Child Maintenance Service

Paul Masterton Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) on securing this important debate.

The question of the effectiveness of the CMS is one that my team and I frequently discuss in the office, after yet another case is brought forward. I suspect that all of us in the Chamber could have used up 90 minutes ourselves, talking about our experience. I am grateful that we have the opportunity to air some of the issues today. I want to focus on two cases that my office has been dealing with that sum up the issues that both paying and receiving parents often face.

One case that I have been working on for a long time, of which the Minister is aware, concerns a paying parent who has gone through much adversity throughout his life. Following the breakdown of the relationship, the receiving parent took the case to the CMS, which contacted HMRC and obtained the most recent income information from 2015. My constituent at that time had a well-paid job, so the maintenance calculation was substantial, but he had left that employment in the previous tax year and, combined with the breakdown of his relationship and the sudden death of his brother, who was killed in a hit and run, he struggled to cope mentally. Nevertheless, the maintenance calculation would obviously remain until he could prove that he no longer earned that income. He phoned up many times to start the process but could never follow it through because of a chaotic lifestyle and deteriorating mental health. He frequently went AWOL and would be uncontactable even by his family, who were having to help him with his rent and bills to try to get him back on his feet.

My constituent found the CMS unapproachable and difficult, and simply could not deal with the situation he was in. He did what many people do when they feel that they are at the bottom of a rut in their lives, and shut the whole situation out, not responding to or even opening letters. Despite a P60 the following tax year proving that he did not earn anywhere near the income on which the maintenance was based, the CMS refused to reconsider the decision. The paying parent was out of time to appeal, because he lacked the knowledge, capacity or support to do so, and is now thousands of pounds in arrears that are entirely incorrect, based on the CMS’s rules, and completely unpayable, owing to the dramatic decline in his income.

Of course, MPs frequently see receiving parents who have an incredibly difficult time getting the money they are owed. Recently, a receiving parent asked the CMS for a variation, as their ex-partner was earning about £100,000 per annum. As is common for someone on such an income, that paying parent had a rather good accountant and was able to disclose to the CMS an income of less than £400 per week—a completely bogus figure. The maintenance calculation was minuscule as a result. Other receiving parents have highlighted issues with their former partner diverting money into pension schemes and other arrangements, to reduce their income and hence their maintenance contributions.

While the CMS is there to ensure that paying parents pay their liabilities, it should have a responsibility to every person involved in the claim—the parent who is paying maintenance but in many cases is unable even to see their own child; the receiving parent who has lost a household income and is supporting a child, often on their own; and of course the child or children at the heart of the whole thing, whose family has broken down and who may now find themselves at the centre of an angry battle between their parents over maintenance. It is not right that some of our constituents are paying wrong amounts and incorrect arrears, and it is certainly not right that parents are not getting the money they are entitled to and are left struggling because of loopholes. The CMS has an incredibly difficult task, but while things have undoubtedly got better than they were under its predecessor organisation, it is not in my experience effective in handling particularly difficult or complex cases.

Relationship breakdowns are never easy on anyone, so it is essential to have a functional system, with an understanding that it is dealing with real people, who may be going through the most difficult times in their lives. Too often, dealing with the CMS can feel robotic and impersonal, with neither parent feeling properly listened to or supported. We can do better.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Masterton Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

The Government have actually delivered an additional 930,000 job opportunities for disabled people over the past five years, and for the first time more disabled people are in work than out of work. The NAO also welcomed our joint work with the Department of Health and Social Care, particularly in the area of mental health. As for the Disability Confident scheme, I welcome the fact that 49% of the businesses that have signed up have said that it helped them to recruit at least one additional member of staff with either a disability or a long-term health condition.

[Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)]

4. What steps the Government are taking to support young vulnerable adults in receipt of universal credit who live in supported accommodation.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Will Quince)]

As announced in August last year, housing costs for all claimants in supported housing, including universal credit claimants, will continue to be met through housing benefit. Maintaining housing benefit for all supported housing reflects the particular needs of these vulnerable groups.

[Paul Masterton]

I welcome the Minister to his new role. However, is he aware of an issue with the Universal Credit Regulations 2013, which refer only to English county councils as relevant bodies? Supported accommodation provided by Scottish local authorities is not covered, even though those living in identical circumstances in accommodation in England will be covered and so will still be subject to housing benefit. Will he meet me to discuss the matter?

[Will Quince]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He is a passionate campaigner, and I recognise that that is a specific constituency issue. There is no difference in how English lower-tier local authorities and Scottish local authorities are treated within the regulations. Amendments to the regulations were introduced in 2014 to extend the protection to other supported housing, which was not previously included and was most likely to be affected by the welfare reforms. However, I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss this complex issue further.

--- Later in debate ---

[Amber Rudd]

I am aware of this, and a number of Members of Parliament have raised issues with me. As a Member of Parliament myself, I know that we need to do better at making sure that people do not have to wait so long for a tribunal, so I am looking again at what we can do. I am focusing particularly on making sure that the first decision collects more information, and that the mandatory reassessment has more content put into it. We are already looking into this, and I am seeing some extraordinarily good progress being made in making sure that the mandatory reconsideration has more information.

I will come back to the hon. Lady and others with more information in due course. I recognise that we need to do more, and I am on it.

[Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)]

What progress is being made to support more people in East Renfrewshire into an occupational pension scheme through auto-enrolment?

[Guy Opperman]

It was a great pleasure to visit Barrhead with my hon. Friend and meet his outstanding credit union, which is one of 1,290 employers providing 5,000 employees across his East Renfrewshire constituency with automatically enrolled pensions. It is a cross-party success story, with 10.4 million people now automatically enrolled.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Masterton Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman]

The reality is that pensioner poverty is at an historically low level. The hon. Lady will be aware of the 12 million winter fuel payments, at a cost of £2 billion, with £200 for households with someone who has reached state pension age and £300 for households with someone who is over 80. In addition, there is the warm home discount support I just outlined.

[Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)]

I welcome the Government’s response this morning to the collective defined-contribution scheme consultation. What does it mean for posties in East Renfrewshire, a number of whom are looking forward to meeting the Minister when he comes up to Barrhead on Friday?

[Guy Opperman]

We believe that collective defined-contribution schemes are a positive step and a welcome innovation to help postmen and women up and down the country to have a sustainable long-term retirement. I welcome the support of the Communication Workers Union and Royal Mail, and the role my hon. Friend has played in the House of Commons. I look forward to meeting some of his posties early—very early, I believe—on Friday morning.

Disability Assessment Services

Paul Masterton Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) on securing this debate.

I welcome the Secretary of State’s recent announcement of the change in the assessment process. Face-to-face assessments cause anxiety and distress among our constituents. It is paramount to safeguard the most vulnerable in society from undergoing assessment when their conditions are unlikely to have changed from their previous visit. As a constituency MP, I am often able to obtain the agreement of the DWP for paper-based reports that remove the need for face-to-face assessments, or at least the agreement to a home consultation, but it can be a real uphill battle to do so.

Those suffering from conditions such as MS, myalgic encephalomyelitis, severe autism and Asperger’s, agoraphobia and a range of mental health health disorders should not be required to submit a new claim every two years. Those suffering from mental health conditions do not find it easy to obtain the required evidence, particularly if that person has no engagement with medical professionals due to their condition. The recent announcement will alleviate those concerns for some claimants. I quickly draw hon. Members’ attention to the great report by the Scottish Association for Mental Health, which is the Scottish equivalent of the charity Mind. It is a sensible report that states clearly that the assessment process does not adequately gauge the impact of mental health or other fluctuating conditions, because it focuses primarily on physical impairment.

The decision to integrate assessment services into one body is welcome news; it will streamline services and allow those applying for ESA, universal credit and PIP to undergo just one assessment rather than two. Although the benefits assess two different matters, the information obtained from one assessment can be used to determine both benefit outcomes.

Like all hon. Members, I have met several constituents who have stressed their anxiety at undergoing assessments because they do not trust the system. Many constituents have been reassessed for ESA and PIP every couple of years and do not get the time to focus on improving their well-being without the threat looming over them of going back for another assessment and potentially losing some or all their benefit. Ultimately, as many Members have stressed, the issue is a lack of trust and faith in the system. Is it any wonder, given the number of low or nil awards given incorrectly, not properly picking up hidden and non-physical disabilities and forcing people to battle the system that should be supporting them?

Like many MPs, my office offers full advocacy support for welfare claimants, from the initial application and accompanying to the assessment centre, to doing appeals and representation at tribunals. Our record of success is well over 80%, which is partly due to my amazing caseworker, Jamie. But that is ridiculous, because we should be getting those decisions right first time, to increase the faith and trust of vulnerable people in the assessment process. By introducing the changes the Government have outlined, we are taking a huge step to begin to rebuild that trust with those living with disabilities.

Social Security

Paul Masterton Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)]

The greatest achievement of the modern capitalist system has been its ability to consistently deliver rising living standards across the globe. With higher living standards come longer lives, and that is absolutely something to be celebrated. Many of us can now look forward to living healthy and fulfilling lives into our 70s, 80s and, God forbid, possibly even beyond.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a point about life expectancy. Is he not aware that recent figures suggest that life expectancy is now rolling backwards and that a good deal of that could well be attributed to Tory austerity?

[Paul Masterton]

I should point out that I spent 10 years as a pensions specialist before coming into this place. The hon. Lady is not actually correct. What has happened is that the increase in life expectancy is slowing down. That is not a UK-only phenomenon; it is happening right across the western world because of very large advances. It is not unreasonable or linked to austerity. Longer lives mean that there will be an increasing number of older people in our society; the proportion of people aged 85 and over is projected to double over the next 25 years.

[Debbie Abrahams]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman has made an error. Public Health England published a report, alluded to by the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), that says exactly that life expectancy is flatlining for certain groups but going backwards for others and for certain regions. Not only that, it pointed the finger at austerity as the cause.

[Paul Masterton]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, but I would point out that that is not what the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) actually said.

I want to address the order, which delivers on the triple lock to the state pension and provides an extra £3 billion for pensioners in 2019-20, uprating in line with earnings at 2.6%. The UK has a system whereby today’s taxpayers pay for pensions currently in payment. When people are living healthier lives for longer, spending much greater proportions of our lives in retirement, that is both unfair and unsustainable. The figure has already grown from 26.5% in 1981 to 33.1% in 2013. In 2010, the basic state pension stood at 16% of average earnings. Thanks to the triple lock, it will soon be around one quarter of average earnings. That has contributed to pensioner poverty falling significantly in recent years and the Government can be rightly proud of that. By some estimates, typical pensioner households now have higher incomes than their working-age counterparts. The triple lock has therefore served its purpose, and I would argue that it cannot be maintained indefinitely.

[Jim McMahon]

Does the hon. Gentleman see that as a justification for removing the free TV licence?

[Paul Masterton]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. I will come on to some of the questions about universal pensioner benefits in just a second.

As the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) mentioned, all Conservative MPs were elected on a manifesto commitment to replace the triple lock with a double lock of inflation and earnings from 2020. I believe that that was the right policy, and it would of course be more generous than the Cridland review’s recommendation of moving to a simple earnings link. Even this year, we are raising the state pension in line with earnings, because they have risen above the 2.5% floor the triple lock provides. The system should of course provide generous support for vulnerable pensioners, but that support should be properly targeted.

The current universal system means precious public funds are being spent on well-off pensioners. In fact, the richest one fifth of pensioners on average receive a higher weekly income from benefits, including the state pension, than the poorest one fifth. That would be a shocking statistic even without the context of strained public finances. If we are serious about addressing intergenerational unfairness, we must recognise the unfairness of allowing higher income pensioners, many of whom remain in very well-paid employment—for example, as MPs—to retain certain entitlements, while workers on an equivalent income lose their child benefit and their marriage allowance, to give just two examples.

We are building huge levels of intergenerational inequity in this country under the current system that the triple lock, having done what it was designed to do, will only continue to exacerbate. If we want to avoid increasing the burdens on younger workers to fund large transfers of wealth to better-off pensioners, issues around the triple lock and, although they are not in the scope of the measure today, universal benefits need to be addressed. Why are we increasing and providing these benefits to extremely wealthy individuals if it means having to freeze the entitlements for those who are in work and struggling to make ends meet?

I know that the political reality following the experience of the 2017 election meant that that manifesto commitment had to go and that that could easily lead the Conservative party to conclude that it has had its fingers burnt on many of these issues and should steer clear of them in future, but that would be a betrayal of my generation and those to follow. While I, of course, support the uprating order and particularly the increase to the UC work allowances, which many Government Members lobbied very hard for, I hope that the door is not being slammed shut on the grown-up discussion that we all need to have in the House about the triple lock and other universal pensioner benefits in the near future.

Pensions Dashboard

Paul Masterton Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Ryan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) on securing this debate; I thought he did a brilliant job of explaining why the dashboard is so welcome and so necessary, so I will not take up too much time going over old ground, but I want to comment once again on why the dashboard is so important and so necessary.

While it is true that we have 9 million new people coming into the workplace pension scheme through auto-enrolment, and those people can hopefully be more engaged in their pension savings throughout their working life, historically that is simply not what has happened. Quite frankly, many people have absolutely no idea what sort of pension savings they have built up over 20, 30 or 40 years of work. Many companies that they have worked for will no longer exist, and the insurance companies that held their pension schemes may have been amalgamated or no longer exist at all.

Those people will suddenly find themselves coming up to their retirement not really having any idea of what sort of pension savings they have, other than those savings made with a main employer that they were with for a long time. It is not particularly surprising that research shows that one in five adults will admit to having lost at least one pension pot. I think that probably understates it, because there will be people who will not admit that they cannot remember what pension savings they have, and there will be people who do not know that they do not know what pension savings they have.

The Pensions Policy Institute research suggesting that consumers have lost track of about £19.5 billion in pension pots really reinforces why we need the dashboard, why it needs to be all-encompassing and, as was said, why we need to make sure that all providers are properly committed to providing the information. The dashboard will not be much use if whether it is any good depends on which provider a person was linked with in the workplace; what would be the point? It needs to work for absolutely everybody.

I thought it was perfectly sensible that the Government decided to take a slightly different approach and push the private sector to lead more on the dashboard’s development; it had been doing most of the running on that, anyway. However, whatever the final dashboard or various dashboards look like, it is vital that the state pension element be included in it, to give people that full picture of their retirement saving. I liked the idea from my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), who is no longer in his place, of looking at ways to link up the dashboard with broader financial products, but we should probably walk before we can run, and make sure that the dashboard is up and running before we start making it more complicated.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister. First, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) raised the issue of data security and identity risks, which I think are very real. The Government Gateway is doing a lot of good stuff to protect against those risks, but we will need to be pretty satisfied, through the regulatory framework, that data is secure, and that there will be no danger.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)]

It may help the House if I address the point raised by my hon. Friends the Members for East Renfrewshire (Paul Masterton), and for Hendon (Dr Offord), and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). For those who have not had the opportunity to see it, chapter 4 on page 29 of the consultation sets out in quite a lot of detail the efforts we propose to take on data security. The matter is clearly subject to consultation, but without any shadow of a doubt, it will not be proposed that the dashboard be a data storage device. Pension companies will provide one individual’s data back to that individual, rather than it going through a conglomerated site, which would be eminently more hackable, for obvious reasons.

[Paul Masterton]

I thank the Minister for that intervention, which was very useful and clarifies the point nicely. My other questions are on the industry delivery group. Is the Minister in any kind of position to explain the process for setting that up, and when it is likely to be set up? The main point is to make sure that the members of the group have the right mix of experience and backgrounds to deliver.

The pensions dashboard is another example of good pensions policy built on a consensual, cross-party basis. As more people come into the pension system because of auto-enrolment, it will be absolutely critical that they are able to keep track of what they have saved in the long term, over their working life.

Social Security

Paul Masterton Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman]

Thank you, Mr Speaker—what an introduction. I will not take the departure personally. With your permission, I will address both the orders at the same time.

The reality is that automatic enrolment is one of this country’s biggest and quietest success stories. It is a cross-party success story that has reformed private pension saving, with nearly 10 million people now signed up to a private pension. Our thanks are due to the 1.4 million employers up and down the country that have supported automatic enrolment.

[Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)]

I am very pleased by the development of automatic enrolment in East Renfrewshire, but while the Minister is at the Dispatch Box, will he take the opportunity to update me on the progress in relation to collective defined-contribution schemes?

[Guy Opperman]

The good news is that approximately 5,000 jobholders in East Renfrewshire are now benefiting from a workplace private pension, and our thanks are due to the 1,270-plus employers in my hon. Friend’s constituency.

On collective defined-contribution schemes—I know the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), who speaks for the Opposition, is very passionate about them as well—I can confirm that, following the closure of the Government consultation on CDCs last week, the Government intend to proceed with CDC legislation, subject of course to the formal response to that consultation. It is right that I recognise on the Floor of the House the fantastic work my hon. Friend has done in bringing forward a ten-minute rule motion and then a private Member’s Bill to prompt and trigger the consideration of CDCs. This will play a massive part for the Royal Mail postmen and women who work in all weathers—I know there is interesting weather in East Renfrewshire—to support local businesses and the local economy.

The guaranteed minimum pensions increase order is a technical matter that is debated by this House on an annual basis. It provides for defined-benefit occupational pension schemes that are contracted out to increase members’ guaranteed minimum pensions that accrued between 1988 and 1997 by 2.4%, in line with the increase in the consumer prices index to the previous September.

The automatic enrolment order reflects the conclusions of this year’s annual review of the automatic enrolment earnings thresholds, as required by the Pensions Act 2008. In conducting the review, the Secretary of State has considered both the automatic enrolment earnings trigger, which determines the point when someone becomes eligible to be automatically enrolled into a qualifying workplace pension, and the qualifying earnings band, which determines those earnings on which the enrolled employee and their employer have to pay a proportion into a workplace pension.

Recognition of Fibromyalgia as a Disability

Paul Masterton Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Toby Perkins]

I agree, and I think that that hints at a wider problem in the benefits system assessment regime, which finds it difficult to deal with fluctuating conditions, whether mental health conditions or muscular problems along the lines of fibromyalgia, that are better on some days, or manageable with a huge amount of medication, so that people can get out of the house and may appear better than usual on the assessment day.

[Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. My constituent Susan says that the pain she suffers is so bad that the only time she does not feel it is when she is asleep. She mentions that it is not just that the condition itself is not picked up properly within disability assessment, but that it exacerbates other conditions she has, making them even more extreme. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with that point about wider understanding of the effects of the illness within the disability system?

[Toby Perkins]

I entirely agree. The impact on the rest of the family includes caring responsibilities that fall on them, restricting their ability to develop their earning potential. The consequence is that the entire family of a fibromyalgia sufferer will suffer too. It is a powerful point.

Estimates suggest that as many as one in 20 people suffer from fibromyalgia. Since I secured the debate I have been contacted by many MPs—there have been many interventions in the debate—and by constituents and other members of the public. People say that at last someone is talking about the condition, which they or their partner have suffered with for so long, feeling that no one understood. The feeling of being misunderstood is familiar to many fibromyalgia sufferers. Often employers are baffled as to why on some days an apparently healthy member of staff is the life and soul of the party, but on others cannot turn up for work because they are crippled by their condition. By the same token, those employees often feel tremendous guilt that a condition that decimates their ability to contribute keeps striking them down. That often leads them to conclude that they must go into work even though they are in extreme pain, frequently making themselves even more ill in the process. It truly is a vicious circle.

Fibromyalgia sufferers are also misunderstood, as we have already heard, by those who assess them for benefits such as PIP and employment and support allowance, as their conditions are variable and can often be managed in the very short term. Many fibromyalgia sufferers have taken pills to help to manage the pain and support them through an ESA assessment, only to discover that the assessment outcome bears little relationship to their daily experience of living with fibromyalgia.

I have had constituents speak to me about the fact that the tablets they took to enable them to get in a taxi to travel to their assessment and get through that assessment for an hour meant that, when they got home, they were in bed for days afterwards. I think they thought to themselves, “If only the assessor could see me now, half an hour or an hour after the assessment, they would see why I’m unable to work. I’ve been able to get myself through that assessment, trying to comply with the system, but to my own disadvantage.”

Universal Credit

Paul Masterton Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)]

There are currently about 330 claimants of universal credit in East Renfrewshire. We moved to full service last month and there are about 5,200 people on legacy benefits who will be migrated to it in the coming months and years. There is no doubt that the phased roll-out has identified a number of issues which need to be addressed. My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) set out very well why the Government were right to proceed cautiously through test and learn. I start by paying huge tribute to the work of the team at Barrhead jobcentre, whom the Secretary of State visited over the summer. They really are changing people’s lives for the better, and we in this House cannot pay testament to the frontline staff in jobcentres enough.

The principles that underpin universal credit were well set out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) and it is very easy to see why they have carried near-universal support. One of the reasons was that under the old system, as we have heard today, people who wanted more work would be penalised for doing so, which was a completely ridiculous situation.

One group who have not been mentioned today but who will benefit from universal credit are injured veterans. Under existing legacy benefits, those in receipt of such benefits, as well as payments through the war disablement pension or the armed forces compensation scheme, receive a statutory £10 disregard, but under UC, unearned income such as these benefits is completely ignored. There are 12,000 veterans across Scotland—120 are in East Renfrewshire—who receive compensation because of their injuries, and they will be better off under universal credit. That is something we should all welcome.

Other Members have set out the improvements that were made to universal credit last year, particularly in the Budget. Those have gone a long way to helping things. Coupled with the recent introduction of the two week run-on of housing benefit, this will help to safeguard those migrating from housing benefit to UC from rent arrears.

Despite these improvements, further progress is still required. In the lead-up to the Budget, the Government should now reinstate work allowances for single-parent families and second earners in families with children back to the level they were before the 2015 Budget, because the changes to those groups undermined the fundamental purpose of universal credit—to make work pay. This would provide targeted support to 9.6 million low-income families, like many in my constituency, and it would be the best way to ensure that UC is truly transformative, as it was always intended to be.

[Ruth George]

There never were any work allowances for second earners in couple households. Is the hon. Gentleman proposing that a new allowance should be introduced, which I am sure Opposition Members would absolutely support because of the high marginal tax rates on such families?

[Paul Masterton]

I was mainly talking about single-parent families, but I know of the work that the hon. Lady has done. We have both had discussions with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation—I think we sat around a table together when we were talking about some of its Budget asks—and I warmly welcome the work that it does and support a lot of its asks in advance of the Budget.

As MPs, we always see the worst of a system—nobody comes to our surgeries or pops into our offices to say how wonderful things are, how easy their application process was or how great it is—and those cases are frustrating and maddening, and we do our job to fix them. However, we also need to take account of the many, many people for whom this has worked. I am very pleased to be hosting a UC information event later this month, working with the citizens advice bureau, the jobcentre, my local credit unions and my local housing associations. I want people to know that they can come to me if they have a problem and that they can sit on the day and get help with their application. If they are having an issue, we will have lines set up directly to the DWP hotline and the HMRC hotline so that when people come—on Friday 26 October—to the Voluntary Action on Kelburn Street in Barrhead, they know that they have an MP whom they can come to for support if it is not working.

UC is a good benefit. It is the right thing to do. To scrap it and to go back to a system that traps people on welfare would be a mistake.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Masterton Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

We have had this discussion in a number of questions now. Can I be absolutely clear? The right hon. Gentleman should look at the report produced by the all-party parliamentary group on hunger, which said that the reasons for food bank usage are complex and myriad, and cannot be put down to any single reason.

[Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the announcement by the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), of a consultation on collective defined contribution schemes. However, I had anticipated that it would come out before my ten-minute rule Bill on Wednesday. Will he give us an update as to when we might see it?

[Guy Opperman]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend has raised this point. The consultation will be of assistance to Royal Mail and the thousands of posties in his constituency. We will be consulting on the matter very shortly.