Business of the House
Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Ruth Cadbury(8 months, 1 week ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
I implore the hon. Gentleman to recognise the merits of the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), who has appeared at this Dispatch Box an enormous number of times, and to acknowledge that the Foreign Secretary, who obviously sits in the House of Lords, has made himself available to hon. Members on a raft of issues. He has particularly made himself available to those Members who have been affected by what is happening in Israel and Gaza.
The hon. Gentleman will know that the Procedure Committee has made further recommendations on how this House can scrutinise the Foreign Secretary, and I am sure the House of Lords will shortly take a decision on those recommendations.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
Despite yesterday’s short-term tax cuts, families across the country know that they are worse off than they were 14 years ago, so will the Leader of the House urge the Prime Minister to call an election and let the British people give their views on this Government?
Penny Mordaunt
I am afraid that what the hon. Lady says is not the case. We have got an enormous number of people into work, and the best way for people to lift themselves out of poverty is through work. Two million of those 4 million people are women, and 1 million are disabled people who would not have had the dignity of a pay packet without our welfare reforms to make work pay and to support people in work.
We have an enormous childcare package that the previous Labour Administration went nowhere near. The number of pensioners living in absolute poverty has reduced by 200,000, and the number of children living in absolute poverty has reduced by 400,000. By any measure, the country is doing better. It will have more opportunities in future because of what we have done in education. We are soaring up the international literacy tables, and we have reformed post-16 education to enable people to get a degree without getting into massive amounts of debt, as happened under the hon. Lady’s party. What she says is not true, which is why we need to stay the course and stick with this Government.
Business of the House
Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Ruth Cadbury(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
For this year, we are not able to do that. In future years, we may have an R and R programme that might enable us to remain in this place, which I know is a concern to many people. Because of the new technology, we have many other options at our disposal—for example, if we wanted to extend the time people could work on this Chamber, which is an option that I know all those involved in R and R are considering. This year, there is not the need to do that or the forewarning to be able to do it, but I know the hon. Gentleman will continue to press to ensure that we do R and R in the most sensible and practical way possible.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
During my recent visit to West Middlesex University Hospital, I met an amazing group of women working there who between them have experienced the many and varied symptoms of the menopause. They told me that, because of the excellent workplace-based support they get, they no longer feel they have to leave their jobs or go part-time, or in other ways flatline their careers and thus their contribution to the NHS. Will the Leader of the House find Government time for a debate on the menopause and the impact it has on women in work, and therefore the impact it has on the economy and our public services?
Business of the House
Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Ruth Cadbury(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
The hon. Gentleman raises a matter that is particularly important after the backlog that has built up in such services during covid and the absence of such services during covid, particularly for children in care and other vulnerable children. Services are improving across the country, and certainly services for those children should be in place. He will know that the Department is looking at what more it can do to bolster the workforce and increase access to provision, and he can raise this issue at the next questions, which will be on 25 April.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
The Royal Oak in Isleworth is a popular pub that is run by a family, but it is being put under huge financial pressure because of the high cost of its gas and electricity bills. Having been forced to sign a new energy contract last autumn, they are stuck paying four times what they were paying last year for energy and they cannot afford it. Despite energy prices tumbling since they signed, British Gas has refused even to review their fixed-term contract. They are now facing closure because of the actions of British Gas, which will not get anything if a small business such as this one goes under. Does the Leader of the House agree that the actions of British Gas are unacceptable and harmful to small businesses? Will she find time for a debate about how we can support our pubs and other small businesses that are stuck with these exorbitant new fixed-term contracts?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Lady for raising this important case. It does sound extremely unfair that British Gas will not engage with that business, as she describes—it sounds very un-British of British Gas to do that. I hope that British Gas will have heard what she has said, look at this case and see whether it can find a way through to ensure that that business can continue operating. I congratulate her on raising this matter this afternoon.
Business of the House
Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Ruth Cadbury(2 years ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent question. It is true: since 2010, we have got nearly 4 million people into work. That is 4 million people who have the dignity of a pay packet; half of them are women and a quarter are disabled people, who did not have many such opportunities before. There are 1 million fewer workless households. Every time our party has left office, we have left the country in a much better position than when we inherited it. The complete reverse is true of the Labour party.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
My constituents living at APT Parkview apartments in Brentford are experiencing shocking treatment from their freeholder and managing agents, including John James Collins, Eight Asset Management, SW4 Management and Paradigm Land—just part of the list of interconnecting directors and companies involved with a single block. The residents face increased safety risks, the withdrawal of services they are paying for and a retrospective charge for air conditioning of which they had no prior notice in their tenancy or lease. I am increasingly hearing from constituents in blocks of flats across my constituency who face the worst of this new breed of landlord, exploiting loopholes in tenancy and leasehold law. Will the Leader of the House find Government time for a debate on how we can protect and support those tenants and leaseholders?
Penny Mordaunt
I am sure all hon. Members will have experienced similar cases, where the situation is incredibly complex and it is not clear who the tenant can get redress from. Governance structures and local residents’ associations can only be effective if they know who they are dealing with. These are important matters, and I will ask the Department to provide the hon. Lady and her office with some advice on them. I know, because measures will be brought forward in the legislative programme, that there will be opportunities to talk about these issues on the Floor of the House.
Draft Cat and Dog Fur (Control of Movement etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2022
Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Ruth Cadbury(2 years, 2 months ago)
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The Minister for Trade Policy (Penny Mordaunt)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Cat and Dog Fur (Control of Movement Etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2022.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott. As a courtesy, I should say that my phone is off before the jokes start. I should also declare an interest as the humble servant of four cats at home.
I am sure that all Members are of one mind that the slaughter of cats and dogs to trade in their fur is completely wrong. Since 2008, the import, export and placing on the market of cat and dog fur, and products containing their fur, has been banned in the United Kingdom, and it will continue to be. When the ban entered into force it was at EU level, but I am proud that the United Kingdom played an influential role in its introduction. The Government rightly chose to keep the ban in place upon the UK’s departure from the European Union, and today we are seeking to secure this statutory instrument to ensure our robust position is maintained.
The SI replicates, clarifies and makes operable the prohibition on the import, export and placing on the market of cat and dog fur, and products containing such fur.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
I am interested in the definition of fur. Does it relate to fur and pelts, as in pelts with fur on, or does it also include combed fur that is not attached to a pelt and has been removed from a live animal?
Penny Mordaunt
The definition includes products containing that fur, so it is a broad definition.
The regulations are simple and do not introduce new policy; instead we are correcting technical deficiencies in the retained EU law and amending domestic law to ensure that the regulations work for the UK now that we have left the EU. The SI ensures the continued enforcement of the ban, as well as clarifies the criminal penalties for breaching it in each of the UK’s criminal law jurisdictions in accordance with the primary legislation that that applies to. In doing so, we are ensuring that any doubt regarding those penalties is removed. The SI also replaces references to the European Union and its institutions and legislation with the equivalent references to Great Britain.
I am sure that there are many things that Members wish that the SI might do, but its scope is very limited. For example, Members may want to end the existing derogation powers for educational purposes, or want the draft regulations to cover other species. But that would be beyond the powers under which the SI is made. It cannot introduce new policy and it is simply ensuring that the ban on the trade in cat and dog fur is fully maintained now that the UK has left the EU. In doing so we are sending a clear message across the world that that is the case.
Drafts of the regulations were shared with the devolved Administrations, and we are confident that there is agreement across the UK on the importance of maintaining the ban on the trade in cat and dog fur. To waiver would risk cat and dog fur crossing our borders and entering our market, and that is not acceptable to this Government. I very much hope that Members will be unanimous in their support for the SI and what it seeks to achieve.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Ruth Cadbury(2 years, 3 months ago)
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Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
From swerving eight invitations to attend the International Trade Committee to avoiding bringing a debate with a vote to this Chamber before ratification, we have seen a truly shameless attempt from the Department for International Trade to dodge to any form of scrutiny of the trade deal with Australia. With the UK now negotiating membership of the CPTPP, I have a simple question: will the Minister promise that this House will be granted a full and timely debate before any deal is ratified—yes or no?
Penny Mordaunt
I will ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to set out any parliamentary business and timetable for any future trade agreements. We have clearly committed to a particular process. For my part, every time the International Trade Committee or other body of this House has asked me to go before it, I have. That is the attitude of the ministerial team, and we will continue to do that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Ruth Cadbury(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
In 2019, the UK signed a trade deal with Colombia. Two years after that deal, Colombia remains the deadliest country for workers and trade union members, with 22 assassinations in the last two years alone. However, the UK’s trade deal has no clear enforcement mechanisms to protect the rights of workers or trade unionists. Will Ministers learn anything from this failure, especially when they negotiate future trade agreements with Gulf states?
Penny Mordaunt
I refer the hon. Member to some remarks on this issue that I made last year in Westminster Hall, where I took the time to list some of the activists—trade union activists, environmental activists—who have been brutally murdered. I listed those people on the Floor in Westminster Hall because it is important that we shine a spotlight on those issues. She will know that we have also taken great efforts to raise this issue at the UN, and I think we are upholding our obligations to those people in doing that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Ruth Cadbury(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
In December, the Government snuck through a change to the UK’s arms export rules, and charities such as Oxfam have warned that these changes will lessen transparency over arms exports and could see UK arms being used against civilians such as those in Yemen. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that UK arms exports are not used to commit breaches of international humanitarian law?
The Minister for Trade Policy (Penny Mordaunt)
The Government have not “snuck through” such changes. We are very open and transparent about the policies that sit behind our very good arms export controls, which are also scrutinised by this House. The Department is due to meet a number of stakeholders; I can check whether Oxfam is part of that. We meet regularly to discuss these issues. We have one of the best arms export regimes in the world; it is flexible and changes as situations change. The hon. Lady will know that we recently made some new changes because of what is happening in parts of the world. She should be confident in what we are doing on that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Ruth Cadbury(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
I do agree with my hon. Friend. The rules that we are constrained by have not prevented us from coming up with the funds needed to help those areas hit by Hurricanes Irma and Maria. This is also a lesson that we should continue to invest in our defence capabilities, because we were very reliant on our armed forces to get into those places.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Ruth Cadbury(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Penny Mordaunt)
Personal independence payment assessments require specialist skills, which is why they are undertaken by qualified health professionals, who are experts in disability analysis, and focus on the effects of health conditions and impairments on an individual’s daily life.
Ruth Cadbury
That is not the experience of some of my constituents, including one who has a rare condition and is on the highest level of DLA, and so should automatically be entitled to PIP, but whose assessor had no knowledge of the condition and refused the PIP application. Will the Minister specify the exact training, experience and competence requirements an applicant would have to demonstrate to qualify as a healthcare professional who could undertake PIP assessments for the DWP?
Penny Mordaunt
I have stated many times in the House the categories of healthcare professionals who can work as PIP assessors—it is a long list—but I should point out that these people are not carrying out health assessments. They are not there to diagnose; they are there to record the impact of someone’s condition on their personal life, which is quite different. As I have said in answer to previous questions, we will introduce some new measures on PIP as part of our response to Paul Gray’s second review.
Independent Living: Disabled People
Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Ruth Cadbury(8 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Penny Mordaunt)
I am delighted to respond to the debate. This is my first Adjournment debate in my new ministerial role, and I am now in my 13th week. One opportunity a new Minister has in getting acquainted with their new Department is to ask dumb questions. Many of the dumb questions I have asked over the last few weeks are very pertinent to the debate: “How did you arrive at that particular figure?”; “What exactly is this money for?”; “Who is actually responsible for ensuring that this is paid?”; and “How do we know this is value for money for the disabled person?”
If we consider the history of our welfare system and the other layers of support administered by local government and civil society, we see that the picture is incredibly complex and muddy. I therefore thank the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) and others who have contributed to the debate, because it affords me the opportunity not only to address some of the issues she raised, but hopefully to further the cause of simplicity, transparency and, critically, accessibility.
I very much welcome the work Scope has done. Historically, Governments have had little detail about what disabled people have had to, and are choosing to, spend their money on. Scope has yet formally to launch its latest report—I do not want to steal too much of its thunder—but has done a valuable service in identifying certain key areas where costs for disabled people are considerably higher. This is not just clothing, transport and equipment, but, as the hon. Lady mentioned, energy and insurance, too.
Other organisations have helped on this agenda—Age UK, to mention only one, which is understandable when so many older people are also disabled. It has clearly established that the older people are, the higher their cost of living—an argument I have often deployed in defending the triple lock and pensioner benefits.
Part of the challenge of capturing these costs is that, apart from certain common trends, extra costs are so personal to the individual. Governments have therefore hypothecated for these additional costs for daily living or mobility. Increasingly and importantly, as we have seen with the Care Act 2014 and the personal independence payment, we leave the individual with a choice on how to spend that money. The spending power that a person has—that empowerment—is the best safeguard against poor-quality services and poor-quality provision. A disabled person will always be better than any five star-rated local authority in spending that money.
The other motivation for PIP was to ensure that we were directing money to those in the greatest need and with the most significant ongoing costs. Designed to cover those extra costs, PIP also improved on the disability living allowance by, critically, recognising mental health conditions, learning disabilities and sensory impairments, as well as physical disabilities. There are now more than 220,000 people receiving over £7,250 a year to help with these additional costs.
Under DLA, only 15% received the highest level of support, while it is 24% under PIP. Under DLA, only 22% of those living with a mental health condition received the enhanced daily living component, while under PIP the figure is 66%. The number of people on the Motability scheme has gone up since PIP was introduced, but we are keen further to improve its working. We have a programme of continuous improvement and evaluation by expert external bodies and stakeholders, including the Disability Charities Consortium. I am pleased that Paul Gray will lead a second review following his extremely helpful report, on which we have acted.
The forthcoming Green Paper affords us a further opportunity to look at those processes holistically, and to look at the person’s whole journey, whatever his or her personal destination might be. We have already made public the intention to stop retests for employment and support allowance when it makes no sense, and we hope that we can do more to reduce the bureaucracy and the burden on the individual. We must seize the opportunity presented by the Green Paper, and I urge every Member with an interest to engage in that consultation.
We also need more clarity about the vast array of support that is out there to ensure that the reach of our programmes and schemes matches the need. It is no good having an Access to Work scheme, a disabled facilities grant or 15 hours’ free childcare if people do not know about it and are not taking it up. However, as the hon. Lady said, we also have a duty to ensure that disabled people have every opportunity to secure best value for money.
Members have spent much time on the Floor of the House discussing energy costs, and I am confident that both Scope and the Government will continue to focus on them. Insurance markets can also afford more opportunities. There are certain practices that do, I think, require more Government action. The hon. Lady mentioned transport, and I agree that the scandal of charging disabled people higher fares is grossly exploitative. As one who has long campaigned on the quality of rail franchise agreements and the comfort, facilities and experience of the travelling public, I can tell the hon. Lady that she is preaching to the choir when she highlights the different treatment that disabled people experience on public transport.
I could give many other examples. However, I want to make it clear that this is not just about disabled people being short-changed—charged more and getting less for their money—but about businesses that are missing opportunities. The combined spending power of disabled people is immense. Some of the Department’s analysts have been working on the subject, and I can tell the House that we have vastly underestimated the spending power of that group. We will make the findings public shortly. Businesses, however, seem content to miss out on a huge customer base. Stores and products are inaccessible, irrelevant, or not even worth considering owing to the lack of accessible toilets. For some, spending a penny—in every sense—can be extremely difficult.
We need to change that. We need to help businesses and other organisations to understand what they must do, and, with us, really understand what the unmet need is and what the game-changing investments will be, in equipment, in technology, and—as the hon. Lady rightly pointed out—in connectivity. How can we drive down the costs, achieve faster take-up, and ensure that Government-funded services provide real value for money for a disabled person? Tackling the costs of living and the digital agenda to which the hon. Lady referred, and improving the targeting and reach of our welfare and support services, is only one half of the equation. If we want everyone in our society to enjoy a good quality of life, financial resilience and wellbeing, we must not only continue to improve welfare, tackle the extra costs and champion the disabled consumer; we must increase incomes as well.
Giving more people the opportunities that come with a pay packet and a career is part of that. The disability employment gap is a scandal. It is a scandal that disabled people have not had the opportunities that others enjoy, it is a scandal that businesses and other organisations have been missing out on huge talent and insight in the workforce, and it is a scandal that the costs of unemployment—people not having the chance to have meaningful activity in their lives and all the health benefits that we know come with it—have been piled on to our public services. We have been tackling the problem in a number of ways, and I thank all Members who have helped the Department by, for instance, running Disability Confident events, but we need to do more.
The Green Paper—the first of its kind, truly joint with health—will move the debate to where it needs to be, and create the momentum it requires. The paper should also consider the resilience and opportunities of carers, and the need to ensure that they can nurture their own ambitions and dreams as well as their loved ones. That includes being economically active, either now or in the future, if that is their wish.
As well as ensuring that opportunities are open to disabled people seeking work, if we are to make more than a dent in the disability employment gap we must also create more jobs, including jobs that offer the activities and flexibilities that disabled people want and need. There is much good work in this space, but it is often down to considerable luck that such ventures are created, with the right people from education, the local enterprise partnership, the council and social enterprise being in the right place at the right time. We must make such ventures more mainstream, more frequent and more the norm.
The number of people with a learning disability who benefit from such opportunities is considerable, and we must grip this issue in order to afford them the income and experiences that they are currently being denied. Such activity forms part of every think-tank-produced checklist for a good life I have ever seen, together with a warm secure home, financial resilience, opportunities and choice, connectivity, the ability to travel and a social life. These are all things that enable a person to reach their full potential, and we must ensure that people do that, or our nation never will.
Ruth Cadbury
The Minister waxes lyrical about the importance of disabled people being able to participate in society—to work and to socialise if they want to—but does she not recognise the fact that the withdrawal of funds to key services and the withdrawal of benefits make that aspiration virtually impossible?
Penny Mordaunt
I would take issue with what the hon. Lady says about this Government’s record. I have mentioned some statistics on PIP, and I could mention others relating to how we are using the increasing welfare bill better and in a more targeted way. I do agree, however, that we need to join these things up much better.
I welcome the tone taken by hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn in an article that she wrote for her local paper, in which she called for more cross-party working on these issues. Politics can often be divisive, and these issues are too important not to make common good, and common cause. Welfare reform is often lengthy, but certainty and stability are desirable. Such is the scale of the challenges that we need everyone to work towards the change we need in business, services and products, in the public sector and in our communities. We need to link the national to the local. We need closer working across all sectors, and we need the opportunities that the third sector brings to be understood and capitalised on by commissioners. We need all parts of the public sector to work better together, and utilising the data that we all have will be a game changer for delivery. We need to extend our reach to those patient groups and peer support forums that we do not currently work with. We need to build consensus, common good and common cause across all sectors.
In the hon. Lady’s constituency, local government consultations are taking place right now that will impact on the people we have been discussing today. It is no good even the most perfect policy being formed in Whitehall if it cannot be delivered on the ground. It is no good having a wonderfully evaluated Work programme if the person who could benefit from it does not know about it, or if the type of benefit they are on precludes them from benefiting from it. It is no good a person getting into work, or getting a college place, if their bus pass does not work before the hour they need to start. It is no good a person having a back-to-work plan if they cannot access the healthcare intervention they need to be sufficiently pain-free to hold down a job.
If we are to continue to improve welfare delivery, to close the disability employment gap, to build resilience and choice, to open businesses’ eyes to the possibilities, to enforce the Equality Act 2010 and to continue job creation with everyone in mind, we need a cultural change towards disability. It needs to be part of the mainstream, because it is the mainstream. It needs to be at the heart of every consideration and every plan.
The new role that I occupy, the fact we are in the youth of this Parliament—although it might not feel like it at times—the raised awareness of these issues, the new opportunities technology brings and the Green Paper will all present an opportunity to achieve those aims. Colleagues must maximise these opportunities, along with their councillors, their local Jobcentre Plus team, their healthcare professionals, businesses and the third sector organisations in their patch. We need hon. Members’ help, and I hope that they will give it.
Question put and agreed to.