Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Order. Everyone can see that a large number of hon. Members want to speak in the debate, which has to conclude at 5.36 pm. If Members can keep their speeches as brief as possible, we can get everyone in.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

Everything comes to he who waits—and that was a long wait, everyone will agree. I will try to be brief, as I have seen how many Members want to speak.

I want to explain why, despite some misgivings about minor details, the Lords amendments are not just wrong but a retrograde step that would make matters worse. No one in the Chamber would disagree that it is a policy failure that only 1% of WRAG claimants exit the scheme to take up employment. We should not lock that into legislation, as that policy failure is unacceptable. I see constituents who have come to my surgery because they are marooned in a no man’s land. Some have been found to have limited capability for work in the work capability assessment, and some have exhausted all avenues of appeal, but for various reasons they do not feel comfortable with transitioning to jobseeker’s allowance, even though in theory they might receive greater support to re-enter employment if they did so. I endorse the disability charities saying that we need more disability advisers in Jobcentre Plus. That is one use to which we could put the extra £100 million that the Government talk about.

[Graham Evans]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

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[Paul Maynard]

I am sorry, I want to make progress so that everyone can get in.

For many people, a response in mental health terms to a sudden onset of or change in a physical health condition makes their willingness or ability to engage in the employment market that much harder. The work capability assessment has consistently failed to adapt and accommodate those individuals. I recognise that a handful of individuals may be encouraged into employment by the changes announced today, but I believe the operation of the work capability assessment will follow the age-old pattern—every time it is changed, more and more people, almost by osmosis, end up in the support group. We have seen that year on year, time and again.

Without further policy change, we could be back here in a few years discussing a sub-group of the support group. But that is a key point: we will not be back here in a few years’ time with the same policy framework. The Government are being more radical in their approach. If this were the sole policy intervention that they were aiming to make, I would share many of the concerns being expressed, but that is certainly not the case. We have recognised that the status quo is inadequate, and the Government are committed to reforming the work capability assessment. A White Paper is coming forward that will, I hope, reform employment and support allowance, which is a dinosaur of a benefit. It is unfit for purpose. It is the last remaining disability benefit that still sees disability as a matter of physical health, rather than a matter of physical and mental health. For that alone it needs to be taken to the knacker’s yard and put out of its misery. I welcome the Government’s intention to do that.

If we agree to Lords amendments 8 and 9, we will not get a £100 million fund placed in the hands of the third sector to support people with limited capacity for work to try to get back into employment. That would be a wasted opportunity. We have managed to get 339,000 more people back into employment over the past two years. Everybody in all parts of the House knows the commitment of the Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People to promoting the Disability Confident campaign. We all accept that the status quo is inadequate, and it would be the worst of all worlds to lock in a failed policy for the work-related activity group. That would benefit no one at all.

I shall briefly touch on Lords amendment 1. There is probably more consensus on how we view poverty-related issues than those on both sides of the issue would like to admit. I do not deny that levels of income have an impact on poverty levels in my constituency. Equally, I believe that there are more fundamental drivers of poverty in my constituency that also need to be addressed. As the exchange between the Minister and the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) indicated, this is not the end of the policy journey. There is to be a White Paper on how we implement our life chances strategy. There will be an opportunity to look at how we integrate into the policy package the different indicators that the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) referred to, but Lords amendment 1 is fundamentally flawed. It shows a misunderstanding of how Government work. The Bill cannot place an obligation on the Government to pursue two broadly contradictory policy objectives for tackling poverty.

If we focus solely on the “poverty plus a pound” approach as the answer to the problems, and at the same time oblige the Government to look at life chances indicators, that will divide the Government’s attention and the Department’s ability to focus on what matters. Opposition Members may disagree with the life chances strategy, and they are perfectly at liberty to do so, but they cannot expect to ride both horses at once and hold the Government to account for it. The Minister has made it clear that the data will still be collected and published. The Opposition will be able to look at that information, assess it and hold us to account for it, but Lords amendment 1 seeks to ensure that the Government fail on both strategies. It would not allow us any latitude to pursue what we have an election mandate for—welfare reform. When we get the life chances strategy, I suspect it will be far more sophisticated than what has gone before.

It has always struck me as utterly perverse to suggest that the most effective and best way to reduce child poverty in this country is to somehow provoke a recession, because that will bring the income numbers down. Surely no one could say that that is the best indicator to utilise to drive change. It astounds me that the Opposition parties—for the sake of posturing, and because of what has happened in the other place—have decided that this is their chance to make a stand on the backs of the most disadvantaged once again, and to try to prevent the Government from doing something about this issue.

I am proud to support what the Minister is trying to do. We have had decades of failure on this issue under Governments of all persuasions. At last someone is trying to do something, but from the Opposition we have nothing but cant, rhetoric and opportunism.

[Neil Gray]

I am glad to have the opportunity once again to set out the SNP’s opposition to this dangerous and despicable Welfare Reform and Work Bill. The SNP will vote to make these Lords amendments part of the Bill, to protect children and disabled people from poverty. In October, my SNP colleagues and I tabled a series of amendments to the Bill, which were, sadly, not successful. Today, I call on right hon. and hon. Members across the House to take this final opportunity to stand up to the Government’s regressive and punitive social security cuts.

In my contribution, I will focus on the scrapping of child poverty reporting obligations, the ending of the ESA WRAG and the universal credit disabled workers element. My hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) will also seek to contribute, focusing on the cut to the ESA WRAG, and my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) will, I hope, discuss the report on child poverty and health by the all-party group on health in all policies.

Let me turn first to the overhaul of the Child Poverty Act 2010, which removes the income-related measures of child poverty, replacing them with an obligation to report on children’s life chances and scrapping the target to end child poverty by 2020. Scrapping that target, when child poverty is on the rise under this Government, is a disgraceful dereliction of responsibility, which serves only to highlight the lack of will on the part of Conservative Members to do anything to reverse the growing numbers of low-income families—in and out of work—who live in poverty.

Lords amendment 1, from the Bishop of Durham, Baroness Sherlock and the Earl of Listowel, would impose an additional reporting duty on the Secretary of State, requiring him to lay before the Houses of Parliament an annual report on child poverty. That report should include data on the percentage of children living in households on relative low income, combined low income with material deprivation, absolute low income and persistent low income.

The Bishop of Durham, in moving the amendment, stressed the importance of income in understanding child poverty and children’s wellbeing. He tackled criticisms made previously by Ministers by arguing that income measures would not displace other statutory measures relating to worklessness and educational attainment. Speaking for the Opposition, Baroness Sherlock supported the amendment, noting that it would cost nothing and that it would allow the Government to be held to account on child poverty.

SNP Members find it unbelievable that the Government would wish to remove all links to income in reporting child poverty. Income is fundamental to whether someone is in or out of poverty—there is simply no getting away from that fact. We have no problem with the Government choosing to report on life chances, substance misuse, family break-up and unemployment by household, but they cannot get away from the fact that substance misuse, family break-up and unemployment are not unique to those in poverty—far from it. However, by using those alternative measures in isolation and not using any income-related measures, the Government are attempting to characterise poverty as a lifestyle choice, rather than looking at the structural causes of poverty.

Of course, such issues can impact on life chances, but income deprivation always will. An alcoholic single parent may be perfectly capable, for any number of reasons, of putting food on the table, a warm winter coat on their children’s backs or keeping their house warm. That may not be possible for a set of married parents who have no substance abuse problems but who are in low-income work. That has nothing to do with family breakup, substance abuse or unemployment—it is because of low income. So why on earth did the Government choose to ignore how many children do not have an outdoor space to play in safely or a place for the family to be able to celebrate a special occasion for them, or whether they can eat fresh fruit and vegetables every day? We know that 1.7 million children live in a family who want to heat their homes but cannot. The parents of 900,000 children want to put a warm winter coat on the backs of their bairns but cannot afford to do so. These are parents in and out of work, who are married or single. What is that if it is not poverty? We have to continue reporting on those matters.

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[Mr Speaker]

I was going to call Mr Maynard.

[Paul Maynard]

I have already spoken.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

There are two elements. The first is that, as my hon. Friend knows, we have introduced a work experience programme, which has been hugely successful in getting young people back into work. When we came into office, people could take work experience through a jobcentre for only two weeks, but we have now increased that to two months—or three months for people who get the chance to have an apprenticeship. Over 50% of those who do work experience have gone back to work.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the huge increase in apprenticeships we are now planning will reskill our young people and ensure that the work they do is high skilled, high value and well paid.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

4. What contribution his Department plans to make to the strategy announced by the Prime Minister in January 2016 to ensure that people from all parts of society have equal life chances.

[Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con)]

11. What contribution his Department plans to make to the strategy announced by the Prime Minister in January 2016 to ensure that people from all parts of society have equal life chances.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

My Department is leading the development of the life chances strategy. The strategy marks our commitment to transforming children’s lives by tackling the root causes of poverty—worklessness, poor educational attainment, family breakdown, problem debt and addiction.

[Paul Maynard]

Improving life chances is very important in my constituency, given the high levels of deprivation, which are often linked to ill health. What more can the Department do to help people stay in work when they experience ill health, rather than dropping out and having to engage with the benefits system?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I commend my hon. Friend on the huge amount of work that he does so tirelessly in his constituency, which I have seen at first hand when visiting projects with him. He is a huge champion for those who have difficulties getting back into work. As he knows, we have introduced the “Fit for Work” programme, which helps employees facing long-term sickness to get back into work sooner and helps employers to get people assessed properly, rather than allowing them to fall away and have difficulties, so that occupational health can look at them as well as their having a health assessment. That will introduce a new way of looking at people to keep them in work because, as the Department of Health now agrees, work is part of a health treatment and should not be seen as separate. The White Paper that I will bring forward shortly will talk about that.

Disabled People: Support

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Neil Coyle]

I completely agree that that training needs to be there. It would be useful to hear from the Minister how whatever new programme is put in place in 2017 will make training and dedicated, specialised support available.

Another thing we have seen is that the number of disability employment advisers, who have specialist knowledge, has dropped by 20% since 2010. There is now less than one adviser per 600 disabled people who are meant to be supported, so we are heading in the wrong direction.

People have been in touch with me about the Access to Work programme. For anyone who is unfamiliar with it, it is a specialised programme that helps disabled people to retain or attain work. The Department for Work and Pensions used to accept—it seems to shy away from accepting this know—that, for every pound spent on Access to Work, about £1.48 was returned through things such as national insurance contributions and income tax. However, fewer disabled people are now supported under Access to Work than in 2009-10—the figure has dropped from just over 37,000 to 36,700. That needs addressing, and it would be welcome if the Minister told us whether there will be more targeted support under Access to Work to increase those numbers.

In 2014, the Government said they were expanding Access to Work to include work placements acquired by the individual disabled person. I have asked questions about that and received no information to show whether the Government are actually delivering on that. In 2011, the Government said that they accepted all the recommendations of the Sayce review, including those on Access to Work. Perhaps we could have an update on how they are taking forward the review’s retention and promotion aspects. In the 2015 spending review, the Government announced that Access to Work funding would support 25,000 additional disabled people by providing IT help, but we have no information on what that means or how it will be rolled out in practice. It would be useful to hear more about that significant target.

The Down’s Syndrome Association has been in touch and has provided briefing for the debate to highlight its WorkFit programme. The association says the programme has supported 75 individuals with Down’s syndrome into work, but that only three have met the stringent eligibility criteria for Access to Work. The association feels that that needs to change, and it is keen to hear from the Minister whether the Government will take forward its recommendations.

I want to raise the issue of assessments and accessible information. I have a constituent called Norma who lives in Walworth. Her daughter, who is about 50, has learning disabilities and a visual impairment, and she is deaf. The DWP has been contacting Norma to press for her daughter to be assessed, and Norma feels that her daughter is being told she should be working, even though she cannot leave her home without support. Norma feels she is under considerable pressure. I will write to the Minister about this specific example after the debate, and I will encourage him to explain why Norma and her daughter feel they are under such pressure from the DWP.

Disabled people have also been in touch with significant concerns about universal credit. Some projections suggest that universal credit will be about 1,000 years in delivery, so perhaps some of the fears are unnecessary, as we will not be here. However, it appears that the Government have scrapped the limited capability for work element before any disabled person has been able to access it, which will leave 116,000 working disabled people £40 a week worse off. Once again, the idea that the Government want to support people into work is undermined by their policies. Citizens Advice has also highlighted in a report that in-work single disabled people will be worse off because of the scrapping of the severe disability premium, which will leave almost 250,000 disabled people worse off by between £28 and £58 a week. The Children’s Society has pointed out that, under universal credit, 100,000 disabled children could also lose £28 a week. I ask the Minister what message that sends to those disabled people.

Employment and support allowance is also a significant concern for many of my constituents, 5,630 of whom receive it. The Government recently announced that a cut of £1.4 billion will affect disabled people in the work-related activity group; that is £30 a week for half a million disabled people. DWP statistics show who those people are. They include a quarter of a million people with learning disabilities, autism or significant mental health problems. Again, I ask the Minister why those specific people were chosen for that measure. What are the Government seeking to achieve by targeting such a disadvantaged and vulnerable group?

An example given to me by Parkinson’s UK shows something of the challenge that disabled people have in accepting that the Government agenda is genuine. In a written answer to a question by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr Godsiff) on Monday, the Minister for Employment revealed that since 2008, when ESA was introduced, 200 people with Parkinson’s in the work-related activity group were assessed and given a medical prognosis by the DWP that they would not be able to return to work for at least two years, or longer. The Department is telling people whom it has assessed as unable to work for two years that they will be receiving £1,500 less per year to get them back into work within that period. I hope that the Minister will comment on that. I hope, too, that he will answer the suggestion raised elsewhere that there will be no change for those already in the work-related activity group. Does that include those whose circumstances change, and those who undergo repeat assessments?

The change to ESA follows previous changes, including the time limiting of some support, which has left 280,000 disabled people with no out-of-work benefit. Some have very low incomes, and it is most unfortunate that the Government have managed to pick that group for an increase in poverty. I would welcome a comment from the Minister about that.

I want briefly to cover sanctions. In its briefing, the Child Poverty Action Group highlighted the fact that some sanctions mean that 100% of a person’s financial support goes. Those sanctions can last up to three years, under the increasingly automated system introduced by the previous Government. [Interruption.] I am glad that some Members find that funny. I find that very strange. Would the hon. Gentleman like to intervene?

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

No, because I am about to make a speech, but I thank the hon. Gentleman for the offer.

[Neil Coyle]

The hon. Gentleman is welcome. Perhaps I will enjoy his contribution as much as he appears to be enjoying mine.

The concern that I have about sanctions is the growing number of disabled people who experience them; 70,000 sanctions have been imposed on ESA claimants between December 2012 and June 2015 alone. The Select Committee on Work and Pensions highlighted the fact that safeguards may not always work effectively. My question for the Minister is: if he believes the system is adequate, how has he responded to the Committee’s recommendations, and when will the Department publish its own findings of a review of sanctions? Furthermore, as sanctions and benefit changes are specifically mentioned in some people’s suicide notes, how does the Department support Jobcentre Plus staff and other agencies in handling suicidal claimants and those who raise the matter of suicide in meetings with Government officials?

Disability living allowance and personal independence payments are a growing concern for many disabled people. In Bermondsey and Old Southwark, 3,600 working-age disabled people will be affected by the abolition of DLA and hundreds more children will be affected as they reach the age of 16. The DWP has revealed that 607,000 disabled people will lose help with the abolition of DLA. That struck me as quite odd, given that a former Minister for Disabled People accused charities of scaremongering, such as when the Disability Action Alliance suggested that half a million disabled people would be affected. Now that the Government have revealed that the figure will be 607,000, perhaps Ministers should apologise to the charities they accused. Instead, the Government attacks charities’ ability to challenge the Government agenda, which is most unfortunate.

The Disability Benefits Consortium, among others, recommended that there should be better trials of the new assessment process. The DWP chose to ignore that advice; then the National Audit Office reported that the early operational performance of PIP was poor, and the Public Accounts Committee suggested that early delivery was

“nothing short of a fiasco”.

What assessment is the Minister making and what monitoring is the Department undertaking of those changes and how they are affecting disabled people’s ability to work, in the context of the stories about Denise Haddon and others? What is the impact of the changes on NHS demand, for example? It would also be useful to have an update on the backlog of PIP assessments. Citizens Advice reported in August that PIP has now overtaken ESA as the most complained-about benefit system.

I want briefly to focus on the bedroom tax. The DWP acknowledges that two out of three people affected by the bedroom tax are disabled people. That is 440,000 disabled people. Assuming that average amount is £14 per week since the introduction of the bedroom tax, by the time it reaches its third birthday at the end of April, it will amount to a disability tax of almost £1 billion. Disabled people are also affected by issues such as the freezing of benefit of uprating. Even for those on ESA, the value of the uprating for the vast majority of their benefits is lower than the rises in their energy bills or transport costs, for example.

On housing, I have been contacted by John, who is pleased about this debate and the one this afternoon. He says that he lives in supported housing, which he relies on to live independently. He says that he has

“lived securely, independently and safely in a social housing wheelchair designated flat provided by Habinteg for 27 years and this is now potentially under threat.”

Many of his neighbours have considerably greater needs and are equally threatened. He finds the threat alone destabilising, let alone what could happen if the changes go through as the Government intend. He believes that the Government’s plans will stem the supply of wheelchair-accessible housing, particularly as there is already a shortfall in the availability of genuinely accessible housing. Has the Minister undertaken any impact assessment of how that specific change will affect the supply of accessible housing over time, given that we have an ageing population and growing demand for wheelchair-accessible homes?

On social care, a recent report from the Royal National Institute of Blind People and Age UK suggested that more than 12,000 blind and partially sighted people over 65 lost access to social care between 2009 and 2013. That is more than a third of those who were previously getting support. The role of the Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People should not just be to act as an apologist for the DWP. It should be cross-Government. I am intrigued to know what monitoring the Minister is undertaking with colleagues at the Department for Communities and Local Government, or the Department of Health, about where those disabled people go next if they lose social care. For example, is there a rise in demand for NHS services? Reductions in support for disabled people inevitably mean an increase in the demand for informal carers, who, without adequate support, can go on to experience health conditions and impairments of their own. There has been a rise in the number of children providing support for disabled parents and grandparents, which is a risk to their own long-term prospects if they do not receive sufficient support.

The independent living fund is being abolished. Its 18,000 users are very nervous about what happens next. It would be useful to have an indication from the Minister about how the people who lose it will be monitored, to see where they go next, given that the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services estimates that social care has lost £3.5 billion in funding since 2010. Many councils are losing about 28% of their budget but are spending about a third of their entire budget on social care. Councils cannot pick up the loss; they cannot step in and fill that gap.

I am sure that the Minister will want to mention the better care fund. My understanding of that fund is that it will only support new services, so those losing independent living fund support may not qualify for help. Scope, Mencap, Leonard Cheshire Disability and the National Autistic Society have estimated that one in six care users have fallen out of the system since 2008, and a further 36,000 working-age disabled people could lose access under the latest cuts as a result of the autumn statement. Will the Minister comment on what that loss could mean for other Government services?

Not only have social security and social care services been undermined by changes since 2010, but changes to a whole range of services used and needed by disabled people have had a negative impact. For example, there are 3,000 fewer nurses and hundreds fewer doctors in mental healthcare than in 2010. In my borough, we have therefore seen a rise in crisis treatment—that is, a rise in the number of people with mental health problems arriving at A&E, rather than having the right support further upstream.

In education, we have seen changes to the disabled students’ allowance. Randstad provided a briefing for this debate in which it highlights its concerns about both the changes to DSA and the regulatory change to how provision is administered. It quotes its survey of disabled students, which found that almost 28% of disabled students would not have attended university if DSA had not been available. Another third said they were unsure whether they would have attended university. The survey also found that more than three quarters of disabled students said that attending university as a disabled student was more expensive, with 42% saying they were more likely to drop out as a result of losing DSA. Furthermore, 87% of students said they were concerned that not completing their studies would impact on their future employment prospects. Will the Minister try to demonstrate that the Government are taking a long-term approach and looking at what DSA changes might mean in lowering income for disabled people and lowering tax contributions to the Government in the longer term?

Even on legal aid, the Government have acknowledged that changes to funding have the potential to discriminate against disabled people unduly. That is borne out in the case summaries since the changes. In 2011-12, there were 7,676 disability discrimination-related cases. That has fallen to 3,106 cases—less than half—in the last year stats were available. That collapse is not due to discrimination ending, though it would be useful if that were so. The Government’s concern should be that, without disabled people receiving the right support, the Government will not meet their commendable target to cut the employment gap for disabled people.

I suspect that the Minister will mention in his contribution the £50 billion a year spent on disabled people. The Resolution Foundation estimates that disabled people have lost more than £28 billion in support under a range of funding changes since 2010. If the Minister were to use that figure, he would therefore acknowledge that the Government have cut resources by about one third. That is not a record I would trumpet. It would be welcome if that figure were broken down into the different pots of support it covers. My concern is that it includes social care funding, without taking into account the charges that many disabled people pay to use social services, so it is not representative.

I want to conclude with a reference to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities inquiry into the rights of people with disabilities in the UK, which should report next year. Investigations by the committee are confidential, and the process, extent and scope of the inquiry are unknown, but it is widely believed that it will consider policies introduced by the coalition Government since 2010 in relation to welfare and social security benefits and, in particular, their compatibility with articles 19 and 28 of the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, which cover their rights to live independently and to enjoy an adequate standard of living.

The UK is the first country in the world to be investigated by the UN in relation to that convention. We have moved from being at the forefront of disability rights, respect and inclusion globally to being the first state in the world under investigation for rolling back disabled people’s rights and undermining their equal citizenship. I simply end by asking the Minister this: can he genuinely be proud of that position for the UK?

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[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) on his wide-ranging speech and obvious knowledge of the issues concerned.

I have learned in my time in the House that it is often best not to attack an individual Member before they have stood up to speak, just in case that Member might actually intend to be helpful to the cause. At least the hon. Gentleman has saved me that dilemma, in a sense. I learned another lesson today, which is never to have stray thoughts during any parliamentary debate. I was not expecting to be here today—I was due to have a meeting at 10 o’clock, which got cancelled. I had an ironic thought about why it had been cancelled and the chance that I happened to be here, but if the hon. Gentleman in any way took offence at me making an audible noise, I apologise.

Since the hon. Gentleman thought I was referring to sanctions, let us talk about that for a few minutes. Sanctions are a particular concern in my constituency. I was fortunate to serve with the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), on the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, where we looked into sanctions. Indeed, I tabled amendments to our Committee’s report that went beyond anything even the shadow Minister felt able to table.

The hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark mentioned suicide notes citing sanctions. I remain a firm supporter of the idea that where there is any question of the benefits system playing a role in any untoward event, there should be a body—similar in scope to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, perhaps—that looks at the individual’s entire journey, from the first day they engaged with any Government Department to the end of their life, to establish what went wrong and where. Often, the fact that people experience a sanction is the end of a process of being poorly served by the benefits system, not the start of a process. I was pleased to see that mentioned in the final report.

I also gently make the point to the hon. Gentleman that much of what the Government brought forward in response to our Committee’s report far exceeded my reasonable expectation. I am sure it did not satisfy the shadow Minister, because she and I rarely agreed in our time on that Committee, but it went beyond what I reasonably expected the Government to deliver, so I welcome that.

The other interesting lesson I have drawn today, in addition to how I should keep a straight face during debates, is what happens when I walk past an annunciator. Walking past an annunciator yesterday, I saw that the short title of today’s debate was, “Support for disabled people,” and I thought, “Gosh! That’s very wide, isn’t it? That could almost cover anything at all.” I see today, however, that the title is actually, “Changes to funding of support for disabled people.”

An interesting observation we can make here is that support can never just be financial. One frustration I have found in my six years in this place is that when we discuss disability, we often start from a financial perspective. Most of the critique is about the amount of money going left, right and centre. I do not dispute for a moment that without a stable financial base of support for disabled people and a well run benefits system giving support to those who need it most, anything else is simply window-dressing. We always need to look at the wider picture of disability: support needs to be about more than just the amount of money we happen to give someone in some way. The Minister’s role has to be far more than administering our benefits system. Indeed, the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark pointed out that the Minister’s role has to be cross-governmental; it cannot just be located within DWP.

The hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned the Government’s welcome commitment to halve the disability employment gap. I said in this place just over a week ago that the Conservative party was the only party to make that commitment. We get a lot of credit from the various component parts of the Disability Benefits Consortium for making that commitment. They want to see it evidenced in policy, and I accept that entirely. I know how hard the Minister is working on the Disability Confident campaign, which may be nebulous in its concept and hard to measure but is fundamental to changing the nature of the debate. Once again, it is about not only the amount of money that the state gives but the amount of money that individuals themselves can obtain through employment, and the benefits that will flow from that.

We need to take other aspects of funding of support for disabled people into account as well. Given the hon. Gentleman’s professional background before he came into the House, I am sure that he is aware of Scope’s Extra Costs Commission, which reported just before the last election. The commission looked at the issue of the “purple pound”, as we like to call it now, and why we often talk about the poverty premium as a disability premium, too. It is a cost that people face.

Although disability living allowance and the personal independence payment are there to cover extra costs faced by disabled people, very often they cannot cover all of them. Scope rightly tried to look at how we can not only increase PIP, but decrease the extra costs. Why is it so hard for charities to perform collective energy price switching on behalf of many of their members and supporters? Why has there never been a Competition and Markets Authority investigation into why aids and appliances seem to have over-inflated prices, compared with the cost of producing them? The commission produced a thick, voluminous report, full of very challenging ideas, many of which can be taken hold of not only by Government but by the market. The hon. Gentleman talked about the Minister having a more wide-ranging role, and that is the sort of thing I envisage.

The hon. Gentleman was right to draw attention to the current controversy over employment and support allowance and the work-related activity group, and I do not disagree that it is a difficult area for Government. His speech was a bit of a Christmas tree of briefings from all the different charities within the DBC, many of which I have met too. They seem to have great unanimity on what the Government are doing wrong, but when it comes to solutions and what we should do instead, I have found great differences in what they are suggesting. Each charity seems to have its own answer about what should be done, even though their analysis appears to have a degree of commonality.

I certainly see a specific problem in my constituency. People may not pass or get the result that they want from their work capability assessment. They may then not accept the judgment and might even reject participation in the ongoing process, but what they do not feel able to do is transition on to jobseeker’s allowance, whereby they might get different, more appropriate levels of help that might get them back into work. They get stuck in a no man’s land, because of the financial jeopardy of losing money as they transition on to jobseeker’s allowance. I accept that removing that financial gap is not the answer for every single person, but it is an honest attempt, in my view, to solve what I see as a real problem in my constituency.

In the longer term, however, I urge the Government to look at ESA as a whole. To me, it is now one of the last in the suite of disability benefits that was conceived when we saw disability mainly as a physical manifestation. Nowadays, we know about the interaction between mental health and physical health, and I think that benefits now—particularly PIP—are doing much more to look at how mental health comes into the picture.

I think that ESA needs more than just tinkering with; it needs substantial reform, because two people with an identical degenerative condition might be at the same stage in their prognosis but might be responding to that undoubtedly terrible news in very different ways. One might have a positive get-up-and-go approach and the other might be totally bowled over by it and unable to cope. Both responses are perfectly legitimate, but they have a major impact on how that person engages in the workplace. The benefit system has to be able to accommodate both those outcomes, without judging them in any way, shape or form. At the moment, I am not convinced that ESA is able to do that. That is why I would argue for a much more fundamental reform. As with other reviews of both WCA and PIP tests, for which we have the annual review, I feel that all we are seeing is more and more people being placed in the support group, almost as a default doctrine. I do not think that would fulfil the Government’s policy objective in the medium term.

I realise that we are trying to keep speeches brief, so I will try to do so. The hon. Gentleman mentioned Access to Work. We are always right to keep pressing the Government about how they are spending Access to Work money, which is a really important pot of money. The fact that there is no cap on it means that I would always argue for more ways to spend it, and he identified a few. I am very keen to see apprenticeships and pre-work situations being brought into the programme’s remit. Many people find, for example, that when they leave university they cannot access the help they need to demonstrate that they can do a job, so that they can get credibility with an employer and get the job offer. Bringing that process to a pre-appointment stage might give employers slightly more confidence that the person they want to employ can be employed and supported in the job. I continue to urge that we do far more to use Access to Work to keep people in work. I know that the Minister is doing more on that issue, but I think more could still be done.

The hon. Gentleman talked about IT. In my understanding, that relates mainly to some of the more mental health-focused interventions that Access to Work is now involved in. There has been, if I recall correctly, a 200% increase in the number of people benefiting from mental health interventions. Given the current levels of demand, I suspect that that needs to be 2,000%, but it is a good start none the less.

Finally, when it comes to financial support for disabled people—if we take that as the title of the debate—there is always room for continuous improvement in the delivery of benefits. I cannot think of a single suite of benefits that the Work and Pensions Committee could look at and not find recommendations on how it could be improved. I live in a constituency that is perhaps a bit similar to the hon. Gentleman’s, with a very high level of transience in the population. Many people do not have addresses that are stable from month to month. The methods of communication are often not suited to those highly vulnerable people, who are often facing addiction challenges of one sort of another. There are always ways of improving how we deliver the benefits necessary to support the most vulnerable, so the Minister’s role will always be about continuous improvement, but it cannot just be about managing a benefit system, because financial support has to come in numerous ways. Part of that financial support is considering what else the Government can do to lower the extra costs across the community—it is not just about how we give people more money to meet those extra costs. Both are important, and we need to give more attention to how we meet some of the extra costs through non-benefit means as well.

My speech was not short enough, but it was an attempt at being short, Mr Crausby.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Access to Jobs: Disabled People

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. Given the number of people wanting to speak, I will keep this as brief as I can.

When I saw the name of the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas) leading on this debate, I rather suspected that we might dwell a bit on Remploy, because he has a long track record of campaigning on the issue. He is, however, right to draw attention to the plight of his constituent. Personally, I take a much wider view of disability employment. On many occasions I have said that I regard Remploy as but one model, and a model that harks back to a different era of how we saw disabled people fitting into the workplace.

I know that people rarely read election manifestos—I make the effort to read my own at least, if not the Opposition’s—but one of the proudest moments of my life was to see in the Conservative manifesto for the 2015 election a commitment to halve the disability employment gap. Such a commitment cannot be seen in any other party’s manifesto—only in the Conservative party’s. I for one am proud of that fact. I am equally proud of the fact that, over the past two years, we have got 340,000 more disabled people into employment, although I recognise that there are individuals who have not benefited and that there are always detailed reasons for how things can be done better.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas) on securing this important debate, which should be not only about what has happened over the past two years, but about what is in the spending review. As I understand it, the spending review included a real-terms increase in the Access to Work budget for disabled people. Will my hon. Friend reflect on that for a moment?

[Paul Maynard]

I certainly will. I served with the shadow Minister on the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, where we looked at the Access to Work scheme in some detail. I am sure we had different interpretations of what we heard, because we normally do, but that is a really important project that the Government have at their disposal—it is often described as their best-kept secret.

We could do far more on Access to Work, which is one of the few uncapped Government benefits in the sense that no artificial cap has been placed on the overall amount spent. It is really important that we realise that and understand what else it could do. It is not just for critical adaptations any more. The number of people with mental health conditions who benefit from Access to Work has increased by 202% since 2010—it has more than doubled.

That demonstrates a really important point that I want colleagues on both sides of the House to understand. Once upon a time, disability employment was about physical access: the nuts and bolts of equipment, doorway widths, desks and chairs and so on. While that remains important, today, mental health issues are just as important, but they do not get sufficient attention.

I hope Opposition Members will join me in paying tribute to the Minister’s commitment. He is working tirelessly to pursue the goal of halving the disability employment gap. The Disability Confident campaign occupies a great amount of his time and I know that he is personally committed to it. We should welcome that. In the previous Parliament, we saw frequent changes in the identity of the Disability Minister. I sincerely hope that our current Minister stays in his post for the entire Parliament—he may not wish that, but I do, because he is doing a superb job.

To return briefly to Access to Work, while one may think that the entire picture is rosy based on what I have said, it is far from that. Certain groups in the disability community are really struggling to get on to the employment ladder, such as those with learning difficulties and autism in particular. The hon. Member for Wrexham quoted the labour force survey and, I think, the 47.6% figure in it, which I saw in the Mencap briefing, too. There are arguments about the starting point, but, while the overall employment gap is 19%, for groups such as those with autism it is significantly greater than that and much more challenging.

If I had to give one recommendation to the Government, it would be to ensure that Access to Work is available at the pre-employment stage when people are looking for work. The employer needs confidence that Access to Work will be available. It cannot be something for them to discover after they have made a leap of faith to take a person on. That would be one way in which Access to Work could benefit a new group of people.

I am fortunate enough to chair the all-party parliamentary group for young disabled people and, when a few months ago the muscular dystrophy campaign Trailblazers did a short report on the right to work, it found that much more support was needed at the job-seeking phase of engagement with employment. That cannot all occur after employers have decided to employ someone, because only then can they start solving some of the practical problems.

There is a wider reason to increase disability employment not just for the sake of human dignity and equality, but, I am afraid to say, for fiscal reasons, too. If we can halve the employment gap, the gain to the Treasury, according to Scope, is somewhere in the region of £12 billion. That is a sizeable sum of money that should not be ignored by any Chancellor of any political persuasion.

I also want to make a plea. To go back to my point about Access to Work, one of the avenues I pursued in the Select Committee’s inquiry was the similarity between the ultimate purpose of disabled students’ allowance and Access to Work, which are both about allowing people to participate in their place of work, be that a college, university or workplace. I still struggle to understand why they are managed by two different Departments on different sets of procedures and with different criteria. It would be far better to bring them together, because they both seek to equip people to function in everyday life. I urge the Minister to look at that.

I will move on to my final point, because, while there is much more I could say, I want others to be able to contribute. No one should underestimate the difficulty of halving the gap. That will not be easy. I know that policy makers like to use the cliché “low-hanging fruit.” That is a disrespectful way to talk about individuals, but some will be closer to the workplace than others and it will be easier to get them into it. The difficulty will come when those with much more complex needs that are more costly to address come into play in terms of meeting the goal.

No one should underestimate the courage, ambition and confidence that young people need to try to seek work. A young person in their teens is probably still in the family home and in the school environment that they have always been in. To a certain extent, they are in a safe environment. It is not until one gets out there and tries to find a job that one really discovers the existence of prejudice against the disabled in society. That can be quite a shock to many young people—it certainly came as a shock to me. I was not expecting to encounter it when making job applications, yet I rapidly ran into it and I do not consider myself to have a particularly severe form of cerebral palsy at all.

When we discuss disability employment overall, it is worth remembering that we need to encourage young people. They do not aspire to a lifetime of supported employment and their families do not aspire to that on their behalf, either. They want full equality in the workplace and we must do all we can to make that happen. It is not easy. I do not doubt that it is a very ambitious target. We are making progress now, but there is no guarantee that that will continue for ever. I therefore thank the Minister for what he is doing. I have offered a few helpful suggestions and I look forward to hearing what other Members have to say.

Funeral Poverty

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered funeral poverty.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Sir David. Whenever I come to this Chamber, you seem to be in the Chair, so it is nice to see the tradition maintained. It is also a pleasure to speak on this issue, which perhaps does not always get the attention that it deserves. Everyone will die at some point, unfortunately. It is an issue that we do not discuss often as a community or even within families, so it is worth bringing it to the Chamber today.

I am grateful to the many industry bodies, charities and campaign groups that have helped in drawing together the information for the debate. It has become clear in recent weeks that this is an issue of growing public interest and it is worth dwelling on why that might be. The hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) had her ten-minute rule Bill just before the election. We have seen the National Association of Funeral Directors campaigning on this issue and Quaker Social Action innovating in how it is seeking to drive down the cost of funerals. I have discussed the issue with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on numerous occasions over the past five years and with Steve Webb, my hon. Friend the Minister’s predecessor in the Department. We have also seen Royal London and SunLife—two of the major insurers—issuing regular reports over the past decade indicating the extent to which funeral costs have gone up over the years.

I never thought that I would find myself saying this, but the Scottish National party may have shown us the way forward: just last Friday it published the Burial and Cremation (Scotland) Bill, which looks at many of these issues. Most interestingly of all, it includes a commitment to review funeral poverty in Scotland. I welcome that and would welcome a commitment from the Minister to look carefully at that Bill—the funeral poverty issues in particular—to see whether anything can be learned. Some of the issues would be a Ministry of Justice responsibility here in England.

When I do one of these debates, I meet all the relevant bodies, read all the relevant reports and gather far more information than I can possibly deploy in the hour at my disposal—not that I have the full hour at my disposal. I will do my best to enable everyone to speak. I recognise that the hour at the end of the day is a new format for this Chamber and I hope that we can accommodate everyone.

It is worth being quite specific. There is a full debate to be had about the rising cost of funerals, but that is not the topic of my debate today. I want to focus specifically on that group of people for whom the cost of a funeral is over and above what they can afford. Many of the trends, I agree, do overlap. Scarcity of burial space drives up costs, for example, but I want to focus in particular on those in financial need.

[Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that in places such as Redditch county, funeral poverty is a massive problem for people? Having lost both my parents, I know that the stress of needing to organise a funeral is bad enough without having to worry about the cost of it.

[Paul Maynard]

My hon. Friend is right. None of us really wants to think about what we will do when the reality presents itself to us and we have a funeral to organise. Not only do we have to process the emotions that we inevitably feel, but there is an entire series of practical steps that have to be gone through that we are probably not best placed to go through at that time. We are not acting as the informed consumer that we might be if we were going down the supermarket to make a normal purchase. This cannot be the normal purchase that we might like it to be.

The experience can be overwhelming at times and many people require a degree of practical help in trying to navigate the process. For some, yes, the need to organise might be a welcome distraction from the process of grieving, but I do not think it can ever be accepted that these things will just happen of their own accord. As Marie Curie points out, there can be quite an adverse consequence for the grieving process if the result is not the right one in the end. Above all else, the cost of a funeral can be a massive shock to the budgets of families who perhaps do not start off with a significant amount of resilience in the first place.

The fact that I organised today’s debate seems to have provoked a number of insurance companies into rushing out annual reports a few weeks early. Both Royal London and SunLife had to get a move on down the printers, and Royal London’s report, which came out on 5 October, showed once again that funeral costs continue to rise. It now estimates that about one in 10 people are struggling to meet the cost of a funeral. The other provider, SunLife, in its “Cost of Dying” report, which came out even more recently—this weekend—found that the cost of a basic funeral had risen to £3,693, with a further £2,000 spent on discretionary items such as extra limousines, venue hire and catering. That is a sizeable sum, which, if not met out of the deceased’s estate, will place a substantial burden on the family if they have few savings yet need to find the money for a deposit even to start the process. No wonder research shows that credit cards and funerals are two of the items that we most commonly find together.

For those whose financial resilience is low to begin with, the phenomenon of funeral poverty almost has a sad inevitability about it. It leaves people facing a scale of debt and a suddenness that they simply cannot be expected to prepare for, so I think that it is right and proper that we look today in particular at what the Government’s tools are for trying to deal with the problem.

The main one is the social fund funeral payment, which has been in existence since 1988. It combines an uncapped commitment to “necessary” costs such as burial and cremation fees, along with a capped amount of £700 to cover such items as the coffin, the memorial and funeral directors’ fee. With an average award of £1,347, it undoubtedly makes an important contribution to the costs of a funeral for those who receive a qualifying benefit and where no other family member can meet the bill.

It should be made clear that the benefit is designed not to pay the full amount of the funeral costs, but to make a contribution. That is the policy objective. It is worth assessing whether the benefit functions as it should against that policy objective. I am sure that we could all express views on whether it should achieve other objectives, and there might well be a debate to be had on that matter, but I want to assess the benefit against that particular objective to start with.

It is worth noting that within the average figures, there is a broad discrepancy. The discrepancy between the cost of a burial versus a cremation leads to some perverse outcomes. The amount that an individual gets will depend on which they opt for and where they are in the country. There is no inherent, internal logic in the amount that an individual will get when they are faced with meeting these bills.

The capping of additional costs at £700 has been controversial for quite a while. I first got involved with this topic when the NAFD came to see me about it. I understand why it is a complex issue. Some suggest that over time the value of the £700 has been eroded. Mathematically, that cannot be argued against. Inflation means that if we were paying that £700 now, based on the amount that it started out at when capping first took place in 2003, it would be slightly over £1,000. Perhaps the best way to think about this is not to argue whether it is too high or too low, but to look at the costs that it is designed to meet.

We have a very poor understanding of where the money from the social fund funeral payment is actually going. We understand where the capped amount—the £700—goes. It does not meet all the additional costs, many of which are discretionary and at the choice of the consumer, but the Government—rightly, in my view—seek to meet all the necessary costs, which relate to the legal requirement regarding the disposal of someone’s remains. It is right and proper that the Government should meet all those costs, and they recognise that. There can be no model in which all the necessary costs are not met.

However, despite five years of trying to achieve that—without any luck—it is very hard to track through the Department for Work and Pensions where those necessary costs are going. Different local authorities charge different fees for cremation and burial. There is no consistency across the country. There are some perverse factors, such as the growth of private crematoriums driving up local authority crematorium costs as well. I have asked on a number of occasions, as other hon. Members have, for more information on what the money is going on. It makes it very difficult, I think, for both the Department and interested observers to make an accurate assessment of whether the benefit is performing adequately and reaching its policy objective. We need to understand what the cost drivers are, and it is important that the Government try to work out what more they can do to improve the data collection. I would be interested to know what steps the Minister thinks that he can take to improve the data collection to allow that analysis to take place.

There are various anecdotal reports that not every council runs its crematoria on a cost-recovery basis. If some are seeking to cross-subsidise, that ought to be at least transparent to the Government; that might help them to understand how the overall amount spent remains roughly the same at some £46 million each succeeding year, while the proportion spent on necessary costs continues to fluctuate. The Government need a better understanding of what is going on.

Many have argued that a relatively straightforward step in the right direction would be to index-link the capped payment—the £700—to inflation. When I put that to the Minister’s predecessor, Mr Webb, he replied:

“One risk of index-linking these payments is that prices would rise and recipients would be no better off”.

I have interrogated that statement from as many logical positions as I possibly can, and I still cannot make head or tail of it. I do not think it relates to the reality faced by funeral directors or consumers. Although I recognise that there is a need for much greater transparency on the part of funeral directors when it comes to offering itemised estimates without having been asked to do so, to my mind a £700 cap leads to some perverse outcomes. Increasing numbers of funeral directors carry a substantial amount of debt because they have to act as debt managers, and that leads some of the larger chains to turn people away when it becomes clear that they may require some social fund payments to pay for the funeral.

I ask the Government once again to look at index-linking—not merely as a spending commitment, but to help them better understand the cost drivers from local Government and to use whatever savings they achieve to pay for the index-linking that would allow funeral directors to cover more of their costs. That would also give the Government an opportunity to look at saying to funeral directors, “Right. We have index-linked, so now let us look at how the industry can improve its delivery of services and act in consumers’ interests to get a fair outcome.”

I ask the Government to consider balancing the need to fund necessary costs with the need to ensure that those costs are constrained on the part of local councils—there can be no blank cheques—and that additional costs are not squeezed merely to ensure the funding of necessary costs, of which we do not have a full and proper understanding. There is a danger that, as debate on and public interest in the subject grow, we may get some perverse demands for change that will not lead to any improvement in the experience of the bereaved. We need robust, coherent data to judge the right way forward, and at the moment we do not have that information. Many observers in the sector strongly believe that to be true.

We also need to look at how the benefit works. From my time on the Work and Pensions Committee, I know that it is important to be quite forensic on each individual benefit. What is its policy objective? Is it delivering that objective? How is it being managed? With some 51,000 applications for the social fund funeral payment, some 41% of which were rejected, I wonder what scope there is to improve the pre-eligibility scrutiny of those applications, because 41% is quite a large number. I suspect that many will be quite transparently not eligible at an early stage.

There have been numerous meetings about how to improve the process, but we still seem to get roughly the same number of rejections. I would welcome the Minister’s view on what more could be done to improve that. The bereaved should not be left disappointed by going through the process of arranging the funeral, only to be rejected later. That can be quite devastating, and it causes many of the financial problems that I have mentioned. In turn, it leaves the funeral directors out of pocket, and they have to chase the debt.

Will the Minister address the situation of people who are awaiting a decision on a qualifying benefit? They are trapped in two DWP holding circles: a decision on their own benefit, which will have consequences for their entitlement to the social fund funeral payment. The form is very complex. Virtually every Work and Pensions Committee report that I have been involved with asks the Department to improve the layout of the form and to subject it to the test of the behavioural insights team. No DWP form can ever not be improved, and I think that this particular form would defeat even me if I tried to fill it in.

The timeliness of decision making matters. The Department’s performance on that is quite good; its target is 16 days, and it seems to fluctuate between 17 and 18 days, so it is not that far off—I can think of many other examples of where it is nowhere near its targets. Although that represents quite good performance, the target of 16 days is actually three days longer than the average time between a death and a funeral. Timeliness of decision making is still an issue, and it might be improved by a pre-application eligibility procedure, if such a thing could be introduced.

I would welcome the opportunity for relatives to know before they commission a funeral the scale of resources that they are likely to have at their disposal. Some relatives may feel that the measure of their grief and loss can somehow be proportionate to the complexity of the funeral that they commission, and although I understand why that is the case, it would be helpful for people to have a clear understanding from funeral directors at a very early stage about what the items on the bill will cost. It would help for them to know how much will be spent on each element and which elements were required, which were discretionary and which were optional. At the moment, people are not acting as informed consumers. Affordability works both ways, because if a funeral director offers a more affordable plan to the customer, they are more likely to get their money in the end. Both parties can benefit from that, and it would alleviate the levels of debt.

One interesting element of the debate is budgeting loans. Steve Webb participated in a debate on this subject a few years ago, in which he talked about budgeting loans being a solution to much of the problem. Despite repeated efforts by the NAFD to get more information out of the Department through freedom of information requests, no one seems to have evidence of any budgeting loan being taken out for the purpose of paying for a funeral. I would be interested to know whether there is any evidence that that is actually happening, because we do not have any data on it.

I will try to wrap up rapidly, because I am running out of time. I have been struck by the calls for regulation of the industry. I recognise that it is tempting to say that there should be a much greater state role, but I do not think that we have exhausted the good will of the industry. Quaker Social Action runs its fair funerals pledge, and many funeral directors are signing up to it, particularly from the younger end of the industry—the insurgents. That disruptive influence on the industry, focusing on what the consumers actually need, can only be a good thing. I am not entirely clear that the industry needs to be castigated. I know many of my local funeral directors, and they are compassionate, caring people who want to do the best on behalf of their community. I am sure that that is true in all our constituencies.

At the heart of the matter is the fact that no one goes into the process with a clear understanding of what costs they should reasonably expect. No one knows what a cheap funeral looks like versus an expensive funeral; one is merely presented with a bill at the end. It is difficult to understand how the component parts of that bill have been assembled, and, emotionally, one is probably not in a position to interrogate it. That can make it difficult to be an informed consumer, and it suggests to me that the market is not fully formed. It is hard to regulate a market that is not acting like one, and in which consumers are not making informed decisions at the point of purchase.

I support Quaker Social Action’s call for some sort of non-governmental third-party ombudsman role. When Steve Webb discussed the matter a few years ago, he talked about “Tell us once” being a possible mechanism for achieving that, but I do not think that it has lived up to its expectations in that regard. It has done a good job of reducing some of the bureaucracy, but it is not acting as a signpost to the best advice on how to navigate this complicated process. I would welcome the Government’s looking at signposting people to groups such as Quaker Social Action, and considering whether such a group could perform an ombudsman role. Yes, that would need to be funded—advice always needs to be funded—but I suspect that sufficient savings could be made in the administration of the benefit to fund Quaker Social Action to play that role.

Many would argue for some linkage between the social fund funeral payment and a defined “simple” funeral, and that suggestion perhaps causes the greatest concern. It is very hard culturally to define what a simple funeral would look like. Quaker Social Action has been cautious not to require those funeral directors signing its fair funeral pledge to guarantee to provide a simple funeral. Instead, it says that the funeral director should clearly advertise their cheapest available funeral.

We need to be careful not to go down the route of the state defining what type of funeral it is prepared to pay for. A lot of cultural elements circle around how we decide what is appropriate for our loved one. It is difficult to try to define what that simple funeral ought to look like.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Maynard]

I am happy to, although I was just about to finish.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the hon. Gentleman; I appreciate that I will be speaking in a second. I have spoken to a lot of funeral directors who have said that they already offer a simple funeral. That was something that I proposed in my Bill, and the industry was split down the middle—some were for it and some were against it. I just wanted to clarify the hon. Gentleman’s point.

[Paul Maynard]

I suspect that we are closer to agreement than the hon. Lady might realise. I know what a simple funeral would look like and I know what its pricing structure would be; I just get a little nervous about tying the social fund funeral payment to that precise model. There may be cultural or religious reasons why people need optional extras.

In summary—if I have left any time for the Minister and anybody else—I would welcome a bit more information on how we can get the basic data to make the right decision about whether this benefit is delivering on its policy intent. I think it can, I hope it will and I look forward to hearing what everybody else has to say.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

DWP Data

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

On the contrary, I find that question astonishing. I take no lessons in transparency or the publication of data from the Labour party. The last Government were more open and transparent in data publication than any other. In the wider context of statistics, I have said it once and will say it again and again that we intend to meet the high standards expected of official statistics when publishing these data, and that is what we will concentrate on doing.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

The Minister will be aware that the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) and I sat on the Work and Pensions Committee in the last Parliament and took part in its inquiry into benefits sanctions, which reported just before Parliament dissolved. She will be aware also that we called for the publication of these data, but that we made a more subtle point, which is that the data are meaningful only if they include information about each individual’s experiences before contact with the benefits system. To publish the data in raw form would overlook the integration that they may have with the health service, mental health services and any other public agencies involved before the individual encountered the DWP. Will the Minister ensure that that information is included?

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend, from his time on the Select Committee, knows the significance of such information. He is absolutely right, and we should not make assumptions about such data.

Child Poverty

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It will not surprise the hon. Lady to hear that I do not agree with almost every single word she said. I remind her that it is no good going on and on about the powers that one wants when one is not prepared to recognise or exercise the massive powers given under the Smith commission—£2.5 billion-worth of new welfare powers, the ability to raise more than 50% of what is spent, and powers over employment programmes. I am not quite sure what she actually wants, but I do know this much: under this Government, employment in Scotland has been better than it has been after previous recessions at any other time.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s thoughtful statement. Does he agree that, despite having figures for persistent poverty in the structure of the existing poverty targets, they have not hitherto succeeded in driving public policy change in Whitehall or in improving the life chances of those in persistent poverty in Blackpool and Cleveleys?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

That is exactly the point I have been making. One of the big areas that has been missing is educational attainment. By locking in educational attainment, we are at last going to be able to look at a balance of measures that ask whether people are actually seeing their life chances progress. The group of people I most constantly worry about are the families who never got near the 60% line, whose life chances were flat. I want them to be able to follow a trajectory that goes above that line and for them to be able to get ahead under their own steam as they take control of their lives.

Child Poverty

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Our purpose is to support people as they go into work and progress into full-time work—that is what universal credit is all about. I believe that what the hon. Gentleman will see as we complete its roll-out is that more families will benefit, to the degree of taking control of their lives and having that independence of a pay packet.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State share my desire to focus on those children in persistent poverty—those in that situation for three years out of four—many of whom are, sadly, in my constituency and face multiple disadvantages within their family? Does he agree that they were a specific group wholly ignored by the previous Labour Government’s anti-poverty strategy?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend has campaigned hard on this and he is right; one problem with setting a narrow measure such as this and then being governed by it is that it is all about rotating people at the top of the relative poverty scale and not actually dealing with the deepest and deep-set problems. Dealing with those is what our purpose must be as we go forward to look at new measures.

Benefit Sanctioning

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing this important debate. I was sorry to hear the aggressive tone with which the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) concluded, because this debate needs elevating above party politics.

I am proud to represent a constituency that has this country’s fourth most deprived ward, which is where our local jobcentre is sited. Just over the road in Blackpool South is the most deprived ward in the country. Our jobcentre deals with a vast range of highly vulnerable people with complex needs, including mental health problems, learning disabilities and addictions of one sort or another.

The walk from the jobcentre to my constituency office is 30 seconds, and I have dealt with numerous cases involving the word “sanctions” over the past four and a half years. I have seen the ebb and flow and the changing patterns in how the Department for Work and Pensions has sought to deal with the matter. It would be wrong of me not to make the effort to visit the local Jobcentre Plus to discuss why all this is occurring, what is going on and what is lying behind it. What truth lies behind the things that I read in the newspaper about targets and inappropriate sanctions? There is an element of black and white here.

The system has problems, many brought out by the Oakley review, that the Government are now dealing with by accepting the review’s 17 recommendations. However, I would welcome confirmation from the Minister that that acceptance applies not only to the sanctions imposed on those participating in the back-to-work schemes that fell within the remit of the Oakley review, but to the two thirds of sanctions that were not covered by Mr Oakley.

It is a fair point that there is a lack of clarity about what people understand they are being asked to do. The welfare state is a complex thing to navigate in the first place, which is why we have bodies such as Citizens Advice. A lot of it can be off-putting.

[Yvonne Fovargue]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Maynard]

I will give way to the hon. Lady as this is her specialist topic.

[Yvonne Fovargue]

There have been a lot of references to the citizens advice bureaux, which issued the valuable report mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) and provide help to the most vulnerable. Many of those bureaux, however, are under threat as local authorities are hard-pressed and cutting their budgets. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that today’s debate demonstrates the value of the advice and the saving to the state?

[Paul Maynard]

I agree entirely. One of my caseworkers also works part-time at the local citizens advice bureau; her experience in the one role helps her in the other, and vice-versa.

What is not made sufficiently clear to all claimants of jobseeker’s allowance is that participation in any activity to get claimants closer to the workplace, whether computer or other skills training, does not invalidate the obligation to continue job-seeking activities. That is often the golden thread running through so many of the sanction cases that come across my desk. That central and essential point is somehow lost on people and, given that it is so central, I urge the DWP to make it much clearer.

What might be driving the ESA issue in particular, which the hon. Member for Edinburgh East mentioned, is the lack of freedom that Work programme providers have not to refer an infringement on for a further decision. That seems to be building into the system an accelerator of the number of referrals on potential sanctions. I urge the Minister to look at how we can build more flexibility into the system so that Work programme providers may choose not to refer if they deem that the claimant has a good reason.

I was struck by the reference of the hon. Member for Sheffield Central to the number of increasing incidents. We can all argue over the figures—some people cite 4.5 million—and I am sure that we will argue about them in the Select Committee, but the essential point to me is that any change in the welfare state or in any particular benefit inevitably creates confusion for those who have to administer the system and for those seeking to navigate it as claimants.

We have seen tremendous changes in the benefits system in recent years—new benefits coming in and new requirements being placed on claimants, none more so than the claimant commitment—and that has required a great degree of comprehension on the part of many of those applying for JSA. Many have none the less found the new document off-putting. Yes, it is certainly personalised, but it is still a matter of putting ticks in boxes as they apply to the individual, so the personalisation is a little limited. It still requires a variety of boxes to be ticked, rather than being built around the needs of an individual. That still creates problems.

I am also struck by the number of people making the journey over to my office from the jobcentre who say, “I have been sanctioned”, when on investigation no sanction is officially part of the story. To me, that was an anecdotal impression—that people said that they were being sanctioned, but were not being sanctioned—so I was intrigued to read in the Oakley report that DWP research had found that 28% of JSA claimants had said that they had been sanctioned in some way, shape or form. Once the case load was reviewed, it turned out that only 11% of claimants had been sanctioned.

I am not saying that those individuals were in any way seeking to misrepresent what had occurred. Once again, benefit claims can be complex, and the amount that one receives each week can change according to a wide range of factors, such as social fund repayments, late payment of bills or the Child Support Agency—the list is endless.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Maynard]

I am conscious that I am taking a lot of time, so I would like to get through my comments rather than give way. I do apologise.

What interests me is that sanctions appear to be becoming a shorthand for a wider range of issues in the welfare system, all of which undoubtedly need to be addressed. Meanwhile, the issue of conditionality is almost getting a worse name for itself than it should be. Conditionality is not always responsible for all the problems that individual claimants are bringing forward and identifying. We need to drill down to what exactly is occurring.

We obviously have the endless debate about whether Jobcentre Plus employees are expected to hit particular sanction levels. I try to take a pragmatic view. If I am managing a process and I have an outlier branch of my network that is producing figures that I do not recognise, I will of course investigate. I specifically asked my Jobcentre Plus advisers in Blackpool whether that was occurring, and I was assured that it was not. I can only take their word for it, but I understand such concerns. I suggest to those concerned that entering into a potential sanctioning process can often bring out some of those underlying problems—[Interruption.] Was it something I said? I see that the hon. Members for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) and for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) are leaving the Chamber.

On the underlying problems, one gentleman who came to my office had not completed any of his back-to-work activity, but he was then found to be functionally illiterate at the last-but-one stage before he was due to be sanctioned. The sanction was not applied and his literacy issues were then dealt with; Jobcentre Plus employees can use discretion and can already get to the bottom of what is causing some of the problems. I revert to the underlying point of Mr Oakley’s report, which is that the system is not fundamentally broken. He states that quite explicitly. Improvements can certainly be made but, as a system, conditionality is not fundamentally broken.

The hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth made a point about the sizeable numbers exiting JSA totally. I hope that the Select Committee will investigate that important issue, because one of the challenges in Blackpool has been to estimate the size of the black economy. The suspicion is that many people, who until the introduction of the new claimant commitment were able to maintain their job-seeking activity while working in the black economy, could no longer juggle both balls and therefore voluntarily chose to exit JSA. It is a persuasive narrative and I would like the Committee to investigate the extent to which it holds true. Does it depend on the size of the black economy in any particular local economy? What estimates have been made? That is another important issue to be drilled down into.

I want to ensure that other people can speak, so my final point is that, as we have all been saying, conditionality has to be part of any functioning welfare system, but it must be done in such a way that it is also seen to be humane. The Litchfield review of the work capability assessment was always careful to make the point that there is such a thing as institutional justice. People will accept an adverse decision if they have confidence in the process that they have gone through and feel that they have been given a fair opportunity to have their say. The fact that institutional justice is part of the welfare state is an important factor in making it work in the interests not only of those claiming, but of those funding and administering it.

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform (Disabled People)

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

Whenever I deal with disability issues, I always feel I have to make a particular effort to look beyond the label of a person’s disability, so as to see the person for who they are and not just their condition. In many ways, it is the same when I am sitting in this Chamber: I have to look to see the people for who they really are, and not judge them by their partisan labels. It is a challenge in politics to realise that we are actually all here because we want to make this country a better place. We may disagree about how to go about that, but we all share that common idea. It is why we enter public life. It is why we welcome a new Member today, the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes), whose maiden speech was excellent. As I try to do that, however, I occasionally feel personally let down. I have thrown away my speech because I want to explain why I feel so personally let down by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), and her comments on disability hate crime in particular.

After I was elected to this House, early on in my constituency surgeries I had a number of very upsetting cases of disability hate crime. It is clearly a very big issue across the country as a whole. Nationally, there have been some very tragic cases. There has clearly been significant under-reporting of disability hate crime over a decade or more under Governments of all persuasions. I quickly realised that we needed to create spaces in which people felt able to report disability hate crime, because I wanted more people to have the confidence to report it. When I see the number of reported disability hate crimes going up, I take no satisfaction in that—certainly not—but I see that we are creating an arena in which people feel confident to talk about it, and I find it deeply personally upsetting when that is used as a stick to beat the Government with, because I have done so much work to try to create that space where people can have that confidence.

That is why this whole debate is so frustrating to me. I have not heard the answer to the question the father of the young lady with the learning difficulty was asking Lord Freud. I do not know what the Labour party’s answer is. I wish we could all leave this Chamber and go to the Upper Waiting Hall, where we all might learn something from the display by United Response. Many disabled people have sent postcards expressing what they aspire to and what they want to be able to do in this country, because it is their country, too.

This is not a matter of our somehow deciding whether disabled people are able to work or not. If they want to work, we as a nation should be enabling them to do so. How we best achieve that is a deeply complex public policy issue. I do not believe they should be paid less than the minimum wage. My own personal preference is the model operated in Denmark, which uses a series of wage incentives to top up what employers are willing to pay, but that is just one of a whole host of options. The tragedy of the attitude that the shadow Minister has shown today in the Chamber is that she has sought to close down that public policy debate—she has sought to close down that consensus.

As we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young), all the great advances in the interests of disabled people have come about when there has been consensus in this Chamber—when the parties have worked together to advance the interests of the most vulnerable in our community. It is entirely right that if people want to work we should be willing to make that happen, because where there is poverty of expectation—and that is what I almost sense from the Opposition Benches—that automatically translates into poverty of opportunity.

All of us have a responsibility for what we say. I am glad that Lord Freud has made it clear that his comments were not appropriate, but the key thing to remember is the goal we have. Only 10% of people with a learning disability are in employment. That is far, far too low. I would rather we spent a few hours in this Chamber discussing how we might increases that, and I am happy to give the Labour party ideas for its manifesto since it seems to need them so much.

We only need look at, for example, some of the ideas that Scope has been coming up with. It is great to get people into work, but we have to enable them to stay in work. I am sure that, like me, Opposition Members have had people coming to their surgeries saying that they are in work, that they are struggling to stay in work and that they need some more flexible form of what is now being called adjustment leave. I think that would be an excellent step forward because it would give individuals greater flexibility in coping with their fluctuating conditions—they may have a good day or a bad day, and they may be working in an environment where that does not always work out quite so well with the employer. Adjustment leave is one idea to address that.

The Labour party continually campaigns about living standards. Well, here is a great idea for it: look at the costs of equipment for the disabled—look at the Office of Fair Trading reports on the cost of powered wheelchairs and the fact that even a set of cutlery for a young man with cerebral palsy can cost £31. There is so much more we could be talking about in this Chamber on a consensual basis to make lives better for disabled people, and what a tragedy—what a waste—that we are going back to politics again today.