Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebatePenny Mordaunt
Main Page: Penny Mordaunt (Conservative - Portsmouth North)Department Debates - View all Penny Mordaunt's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(7 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberWe already support employers through the new Disability Confident scheme, Access to Work and the Fit for Work service. Other measures are planned. The Green Paper consultation will provide further insight into how we can support employers and their disabled employees.
What advice can my hon. Friend offer to people such as my constituent Jehanzaib Sabih, who is deaf, so struggles to speak on the telephone, worked hard to obtain a university degree and yet is really struggling to find employment in the financial sector?
A lot of our bespoke expertise lies in the partner organisations we work with. If my hon. Friend contacts Sarah Holtham, who is the work coach at the Northampton jobcentre, she will facilitate a meeting with Deafconnect for him and his constituent. It also does a huge amount of work getting placements in the financial services sector, in particular with Nationwide, whose headquarters are in his constituency.
Following numerous successful Disability Confident events, we launched the small employer offer directly to engage, encourage and signpost new employers to take advantage of this often overlooked wealth of talent. Will the Minister update the House on the progress of this vital pilot?
As part of the small employer offer, we will introduce over 100 employment advisers to small employers, and the feedback we have had is that that is very welcome—in particular, for organisations that do not have their own human resources departments.
Recalling the very happy days when my hon. Friend was training for her diving competition in Southend, will she join me in congratulating Southend Adult Community College and Poundland on leading the way in employing disabled people in Southend?
I am familiar not only with the diving boards at Southend but with that excellent college, which has done many things well, including understanding that the built environment has a huge, positive role to play in ensuring that people with profound and multiple physical and learning disabilities can achieve their full potential.
Very many individuals who previously received disability living allowance and who now receive personal independence payments are prevented from travelling to work—their Motability vehicles are being taken away because they do not qualify for the higher rate mobility component. This is a serious issue for people who are working, want to work and for whom the Government are making things more difficult. What is the Minister going to do about it?
I would point out that more people now have access to Motability than before, but I understand the problems that the hon. Gentleman raises, and we are looking at this in the Department.
May I put on record congratulations to Andy Murray on his magnificent achievement and also congratulate his brother, Jamie Murray, who will end the year as doubles world No. 1? What Scotland lacks in football prowess, we more than make up for in tennis, and we are immensely proud of both Murray brothers.
Last week, Members on both sides of the House made it clear to Ministers that cutting employment and support allowance for those who are in the work-related activity group by nearly £30 a week, with corresponding cuts to universal credit, is not acceptable when the Government are still consulting on their Green Paper on closing the disability employment gap and do not have adequate support in place. Has the Minister discussed the outcome of last week’s debate with the Chancellor ahead of the autumn statement and impressed on him the need to postpone these punitive cuts?
I point out to the hon. Lady that the support that needs to be in place for those members of WRAG will be in place, and I gave the detail of exactly when that would be in place—before new claims come online—but I must stress that, as well as enabling people to endure and cope with such situations and the associated costs of living, we have an obligation to help them to get out of those situations. I have given assurances to the House that we will do both.
The loss of the limited capability for work element of universal credit will mean that thousands of working disabled people will be about £1,500 a year worse off. Does the Minister think that slashing the incomes of working disabled people sends the right message about the Government’s commitment to those who are just about managing?
We are spending more money on disability benefits, and we are doing more in terms of support, so I do not recognise the position that the hon. Lady outlines.
Yes, I do, which is why we have brought forward a Green Paper, and we will be consulting on it until February. In the meantime, where we can make progress and foster the local connections and relationships between employment support and healthcare professionals and others those individuals will need support from, we will do so, and the flexible support fund, which goes live in December, will do that.
On behalf of Labour, I offer my congratulations to Andy Murray.
The prospect of a further £1,500-a-year cut in support to sick and disabled people found not fit for work, on top of the previous £28 billion of cuts, fills many with dread. Why is the Secretary of State touting the propaganda that the cut will incentivise disabled people to find work, when his Department’s own research says the opposite? Will he listen to MPs on both sides of the House who unanimously rejected his policy last Thursday, and stop the cut in the autumn statement?
As I pointed out at length, we will mitigate the financial cut to the WRAG group through several measures, including the flexible support fund, which will help with costs related directly to work, and through other measures to help with costs not directly related to getting into work. I have stated to the hon. Lady several times in the last week that we have to do both those things. We need to ensure someone’s liquidity and financial resilience, but we must also ensure that they have other kinds of support. We will not pause that support when it commences in April.
Our policy is designed by service-user panels, provision is strictly monitored and measured by independent audit, and the provider is held to account through our contract with it.
Citizens Advice and the mental health charity Mind told the Public Accounts Committee in March that private contractor assessors were comprehensively failing claimants with mental health issues, so what progress has been made since in the recruitment of registered mental health nurses by healthcare assessment providers to ensure that claimants with mental health issues get the support they need?
Since then we have introduced a number of new measures, including improved training and additional recruitment. We are also monitoring to ensure those doing assessments are referring to mental health services if they feel that that is required.
Fourteen-year old Olivia in North Cornwall is the primary carer for her mother, who has multiple sclerosis. PIP assessments create uncertainty for Olivia; no one else in her household is able to work or to care for her mother. Will my hon. Friend applaud young carers such as Olivia? In the light of the DWP’s proposed end to reassessment for people with long-term illnesses, will she consider extending this to people who rely on children to care for them until such time as those children have finished further education?
I certainly pay tribute to Olivia and the thousands like her who do a physically and emotionally demanding job for their loved ones. We recognise the principle. We have made changes to ESA reassessments and the Green Paper affords us the opportunity to look at how that principle could be applied to PIP. It might be to my hon. Friend’s constituent’s advantage to have further PIP assessments because her needs might increase, but there is an opportunity to have a much more streamlined process, which I hope the Green Paper will deliver.
Does the Minister not realise how wildly wrong some of these assessments can be? I had a constituent with cerebral palsy who was told that he would get no mobility component with his personal independence payment, meaning that he risked losing his car and therefore his ability to work. Are any financial sanctions imposed on the contractor for getting such assessments so wildly wrong and hence threatening people’s jobs?
I think the hon. Lady’s question related to PIP. We have also introduced other ways in which we can measure a contractor’s performance, including the use of clinical data. Whether in relation to PIP or to ESA, we need to ensure that the evidence needed to make these judgments is submitted early in the process. We are doing some work to ensure that that happens, and it is improving things considerably.
That particular criterion, of which I am very aware, is obviously not the sole criterion—many other factors are taken into account. I wish to do more on Motability, and we are looking closely at the whole area.
I will happily write to the hon. Gentleman with the figures, but I do not recognise what he says. We have actually expanded such schemes, and the Green Paper asks what more we can do. We want to ensure that everyone who wants to get into work has the necessary equipment and support to do so.
I point my hon. Friend towards the joint Department of Health and DWP Green Paper that we have just published. It represents a key opportunity. If we want to, it is early enough in this Parliament to reform things such as the work capability assessment to ensure that support—whether from our services or from healthcare—gets to the people who need it.
By Wednesday’s autumn statement, it will be 505 days since the Government first announced the two-child policy and the rape clause in the summer Budget 2015. The Resolution Foundation estimates that that policy will put 200,000 children into poverty by 2020. The Government still cannot tell us how it will actually work, and there is a measly 38-day consultation in which the public can respond. When will the Government finally admit that the rape clause and the two-child policy are completely unworkable and scrap the policy?
Yes, I would be very happy to give those reassurances. In addition to discretionary payments that can be made through the work coach with the flexible support fund—[Interruption.] Yes, it has always been the case. Those payments are in relation to the costs that people incur from getting into work. As for those other costs that are not directly related to getting into work, we are looking at how we can reduce those outgoings, and there are a number of other national and locally administered schemes that would mitigate those costs. I am very clear that we have to do both things. We have to ensure that someone can endure and cope with the situation in which they find themselves, but we must also bring forward that support in April to enable them to get out of a situation.
With around £4 billion of child support debts still outstanding and DWP’s own figures to March this year showing that 90,000 non-resident parents have not paid child support in full, will the Secretary of State tell the House where extra resources can be found to ensure that those parents who are due child maintenance for the care of their children receive it in full and on time?
It was a long overdue victory for common sense that those people with chronic illnesses and long-term conditions will no longer be subject to the work capability assessment, but what about our brave veterans in receipt of war pensions? Why are they still subject to work capability assessments?
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. It is one that I, as a former Armed Forces Minister, have discussed with the Department. That is why we have specific questions related to our armed forces in the Green Paper. It is a good idea.
The most challenging gap that we need to bridge in the disability employment statistics is the one relating to people with learning difficulties. In answer to a written question, the civil service was unable to break down the stats to show how many people with learning disabilities were employed. Does the Minister agree that those stats are vital to help us to provide policies and support for people in these circumstances?
I agree absolutely, which is why we are doing that at as local a level as possible. On 5 December we are holding a drop-in session to which every Member of this House will be invited. As well as giving them information about how they can run local events to encourage participation in the Green Paper consultation, we will be giving them some local data so that they can get that local focus on the people we are currently trying to help and the unmet need.
Why does the Secretary of State think that five of his colleagues voted for my motion last week calling on the Government to pause cuts to ESA and universal credit?
Should not those people who were damaged in the contaminated blood scandal by the NHS be passported on to the new PIP regime if they are already in receipt of DLA?
I do not know whether this is an issue that the hon. Lady has raised before. I am sorry if I am not aware of the previous correspondence that she has had with the Department. I would be happy to meet her to discuss that.
PIP continues to lead the way in identifying and supporting those with mental health conditions to a significantly greater degree than DLA, so what more can be done to signpost the people identified to additional support provided by the NHS, charities or the Government pilot?
We have been trialling a number of measures—for example, the mental health trailblazers, which combines employment support advice with psychological support delivered through the NHS, and we are going to roll that out nationally.
Does the Secretary of State understand that the dismissive answers that the Under-Secretary of State for Pensions, the hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington), gave about the problems faced by WASPI women are a slap in the face to women who have worked all their lives and in many cases have retired to look after sick or elderly relatives, thus saving this country millions of pounds? It is time that Ministers recognised that those who have done the right thing ought to be looked at and their situation alleviated.
On Saturday evening, I met one of my constituents, who came to see me about PIP reassessments for those with deafness-related conditions. The question he wanted me to put to Ministers was whether, as part of the ongoing review of the reassessment process, they will look carefully at the situation relating to this group of individuals.
Yes, the Green Paper will afford us the opportunity to do that. Around certain disabilities, there are some very sensitive issues about how someone might need assistance provided—for example, they might prefer to use sign language, as opposed to assistive technology—which we also need to take into account, and we will do that.
I was recently contacted by a constituent who was asked to complete an evaluation form at the end of a PIP assessment and who alleges that the Atos healthcare professional who conducted the assessment stood over her and watched as she completed the paperwork. I am sure the Minister will share my alarm that people may feel menaced into giving favourable feedback. Will she agree to personally look into this as a matter of urgency?
If the hon. Lady can give me any more specifics about that, I would be very happy to look into it. In terms of the satisfaction reviews that are done, the satisfaction rating is high, and I do not think—[Interruption.] No, we need to give credit where credit is due. But if that kind of practice is going on, or if any Member of this House has evidence or further examples of it, I will be very happy to look into it.