Compulsory Jobs Guarantee

Pamela Nash Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The hon. Gentleman, for whom I have a huge amount of time, is right about work experience, and he must not let anyone on his side push him off that, but what he has just said is slightly wrong. He said that we are promulgating work experience and the Opposition are talking about a jobs guarantee, but we are not promulgating it; a quarter of a million young people have already gone on our work experience programme, and over 50% of them have gone into work. He is quite right that not all of them went into the businesses they did the work experience with, but many of them have gone into other jobs almost immediately. What is really exciting is that although many businesses said, “We’ll do the work experience, but we can’t guarantee a job,” a significant number of them, once they had seen the young person for a few weeks, came back and said, “I tell you what: we’re going to create a job around this individual, because we think they’re going to help our company.” That is what work experience has done. I simply say to Opposition Members that they should embrace that, not oppose it, because their Front Benchers have opposed work experience, and that is a big problem.

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

In my experience the Opposition do support work experience, and there are many examples of that. Does the Secretary of State realise that there are already local examples of programmes similar to that which we are today proposing nationally? For example, my local authority, North Lanarkshire council, is about to announce that 5,000 people have got into work as a result of a similar project. Permanent private sector jobs have been created as a result of a six-month wage subsidy.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

But because of what we are doing with local authorities, working through the local enterprise partnerships, and with all the local provision that we have been pushing down, if they want to create additional programmes, Jobcentre Plus will support them through that. We have to be slightly careful, when starting to calculate figures, about one group coming on the back of others, because we will not know how many of those went to work as a result of Jobcentre Plus and how many as a result of the programme. If local authorities, rightly, want to help, we are all in favour of supporting them with extra help.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

Thank you for calling me to speak in this important debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have to start by saying that I am particularly proud to be a member of the Labour party and the labour movement, as we debate this policy. I feel it reflects the heart of our movement and where our priorities lie in creating new opportunities for young unemployed and long-term unemployed people to give them the dignity of paid work and skills development, while simultaneously supporting job creation and business growth, making for a stronger, more vibrant economy with permanent long-term jobs. I have no doubt that, should we have a Labour Government in May, this policy will make an incredible impact in my constituency of Airdrie and Shotts, complementing the existing work going on at local government level and in the voluntary sector. Indeed, it will help thousands of people back into work across the country.

We know that youth and long-term unemployment has a detrimental effect on people’s self-worth, their mental and physical health and their circumstances. However, that impact is not confined to individuals; it is also felt by their families, by the people around them, and by their communities. The youth dole queue, which is currently the length of Hadrian’s Wall, shows us the impact that this is having, and can have, on society as a whole, and it is the responsibility of whichever Government are in power to tackle it.

In the short time that is available to me, I must confront the Secretary of State’s claim, in his opening speech, that the Labour party is opposed to work experience. I find that offensive, because it is categorically wrong. Our opposition is to the Government’s exploitation of the unemployed through poor-quality, mandatory, unpaid work experience. I would be less likely to be in the House today had I not had the opportunity to benefit from high-quality work experience when I was young. That led me to launch the Our Community project, in conjunction with the trade union Community and the local jobcentre. The project matches young unemployed people with voluntary, high-quality work experience provided by local employers. Work experience is extremely valuable, and we must do all that we can to nurture the culture that produces it.

[Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has referred to the importance of keeping young people in employment, and to the project that matches them with local employers. Constant contact with employers makes it possible to find out what new skills and career directions can benefit those who are placed with them. Is that not one reason for the success of the project?

[Pamela Nash]

Absolutely—and I think that the jobs guarantee will extend or complement the ability to do that, rather than take it away. However, it will also have a positive impact as a whole. It will create new jobs. As we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), employers will have to prove that the jobs would not otherwise be there. It will also be mandatory for them to include a training element that will provide over six months of guaranteed paid work, with all the benefits that that brings.

As I said earlier in an intervention, the system is already working. We have seen several examples of that. My local authority, North Lanarkshire council, is doing fantastic work in getting people back to work, and creating new jobs—in the voluntary and public sectors, but mainly in the private sector—through its project “North Lanarkshire’s Working”. A key part of the project is the provision of a 50% wage subsidy for employers who give unemployed people new jobs for six months. It is aimed primarily at young people, although 15% of the funds are earmarked for older people, and it has returned nearly 5,000 people to employment and training. I hope that a version of it will be rolled out throughout the country, so that others can benefit from it. The project has also put considerable effort into encouraging the creation of jobs for those who find it most difficult to obtain work, including those who live with disabilities and young people who are leaving the care system.

Earlier, both SNP and Tory Members heckled my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, saying that after the six months was over, people would end up back in the dole queue. Our experience in North Lanarkshire shows that that is not the case among the vast majority of participants. The wage subsidy allows businesses to expand at reduced risk, because it allows them to take people on for six months and then create permanent jobs for them. Even when that has not been possible, the skills, confidence and routine that people have gained from six months of paid employment have left them with much brighter prospects.

The jobs guarantee that my party has proposed today, and in the last few months, is the culmination of other successful policies that we have seen in the past, and see currently in other parts of the United Kingdom. I think that it will be a game changer, creating jobs and tackling both youth and long-term unemployment, and I look forward to its implementation by a Labour Government in May.

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[The Minister for Employment (Esther McVey)]

With only three months to go until the general election, I was intrigued to hear what the Opposition would put forward today to help people into work. What was this compulsory jobs guarantee? What we have learnt today is that there is no real commitment and no real understanding of what would happen. As my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma) said, it is unfunded, un-thought-through and unworkable.

Many questions remain about the jobs guarantee. Which businesses have signed up to it? How many jobs would it provide? What would happen if someone refused to do it? What would happen to apprenticeships if people did it? How would it be funded? None of those questions has been answered adequately. What we do know is that it is important to distinguish between proposals that have not been thought through, prepared or funded and what this Government have done.

Members spoke today about what has happened in their constituencies—and those are facts. In Aberdeen South the claimant count is down 56% since 2010, and in Stroud it is down 56% since 2010. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) on setting up the festival of manufacturing and engineering in his constituency. When it comes to building infrastructure and helping business, we know that we have put forward £12 billion for the growth fund. We are putting £15 billion into roads and infrastructure. We have the northern powerhouse, bringing together science, manufacturing and infrastructure and absolutely turbo-charging our northern cities.

In Ealing North the claimant count is down 38%, and in Nuneaton it is down 46%—the same is true for every Member who has spoken today. We are seeing employment going up and unemployment going down. We need this clear distinction: should people go forward with a party that does not know what it is doing or what the outcome would be, or should they go forward with a Government who have a tried and tested record—1.75 million more people in work and the biggest fall in youth unemployment since records began?

[Pamela Nash]

Will the Minister give way?

[Esther McVey]

I will not take any interventions, as the shadow Minister did not do so, but I will get through this in plenty of time for Members to speak—[Interruption.] Okay, I will take two interventions later.

What does the OECD have to say about Labour’s compulsory jobs guarantee? It says that there would be “displacement and substitution effects” and that it would not get anyone into permanent jobs. What did the Institute of Directors say? Like my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois), it said:

“Wage subsidies for employers are not the source of sustainable jobs. Government must focus on creating the conditions for growth, as only businesses know when consumer demand will allow them to create more positions.”

That is exactly what we are doing, with business tax support, welfare changes, infrastructure and true fiscal discipline. I work with businesses pretty much every day, and we know that over the next 10 years, as a result of what this Government are doing, there will be 12 million new jobs created, fundamentally in science, engineering and IT. We have to ensure that our young people can take up those jobs, and that is what we are doing, with increased support for training and increased support for schools, for example through the pupil premium. We will help those who have been left on the unemployment list for so long and tackling the long-term youth problems and family problems through support for troubled families. We are systematically tackling unemployment and working with people to ensure that they are in work.

It is really important that we draw a clear distinction between what is working under this Government and what never worked under the Labour Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) said that when Labour leaves office, it always does so with higher unemployment than when it came into office, and that is absolutely true. So why would anybody choose to move forward with this jobs guarantee without knowing where these guaranteed jobs are coming from?

Interestingly, even the European Commission, which likes to foist initiatives on people, has said that

“the draft Country Specific Recommendations published 2 June call for commitment to the UK’s Youth Contract to be maintained.”

In other words, it would not pursue Labour’s proposal on guaranteed jobs, and what we did was correct. We supported people and put money in place to create work experience, sector-based work academies, and incentives.

Separated Families Initiative

Pamela Nash Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) on securing this important debate. I will not repeat the points hon. Members have made, but this is a welcome opportunity to discuss the impact of HSSF, as well as the expectations of it and of the new CMS.

The goal of the CMS must, of course, be to ensure that children are well provided for and looked after by both parents when those parents are separated. At a time when child poverty is rising—latest figures show that one in four children in my constituency live in poverty—maintenance has a crucial role to play. For the poorest single-parent families, it can provide up to a fifth of their household income, which is a huge amount for them. It is therefore important that the Government make this good new project a success, and if they are to reduce the use of a statutory maintenance service, which they have said is their goal, and to support families to form their own maintenance agreements, the success of HSSF will be absolutely fundamental.

The service is in its early stages, but the case of a constituent who came to my surgery last week gave me some concern about its success so far and about how it might be improved. My constituent’s case made me feel that it is not really clear when a case is eligible to be referred to the CMS, and I would love the Minister to give us some clarity today. At the moment, parents are required to seek advice first and then to get a reference number to go to the CMS. I should have thought that that would happen when the parents had exhausted all other avenues in trying to come to an agreement on their own.

My understanding from the information my constituent gave me, however, is that he had paid maintenance regularly every month for more than 10 years and had, indeed, upped the payment following a request from the receiving parent, but that he then received a letter from the CMS with a payment plan. My understanding is that he was not contacted previously about any mediation and was not involved with HSSF, and his record of paying monthly on time for more than 10 years was not taken into account.

As a result, my constituent was assessed as having to pay £236.71. Previously, he was paying £250; now, he has to pay £283.99 because of the 20% fee. There must be a failure somewhere in the HSSF process in my constituent’s case, and I worry that the problem is more widespread. The child in this case now has less money per month, while the father is paying more per month. How can that possibly be of any benefit to the child or the parents involved?

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

I am quite disturbed to hear of that experience, because it sounds very much like the criticisms we made of the previous Child Support Agency. Often, the non-resident parent was chased for extra money without having gone through an understandable reassessment. That is quite concerning, because the whole point of the new system was to sort cases out long before they got to the CMS itself.

[Pamela Nash]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. The reason the issue has upset and angered me enough that I have come here to make my case today is that we were all very hopeful when we knew a new child maintenance service was required. As constituency MPs, we all have big CSA work loads—like others, I have personal experience of this issue—and we wanted the proposals to be a big success. I therefore hope that my constituent’s case is indicative just of teething problems, not of how the CMS will work in the future.

My constituent’s case also underlined my general concerns about the introduction of fees and how they will impact on children and families. I therefore renew my plea for the Government to publish, at the earliest opportunity, the information and analysis they have on the impact the measures are having on children. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us today when that might be.

The debate also gives me the opportunity to discuss the closure of cases from the 1993 and 2003 schemes and how those might go through HSSF and into the CMS. Will the Minister update us on what progress has been made? My understanding from a written answer from the Minister for Pensions is that the closure process is due to go on until May 2018 and that the last cases to be covered are those in which

“Enforcement action is under way”—[Official Report, 1 July 2014; Vol. 583, c. 526W.]

In many ways, those are the cases deemed most difficult to deal with.

To return to the matter we are debating, I am concerned that the HSSF initiative is due to be funded only until March 2015, whereas the process of case closure is due to go on until May 2018. The cases involved are the most difficult and would, I imagine, need the support HSSF offers to make a successful transition. Does the Minister share my concerns? Are the Government considering extending the funding of the HSSF initiative beyond March and indeed until after May 2018, when the case closures are due to end?

Let me finish my short remarks by returning to where I started and to the reason why we are all here. Child maintenance is a crucial part of fighting child poverty and making children feel not only financially supported, but supported by both parents, and that is important for their well-being. The Government are continually telling us they are putting families at the forefront of their policy, and I hope they are doing everything they can to make their proposals a success.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve in the debate under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. Unlike the Minister—it is good to see her in her place—I am not moonlighting. I am a former director of the National Council for One Parent Families, which has since merged with Gingerbread, so this is part of my brief. I join my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) in thanking Gingerbread for the helpful briefing it has given many of us in preparation for the debate.

I welcome the debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend, who raises an important issue in relation to the separation of parents and the financial arrangements that follow separation. The issue is perhaps too little in the public eye these days, which is in stark contrast to the 1990s, when child support issues dominated MPs’ postbags. I fear that the reason is not that the difficulties we saw in earlier years between parents have gone away, but that too many parents have given up hope of ever seeing any maintenance at all.

I recognise that there were considerable difficulties with the legacy 1993 and 2003 schemes, and I strongly recognise the need for reform. I also acknowledge that the new 2012 scheme is being introduced carefully by a stable and respected team in the DWP—there are lessons there for other DWP projects. However, I have long been concerned about the overall objectives of the 2012 scheme. I cannot help feeling that the overarching objective is to get as many parents as possible out of the statutory scheme and into voluntary arrangements to bring in fee income for the Government—according to a written answer from 10 December last year to Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, the income is estimated to reach approximately £1.2 billion by 2022-23—and to cut costs. While it may be argued that voluntary arrangements between parents, freely and equally entered into by them, will often produce the best outcomes, the new scheme means that many more parents will not choose those arrangements but will, effectively, be coerced into them. The jury is out on what that will mean in practice for their success.

Of course, the overarching objective of the new scheme should be to get maintenance flowing for the benefit of children. Yet neither the Government’s express intentions, nor the monitoring data that we have been able to get, nor the help and support for separated families initiative described by my hon. Friends, have focused, as far as I can see, on that specific goal. Yesterday I received a written answer from the Minister for Pensions, who said he could not tell me, with respect to new applications to the scheme, what change there had been in the proportion of children receiving maintenance.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East said, the DWP’s early iterations of the purpose of the HSSF innovation fund gave two key objectives: increasing the number of children who benefit from child maintenance arrangements, by reducing conflict and improving collaboration between separated and separating parents; and testing a wider range of interventions to understand what is effective in encouraging such collaboration and reducing such conflict. However, in later iterations, the object of increasing the number of children to benefit from the arrangements has disappeared.

I can understand that the 17 HSSF innovation pilots differ greatly with respect to the groups that they deal with and the approach that they take; but surely a simple, measurable way to test their success and compare them would be to assess whether something, at least, is being paid towards the cost of raising children by the parent who is not the one with care. Hon. Members have acknowledged that ensuring the flow of maintenance to separated families is one of the best forms of support that can be established. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was right to highlight the pressures put on family relationships by poverty. It is right that the arrangements that we are discussing should be aimed at reducing that poverty.

NatCen Social Research and Gingerbread say that regular child maintenance can lift one in five one-parent families out of poverty. Those families are at a particularly high risk of poverty, and escaping poverty is the route to a host of other improved socio-economic outcomes for families and their children. However, although it is early days, the introduction of application fees this June, under the new scheme, seems already to be having an effect. In May, before they were introduced, there were 9,700 fresh applications to the scheme, but by August the number of fresh applications had dropped by 38% to 6,000. The Government expected a drop of 12%, with 250,000 fewer cases in the statutory scheme by 2018-19; so the rapid fall-off in new cases seems to be well out of line.

Meanwhile, the number of parents contacting the options service who say that they would consider a voluntary arrangement is also falling. According to a recent report by the Public Accounts Committee, the number who say they are considering one is down from 5,540 in August last year, to 3,590 in March 2014. Ministers responded that the phenomenon would be temporary, and that it resulted from the fact that people are now for the first time being required to go through the options gateway. However, the two sets of statistics, showing a decline both in new applications and in the number who think that they will make a family arrangement, are clearly cause for concern. The unavoidable implication must be that some families—perhaps many—will end up with no arrangement at all. That is a worrying prospect. What is more, as has been pointed out this afternoon, the early statistics cannot yet tell us much about parents who intend to make a family arrangement and try to do so, but find that they cannot, or that they cannot sustain it. Will those parents attempt to go on to the statutory scheme, or will they give up at that point?

We will shortly be able to get more information. The Pensions Minister told me in a written answer on 14 October that the Government intend

“to publish the results of the Child Maintenance Options survey by the end of the year.”

I welcome that. The survey is carried out quarterly by the options service and it goes back to callers who telephoned the service in the previous six months or so, to find out what child maintenance arrangements they made, and whether they in fact receive any maintenance. It has its limitations, but it will at least offer some measure of what callers actually did about child maintenance after their call.

Perhaps I can push the Minister for a little more information. Is it the intention to publish the options quarterly surveys of caller outcomes on a continuing basis, rather than as a one-off? What continuing tracking of parents will there be, with respect to their arrangements and the flow of maintenance after the first six months? If we are serious about improving outcomes for children, we need to know not just what families agree or do at first, but what maintenance actually flows and continues to be paid regularly. When exactly does the Minister expect the Government to publish the first results?

On the question of the pilots, I recognise that the Government want parents to reach their own arrangements wherever possible, and in the past Ministers have said that 51% of parents with care and 74% of non-resident parents said they would make a family arrangement if they had the help and support of an expert and impartial adviser. I assume that that is, in part, exactly what the HSSF initiatives are intended to provide. However, we must also remember the figures given to Members by Gingerbread and Families Need Fathers, which have been mentioned this afternoon: 13% of parents with care and 14% of non-resident parents say that their relationship with the other parent is not at all friendly; and 42% of parents with care and 41% of non-resident parents say they have no contact with the other parent at all. It would take a heroic effort for those parents to make private arrangements, and I fear that the HSSF will fall well short of what will be required.

In cases where there is no contact at all, or where there is considerable hostility between the parents, it will be particularly difficult and challenging to reach private arrangements, and will need specialist and specific support. Yet most of the pilots appear to have been quite generic. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East pointed out, only the most recent, quite small-scale pilots have focused on those whose relationships might be seen as the most intractable, or those who have been separated for a long time. My hon. Friend also pointed out other difficulties with and deficiencies in the pilots. Some began late. We should bear in mind that they are short term, so a late start has a significant bearing on their impact. Some are offered by only a small number of organisations. Those are, as my hon. Friend said, highly respected, but none the less with only a small number of charities and other bodies engaged in the pilots, there must be some concerns about coverage. As she highlighted, use of the Sorting out Separation online application has been at a level well below what Ministers expected; just 9,132 unique users had clicked through to a signposting action by January this year, whereas the Government said that there would be 260,000 users in year one.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) pointed out, there were plans to strengthen co-ordination of local face-to-face services by identifying and utilising touch points that parents have contact with, providing information and links, appointing regional co-ordinators to develop regional networks of contacts, recruiting and training advocates to promote collaborative parenting across delivery organisations and promoting quality mark use, but those pilots have been dropped from the scheme. It is not clear why, especially when we think of those parents with more difficult or long-standing separations who may need highly skilled and longer interventions that that local face-to-face support could best provide. Perhaps the Minister will explain the rationale for dropping that initiative.

There are questions about the impact of the kitemark. It is welcome, but we must know how widely it is used or recognised, and what improvements in service it has helped to bring about. I understand that 35 organisations have been awarded the kitemark, but there is little evidence that parents are aware of its significance and little effort has been made to communicate that to them.

The innovation fund that the Government have set aside has been underspent. With little time left to complete the pilots, it would be useful if the Minister could explain why, and whether they intend to get the rest of the money out of the door before the pilots are due to conclude and to be evaluated in spring 2015. Meanwhile, very little information has been published about parents’ participation in the 17 projects financed under the innovation fund, nor have details been made public of the evaluation process to assess what works in assisting parents to collaborate. Will the Minister say more about that? Who will carry out the evaluation and what will be the criteria for success?

Most disturbingly—colleagues highlighted this—no commitments have been given to scale up the lessons learned from these projects of what works and can be implemented on the scale necessary throughout the country, yet we are now heading into the period when not only new applications but thousands of case closures from the legacy systems will be coming into the new scheme. In truth, the HSSF initiative is way too limited an offer for the almost 2 million parents who will be steered towards making their own child maintenance arrangements over the next three years.

[Pamela Nash]

On the limited offer from HSSF, does my hon. Friend share my concern about couples who have been separated for a long time? It seems that many of the pilots are aimed at those who are separating imminently or have done so recently. Figures from the Department for Work and Pensions have shown that 70% of couples who are using child support allowance have been separated for more than five years.

[Kate Green]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern and I find it puzzling that it was so late in the organisation of the pilots that we began to see efforts to address that specific and challenging group of separated parents. It is hard to imagine how people would be able to make a private arrangement easily with someone with whom they have had no contact or only hostile contact for a long time. I am puzzled at the lack of attention, given the effort that has been put in to, for example, planning the transfer of the legacy cases. It would be helpful if the Minister could say whether the Government intend to offer more support or different support to couples who have had a long period of separation and little or no contact with each other.

Funding for the HSSF pilots ends in March 2015, whereas the CSA legacy cases closure programme runs between 2014-15 to 2017-18. Will the Minister say whether there are any plans to extend HSSF funding to cover the period of CSA case closure? Can she tell us now what financial resources will be made available post-March 2015 to support the HSSF initiative? What funding plans, if any, are in place to implement the lessons learned from the 17 HSSF innovation fund pilots on a wider scale when they have been evaluated? Without decent answers to these questions, we cannot avoid the conclusion that the HSSF initiative, with its pathetic budget of £20 million over three years, has been intended only as window dressing for the scheme.

In scaling up to meet the level of real need, those 17 projects come nowhere close. How can the Government claim to be serious about the HSSF programme when the £10 million awarded to 17 projects is expected to help at best only around 24,000 families face to face plus around 270,000 online while around 300,000 couples separate every year, and around 1 million CSA cases face closure over the next three years? If the Government are to succeed in reducing use of the statutory maintenance service and at the same time enable more parents to collaborate in fixing and paying their own child maintenance, the success of the HSSF initiative is fundamental. Today’s debate raises big questions about whether it is up to the task.

Jobcentre Plus

Pamela Nash Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Dame Anne Begg]

I think people would be surprised to learn that Jobcentre Plus does not routinely record the reason why someone leaves benefit. As far as JCP is concerned, because the primary focus is on benefit off-flows, the important thing is that the person is no longer on a job-seeking benefit. However, as my hon. Friend says, why are they no longer on a benefit? It could be because they have a new job—that is what we hope—and it is possible that they have transferred to a different benefit because they have become ill, but they might be in prison or have gone into the black economy. We do not know, and nor does JCP because it does not gather that information or track claimants’ destinations. We think it is important that JCP does that in order to judge how efficient and effective its work is.

At some point, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, off-benefit is likely to cease to make much sense as a performance measure, particularly with the introduction of universal credit. I think Members agree that a system that merges out-of-work benefits and in-work tax credits, and in which benefits taper off gradually as earnings increase, would be a huge step forward. That is what universal credit is intended to do, but it will require creative thinking from the Government about new performance measures for JCP.

The Department says that it will think about how to formulate such measures once universal credit is implemented—whenever that is going to be. We think that it should be thinking about and testing them now, not leaving it until much later. Even if universal credit continues to slow down, the Committee certainly thinks that the development of a new measure is worth while anyway, whether in conjunction with universal credit or not. The Department must pilot more meaningful performance measures that track JCP’s effectiveness at getting people into work and helping them to stay there for the long term. I hope that the Minister can reassure us that the Government understand the importance of achieving longer-term positive employment outcomes.

Another part of our report that has received quite a lot of attention—perhaps because many Members have experience of it in their constituencies—is Jobcentre Plus’s use of sanctions. There is an inherent tension in what JCP does, between helping and supporting people to find work on the one hand, and, on the other, enforcing strict rules, including financial penalties for claimants deemed not to be trying hard enough to find work. Such is the everyday experience of the Jobcentre Plus adviser and the job-seeking benefit claimant, and it can make for an uneasy relationship.

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern about sanctions data? In preparation for this debate, I requested figures on sanctions from my local jobcentre. The staff there said that they had not received any data back since March and so are themselves unable to keep track of the number of sanctions being issued and the reasons for them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

Let me echo my colleagues and say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Amess.

I will not replicate my colleagues’ remarks about the report, but it will not surprise Members to hear that I agree with the vast majority of it. I congratulate the Committee’s Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), on all its work, but particularly on this report and on giving us the opportunity to debate it today.

The first issue I want to concentrate on is support for claimants with health conditions and disabilities. In one of the report’s recommendations, the Committee asks the Government to take urgent action to improve the level of jobcentre support for claimants with health conditions and disabilities, including by addressing unacceptably high work-related activity group case loads.

One of the most heart-breaking things I have seen in my four years as a Member of Parliament is the number of people coming to my surgery, or requesting a home visit because of their health conditions, who it is clear—even to the naked eye—are not fit for work, but who are still put in the work-related activity group for ESA. Let me give one example from my constituency, although it represents the stories of many other people there. My office spoke this morning to a constituent who wants to remain anonymous. She is 59, and she had to stop work due to ill health. There has been a series of errors since she applied for ESA.

My constituent, who suffers from arthritis and panic attacks, among other health conditions, attended an assessment, but she did not receive a copy of her assessment report afterwards—I have heard the same point made repeatedly over the past four years. She was just told that she had “passed” the medical. Does that mean that she is healthy, or that she will receive the benefit? It is an ambiguous term.

My constituent was given no information about the difference between contribution-based and income-based ESA. After 365 days, she was moved from one to the other with no notice. The only indication that something had changed was the unexpected drop of £118 per week in the amount of money going into her bank account. That is an extremely large amount for a low-income household.

I will not go any further, because I may be drifting a little from the report, but I ask the Minister to look at what has been a recurring theme today: the data and analysis available on the success of jobcentres and the DWP. Will she publish more information so we can look at the problems? If we do not know what they are, how can whoever is in government seek to fix them?

Another issue is support for those in the work-related activity group. There are some who clearly should be in that group. However, the type of work they can do is severely limited, although they might be able to work with the correct support. My understanding is that that is exactly why this policy is in place—to allow these people to go back to work. If they can contribute, therefore, they should be supported so that they can do so. However, the Committee’s inquiry found that relatively few resources were devoted to providing that support in jobcentres; in fact, the figure is one adviser to every 600 claimants. Is the Department looking at improving the support available to help these people back to work?

Another issue related to ESA, which I became aware of recently, is the actual average clearance time. The headline figures for ESA show that, since the Government came to power, waiting times have gone down. However, I asked the House of Commons Library to look into that, and it told me that the figure relates only to the time between a new claim being made and a decision being taken on whether the person should have an assessment. The total time, if we look at how long people have to wait for a work capability assessment, is 118.9 days on average. What is the Department doing to bring that figure down?

I want to say something briefly about sanctions. Again, I will not replicate what has been said, and I agree with much of what my colleagues have said. However, I would ask the Minister to comment on the repeated claims from Jobcentre Plus whistleblowers, which we have heard about in the press and here today, that there are quotas or that there is pressure on staff to impose a certain number of sanctions on their client base.

I also want to talk about the fact that there are no crisis loans any more, with the localisation that was touched on in the report. In Scotland the Scottish welfare fund is the replacement, but that specifically may not give money to people who have been sanctioned. I simply want to put the question to the Minister: what are those people supposed to do? How are they supposed to eat, with no income at all? When people are convicted of a crime we do not starve them; yet people who have been sanctioned turn up at my office—and the vast majority get the sanction overturned on appeal, for reasons such as we have heard today, and because of mistakes—and they are left in dire straits.

I am ashamed sometimes to be an MP in a country where all I can do is send those people to a food bank. They are sent for payday loans. They should not be getting those if they have no salary, and if they are given them that is shocking. Even worse, they often go to criminal loan sharks. That is the one business that has thrived during the recession, which is a disgrace. What does the Minister expect people who have been sanctioned to do, to meet their basic needs for survival?

The report examines in depth the flexible support fund and its uses. It replaced a few other funds; many of the relevant people would have been affected more recently by the removal of the return to work credit, although I realise that that was a much longer-term support for people returning to work. I worry about some constituents who receive a job offer—which is happening increasingly; I welcome the fact that unemployment is reducing in my constituency and there are many new businesses, and the town centre is more thriving than I can remember. However, some constituents find it difficult to go back to work, because they do not know how they will survive for the first month.

I have been told by my local jobcentre that the usual flexible support fund payment is rarely more than £50 for travel to work. Housing benefit runs on for a month, too, but apart from that there is little, if any, support to enable someone to pay bills or perhaps buy clothes for a new job—or, indeed, lunches for the first month. Being out of work often causes a drop in confidence, so people want to make a good impression and not to have to worry about such basic things in the first month of a new job.

Work experience contributes to building up confidence. I know that the Government have made work experience programmes part of Get Britain Working, but in my experience there are few opportunities for young people to get such experience. What are jobcentres doing to increase opportunities for placements? I am setting up a work experience programme in my constituency, and letters to more than 400 local businesses are being produced as I speak. That is being done in conjunction with the jobcentre, which has difficulty finding enough work experience placements for the people who want them. Some of my colleagues are setting up similar projects in their constituencies, but what is happening at Government level, so that it will not matter whether MPs spend time doing that, and people will not need their MP to set up work experience projects to make placements available to them?

I found work experience useful, because I was on the dole at one point after university. The jobcentre told me I would be sanctioned if I did voluntary work, because I would not be spending that time looking for jobs; however, since then, there has been cross-party support for and understanding of the idea that voluntary work and work experience can lead to full-time sustainable employment.

[Debbie Abrahams]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on setting up work experience in her constituency. I have done that too, for 18 to 24-year-olds, starting next week for two weeks. It is the first time I have done it, but I have been asked whether I would consider something for older people. We need to think of them as well.

[Pamela Nash]

Definitely. The work experience programme that I am setting up is aimed at young people, but it is not just for them—it is certainly for others too. At the other end of the age range in the work market, and particularly with the pension age going up, there are many people who want to work a bit longer but are having difficulty finding jobs. That affects every age group in between, too.

In fact, there was a good news story from my local jobcentre when I visited last Friday. A gentleman had been out of work for 20 years, and, with the new programmes, one of the advisers who recognised his need could spend much longer with him. He has now started a full-time job.

The hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) said that Select Committees are often negative because of their role in holding the Government to account, and I think that that often applies to Opposition MPs as well; we appear a bit crabbit, to use a Scottish word, and negative. However, holding the Government to account is our job. I certainly do not think that everything is wrong, but there is a lot of room for improvement.

Finally, I want to comment briefly on the Work programme, which comes outside the work of Jobcentre Plus. My area has very good and very bad examples of the way it is run. I am angered when I go to the jobcentre and staff tell me how good the success rate is for people leaving the Work programme after two years, and being found work quickly. There are people who are ready and desperate to work, but who were not given the support they needed during the Work programme.

When I meet constituents who have been on the programme, they always tell me two things. First, they tell me that they can end the two years without even a CV—which is ridiculous—or basic IT skills. Secondly, I am constantly told about their intention to apply for training; there are many positions in security in my area, so they might want to go for a Security Industry Authority badge. Yet that is not available—nor is any small cost for training that might keep their skills up to date or improve their job opportunities.

If those people had been under the care of the jobcentre at the time in question, those things would have been available to them, but the contract that the Work programme providers have does not include such provision, and obviously the providers will save costs whenever they can. That is relevant to the debate, because the situation increases the work of the jobcentre, when the people in question go back. If the Government are not going to scrap the Work programme as it stands, will they take another look at the contracts, and make it clear what is expected of Work programme providers in the way of support for participants? Can that be published? Are there guidelines for the providers that Members of Parliament can see?

The hon. Member for Newton Abbot talked about negative comments. On Friday I visited my local jobcentre, as I do regularly—my office is a couple of doors away and it is no accident that I get most of my casework from there. The staff were excited about the prospect of becoming a digital jobcentre. We saw the work being done, and I think much of what is happening will improve the service for my constituents, so I look forward to that.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess, as everybody has said. I thank the Select Committee on Work and Pensions for its work on the report that we have been discussing. The Government welcome the Committee’s endorsement of the role of Jobcentre Plus in a reformed welfare system. Through the recession and into the period of recovery, it has provided good value for money and excellent levels of service to claimants and employers.

With employment rising to record levels, unemployment falling and sustained reductions in the number of people on welfare benefits, Jobcentre Plus continues to be a model other countries follow. As the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) said, they use it in Germany. They totally copied it and are following our model, as other countries are coming to follow what we do. More recently, the creation of Jobcentre Plus is reckoned to have raised national GDP by 0.1%—worth £5.5 billion to the UK economy by 2015.

The achievements of Jobcentre Plus stand as a testament to the hard work and dedication of the Department’s staff. I thank the staff who came into work today to ensure that all our jobcentres are open and that everybody who requests to see an adviser can do so. Despite staff reductions, Jobcentre Plus continues to make a major contribution to improvements in our labour market. We know that more people are working now than ever before: a record 30.5 million, up 780,000 over the past year and 1.7 million since 2010. That is a record-breaking number of people into work in a year, and it must be down not only to the hard-working staff of Jobcentre Plus but to all the people working so hard in the welfare to work industry.

The unemployment rate has fallen in every country and region of the UK over the last year. We have had the largest annual fall in long-term unemployment since 1998: 108,000 in just one year. The Work programme, which was set up in June 2011, has made a major contribution to that fall—the biggest since 1998, as I said. We have seen 1.5 million people go through the Work programme. Of those, 550,000 have got a job start and 300,000 have gone into sustained work. That is a significant contribution. I agree with the National Audit Office that the programme had a slow start, but it has improved considerably and its stretching targets will be achieved by its end.

If people have read the NAO report, they will know that the Work programme will actually be 12% better than the flexible new deal and 17% better than the pathways scheme once we have completed our work. It is therefore undoubtedly better than any other programme that has gone before, despite its being talked down. It is hard for me to reconcile what I have heard today with what the NAO agreed, which has to be welcomed.

When I looked into the sanctions applied under the Labour Government’s pathways into work scheme, I saw that they were significantly higher for ESA claimants. It is interesting to note the difference between what has been said today and what the previous Government delivered.

[Pamela Nash]

I admit that I have not seen the NAO figures, but is there any specific focus on youth unemployment? Although unemployment figures are coming down—I completely welcome that and the success in my constituency—youth unemployment is not coming down at anything close to the same speed, particularly not in my constituency. Is there any focus on how the Work programme is affecting youth unemployment?

[Esther McVey]

If the hon. Lady had looked at the youth unemployment figures, she would welcome them as much as I have. We have had nine consecutive months of decreasing unemployment, and the figure is now nearly 100,000 lower than at the general election. We have given significant focus and support. We have put in place a youth contract that helps people with work experience—I am delighted that people now agree how important that is—and 180,000 people have now gone on work experience. Of those, around 150,000 have been young people—other people are eligible—and 40% have got a job. So I feel I have answered the hon. Lady’s question—

[Pamela Nash]

You haven’t answered it.

[Esther McVey]

We have done a considerable amount of work and we continue to do so. That is key and should be welcomed. Youth unemployment has fallen across the country.

[Pamela Nash]

The rate is three times slower.

[Esther McVey]

We know that at the heart of the Government’s plan is the desire to build a stronger, more competitive economy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

No, I will not. As I have said, not only was it a point of order and not only was it in the last Select Committee—I never said that there would be an independent further review. That was not said. And of course the Matt Oakley review will come out. I said it will come out in due course and that will be this month. The right hon. Member for East Ham asked about that. When we have that report, we will all see what recommendations it makes and what issues have been brought forward. Despite Members here today saying that they did not think that the Oakley review was an in-depth review, yes it was. It was about communications and process; all those things are key.

As I said, we continue to look into these issues, because as was said—it may have been said by the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), the Chair of the Select Committee—at the end of the day what we need is people to comply and to do what is right to get a job. The ultimate aim would be that less sanctions are given, because that is what we want. We put more and more support into the system; we work with people, and the claimant commitment is there to do that; we see what people’s needs are; and we have got to make sure that we are working with voluntary organisations and charitable organisations, and understanding the needs of the individual and also their vulnerabilities. When we have got all that right, then we will all be going in the right direction.

However, what we know we have got right is the extra support and getting more people into work than ever before. The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) said that she had spoken to people who had been unemployed for 10, 15 or 25 years, and she also said how delighted those people now are to have a job, and that it has transformed their lives. Those are the type of people I meet all the time; people who were left on benefits and some people would say that they were forgotten about, and that they were not reached out to and connected with. Well, we said that we, as a Conservative party, do not agree with that; we totally do not agree with it. We will reach out and support them, and help them to do as best they can. But it is a system in the round; it is about support, sanctions and what we can do to get people to support themselves.

[Pamela Nash]

I thank the Minister for giving way and, yes, those are the good news stories and I love meeting those constituents. However, have there been constituents who have gone to her surgery because they have been sanctioned? Maybe they were sanctioned rightly, but maybe she suspects that they were sanctioned wrongly. What advice has she given them about how to feed themselves that week, and how did that make her feel?

[Esther McVey]

In what we have heard today in some of the stories about whether sanctions were applied or not, I know that some of them would have come under good cause and they would not have had a sanction applied. Where I would send people who are sanctioned, as do Jobcentre Plus, is hardship funds; they could get support, although the case has to be worked through. Why do people continue to sign on for benefits and remain on the claimant count? Because they would not get that hardship fund, which is either 60% or 80% of the benefit, if they do not. That is what I would say: “How do we support you? How do we get you back re-engaged?” I would also work out the vulnerability of the claimant.

[Pamela Nash]

rose—

[Esther McVey]

I will not take another intervention for the time being; I will move forward with some of these answers.

Claimants are given the opportunity to explain why they have not complied with a requirement. If they provide good reason, they will not get sanctioned. Once sanctioned, claimants are informed of how to apply for these hardship payments. Vulnerable claimants, including any claimant with responsibility for a child, can receive payments immediately. We believe that we get the vast majority of our decisions right. In 2013, our decision makers considered nearly 2 million cases that were brought to them, but they imposed just over a million sanctions. So the information comes from the adviser and it goes to a decision maker, who looks at all the evidence before deciding whether a sanction will be given. Of those cases, only 130,000 were overturned on reconsideration or appeal—just over 13%—not the figures that I heard from the Opposition Benches; I am not sure where they get those from.

DWP: Performance

Pamela Nash Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, we believe that our welfare reforms are good for the people of the United Kingdom and should be adopted in all parts of the United Kingdom.

Let me move on to some of the contributions made in the debate. It was a great pleasure to hear from my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller), who I had the great privilege of working alongside and who laid the foundations for a number of the vital reforms we are making. She pointed out that contrary to the rhetoric we sometimes hear, we are increasing the support for disabled people while also ensuring that more of the money goes to those who are most in need, which is absolutely the right priority.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) pointed out that although we have a motion from the Labour party, we do not appear to have any policy options from the Labour party. Despite the fact that there was, I think, some sort of launch last week, we had hardly any reference to the alternative. Once again, it is like talking into a vacuum—we do not know what is coming back from the other side.

The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) asked about the support given to people waiting for benefit. There are two forms of support. One is the short-term benefit advance, when somebody is entitled but the money has not come through, meaning that they are in financial need, and when somebody has a change of circumstance that results in an increase to their benefit award. The other is a hardship payment, for when people are subject to sanction. We will be happy to respond to the right hon. Gentleman further if he has any further questions.

The hon. Member for East Lothian asked a couple of questions. If I could distract her from her phone for a moment—

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

That is not the Member for East Lothian.

[Steve Webb]

I apologise.

The hon. Member for East Lothian (Fiona O’Donnell) asked two questions. She asked whether carer’s allowance would be backdated—[Interruption.] I have apologised. It is backdated if someone’s claim for PIP comes through. She asked about the definition of terminal illness, and we use the same definition as the previous Government. There is a six-month definition based on our judgment that takes account of and is informed by the advice of a health professional, such as a consultant or a Macmillan nurse. I hope that that makes it clear to her.

Bedroom Tax (Scotland)

Pamela Nash Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Westminster Hall

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. When discussing the report today, the key issue that we should not lose sight of is that the bedroom tax should never have happened in Scotland. There has been a broad cross-party consensus that it is a regressive measure and it should be abolished. However, the truth is that it should never have been introduced in the first place. It was brought to us by a Tory Government—propped up by their Liberal Democrat allies—for whom people in Scotland did not vote, and it reflects the same Tory values that brought us the poll tax 25 years ago, and which have been rejected time and again at the ballot box.

The bedroom tax has caused enormous hardship for some of the most disadvantaged tenants in Scotland, the vast majority of them disabled. It has created problems for social landlords and it has cost more than it has saved. The problems created by the bedroom tax were entirely predictable, and were in fact predicted by local authorities, housing associations and organisations representing tenants, as well as by Members of Parliament here and in Edinburgh.

To a large extent, the report we are debating today has been overtaken by events, given that a few days ago the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland said that the UK Government would provide Scottish Ministers with a power to set the statutory cap on discretionary housing payments in Scotland, using section 63 of the Scotland Act 1998. The Deputy First Minister made a statement in the Scottish Parliament yesterday and, I believe, met the Under-Secretary earlier today to discuss the process from here. That is a very welcome, if belated development, and follows several months of silence from the UK Government on the issue.

Yesterday’s announcement paves the way for discretionary housing payment to be made to everyone affected by the bedroom tax in Scotland. As the law stands, the only legal way to make regular and ongoing payments directly to tenants to make up for their loss of housing benefit is through discretionary housing payments. The UK Government has allocated Scottish local authorities £15 million for discretionary housing payments, but that is less than a third of the £50 million needed to mitigate the penalty for everyone affected.

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady accept that local authorities in Scotland have found other ways to give money to their tenants and residents to mitigate the impact of the bedroom tax, without using DHP? Can the Scottish Government not also use that, as the UK Government have confirmed?

[Dr Whiteford]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point. It is something that parties in Scotland have looked at very closely, and I know that senior Labour MSPs such as Jackie Baillie and Iain Gray have very much been part of discussions with the Scottish Government about those issues. Even they have agreed with the Scottish Government about the way to distribute the extra money, in compliance with the law as it stands. They agree that DHPs are the only clear legal route to provide funding for bedroom tax arrears directly to the people affected on a regular and ongoing basis. We are having to jump through a lot of legal loopholes. It is clear there are some solutions—the Scottish Government, certainly, were looking at them very carefully—but it seems that the clearest way forward is through discretionary housing payments and the challenge for all of us is to make sure that they are made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whiteford]

I am very much looking forward to the referendum in September, when people in Scotland will have a say on whether they want control of their own affairs and responsibility for setting income tax levels. I led an Opposition day debate on this issue back in February last year, when I called on the Government to end the policy, but we have had a number of opportunities in the House since then to voice our opposition, which includes opposition on the Government’s own Back Benches. The best chance we had to get rid of the bedroom tax was in November last year, when the Government came tantalisingly close to being defeated in the Commons in a vote following a Labour Opposition day debate. A defeat in the Commons would have forced the Government to rethink their approach, because it would have shown that even their own Back Benchers in the coalition—

[Pamela Nash]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dr Whiteford]

I said that I would not take any more interventions, so I will not. [Interruption.] Well, I did say that earlier.

A defeat in the Commons would have forced the Government to rethink their approach, because it would have shown that even their own Back Benchers in the coalition recognised the manifest injustice of the bedroom tax, but that vote was lost by a margin of 26 votes, and 47 Labour MPs did not vote for their own motion. They included 10 Scottish Labour MPs, who apparently were in cosy pairing arrangements with their Tory counterparts. That was the best real chance we had at Westminster to sink the bedroom tax, and it was wasted.

I am well aware that there are often very legitimate reasons why Members of the House of Commons cannot attend votes. At times, all of us will have to deal with illness, bereavement, caring responsibilities or competing demands from our constituencies, but for matters of importance, most of us will move heaven and earth to be in the Lobby when we need to be. Those who missed that vote need to ask themselves whether what they were doing was really more important than voting down the bedroom tax.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone.

It is good for Scottish Members of Parliament to have an opportunity to debate the bedroom tax and its impact on Scottish constituents and constituencies. As well as examining the specific problems and effects in Scotland, the report considers what should be done to mitigate those problems. We were inspired to produce our report by the policy’s impact on our constituents and the constituents of colleagues across Scotland—across parties, Members were concerned. I was delighted to welcome the Committee to my hometown of Airdrie to see the impact of the bedroom tax and what is being done in Airdrie and throughout north Lanarkshire.

Before the inquiry started, I campaigned on the bedroom tax in my constituency. At the beginning of my campaign I started a joint campaign with the local Scottish National party. That had not been done before, but we came together as two local political parties because we were united in our anger at the UK Government—the Tories and the Lib Dems—for introducing the policy, which was doing so much harm in our local area. Unfortunately, it quickly became clear to us in Scotland that the Scottish Government were not doing everything they could have done, and with regret the happy partnership ended rather quickly.

When the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson), spoke earlier, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) was chuntering as usual, and I want to get it on the record. What he said—please correct me if I am wrong—is that it was ridiculous that the Chair of the Select Committee dared to mention that the Scottish Government had played politics on this issue by announcing that the bedroom tax has now been fully mitigated.

The Scottish Government let people suffer for more than a year. Some 82,000 households across Scotland have suffered, losing, on average, £50 a week. By definition, those are the poorest households: they are claiming housing benefit because they are low-income families and low-income households, and 80% of those households have a disabled member. Perhaps the Scottish National party should have spent more time considering what it could do, rather than pointing the finger at us and at the Labour party as a whole.

I was not going to spend time on this, but I feel that I have to defend myself and the Labour party. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) mentioned the Opposition day vote on the bedroom tax. I asked to intervene, but she was in full flow. I agree that that number of Labour MPs should not have been paired, and I am already on the record as having said that—I have said it publicly and I have said it locally. But it is misleading to say, I assume accidentally, that those pairings changed the outcome of the vote. Every single Labour MP was paired with a Government MP, as was confirmed by the parties at the time. It is not true that there would have been a difference in the outcome of the vote. We have to put that on the record, and it is nothing short of hypocritical for the SNP to say that when every single SNP Member of Parliament has missed a vote on bedroom tax legislation.

[Pete Wishart]

That isn’t true.

[Pamela Nash]

I have had it checked by the House of Commons Library. I voted against the bedroom tax seven times, which is all the votes on legislation, and I supported a private Member’s Bill, yet the SNP choose continually to mention the Opposition day debate on which some Labour MPs were paired and therefore did not attend. I am sorry to labour that point, but it is important to get on the record the facts of who represented Scotland by voting against the bedroom tax and who did not.

I unequivocally agree with all Members who have said today that, as the report clearly states, the bedroom tax should never have come into fruition and should never have been introduced by this UK Government. I think the bedroom tax should be abolished immediately, but that does not let the Scottish Government off the hook. In my hometown, people still remember the impact that Strathclyde regional council made during the miners’ strikes. That was part of the inspiration for devolution and for the Scottish Parliament: when a local authority could protect its local people, imagine what we could do for all of Scotland. That has been used as an argument for independence, too, but it is an argument for devolution. Devolution was designed to get the best out of the UK and to protect it when something goes wrong and there is a policy with which we do not agree. The SNP has remained anti-devolution and uses the Scottish Parliament only when it suits the SNP.

I hope the Minister will announce the abolition of the bedroom tax today. I will not hold my breath, but I hope she will at least tell us whether the Government are doing an analysis. If that analysis shows that the Government’s aims for the policy are not coming to fruition, will they consider abolishing the bedroom tax not just for Scotland but for all the UK? I am relieved that my constituents will not have to suffer from the bedroom tax in future, although they have already incurred debts. I look forward to a Labour Government abolishing the bedroom tax for the entire UK in 2015.

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

I congratulate hon. Members on their self-restraint. Every Back Bencher who wanted to speak has spoken.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lindsay Roy]

rose—

[Pamela Nash]

Will the Minister give way?

[Esther McVey]

I will not give way just yet.

Since I am talking about people who have to afford their homes, what about people who have bought their own home on a low income but cannot have a spare room because they cannot afford it? We have to look at fairness to the taxpayer and to people in private rented homes, and those in social rented homes, as well as at a bill spiralling out of control. As I said, I am afraid that this problem was handed to us. It is not an easy problem; it is a complex one. It is a difficult problem to solve, but we are solving it.

Talking about the extra support, which is key, we trebled discretionary housing payments for the complex cases; that is the money that we have handed out. We recognise the rural issue and have provided an extra £5 million for that, and we recognise significantly adapted homes, whether with a room for those affected by domestic violence or with specific adaptations for disabled people, for example. We have put an extra £25 million into that. All those things have been acknowledged.

At the same time, claimants or their partners who receive frequent overnight care from someone not in their household were exempt. Parents of disabled children who could not share a room were also exempt. Foster carers had an extra room. Parents with adult children in the armed forces who remained at home when not on operations had exemptions, too. All those people were recognised.

[Pamela Nash]

The Minister mentioned a few numbers relating to money given in mitigation. Exactly how much have the Government saved as a result of this policy? Which organisations have come to the Government, during their analysis of the policy, before and after implementation, and said, “This is a good idea”?

[Esther McVey]

I am not just talking numbers; I am talking lives of people right across the country who are affected by this. We are looking to save £500 million per year. That is what is being rolled out and what is being saved, because at the moment people are moving into other homes. At the moment, that is the amount being saved.

Pensions Bill

Pamela Nash Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Yes, I can confirm that to the right hon. Gentleman. Unless there is some reason why he disagrees with that and wants to come back at me, I will make progress.

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for giving way before he moves on. We are talking about winners and losers. Is it not the case that the average payment that a pensioner will receive per week under the single-tier pension is less than the current average payment?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

No. I am not sure how the hon. Lady arrived at that conclusion. It is not the case. The vast majority will get more in decades to come. We are happy to discuss that further if she has some information that she wants to share with us.

In 2020 three quarters of new pensioners will get the higher state pension, following the introduction of the single tier, particularly benefiting those who have historically had poorer state pension outcomes. There will be better provision for the low-paid, including 60% of the lowest income pensioners who will have higher incomes in retirement by 2040, compared with rolling forward the current system. There will be better provision also for the self-employed—this is a big plus—who for the first time in about 40 years will be treated the same as employees for the purpose of state pension entitlement. That is a genuine gain.

There will be better provision for those with broken contribution records, especially women and those with caring responsibilities. I hope that this will be seen in all parts of the House as part of a rolling process to try to include them in the process and reward them for doing a hugely responsible job in society. More than 700,000 women who reach state pension age in the first decade after single tier is introduced will receive on average £9 a week more. That is quite a significant change. By bringing forward implementation to 2016 rather than 2017, an additional 85,000 women will retire under the single tier. That was a debate that took place previously and I hope the measure will be welcomed in all parts of the House. However, this better provision will be sustainable only if we get to grips with the unprecedented demographic shifts reflecting and affecting our population.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pamela Nash]

The pensions Minister gave the figure of £4.5 billion to put this group of women born between April ‘51 and ‘53 on equal terms with men. We have been hearing during the debate that this is about winners and losers, but does that not show that women born between ‘51 and ‘53 are losing out to the tune of £4.5 billion?

[Mr Byrne]

It is hard to refute my hon. Friend’s argument. I suppose we must look at the position of those women together with the consequences of the reforms that the Secretary of State has authored to auto-enrolment—I know he will do that. One of the first decisions he took in the Pensions Act 2011 was to link the threshold for participation in auto-enrolment to the personal allowance. As the personal allowance has gone up, more and more low-paid people have fallen out of the auto-enrolment system. In 2011-12, 600,000 people fell out of auto-enrolment, and another 100,000 in 2012-12. In 2013-14, 420,000 people will fall out of the auto-enrolment system—1.1 million people have been carved out of that system.

This is an incredibly important part of the pensions saving architecture for the future, and I am extremely concerned that a number of low-paid people—more than 1 million, most of them women—have been shut out of the auto-enrolment system. To that mix we now say to 720,000 women who had the misfortune to be born between April 1951 and 1952, that they will not get the new system either.

Child Support Agency

Pamela Nash Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

I am very pleased to secure the debate, and to have the opportunity to exchange views with the Minister on the problems still being faced by parents assessed by the Child Support Agency under the 1993 scheme. I will concentrate on how this has severely affected one of my constituents, about whose case I have already been in correspondence with the Minister and the Department. It may seem odd to request a debate at the moment, when the Government have recently launched the most recent incarnation of the Child Support Agency. However, I would like to stress from the outset that I do not believe my constituent’s experience is an isolated one, and wish to take this chance to explore what might be a larger, underlying problem.

It is in the mood of cross-party co-operation that I wish to conduct the debate, as it would not be fair or helpful to blame any one party or Government for the numerous IT policy failings that have occurred in the administration of the Child Support Agency, from its inception to the present day, under different Governments. The contentious issue of ensuring that parents support their children after the breakdown of a relationship has undergone repeated, technical and bureaucratic tinkering by successive Governments.

When established in 1993, the CSA was originally designed simply to collect and enforce the child maintenance payments of non-resident parents on a formulaic basis. Government intervention was necessary following a long line of failures by the courts to establish a fair and consistent process of addressing the situation. However, the system created out of the Child Support Act 1991 was a product of the previous recession. As a result, it has been widely accused of being driven with the aim of saving the Government money, rather than collecting it for the children to whom it was owed. I remember only too well CSA letters dropping through my own letterbox as a child, and I can tell the Minister that the content of those letters pleased neither my mum nor my dad. Despite repeated attempts to fix the problems of the CSA, I find it unacceptable that there are still people being assessed under the same system that could not help my own family more than 20 years ago.

My constituent, Gordon Russell, was first assessed by the CSA in April 2002, and he has paid what the CSA assessed he was due to pay up until very recently. Because of the date of his original assessment, his payments were assessed under the 1993 scheme. This week the 2003 scheme is 10 years old, and yet Mr Russell has never been allowed to change over to it. He and I have calculated that, had he been reassessed under the 2003 scheme when he expected to be in 2004, he would have paid more than £23,000 less in child maintenance than he has paid as a result of being assessed under the 1993 scheme.

I want to demonstrate how the systemic failures of both the 1993 scheme and the revised 2003 scheme have impacted on Mr Russell, and possibly many others. It is the Government’s responsibility to ensure that policies are, and are seen to be, equitable—that is, that two people in almost identical situations should never find themselves in very different financial positions solely as a result of Government policy. However, by running the 1993 scheme concurrently with the 2003 scheme, that is precisely what has happened to Mr Russell, who is expected to pay almost double the amount paid by others in exactly the same financial and personal situation who were assessed post-March 2003.

Mr Russell contacted my office early in my parliamentary career. He is a non-resident parent of two children. Initially, following his separation from his wife in 2000, they agreed a sum for maintenance between themselves. They arrived at it after he contacted the Child Support Agency for advice on how to proceed. He says he was told that the system was very complex and was about to be amended. With that in mind, Mr Russell and his ex-wife used the 1993 scheme as a calculator, but at that point the CSA was not directly involved in the assessment or the administration of the payments. In 2002, for various reasons, that voluntary agreement broke down and the CSA was contacted by Mr Russell’s ex-wife. At that point a new CSA case was opened and an assessment made under the 1993 scheme of the time. The resulting calculation was a monthly payment by Mr Russell of just under £585. Again, the CSA was not involved in the administration of the payments, which I understand Mr Russell made on a voluntary basis to his ex-wife.

In spring 2003, Mr Russell received a letter from Doug Smith, the chief executive of the Child Support Agency, informing him of the new assessment scheme—I expect it was sent to many people in his position. The letter stated:

“The introduction of the new scheme will be a complex task, which must be planned and handled very carefully. When the Government is sure that the changes are working well for new applications, I will write to you again. I will then explain when your child support maintenance will change and what this means for you.”

It is clear that Mr Russell and the others who received these letters were continually reassured by the CSA that their cases would eventually be transferred to the new scheme, but that never transpired. The reasons given for the failure of the administration of the 1993 scheme centred on an over-complicated calculations process, an inadequate enforcement procedure and multiple IT failures. The 2003 scheme was sadly also plagued by IT problems. I understand that one issue for the new system was that cases from the old scheme could not be transferred to the new scheme’s simpler assessment process. That resulted in the CSA being left to administer two different systems concurrently, in a twin-track process. When Doug Smith departed the CSA, not long after he wrote that letter, he declared:

“I and the senior management team have done a good job over the last year to mask the worst impact of this IT system from the people who really count in this, who are our clients.”

Lord Kirkwood, then Chair of this House’s Select Committee on Work and Pensions, disagreed, saying of the CSA’s problems:

“This is not just about computers. It is a systemic, chronic failure of management right across the totality of the agency.”

For eight years Mr Russell paid the amount agreed with the CSA under the 1993 scheme. His expectation that he would be transferred to the new scheme was never met. In 2012, Mr Russell’s daughter celebrated her 19th birthday, which under the CSA’s rules meant that his maintenance payment for his children needed to be recalculated. He was told at that point that his monthly payment would be £511 for only one child. He challenged that figure, as it was only £74 less than he was paying for two children. As a result, a new assessment was made, still under the 1993 scheme, which concluded that he was in fact due to pay £618 a month—more than he was previously paying for both children. At that point Mr Russell decided he had to take a stand on this inequity, as he felt—indeed, he has been advised—that he should be on the 2003 scheme, under which he would be paying almost half that amount. In fact, he could no longer afford to pay that much money and felt that he should not have to. At that point he took the decision to pay the sum of £350 a month, which was what he calculated he would be paying if he had been assessed under the 2003 scheme. As a result, Mr Russell started to accrue arrears, and only two weeks ago, his wages were arrested.

For the past few months, I have been acting in support of Mr Russell’s case, the essence of which is that there is a gross inequity between his position and that of someone in identical circumstances who just happened to be introduced into the CSA scheme a few months after he was. To be clear, a non-resident parent like Mr Russell with children of the same age living with a parent with an identical financial situation to that of Mr Russell’s ex-wife, and with the same salary and financial commitments as Mr Russell, could pay much less child maintenance if they had been assessed post-March 2003.

I do not see how the Minister or anyone else can argue that that is a fair system. It is unfair to the non-resident parent who pays double the amount, and it is unfair to the children and parents who receive less under the same scheme. I would appreciate hearing from the Minister how many non-resident parents are still paying maintenance calculated under the 1993 scheme, and how many of those parents are paying more than they would be paying if they had been assessed under the 2003 scheme.

The Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008 made provision for a new system of child support to replace both the existing systems and to end the twin-track approach. Subsequently, it was decided that cases would not be transferred after all from the pre-2003 caseload to the post-2003 system as planned. Instead, all cases would eventually move over to the new system, once it was up and running. That sounds fair, but unfortunately there appears to be a nine-year gap between when the decision was first taken under the previous Government and its being implemented by this Government, and 2017 is the date when all cases are planned to have been moved over. That means that cases such as that of my constituent will have to continue under the current arrangements unless there is some other reason to convert the case. That would normally apply if a parent on the pre-2003 system made a new application to the CSA in relation to a second child, in what is known as a linked case.

My understanding is that it is impossible to change from the 1993 scheme to the 2003 scheme, or indeed to the new scheme, unless the paying parent has another child or the receiving parent has another child with another non-resident parent who they are claiming maintenance from. I would appreciate clarification from the Minister on whether that is correct. I see him nodding. In that case, I want to ask him why that is the case. The CSA’s own documentation says that that is the case so that all children in linked cases are assessed under the same scheme. I presume that that is to make it fairer for all concerned. I would argue that, to ensure the system is fair, surely all cases in the UK should be assessed under exactly the same scheme.

Reassessment is made regularly in a whole range of changes of circumstances, including parents getting married or moving jobs. I am still not clear about the obstacle to reassessing a person’s case on a different scheme when many changes of circumstances result in a recalculation anyway. I cannot help but guess that cost might be a factor. I would appreciate it if the Minister could provide an estimate of the administrative cost of moving an individual from the 1993 scheme to the 2003 scheme.

In terms of the differences between the two schemes, I find it unacceptable that, in the case of Mr Russell, I have recently received correspondence from CSA officials and from the Minister indicating that, in the view of the Government, it is simply a matter of moving between two equal but different systems. For example, the Minister stated in a letter to me that:

“For every parent who believes they will gain under the 2003 scheme, there is a parent who may lose out. While in most 1993 scheme cases one of the two parents would prefer to move onto the 2003 scheme for financial reasons it would not be fair or practical to transfer a case for this reason.”

That argument was reiterated by Andrew Jackson, a CSA senior client service manager, in a letter to me stating that

“for every parent who may believe they will gain under the new rules, there is a parent who may lose out.”

Surely what they should be arguing is that all parents, and all children for that matter, should be treated equally.

The 1993 scheme was deemed unfit, and a new scheme was therefore put in place. That was a replacement improved scheme, and it was never designed to be run long term alongside the previous scheme. By definition, as a replacement scheme it was introduced as it was thought to be fairer. I find the Government’s argument somewhat bizarre—namely, that for every loser as a result of the two-track approach to CSA there is a corresponding winner—as if someone gaining from an unfair system somehow compensates those who lose out. In my opinion, this argument about swings and roundabouts to support an indefensible two-track system is not worthy of the Department or the Minister.

If the IT problems of the CSA did not exist, would they continue to run two systems on the basis that, on average, one person’s loss is another person’s gain? Of course not. If the administrative, managerial and IT problems did not exist at the CSA, we would have had a single system many years ago. Yes, within such a system, there could be some winners and losers, but the important point would be that everyone would be assessed under the same rules. I appreciate that that is what the new system coming into play is planning to do but, as I said earlier, people will have to wait a long time before they go on to it, which is not good enough.

The most recent correspondence I received from the CSA about this case was from a complaints senior review manager and it is littered with serious errors about the basic facts of the case, including the accusation that Mr Russell has been paying only £350 a month since April 2002, when in fact he paid the full assessed amount up to June 2012. Since then, he has chosen to pay what he would pay if assessed under the 2003 scheme. I appreciate that this is a small and specific example of a mistake, but how can my constituent—or, for that matter, anyone—have faith in the CSA’s ability to run such an important system when it gets simple facts wrong in respect of a serious complaint by a Member of Parliament leading to months of correspondence between myself and the organisation?

In conclusion, the system was changed in 2003 because the previous one was not working—it was not fit for purpose and it was unfair. The figures I have cited this evening are not just figures on a balance sheet, and cannot be put down simply to bad luck if a person was assessed under the 1993 scheme. Successive Governments have had a decade to fix this, and lives have been ruined in the meantime. I hope that the Minister is able to answer some of the points I have raised, particularly about how many people are still paying maintenance assessed under the 1993 scheme. Why exactly have all those people never been switched over to the 2003 scheme? What are the Government going to do to stop this situation continuing and to compensate those who have suffered as a result? How long will it be before those assessed before March 2003 are moved on to the latest scheme? If the 1993 scheme was found to be unfair, why did the Government continue to use it for another 10 years?

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) on securing this debate and on the assiduity with which she has represented her constituent. I have looked into the individual case and corresponded with her a number of times about it. I will frame my remarks in a more general way, however, so as not to disclose any further personal information about her constituent, save to say that if the Child Support Agency has sent a recent letter containing factual errors, I hope she will send me a copy as I would be happy to look further into that specific issue.

The hon. Lady raised an important point about the fact that there are still 261,000 cases of people being assessed under the 1993 rules. Perfectly reasonably, she said that she did not want to approach the debate in a partisan manner, and neither do I. I will simply observe, chronologically as it were, that the 2003 system came in. I shall say more about the reasons for that, but it was not because the 1993 system was felt to be fundamentally unfair or that the figures the system produced were somehow wrong. Rather, it was about the massive bureaucracy and complexity of assessing anybody, which meant vast amounts of time were required and vast amounts of evidence had to be gathered. That is why the decision was taken by the previous Government to streamline all that—not because the answers of the 1993 system were inherently wrong or worse than under the 2003 system, but because of the awful amount of time and effort involved. It was fundamentally a streamlining process.

The original intention was, as the hon. Lady said, to migrate people across, and for several years the previous Government sought to do that in good faith. That is why letters of the sort she mentioned from Doug Smith were sent. Those letters were subject to the caveat that when the Government were convinced things were in order, those people would be moved across—but they never were. In fact, it was the independent Henshaw report that finally put the nail in coffin of this idea back in 2006. So well into the period of the last Government, it was decided that it was simply not feasible to bulk transfer people across. As the hon. Lady will have gathered—now there are more than a quarter of a million of cases; back then, there were far more—the IT issues, the compatibility of the data and the whole difficulty involved in moving things across meant that bulk transfer and bulk case closure were simply not an option.

The hon. Lady asked why, if a single constituent had calculated that he would pay less under the 2003 system, we could not just transfer that one person. Within the total of 261,000, there will be an awful lot of people who are potentially in that position. I do not know how many precisely, because we have not made 261,000 calculations; if we had, we could probably transfer all the people concerned. However, it is clear that there will be a proportion of people of whom that is true, and a proportion of whom the opposite is true.

I was pleased when the hon. Lady rightly said that what matters is the well-being of the children. A unilateral case-by-case closure is currently against the law, but if we changed the law to enable all the people who did not fancy their ’93 assessment because they thought it was bigger than the 2003 assessment simply to transfer to the latter, tens of thousands of children—perhaps hundreds of thousands—would receive less child maintenance.

The position would be asymmetrical, because parents with care who calculated that they were receiving more under the old system would presumably not have a right of veto. All the non-resident parents who were paying more under the old system than they would under the new one would be transferred, although there would be a massive take-up problem: people would be asking us to do calculations and all the rest of it. If people opted to be transferred in tens of thousands of cases, tens of thousands of children would receive less money and no one would receive more, because no one would move in the other direction.

I hope the hon. Lady recognises that that would create a different kind of unfairness. How is it fair for someone who would pay less under the new system to be able to move to that system, while someone else—a mother, for example—who would receive a larger amount under the new system because the maintenance would be higher, as it will be in some cases, cannot do the same? That person will then persuade her Member of Parliament to hold an Adjournment debate and say, “It’s not fair. My ex-husband could transfer because he wanted to pay less, and I should like to be in the system in which I receive more. Why can he do what he wants and I cannot?”

[Pamela Nash]

I would argue that if non-resident parents are to be allowed to ask to be transferred, resident parents should have the same right.

Will the Minister clarify his position on cases in which there is such a large discrepancy between the amounts being paid under the two schemes? How can both schemes be seen to be fair when according to one assessment my constituent should be paying £350 a month and according to the other he should be paying nearly £600 a month?

[Steve Webb]

The aim of the ’93 system was to produce a tailored figure, and it took account of factors such as housing and travel costs. I believe that in some cases nearly 100 items of data were required to calculate the assessment. The incomes of the new partner and the parent with care had to be assessed, for instance. There are different answers to different questions. If those doing the calculations take the view that all the complexities of people’s circumstances should be taken into account, they will come up with one number; if they take the view that what is wanted is a rough and ready, quick calculation—15%, 20%, 25%; now let us get on with our lives—they will come up with a different number. Is one right? Is the other one right? Who is to say?

It could be argued that a comprehensive system is fairer because it is tailored to individual cases, but the calculation takes for ever. The last Government took the view that we were spending all our time doing complicated sums instead of getting child maintenance to people. The change was not based on the view that the 1993 figures were wrong—that they were inherently unfair to one party or another.

The hon. Lady asked about the process of migration. That is obviously important to her constituent, and I should probably put something on record now, because we have not said a great deal about it so far. The new system is intended to turn things around. That may be more difficult in the case of those who have been in the system for a decade or more, but, in general, we are trying to make sorting things out the default.

For many years the couple to whom the hon. Lady referred seem to have talked to each other and resolved matters. We know that children do better when mum and dad sort things out between themselves, and our goal is to make the child maintenance service a last resort. We are investing resources in help and support for separated families—in web applications, advice services and so on—to help people to sort things out for themselves, and if they contact us, we will signpost them and advise them on how they can do that. Clearly, however, some will still come to us, and about 1 million cases remain in the system, so we will have a migration process. Let me explain how that will work.

Pre-Christmas, in December, we started the process for new cases where there were four or more children. It is a very slow pathfinder system trying to learn from the ’93 and ’03 failures. Those cases will go straight into the new system and later this year, when we are convinced that it is working—it is going well so far—we will bring in the two-child-and-above new cases, and later still in the year all new cases. Once we are convinced all of that is working, we will begin the process of migration.

When we close cases under the existing two systems and bring them into the new system, we will encourage parents to reach family-based arrangements. Cases will be closed over a three-year period from next year, and where maintenance has been hard-won—where a non-resident parent has tried quite hard not to pay but we have got payment—we are thinking very carefully about how we can manage the case closure and migration process to make sure we do not disrupt the maintenance that is flowing. We are thinking very carefully about the sequencing of the way we do that.

We will introduce charges for the use of the statutory scheme, particularly on the non-resident parent. Again, the idea is to encourage both parties to reach a family-based arrangement, rather than to use the statutory system. Both parents can avoid collection fees entirely by paying directly using Direct Pay. Therefore, in the vast majority of cases we will give the paying parent the opportunity to pay the receiving parent directly. This Direct Pay option will give parents access to the statutory service in a way that can help rebuild trust between them.

We want to avoid the mistakes of the past. We acknowledge that some parents are better off under the ’93 scheme and some are better off under the ’03 scheme, but I stress for the record that these are statutory assessments, so people cannot say, “I don’t think the law as it stands is fair, so I will decide what I will pay.” These are legal liabilities, so the amounts are owed; it is not a matter of choice, I am afraid. I appreciate the point that some people, on both sides in many cases, will feel the sum is unfair. That is why if somebody does not pay what they are legally required to pay, arrears build up, and that will remain the case.

The previous Administration originally planned to move all 1993 scheme cases to the 2003 scheme, but it was simply not possible clerically to move 250,000 or so cases one at a time. We want to focus our energies on getting the new scheme up and running and migrating everyone to it—except where we can secure family-based arrangements—rather than put a lot of effort into moving people from the previous-but-one scheme into the previous scheme.

We are trying to ensure what happened in the past does not happen again. We are using tried-and-tested—standardised—software, as one of the problems with the ’93 system was that it was bespoke and unlike anything anyone else was using. We are also introducing the 2012 scheme gradually through a pathfinder approach, so that any issues can be picked up at an early stage, before we have a large case load.

The 2012 scheme, as I mentioned, is now open and progress so far has been good. We will gradually move people across and we have been consulting on the exact sequencing. I cannot give the hon. Lady a date for when her constituent’s case will be moved across, but our idea is to contact people six months ahead of the point at which their case would be due to be closed. We will encourage them to reach a family-based arrangement where possible and will support them in doing that. If that is not possible, six months afterwards the case can be reopened under the 2012 system, which is designed to be simpler and contains charges to encourage people to come to their own arrangements.

Another point that I think is relevant to her constituent’s case is that the 2012 scheme uses more up-to-date income information. One problem with cases on the ’93 system is that they are often stuck in the system untouched, so the maintenance assessments get very out of date, and they can be based on very old income data. I do not know whether that is the case with her constituent, but if someone asks for a reassessment and finds that their liability has gone up, that is often because the previous assessment was based on very old wage data.

The beauty of the new system is that it will use most recent tax return data from HMRC. Rather than our having to go to a non-resident parent, ask for wage slips, wait for them to come back, process them and so on without reassessing the assessment, those data will feed through automatically to us. Once a year on the anniversary we will revisit the assessment and update it with the latest income information so people will not have the rude shock of a sudden hike or drop in their liability, which will be based on the latest income information.

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that there is a set of issues for the people on the ’93 system who are paying more than those on the ’03 system. Equally, a set of parents with care would love to be on the ’03 system but are stuck on the ’93 system. It is important to realise that and perhaps we have not communicated it in correspondence as clearly as we might. We are not saying that because the computers cannot do it there is no issue of fairness, but there are multiple issues of fairness.

What we mean by “for every one, there is another” is that for every parent with care who would receive more under the new system, there is a non-resident parent who would pay less under it. Simply allowing case-by-case migration, quite aside from being unlawful, would create a different set of injustices. That is my conclusion: we want to get as quickly as we can to a new streamlined system that is fair to all and in which we do not have either of the legacy systems while learning the lessons from the past. As the hon. Lady rightly said, the process has not worked as well in the past as it should have done and we want to get to the new system as quickly as we can.

Question put and agreed to.

Atos Work Capability Assessments

Pamela Nash Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

Nothing has shocked me more as the Member of Parliament for Airdrie and Shotts than the sheer scale of anxiety and hardship caused by the flawed work capability assessments, which is apparent in the number of people visiting my office every week. I am sure that that experience is replicated across the House and that we will hear many such stories today. I have had a frail lady sitting in my office who had only recently finished chemotherapy but had been told she was fit for work. I have had a lady who suffered 90% burns to her body—she spends every day in severe pain—and was told that she was now ready to join the Work programme. I could list hundreds of others—sadly, these are very familiar stories. These people are having their lives ruined by a system that was designed to support them.

Last year the whole country came together to celebrate the Paralympic games. I have to say that the vast majority of the country joined those booing in the Olympic park when the Chancellor took the spotlight, but he was not the only unpopular person at the games. Atos’s sponsorship was also widely condemned, leading to protests throughout the country, including by our very own Team GB. Unfortunately, the Scottish Government have not listened to the Scottish people on this. In fact, our Deputy First Minister has welcomed Atos’s sponsorship of the Commonwealth games next year. She has tried to wriggle out of it by saying that Atos is only carrying out the will of the UK Government. However, the Scottish people disagree not only with the structure of these work capability assessments but with the incompetence with which they are being carried out.

As I have such limited time today, I will restrict the rest of my comments to the recording of work capability assessments, which I have raised before on the Floor of the House. I know that there has been a pilot of recording work capability assessments as a result of Harrington review. The result was that the majority of those being assessed do not wish to have their assessments recorded. However, recording should continue to be offered to everyone being assessed, and the reason for doing this—the huge number of assessments whose results are overruled when they go to appeal—should also be explained to every claimant.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful case. Does she agree that the Atos assessment process is not only humiliating and demeaning for those involved—and often plain wrong—but counter-productive, in the sense that it adds to the stress they are under, making sick people even sicker?

[Pamela Nash]

I thank the hon. Lady for that contribution. I am sure she has had the experience, as I have, of seeing people who have claimed employment and support allowance as a result of a physical disability or illness ending up with mental health problems owing to the stress of going through the system.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it says a great deal about the nature of the work capability assessment that not only do many people win their appeals but that so many are appealing that this can lead to delays of up to 25 weeks for them to be heard?

--- Later in debate ---

[Pamela Nash]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We have heard that one in six of those claiming ESA ends up eventually winning their appeal, but in North Lanarkshire—the local authority area that I live in—60% of appeals are being won by those lodging them.

To return to the recording of assessments, the Minister’s predecessor, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), made it clear in a Westminster Hall debate last September that he felt that Atos

“should make recording available on a voluntary basis”.—[Official Report, 4 September 2012; Vol. 549, c. 42WH.]

However, not a single constituent of mine who has come to see me about work capability assessments has told me that they have been offered the prospect of having it recorded. In fact, one constituent told me that she had asked for her assessment to be filmed, following her previous assessment, which resulted in a report that bore little resemblance to that assessment. On that occasion she was found fit for work, but she subsequently won her appeal. She was informed that recording would indeed be possible, but that she would have to pay for a private, independent company to come in to record her assessment. Equipment was not made available to her. She had hoped to take a family member in to film the assessment, but was told that this would not be allowed or appropriate. How on earth is a person living on benefits—living on the breadline—supposed to be able to afford to pay a private company to record their assessment?

The Minister’s predecessor also stated in that debate that additional audio recording machines had been ordered for work capability assessments. I hope that the Minister can today update the House on the progress made on that and on whether visual recording equipment is being purchased for that purpose. I would also like clarification on the right of the claimant to request a recording. If claimants have that right, will the Minister make it clear whether Atos is obliged to provide a recording? Will Atos reschedule an assessment date if the person concerned is told that equipment is not available on the original date? In the event that a claimant refused to go through with an assessment without a recording, would they be sanctioned in terms of their benefits?

This is an important issue to raise in the House today. Not only does it affect those going through the assessments directly, but there is a huge cost for the taxpayer, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher), who has brought this matter to the House today, illustrated in his speech. This process has cost £60 million in the last tax year, which is more than half the original cost of the contract with Atos to perform the work capability assessments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr McKenzie]

I could not agree with my hon. Friend more. The accuracy of assessments is essential, as I will go on to discuss later.

Let me outline briefly some of the cases that have been brought to my surgeries, on the back of a recurring issue now being referred to by my constituents as the “Lazarus letter”. This is a letter they receive instructing them to make their way to Glasgow for assessment and containing many connotations about what will befall their benefits. A constituent who suffers from severe cerebral palsy and could not travel was refused a home visit and told to go to Glasgow to be tested. Another constituent who was recovering after being seriously injured in an accident was advised to attend an Atos assessment in Glasgow. Both those constituents could not possibly travel because they were in so much pain, and I had to get involved and ask for a home assessment for them. It does not end there because they then had their benefits cut or stopped because Atos sent the assessment forms to the wrong address. If it cannot get the address right, what chance does it have with assessments?

Clearly many of my constituents have not been treated with the fairness and decency they deserve. Although I realise that we need to see whether people can work, we need a system that is humane and fair, not one that causes fear and loathing. It is time the Government realised that they are driving many sick and disabled people into poverty. What does the Minister think of Citizens Advice’s detailed year-long study “Right first time?” on the controversial work capability assessment run by Atos, which has revealed evidence of widespread inaccuracies in the medical reports that help to determine whether individuals are eligible for sickness benefits? Citizens Advice also tracked a group of people through the process of claiming employment and support allowance and looked at how their claims were handled. The report’s conclusions are stark: 37 individuals were tracked and had their reports examined, with serious levels of inaccuracy revealed in up to 43% of the reports. That level is significant enough to have an impact on the claimant’s eligibility for benefits—surely our sick and disabled deserve better than this.

The low rate of accuracy is worrying because the reports are used in deciding entitlement to other benefits. Is it not better to have an accurate, fair and just system of medical assessment, one that claimants know will treat them fairly and with the humanity they deserve, rather than a system that is, frankly, unfit for purpose and that uses a company, Atos, that instils fear and loathing in people, resulting in a system where people are continually appealing against decisions? We have already heard that the success rate against the decisions is about 60%.

[Pamela Nash]

Although the Department has made much of the fact that Atos does not actually make the decisions, with that being done by decision makers in the job centres, I have never seen evidence of the decision makers taking account of any evidence apart from the Atos assessment and the questionnaire, unless the case goes through appeal or reconsideration. Does my hon. Friend agree that decision makers should in every assessment be seeking the opinion of the person’s GP and of other professionals who are offering the person care at that time?

[Mr McKenzie]

I thoroughly agree with my hon. Friend on that point. It is ridiculous to have people making an assessment based on a tick-list that looks like it should be used for an MOT on a car.

We need to ensure that the people who are going through the system are treated well, justly and fairly. The British Medical Association has called for the work capability assessment to end immediately and be replaced with a system that does not cause harm to some of the most vulnerable people in society. I call on the Government to change course and look again at this process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hoban]

No, I am not going to give way. I want to make some more progress and the hon. Lady raised some questions that I want to address.

It has also been suggested that Atos health care professionals make decisions on benefit entitlement. They do not. Those decisions are made by DWP decision makers. They take the ESA50—the form people complete when making an ESA claim—any further medical evidence produced by a GP, consultant or health practitioner with whom the claimant is working, and the Atos assessment, but they look at all that evidence. The decision is made by DWP decision makers, not Atos. That is why there are a number of cases where the DWP decision maker’s decision has been different from any recommendation made by Atos. It is up to the DWP—the decision is made by the Department, not Atos—to decide who goes into which group.

[Pamela Nash]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hoban]

Let me make a bit more progress.

People say that the number of appeals overturned at tribunal is evidence of poor Atos reports—a point raised by the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore). When we asked judges why they overturned DWP decisions, they said that an error in the Atos assessment was the primary reason for an overturn in only 0.3% of cases. However, although it happens very rarely, I agree with her on one point: I would like to get more information from the judges.

Remploy

Pamela Nash Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

Of course we are cutting through any bureaucracy. However, a process has to be fulfilled and carefully followed. The process has only just started and a 90-day consultation will begin in January, so those people whom the hon. Gentleman has found who might be interested in taking the factory forward should now make their case and it will be taken up by the Remploy board.

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

When the last round of closures was announced by the Government, I was visited by several of my constituents who worked at the nearby Remploy factory. They sat in my office and were absolutely devastated, and I tried to console them. Now we hear that hundreds more across the UK face the same fate. We also know that 90% of those who were sacked last time by the Government are still not in work. Will the Minister make it clear why 90% are not in work and, if she cannot, why she is pressing ahead with these closures?

[Esther McVey]

As to why the previous Government failed, that question should be put in the direction of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne). I reiterate that we are working as closely as possible with these people. We have put in place personal support and that is increasing on a daily basis. We intend to get as many of these people as possible into work.

Atos Healthcare

Pamela Nash Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Tom Greatrex]

I will take one more intervention. I apologise to everyone else, but I want to leave time for other hon. Members to make contributions. I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash).

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

On the point about recording assessments, a constituent of mine was told recently that they could record the assessment, but only if they paid for a private, independent company to come in and do it. Obviously, someone who is living on benefits cannot afford that. I wrote to the Minister at the time about the issue. I wonder whether he can deal with the recording of assessments in his closing remarks.

[Tom Greatrex]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She has made a point to which I hope the Minister will be able to respond.

I will attempt to move on. Back in February, I wrote to the National Audit Office to outline concerns about the contract between Atos Healthcare and the DWP. The correspondence centred on two issues: first, a lack of efficiency in the use of public funds, to which I have referred, and, secondly, a lack of accountability inherent in the disbursement of those public funds. As the recent House of Commons Library note and many of the figures that I have received as answers to parliamentary questions over the past 18 months or so have confirmed, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) reflected, 41% of those found fit for work appeal the decision and 38% have their appeal upheld. For those who seek the advice and support of professional advocacy groups such as Citizens Advice, the appeal success rate is closer to 70%. Just last week, Kent’s largest citizens advice bureau indicated an appeal success rate of 95%.

The impact of what is happening is twofold. First, too many sick and disabled people are being found fit for work when they are not. They become entangled in a lengthy appeal process that can occupy up to nine months of their time. In many cases, even when the appeal is successful, the individual is placed in the work-related activity group and then they have to begin the whole process anew.