Universal Credit Roll-out

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Frank Field]

I could not agree more. We will come on to discuss, briefly, I hope, the reforms we want and will push for. I will certainly do that, as perhaps others will. We will review these things in our Select Committee. We must base this on evidence, but the evidence is mounting up.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

I do not know whether my right hon. Friend has noticed that The Times reports today that property companies are now doing pre-emptive evictions of tenants who are being moved to UC. [Interruption.] The Times is reporting this today; it is actually happening on the frontline. Will he say a few words about the impact this will have on already vulnerable claimants of UC?

[Frank Field]

Both those statements made by my hon. Friends from east London and Hove, on the coast, are true, and I am sure they will try to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I move on to the theme of organised chaos. Even if we are working with CABs, every Tom, Dick and Harry organisation seems now to be embedded in the system. Jobcentre officials say that even when the system is up and running, as it is in Birkenhead, claims are closed down in error and it takes several months to rebuild them. There is no money during the rebuilding—

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

I am grateful to be called so early in this debate. It is a pleasure to speak on this important matter. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid) for his maiden speech. I agree with what the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) said about the speech, save in one respect: my hon. Friend gave the confident speech of a young professional. He paid generous tribute to his predecessor. I particularly appreciated his comments on broadband, and I look forward to campaigning alongside him to ensure that all of our rural areas have adequate access to broadband. I look forward to his further contributions in this place.

I am pleased that this is the third or fourth such debate that we have had in the past month, because it gives me the opportunity to reiterate my strong support for universal credit. Like most people on both sides of the House, I am firmly of the view that work should always pay. That is the principle that underlines universal credit. Government Members are passionate about ensuring that more people get into work, that they are supported into work and that, once they are there, they get on and get ever more work both in terms of hours and quality.

[Peter Kyle]

Does the hon. Gentleman remember the early days of when universal credit was first mooted? At that time, the Labour party was supportive of the concept, but said that universal credit needed to be rolled out over a period longer than one Parliament, and that much more detailed piloting would be needed to get the system right. Those are the things that have gone wrong, and they are inflicting misery on our constituents.

[Michael Tomlinson]

I will come back to the Labour party’s record on rolling out benefits in due course, but the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I wish that Labour Members would speak up more loudly with their support for the principle behind universal credit, because at the moment it sounds like they are calling for not a delay or a pause, but a scrap. The Labour party has opposed every single benefit change that this Government have brought into effect, and the cost of its position would have been tens of billions of pounds. However, this is not about the money. More importantly, it is about the people, and universal credit is about encouraging people into work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Tomlinson]

In one moment.

We remember the fiasco of tax credits, with £7.3 billion of overpayments, and we remember the misery that was caused. The hon. Member for Hove referred to the speed with which universal credit has been rolled out. Actually, the lesson to be learned is not to roll out a scheme in a big-bang fashion, as happened with tax credits, when £2.7 billion then had to be clawed back from the poorest and most vulnerable in society. I was a new Member of Parliament in 2015, when people were still feeling the repercussions of that old system.

[Peter Kyle]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Michael Tomlinson]

I will not. I only have a minute and a half left, and I do not get any more time.

The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) referred to two-weekly payments. Will the Minister tell us the number of people in employment who actually receive such payments? My suspicion is that it is a very low proportion, but I want the Minister to tackle that point directly, as he was asked the question by the right hon. Gentleman. In particular, I want the Minister to continue to listen and learn, and to ensure that it always pays to be in work rather than on benefits.

Intergenerational Fairness

Peter Kyle Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 28th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

In some ways, it could not be better that this debate is following the previous one, because, as was rather graciously referred to by the leader of the previous debate, the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), we have had an announcement today from Sir Philip Green about part of a settlement to bring justice to BHS workers and pensioners. The inquiry on BHS showed how two Select Committees working together can be more powerful than the sum parts of each Committee. I continue to emphasise, as my hon. Friend did, that the announcement represents the first piece of the puzzle on pensions being put in place. We have not had a chance to read the small print, but one hopes it is good as the headline.

A number of reports are still outstanding, including from the Inland Revenue, which has arrested Dominic Chappell—the person who, wisely or foolishly, bought BHS for £1. There are outstanding reports from the liquidators, the Serious Fraud Office and the Insolvency Service. The Prime Minister has made it plain that she will make no move on making a recommendation to the Honours Forfeiture Committee that it should begin work on considering whether Sir Philip should keep his knighthood until she has access to all those reports. That is immensely sensible, as one would expect from somebody who is as careful as she is before taking such decisions. All I would add is that although we know that seeing justice as a result of the reports from the Revenue, the Serious Fraud Office, the liquidators and the Insolvency Service is much more important in the longer run than any knighthood, some in the country will look for sacramental changes that show that the Government have really taken on board how horrendous the BHS chaos was.

I am obviously not going to talk any more about that subject, Madam Deputy Speaker, because you have been kind in letting me make a follow-up statement on this of all days, when we are following a debate on a Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee report with one on a Work and Pensions Committee report. Those Committees joined forces to look carefully at the beginnings of a longer-term solution for the pensioners and workers, and what these things mean for public companies, as well as a whole host of other issues. The two Committees began that work together, and I am pleased that our two debates have, with providential luck, somehow been joined together.

We are using the privilege of occupying the Chamber of the House of Commons to debate the Work and Pensions Committee report on intergenerational fairness. I am pleased that a number of members of the Committee and others are here to make a contribution. If I keep disappearing, Madam Deputy Speaker, to make some comments on Sir Philip Green, I hope I will be allowed some leniency; normally I would stay in the Chamber for the whole three hours.

By way of introduction, I would stress two points. First, intergenerational fairness is a huge, huge topic. The problem for any Select Committee—or for Select Committees that have joined together—is where to begin in order to make sense of a topic. The Committee has looked at, and made recommendations to the House on, the triple lock, and that will be the main subject of my speech. I agree that we could have started with other topics and looked at other aspects of intergenerational fairness, but the triple lock was where we began our inquiry. As my speech unfolds, I hope that Members will see that while there were immediate pressures that pushed us to look at that area rather than other aspects of intergenerational fairness, those other aspects need to be considered.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

Does not my right hon. Friend agree that the fundamental core of this issue is that there are people in our society who will succeed because they have assets? However, someone who is talent-rich but asset-poor is unlikely to succeed in life, in terms of getting into the school they need to go to, educational attainment, and health and economic outcomes. The core challenge for our generation is to make sure that everybody has access to the best our economy can deliver, whether they are born into a family with assets or otherwise.

[Frank Field]

I could not agree more, but I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not follow that up, because one of our colleagues wants to talk about how aspects of education affect intergenerational fairness.

The Committee decided democratically that it would look at the triple lock. However, I was also struck by the difference between my life chances and those of people who are the age that I was when I set out to earn a living after university. When I graduated, I was one of 3%. People might say, “Well, we can see which cohort you belonged to,” and it was a very privileged cohort. I went to university, but I did not pay fees—we expected county scholarships to see us through university, and we did not come away with debt. When we graduated, we interviewed big firms to see whether we wished to work for them, and now graduates are scrambling for jobs, so it is a very different world. I expected to get a job, I expected at least to own a house—if not more than one house—I expected to have savings and I expected to have a pension. One need only look at how privileged my life has been compared with that of people in their 20s who are graduating today to realise, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) said, that the wheel of fortune has turned. Whatever one wants to say about the golden oldies, we are in a very privileged position, and that has been reinforced by the Government. I shall return to that in a moment.

The Committee wanted to test whether the triple lock was viable for the next Parliament and beyond. If it was not, we wondered whether we could marshal a report on which all of us agreed, and behind which political parties could slowly move before deciding what policy they would stand on in the election, perhaps in 2020. We now see our role as a Select Committee as taking on controversial topics and letting the Government and Opposition judge for themselves what nuclear warfare should be employed against us. Then, if we are still standing to tell the tale, perhaps the Government can be a little more brave than they would otherwise have been.

I am not saying—the whole Committee was united on this—that there are not a number of very poor pensioners in all our constituencies, but the position of pensioner poverty has been transformed over the past 10 to 15 years through Gordon Brown’s pension credits and the coalition Government’s triple lock. If we were having this debate 10 years ago and talking about not making moves to benefit the vast majority of pensioners, we would be laughed out of court, but now the debate has significantly changed. Despite that, I do not want anybody to think that we do not have to rack our brains to think how we can sensitively, but equally effectively, ensure that we continue to deal with poor pensioners. One does not have to be a very bright Member of Parliament to know that we all have some very poor pensioners in our constituencies. However, we also now have a growing number of rich pensioners, thank God.

It was against that background that we considered the whole business of the triple lock. There are four ways in which the Government could deal with this issue. First, they could just ignore it and allow the public finances to let rip, depending on the international money markets to shovel us loans at very low rates of interest forever so that we can continue, right into the sunset, to live beyond our means. I do not think for a minute that the historically low interest rates that we have at the moment will last for very long, let alone that we would have a Government who would commit the next Parliament to the triple lock. I cannot see that our public finances will be secure unless the Government take a deep breath and think very carefully about our report.

I also make a plea to Labour Front Benchers. People are now saying that it is impossible to envisage another Labour Government in anybody’s lifetime, but funny things have happened this year—funnier things than the election of a Labour Government. I therefore would not bank on Labour being unelectable and our party therefore not having to consider how fiscally responsible we have to be as we approach an election.

The second approach to the triple lock would be to say, “We’re going to increase taxation.” If we were to go down that route, we would need to raise the same amount of money that we would otherwise have to borrow, so we would be talking about raising an additional £40 billion in today’s money. That is half the sum that we raise from income tax, so it would mean saying to the country, “We expect to be continuously elected on the basis of putting up your income tax by 50%.” I do not think we would be able to hold that position for very long. If we look at the marginal tax rates paid not by the rich, but by the working poor who draw benefit and then lose it as they work harder, we will see that the idea of putting 10p on the standard rate of tax seems so absurd that there is hardly any point in suggesting it, but that is the second way in which we could square the circle of keeping the triple lock.

The third approach is to continue the policy of not just this Government but previous Governments of favouring pensioners and reducing the living standards of the working population. I do not believe that that is tenable now, but it is what will happen until the end of this Parliament. It is certainly not tenable beyond that point, however, because we are taking resources from the working population and giving them to many pensioners who are well off. People sometimes hear what they want to hear rather than what is being said, so I want to emphasise again that I am not denying that there are not too many poor pensioners. However, the standard of living of the vast majority of pensioners is of a kind that the pensioner population has never experienced before. Thank God for that, but cuts in the living standards of the working poor are already starting to result in people of working age being reduced to destitution.

Welfare

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb]

It is about human beings, as I said in my statement. All the statistics that we talk about in this place have lives, families and individuals behind them, but it is especially important in the area of welfare and disability to remember that we are talking about human beings.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State to his post. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) pointed out, page 26 of the Red Book commits the Government to £3 billion of cuts to meet the welfare cap. Is this not what his predecessor described over the weekend as

“too focused on narrowly getting the deficit down”

at the expense of the poorest? Is the £3 billion going to be honoured, and how he is going to deliver that?

[Stephen Crabb]

I have a very direct answer to that very direct question. It is the one I have been giving all afternoon, which is that the Government will not be seeking further savings in the welfare budget.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

According to the Department’s own figures, pension contributions by the self-employed have fallen year on year for the past five years. What is the Secretary of State going to do to reverse that trend?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)]

We are liaising with companies and individuals and also ensuring that people take some individual responsibility, by looking at their statements and contributions and thinking ahead. We are also encouraging companies to be proactive and to ensure that their workers take part in the auto-enrolment process and that those workers are protected.