful ponds and many award-winning parks, and we have the historic River Wandle and so many good pubs that it is really difficult to avoid them at the weekends.

I would like to take this moment to recognise my predecessor, Elliot Colburn. This House will remember when he bravely spoke out about his own struggles with mental health. I have great respect for his willingness and openness to share his story, and I am certain that his bravery will give courage to others to speak up and seek help, too. I would also like to put on record my recognition of another predecessor, Tom Brake, who served my community of Carshalton and Wallington for over 22 years. He is a true local champion, and he is still spoken about fondly on the doorstep. The House will probably be aware of his tireless campaigning for St Helier hospital, and I plan to take up that issue at a later date, too.

There is much more I would like to share about my constituency over time but, unlike the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire, I will not take up that time now because I am keen to get involved in today’s debate as well. I want to start by joining my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) in welcoming the thrust of the Government’s proposals to give more powers to the Office for Budget Responsibility to scrutinise major fiscal announcements. The inappropriately named mini-Budget sent shockwaves across the country, with mortgages soaring, pensions on the brink of collapse and market confidence damaged so badly that I feel we will be dealing with the trust issues caused by that disruption for quite some time.

Yet the state of our country’s finances is not just down to one fiscal event. The populism that infected everything that the last Government did was laid bare by the Chancellor yesterday, and I am so angry about the mess that has been left behind. It is always the most vulnerable that suffer the most when the Government gets things so drastically wrong, and we must never let such reckless gambles be taken with our country’s finances ever again.

While I am optimistic that the fiscal lock will provide the public and markets with some reassurance on this, I do hope that the Government do not feel locked into one particular model of fiscal management. The key lesson to take from the disastrous mini-Budget should be not that there is only one way to run the economy, but that, whatever choices the Government make, they should be informed by good information and stand up to rigorous analysis. It will be my intention from these Benches to encourage the Government to take seriously the calls from many respected economists to ensure that fiscal responsibility goes hand in hand with maximising the growth potential of the country over the long term. This is particularly relevant to major capital investments such as the rebuilding of St Helier hospital in my constituency. Our local NHS trust faces huge costs every year trying to maintain an unfit building. We must not forget that there is a cost to not investing, too.

When talking about growth, let us remember that it has not only a rate but a direction, and that necessarily involves political choices and cannot be left to expert analysis alone. While the OBR can rightly describe what actions will increase growth and by how much, we in this House still have a crucial role to play in selecting what actions will meet all of society’s goals. A purpose-driven industrial strategy, as proposed by the Liberal Democrats, will ensure that we deliver the right sort of growth, not least in relation to green industries.

The Chancellor is right to reiterate that the Government should not commit to any unfunded spending pledges, but there are many ways to fund the investment we so desperately need in our public services, and we do not have to increase tax on ordinary workers to do so. If the Chancellor is stuck for ideas, I would invite her to have a read of the Liberal Democrat manifesto, which includes ideas such as raising capital gains tax and reversing the Tories’ cuts for banks. There are fairer ways of raising the revenue we need, and we should look at them seriously.

It is at this point that I look back up to the Gallery, and I have some regret that my maiden speech was on the intricacies of fiscal responsibility. If Members would indulge me for a moment, before I close, I would like to make a brief translation by putting my points into footballing terms—Dad, this is mainly for you. The former manager played six up front and got hammered, but that does not mean that the new manager has to revert to a defensive five at the back. There are many different styles of play out there, and I think some will have bigger rewards. So let us get the balance right and get our country winning again.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Ghani)]

No doubt your mum and dad enjoyed that up in the Gallery. We now have another maiden speech—I call David Burton-Sampson.