Prisons
Peter Heaton-Jones Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)
No, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am terribly sorry, you have conflated two hon. Members. I am very closely related to my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), but I am not he. Is it me you intend to call?
Peter Heaton-Jones
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The prison system faces challenges, but the Government have taken enormous steps to address them. We have heard about some of them, and extra investment of £1.3 billion to reform and modernise the prison estate is front and centre in the White Paper that was published last October. None the less, the prison system faces challenges. I was taken with the comments of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) that no one on either side of the House would deny that the Prison Service faces serious challenges. That is absolutely the case.
I welcome the White Paper, and I have mentioned the £1.3 billion to reform and modernise the prison estate, which I greatly welcome. I also welcome the fact that we are recruiting 2,500 frontline officers. I was pleased that the Lord Chancellor mentioned at the beginning of the debate the further commitment to fast-track 400 new prison officers into 10 of the most challenging prisons by the end of March. We are more than on track with that, and I think that she said that 389 appointments have been made under the scheme, which is excellent news.
In the remaining time, I want to discuss security, which concerns me. I have discussed it with Ministers in the past, and I am particularly concerned about the growing problem of drones being used to deliver drugs, contraband, mobile phones and various other things to prisoners. I have long held the view that, as a society, community and perhaps Government, we have not quite grasped the difficulties caused by drones. There has been an explosion in the number of people who own them. Quite apart from security matters in prisons, there have been awful cases of near-misses with aircraft, and we need to tackle that. We need to look at that very seriously when considering the problem of security in prisons. Practical measures have been taken, including basic things such as putting up netting to prevent things from being dropped. We need to look at that more carefully and at the issue of drones overall.
I am also concerned about the continuing challenge we face with the misuse of mobile phones. Mobile phones are being delivered to prisons using what I understand are increasingly ingenious methods—I do not use that word as praise, but merely to say that new ways are being found all the time to deliver mobile phones to prisons. We have to stop that, with practical, hard measures. The mobile phone industry has a responsibility as well, and it needs to do more technically to work with us and the prison authorities to ensure that that there are ways of blocking mobile phone signals.
More can be done. I know only too well as the MP for North Devon that many places do not have a mobile phone signal. That is unintentional, but I am sure that there is a technical solution. We can ask mobile operators to take responsibility and make sure that there are intentional blackspots to stop mobile phones getting into prisons.
I support the Government amendment, I praise the work that is being done, and I welcome the White Paper.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Third sitting)
Peter Heaton-Jones Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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The Chair
We have 12 minutes left for this session, colleagues. Three colleagues wish to ask questions, so can I ask, please, for brief questions and brief answers? I will call Peter Heaton-Jones, followed by Neil Coyle, followed by Emily Thornberry, who will ask the final questions.
Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)
Q 187 I will be very brief. I seek just one point of clarification from Professor Gordon. In your opening answer, you made a reference I want to clarify. You said certain measures in the Bill had previously been proposed in 2007, I think—
Professor Gordon: Between 1999 and 2007, under the last Labour Government.
Peter Heaton-Jones
Q 188 And what were the measures that that Government proposed?
Professor Gordon: They were part of the opportunities rule, which had a whole suite of measures of child wellbeing. There were effectively identical to the measures proposed in the Bill.
Stephen Timms
Q 197 You had some comments, I think, about what the apprenticeships report should tell us. Could you say a few words about that?
Julia Unwin: Apprenticeships clearly matter. We can learn from other countries about how to do them so much better, but we need to understand in fairly fine-grained detail the impact of apprenticeships and what they do for people’s life chances, as opposed to thinking that they are a process through which people go and that there are automatically positive outcomes.
Peter Heaton-Jones
Q 198 I want to move on to discuss clauses 9 and 10, which put in place measures to freeze certain elements of benefits and tax credits over a four-year period. I am keen to get your knowledge and experience on how, since roughly 2008, average earnings have risen by about 11% while average benefits have risen by—depending slightly on how it is measured; I agree that there is a grey area—about 21%. Do you think that the measures in the Bill to freeze certain elements are welcome in that they would get a bit of equalisation in the system? We should bear in mind the Government’s stated intention that they are trying to bring more people closer to work, and to make work pay—to use the slogan.
Dr Niemietz: The problem with an across-the-board freeze is that you do not really incentivise work, because you freeze out-of-work incomes and also in-work incomes, or at least that part of the transfer that is supposed to top up low incomes and thereby incentivise people to enter the workforce. If you freeze both, you lose that effect because the gap remains the same. It would have made more sense to freeze only out-of-work benefits, or even to uprate them at a rate below inflation, but not to touch the work-related top-ups, especially the 30-hours element of working tax credit, which was meant to give people an incentive not only to move into some work but, once they were in work, to move further—to move from minor employment towards something closer to full-time employment.
Julia Unwin: The benefits freeze is a huge risk for the Government to be taking, and to have taken in advance in this way. The basket of goods on which poorer households spend their income has been subject to more inflation than the rest because the cost of essentials has gone up. We are currently in a period of lower inflation, but we cannot predict what will happen. I would recommend, as we did in our submission, that the Government review the rate of inflation annually. The outcome might well be a freeze, but actually, what the Government are doing is removing the one buffer that the poorest households, both in and out of work, have against inflation. That is hugely risky.
Peter Heaton-Jones
Q 199 What is the panel’s view on taking the measures in the Bill alongside the wider approach of some of the measures proposed in the Finance Bill—for example, the national living wage and the uprating of income tax thresholds? If you take them all as a bundle, is there not—well, I do not want to lead you. What is your view on whether that package of measures would be welcome in moving people closer to work and making work more attractive?
Julia Unwin: There is no question but that we need to move people closer to work or that people’s best route out of poverty is work—that is, work that gives them security, confidence and some progression. We have done some analysis of the package of measures, as you described it, and some are welcome. All the measures are welcome in their own right, but their impact is different on different groups of people. As you heard in the previous session, the better impact is on couples without children who are both working. That is welcome, but for child poverty, particularly for single parents, there are some very real losses. This freeze only compounds those losses.
Dr Niemietz: I would have started from a very different angle. One of the transfers that most undermines work incentives is housing benefit, because in a lot of areas—particularly London, but other cities as well—a lot of low earners could not realistically earn an income that gets them off the housing benefit taper. That means they will always have this taper rate of 65% of net income, which is a huge disincentive against work. That cannot be addressed within the remit of the Bill, but it is always worth bearing in mind that the only reason why housing benefit dependency has risen so much is that rents have increased at a faster rate than incomes for a very long time. The reason for that is simply that we are not building enough houses to keep up with demand. Once you get that right—once you allow the construction of sufficient numbers of homes—rents will fall and housing benefit dependency will automatically fall with it, meaning that far fewer people are exposed to that 65% taper rate. You would massively increase work incentives while saving a lot of public money.
The UK has a higher proportion of its population depending on housing benefit than any other developed country. It is about one in five households. That is the highest proportion in the developed world. I would have started from that angle.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Second sitting)
Peter Heaton-Jones Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Hannah Bardell
Q 54 Leave it out?
Tony Wilson: Yes, not to do it is the simplest one. It will be a really tough one for the Committee to grapple with. We know that rapes tend not to be reported; we know that prosecution rates are very low. How do you do it in a way that does not rely essentially on the outcomes of criminal cases? It is quite unpalatable to think how that might work in practice. I do not think there are any easy or straightforward ways to resolve it.
Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)
Q 55 I will be brief. I just want to clarify a couple of figures, if I may. The latest figures I have for the number of ESA claimants in the work-related activity group is just shy of 500,000, I think. Do we have any figures for what percentage of people successfully come off WRAG and get into paid employment?
Kirsty McHugh: We could look at the Work programme figures and ERSA collates job start figures as well as the job outcome figures, which are produced by the Government. We can share all of those with the Committee if you want us to.
Peter Heaton-Jones
Q 56 It would be interesting to know what percentage of people who have been in receipt of ESA in the WRAG have come off that and in to employment. Does anyone else have anything?
Tony Wilson: The only indicators that the Department publishes are benefit offloads at 65 weeks—the proportion who have left benefit after 65 weeks. You have put me on the spot because I cannot remember what the figure is. It is not a lot—it might be 40% or 45%.
Charlotte Pickles: It is not job outcomes.
Tony Wilson: It is not job outcomes.
Charlotte Pickles: Which is the problem and the point I was making earlier.
Tony Wilson: It is not beyond the gift of the Department to work that out, essentially matching with HMRC and its own data. I think that is something we would all find invaluable.
Corri Wilson
Q 57 I just wanted to touch on the carer’s allowance and the widow’s pension in part of the cap. Those are obviously groups of people who are already under a strain: they have either lost a partner or have a caring responsibility 24/7. Should they be part of the cap? Should they be included?
The Chair
Any advance on yes from Sophie? Is that the general feeling?
Roy O'Shaughnessy: The only thing that I would add is that Shaw Trust has taken a position that we are all in this together and that, once the Government process has determined an appropriate way forward, we will work tirelessly to achieve the objectives of halving the rate. So for us it is much more about how we can deal with the problems that people are highlighting. For example, our commitment in the next five years is to work with Whizz-Kidz, which represents 74,000 16 to 24-year-olds who are in wheelchairs. They get very low job outcomes. We have committed to help them get 2,000 young people in wheelchairs into placements, and then, over five years, to get 20,000 of those young people into jobs.
I am sure that there are incredible problems in how we are going to deliver all this, but by the time we host the global congress on rehabilitation in Edinburgh next year, we plan on being able to report that 700 of these young people in wheelchairs are in placements and highlight that at least 20 or 30 are now in sustainable jobs.
My view is that the civic society and the legislative process and business now need to come together, in some kind of shared framework, to make this work—all of us recognising that there would probably be a much better way to do this if there were unlimited resources. But based upon where we are, we are going to take the best of what we have and work with those individuals, and we are delighted to have Whizz-Kidz on board with us.
Gareth Parry: I think the answer is yes, if nothing changes. But if some of the money saved in that Bill is reinvested in the provision of high quality, easily accessible, personalised employment support, it has a chance of succeeding.
Peter Heaton-Jones
Q 76 I have two brief, but separate, points. As Helen shared with us earlier, I also take an interest in people with mental health conditions being able to get back into work. There is one town in my constituency, Ilfracombe, where there is a particular issue. There are a lot of groups, both statutory and third sector, doing a lot of work. I am interested to hear your perspective on the effect you think some of the measures in the Bill will have on that. In particular, one of you—forgive me, I think it was probably Gareth—mentioned a holistic approach being necessary for this. Looking outside the scope of the Bill to the work the DWP is doing, such as the Disability Confident programme, how do you think all that in its entirety will help with this challenge?
Gareth Parry: On that specific point, one of the points we wanted to make is that the Bill does not strongly feature the role of employers in a lot of this. It is not all down to employers, but employers need support and education in the same way that disabled people need support. There should not just be a continuation of Disability Confident but a significant ramp-up of Disability Confident not only to make employers aware of disability issues in the workplace and to encourage them to employ disabled people but to help equip them, provide them with training and give them the capability to employ disabled people, rather than continuing to create dependency on specialist organisations to do everything for the individual and the employer. If Disability Confident could be promoted and turned into a capacity or capability building programme, that would be fantastic. I confess that I cannot remember the other bits, so I will hand over to colleagues.
Sophie Corlett: I can comment on the first part of your question about impacts. Before coming today, we went out to people and asked, “What would be the impact for you, for the people you know or for the people you work with?” We have had more than 500 emails from people. That is on top of the work we have done over the last decade or so on benefits and their importance to people. To give a bit of an insight into how people use their income, isolation is a big issue for many people with mental health problems. Particularly in rural areas, whether you are able to go out to get on the bus to go to places or to see your family is an issue. You may need to have a car.
We heard from one person who said that, if they had less money, they would have to give up their transport. They really struggled with public transport because of their mental health condition. There are different things for different people, but there is an acknowledgment from a number of people, including from a welfare benefit adviser, who said, “For all these people, £30 less a week would mean not being able to pay essential bills, not eating properly, or both, increasing their anxiety and making it less likely that they will be well enough to work.” It is just chipping away at some of the things that help people to stay well or to recover. Some of those things are really important.
On the other side, in terms of improving how people are getting back into work, we now know some well evidenced things about how to get people with mental health problems back into work. We talked a bit about them earlier, but it is about working with people on their aspirations and tailoring to their particular needs and circumstances. It is about having a good understanding—Gareth talked about people’s skill level—and working with employers. There is Disability Confident and other mechanisms. We are involved in the Time to Change campaign, which is looking at employers and how they work. We cannot wait for all those things. Employment advisers themselves will have to work with employers on a one-to-one basis for each individual, because if we wait until employers as a whole are ready to take people, we will be waiting quite a long time.
Peter Heaton-Jones
Q 77 I will be brief because I am aware of the time pressures. I just want to talk about the work-related activity group, which contains about half a million people. The Government are allocating extra funds for that—£60 million rising to about £100 million—and I am interested to hear the view on how that money would be best spent. I choose Matt.
Matt Oakley: Can I avoid the question?
Peter Heaton-Jones
No.
Matt Oakley: I will answer in a different way. I am not sure that it is necessarily a question of money. I am not sure that £60 million or £100 million, in the grand scheme of things, will raise that 8% to 16%, 24%, 32% or whatever. At the moment we are treating people too much by their benefit type when they go through to the Work programme, which means that they have a set amount of money attached to them. Frankly, that is not accurate enough. What we need to do is say, “Okay, you’re in the ESA WRA group. You’ve been there for a very long time. You’ve had huge problems in the past. You’ve never been employed. Let’s get a huge amount of money to you,” versus the person who potentially has far fewer barriers to work, has just moved into the WRA group, is very keen to work and has a prognosis that is actually very good. Why are we paying the same amount in the Work programme for those two people? It just does not make any sense. Extra money is great, but we need to fundamentally rethink how we are funnelling that money to the hardest-to-help people.
Emily Thornberry
Q 78 I may have misunderstood your evidence, because you seem to be accepting that there are people in the WRA group—the employment support group—who will not be able to find work because there is something wrong with them; they really will not be able to find work and have been unemployed for a long time. You heard Sophie’s evidence about how hard it is to live on JSA for any period. As a matter of humanity, do you not think it is wrong in those circumstances for people who we know are on long-term sick leave or are long-term unemployed to be put on to jobseeker’s allowance? They simply will not be able to cope.
Matt Oakley: I would make the same argument for jobseeker’s allowance. There are people going on to jobseeker’s allowance who go into a jobcentre on day one and frankly, we should know that they are not going to be employed for the next three years. There is no more reason to give them less money than the WRA group people you are talking about. My point is that, money aside, we should be making sure that the employment support they are receiving is fit for purpose and that we are targeting support at them on day one, day two and day three to make sure they are tackling the barriers to work they face, so that people are not spending three or four years either in the ESA WRAG or on JSA.