Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

While I accept some of the things that the hon. Gentleman says—in particular, I accept that Atos’ contract for the work capability assessment was brought in by the previous Administration—there can be benefits, and savings can be made, if assessments are done correctly. To look after our constituents, we have to make sure that companies do them properly.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

In the Minister’s reply to my written question of 5 December, we learned that there was a prosecution in fewer than one in four of 45,000 cases of benefit fraud. Only 400 cases resulted in a prison sentence; the vast majority were handled through informal recovery processes. What proportion of the informal repayment arrangements are up to date, and does the Minister believe that increasing the incidence of prosecution would be helpful in reducing the incidence of benefit fraud?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We have made great progress in pursuing more people than have ever been pursued before. The reality is that the amount got back from those who have been defrauding the state is better than it has been, but in the answer to which my hon. Friend refers, we made it clear that we have much more to do. It is the nature of many benefits that they are open to abuse; changes such as universal credit will simplify the process and give far less opportunity to those who would defraud the system. That is the right way to deal with the issue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I think my hon. Friend might be referring to the idea of a total welfare cap, and while the Chancellor of the Exchequer has explicitly ruled out the idea of capping state pensions, I understand there are others in this House who are prepared to cap state pensions.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

7. What assessment he has made of the performance of the Work programme in helping young people into work.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)]

Just under half the young people who had been on the Work programme for a year had work, and over 46,000 had had more than six months of work.

[Richard Fuller]

I do not know whether the Minister is as disappointed as I am at the sniping negativity of Labour MPs towards the Work programme, when what they should be doing is rolling up their sleeves and making it work in their constituencies. In that spirit, will the Minister applaud the 50 small businesses in Bedford which, working in conjunction with the two Work programme providers, will on 11 July be giving 200 young people the equivalent of a day of speed-dating interviews to give them a good restart in their careers?

[Mr Hoban]

That is a fantastic example of how local employers can work with the Work programme to deliver good outcomes for people and get them into work.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I shall give way a couple more times, but then I want to conclude.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that the public do not want false distinctions between strivers and shirkers and he is equally right, I think, to believe that people will see through those who pretend to care when they do not have the money to show that they care. In his more lucid moment, he explained that the Government had no more money left, so would he accept that one answer might be to push forward with ideas such as the living wage, and will he advise us, on the basis of his own research on a living wage, what impact it would have on the long-term benefits needs in the country?

[Mr Byrne]

I suspect the hon. Gentleman feels that very keenly, as 7,500 people in his constituency are on tax credits. I think that the best way to bring the welfare bill down is by getting people into work. The tragedy with the Bill is that it fails the Ronseal test set out by the Prime Minister yesterday. It does not do what it says on the tin. We are told that this Bill is all about reducing welfare spending. Actually, if we put tax credits to one side, the welfare bill for the period covered by this Bill will not rise by 1%; it is going to go up by 4%. It will go up by £8 billion because the Secretary of State is doing so little to get people back to work.

The reality of the debate is that there is a Labour way to bring down welfare spending and there is a Tory way. The Tory way, aided and abetted by the Liberal Democrats, is to attack tax credits. The Labour way is to bring down welfare spending by getting people into jobs—jobs in which they will pay tax rather than sitting on the dole taking benefits. That is why we tabled our amendment. We think that it is right to introduce a bank bonus tax to get 100,000 young people back to work, and to reform pension tax relief to create a two-year limit on jobseeker’s allowance. We think that it is right to send the clear signal that anyone who can work must not, and will not, be allowed to languish or to live a life on welfare. That is the kind of tough-minded but fair policy that we now need.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

It is under different leadership in Northern Ireland, but let us be absolutely clear that someone who is undergoing treatment for cancer and is having chemotherapy and radiotherapy would, in almost all cases, be in a support group and be receiving long-term care. I do not know enough about the circumstances of the hon. Gentleman’s constituent to be exactly certain where she is in the course of her treatment, but one of the changes that we made on coming to office was to improve support for cancer patients, not to reduce it.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

A constituent visited me during the weekend to express her concerns about her husband who is blind and who has been informed that he will lose ESA in five months. He is taking a course to enable himself to get back into work, but it will take longer than five months to complete. What additional support may be provided to people in his situation to enable them to get back into work?

Work Capability Assessments

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

I became a Member of Parliament in 2010 and, right from the start, people expressed concerns to me about the work capability assessment, which was introduced by the previous Government. Can the hon. Gentleman confirm that Atos was hired by that previous Labour Government? Were some of the concerns that he was beginning to talk about exhibited at that stage, or are they only coming to light now?

[Tom Greatrex]

The hon. Gentleman must know the answer to his question, but I have not suggested that the contract was agreed under the current Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

I am conscious of the time, Mr Williams, so I will be as brief as I can. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) on securing the debate and I encourage him to try to secure another debate later in the year, because the process is ongoing, will involve more people, and more issues such as those we have heard about today will come forward. The opportunity to bring such matters to the Minister’s attention is important. We are dealing with the human consequences of failures in a bureaucratic, state-driven system—in this case, incapacity benefit. Similarly, many hon. Members have seen the failures of the immigration system, and its human consequences for our constituents and for people around the country.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

In my constituency, I have had the experience of the fit for work tests being piloted in the Burnley benefits centre. There has been an extreme improvement through the pilot scheme to where we are now. There is more we can do, but I echo my hon. Friend’s thoughts about waiting for the completion of the process before we pass judgment.

[Richard Fuller]

I appreciate that intervention from my hon. Friend.

I would like to place in context some of the concerns we have heard about; first, about being assessed. It is quite natural to expect people to have concerns, as we are making a significant change to people’s lives. In many comments, the issue has not been a generic concern relating to assessment, but a concern about specific types of conditions and cases. Will the Minister confirm that for every 100 assessments, nine people who are found to be fit for work go on to win their appeal? That means there are 91 people who fit into another category.

One fluctuating condition that has not been mentioned is alcoholism, and people who have chronic, long-term alcoholic conditions. One constituent who came to see me had his papers from assessments in the 1990s. Will the Minister provide confirmation on that?

Although it does not relate directly to the debate, part of work capability assessment is that there is then work. In today’s conditions, what can the Minister say will be on his agenda to try to encourage some of these people into work at the end of their assessments? There is much more I would like to say, but because of the time I have to stop there.

Living Standards

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Syms]

Yes, partly because of that. Traditionally in Britain it has been about 40%, so that gave the Government some room for manoeuvre. Any Government in office would have had a large increase in its deficit given what hit them in 2007 and 2008. There is no great argument about that and, as someone sitting on the other side of the Chamber, I think that many of the things that the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) did were beneficial in trying to maintain a fragile economic situation.

Having said that, we cannot continue to increase debt year on year at the rate we were in 2009, 2010 and 2011 or we will overwhelm the British economy. The worst thing for our constituents is not paying tax; it is paying tax to pay interest on money being borrowed from someone else. The Government had to make a judgment, and their judgment was to set out an economic policy gradually to reduce our debt over five to seven years to a level that, once it tops off in 2016-17, can then start to be brought back to the level of more normal years, which is about 40% of GDP. In an environment in which the world was growing rapidly, that would be easier. In an environment in which the eurozone is blowing up, and there are high fuel and food prices, it becomes much more difficult. That is part of the problem for the Government in the short term. It is events—it is what is happening around the world.

There is nothing surprising about where the Government are. Sticking with the policy is perfectly sensible, but things do not go in a straight line in economics, and there will be OBR forecasts and Budgets where the figures for debt increase, and some where they decrease. It will depend to some extent on world events.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is talking about debt levels. Was not one of the issues under the Labour Government the integrity of the public finances? Their estimates of public sector debt did not include the private finance initiative, which was a grossly exaggerated amount of public benefit, and they did not include the burgeoning increase in public sector pension claims on the economy. Does my hon. Friend agree that another aspect of debt in which the Labour Government’s policies were embedded was increasing the costs that people had to pay for their housing through the ever-increasing impression that housing wealth was real wealth? That has had a real impact on people’s well-being and living standards today.

[Mr Syms]

Clearly, and another problem in the British economy is that there is a lot of private sector borrowing. We have a high level of indebtedness, both of government and of the private sector. In Italy, they save rather more than we do, and as a country we should try to encourage more of our citizens to save and not live on the never-never in the long term.

I support what the Chancellor did in the autumn statement. We are clearly in choppy weather, but that is no reason to change course. We cannot adjust the budget down or raise taxation painlessly. The living standards of most of the population will be squeezed. As the IFS and other organisations have said, living standards have fallen by about 7% over the past two to three years. The good news is that next year the projection is for things to be fairly flat, with some modest recovery after that. It may well be that when we get to 2015—the general election year—we have lower living standards than in 2010 as a consequence of the fact that we have inherited a major deficit, very difficult problems and a pretty rotten international environment. That is no reason for going off course, but it is a reason for sticking to a very sensible policy. Labour Members may think that we cannot do things without breaking eggs, but that is not so. We have to raise the tax burden and reduce spending, and I am afraid that that has consequences.

Youth Unemployment

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

The hon. Lady need only look at the statistics, including those for her area. This year, long-term youth unemployment has risen by one third in Solihull. The future jobs fund was helping to bring youth unemployment down. To return to the point made by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), we have to help young people stay close to the labour market because if we let them drift into long-term unemployment, they have a bigger chance of being unemployed in the future, of being low paid and of drifting into ill health. That is why the right decision for her constituents, as well as mine, is not to do nothing, but to act.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman did not answer the question from my colleague, the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt). We are fooling ourselves, if we think that this problem is simply to do with this Government or the previous one. This is a long-term, growing problem of youth unemployment. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) is looking for the statistics for my constituency. I can tell him: it is up 24%. As we look for solutions and as economies across Europe are being destroyed because of their excessive debt, my question is: what can we do that does not incur additional debt for the Government? Will he support our schools reforms? Will he support our efforts on apprenticeships? Will he support the reductions in taxation and regulation on small businesses indicated by the Government?

Pensions Bill [Lords]

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I will in a moment.

This unfolding chaos has been impressive even for a Government who have presided over U-turns on forests, sentencing reform and the reorganisation of the NHS, because we thought we knew where we were. The coalition Government made a wise move in appointing the Pensions Minister to his brief—he is a man who knows a thing or two about pensions. Indeed, in one of his first major speeches, he told his audience:

“I have become known as something of a bore at pensions conferences.”

We have no problem with that. Then we had the coalition agreement. I do not know whether anyone remembers the coalition agreement—it was important once. Page 26 reads:

“We will phase out the default retirement age and hold a review to set the date at which the state pension age starts to rise to 66, although it will not be sooner than 2016 for men and 2020 for women.”

For good measure, the Pensions Minister got to his feet a month or so later and said that the Government were committed to any change not being sooner than 2020 for women. Then, 118 days later, the Chancellor arrives on the scene. He stands at the Dispatch Box and says that

“the state pension age for men and women will reach 66 by 2020.”—[Official Report, 20 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 956.]

Yet buried in the fine print, we learnt the truth—not the Pensions Minister, the Secretary of State or the Chancellor could bring themselves to that Dispatch Box and actually tell people straight that that policy set out in the coalition agreement was absolutely worthless. The truth was set out in the depths of the spending review, page 69 of which read:

“The State Pension Age will then increase to 66 for both men and women from December 2018 to April 2020.”

That is a promise well and truly broken. At least when the Lib Dems changed their minds about increasing tuition fees, they could pretend that they were just making things up to get elected, but this was a promise they made and broke in government. Just last summer, the Pensions Minister boasted of reforms in the system that he said included

“those who the system has always missed out such as women and the lower paid.”

In his own Department’s review, he said that he wanted to look at the “particular challenge” for

“women pensioners. A group I have long worked for, and who are so often the poor relations in regard to pensions.”

I will let the House draw its own conclusions. One moment the Pensions Minister is offering to protect women pensioners, the next he is presenting proposals that will punish half a million women with a bill for up to £16,000.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Byrne]

I will give way, and perhaps the hon. Gentleman can explain the Pension Minister’s change of face.

[Richard Fuller]

The right hon. Gentleman was giving a discourse on integrity in pensions provision under the previous Government, which I think is important, because many of my constituents will be worried about this issue, and will be looking for integrity. He is very good with numbers—it is when he has to add them up that he has trouble—so I am wondering, on the point of integrity, could he answer this question? The Labour party has recommendations for how best to treat the women he is highlighting who are being impacted by the Bill, and those recommendations are costed at £10 billion. In the interest of integrity, will he please advise me and other Members where he would find the money?

[Mr Byrne]

Can the hon. Gentleman confirm that he has seen the costings given in the parliamentary answer provided by the Pensions Minister on 9 March 2011?

[Richard Fuller]

I have not seen those costings, so the right hon. Gentleman can enlighten me further.

[Mr Byrne]

The Minister gave an interesting answer, because those costings say that if, for example, we increased the retirement age to 67 by 2035—that is, if we accelerated the reform by one year—that would save £6.9 billion. However, if the retirement age was increased to 67 by 2034, by accelerating the increase by two years, that would save £13.7 billion. Therefore, the question for us this afternoon is: how much will be saved by accelerating the reform for those women who are now having to retire later, and who therefore confront trying to find all that money magically, in the space of just four or five years? Has that been traded off against other options, such as introducing advances in the retirement age later on? That is the question that we have to get to the bottom of in this Second Reading debate.

[Ben Gummer]

rose—

[Richard Fuller]

rose—

[Mr Byrne]

I will give way in a moment.

Let us hear what the impact of the Government’s proposals will be, because the Secretary of State rather glided over this point. Some half a million women will receive their state pension at least 12 months later than they had previously been advised, with 300,000 women—those born between December 1953 and October 1954—experiencing a delay of one and a half years. For 33,000 women—those born between 6 March and 5 April 1954—that period increases to two years. For them, the loss in state pension will be around £10,000. For those on full pension credit, the loss will be closer to £15,000. Those women, with five years’ notice of the timetable change, have almost no time to prepare for their income loss.

Disability Living Allowance

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) on securing it. I wish to declare an interest—I am chairman of two domiciliary care service companies. They are not in receipt of disability living allowance, but they deal with adjacent issues. I welcome the debate. In particular, I welcome the Minister to her place.

The fundamental question that went through my mind when the announcement was made was what it said about our attitude towards the decency with which we allow people to lead their lives. What does it say about how we are prepared to protect the most vulnerable in our community at this difficult time, with the significant financial challenges inherited by the Government? That was made real for me by the visits of constituents; families who care for their sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, cousins and uncles, and who have to create that sense of independence every day for their loved ones in care homes.

In particular, it is my pleasure to recognise the campaigning work of Mr and Mrs Ogaza from my constituency—Mrs Ogaza is here today—on behalf of not only their son Paul, but other families. I thank the Minister for taking the time to meet me not once but twice—the second time to listen to Mrs Ogaza—and for her visit to a care home in Shefford, near my constituency. That is emblematic of how much she is trying to reach out and listen, and to understand this complex area. Indeed, that complexity is at the root of the Government’s attempts to deal with the question of decency. There is nothing decent about the system that is in place if it provides a patchwork of services for recipients in different parts of the country. There is nothing decent about a system that does not ask our care home providers tough questions to ensure that they are actually providing the services that we would like.

[Guy Opperman]

Is not the biggest test for the future to have a road map where things are clearly signposted and understood? Whatever the reason for the system being in the state that it is in, comprehension and utilisation would then be much clearer.

[Richard Fuller]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. He echoes a point that was made by my hon. Friends the Members for Banbury (Tony Baldry) and for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan). This is an opportunity to provide a clear map of the requirements and also to identify, not in a naming and shaming way but in a positive way, what local authorities and care homes should provide and where evidence shows that they are falling short.

I believe that this is the second debate on disability living allowance that the hon. Member for Arfon has secured. Is that correct?

[Hywel Williams]

No.

[Richard Fuller]

I am sorry. It is the second debate that I have attended on the subject. It shows how important it is to hon. Members that we get the correct answers. This debate is a bit more heartening in that it is not focused so much on cuts. The Minister needs to lay this to rest: the changes are not being made to reduce funding but to ensure that the funding that is available is directed in a way that gives clarity to families and the recipients of care in various care homes. It is extremely important that that message is made clear. [Interruption.] If hon. Members disagree, we need to continue to bring that to the Minister’s attention. I fundamentally do not believe that that is the intent of the policy, and I look forward to listening to those who think differently.

I should like to thank the 27 charities—the number is growing—that have provided information to other hon. Members and to me in their reports, “Don’t Limit Mobility”, and, more recently, “DLA mobility: sorting the facts from the fiction”. A number of them are in an expert position because they also operate care homes. I would be interested to hear from the Minister how many of them have come forward with examples from their own experience of the uniformity of provision across their network of homes. Has she received such representations or evidence from them about whether they experience differences in the various local authority areas in which they operate? That would be a useful body of evidence, and it behoves the charities to provide such information to the Minister, so that we can have a clearer picture.

In their reports, the charities provide some information about the rationales for the changes. I admit that several have been presented over the months, but I should like to pick up on two that are particularly pertinent and germane. I thought that the first one they listed was very interesting:

“The responsibility for mobility/transport costs should be met by the care home provider”.

What struck me in the evidence that the charities provided was that they saw a lack of clarity in what has been provided. They stated:

“Related legislation and guidance make no specific reference to mobility… While guidance places a responsibility…it contains nothing about how this is paid for… This guidance is not contract terms… the guidance does not provide a legal requirement.”

That points to the comments that were made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury and others about the need for clarity and a road map.

[Mr Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I would echo my hon. Friend’s comments about the Minister. She has gone far out of her way to reach out to colleagues across the House, and I pay credit to her for that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury spoke about contracts and specifics being written down. The Winchester and District Mencap Society has made the point to me many times that the mobility component is not necessarily used just for appointments at doctors or care homes, or for visits to friends or the hairdresser. Sometimes, for their own physical and mental health, people use it to get away from those with whom they live. Is not the key point that if we reform the system and move to personal independence payments, we will put power in the hands of disabled people who are individuals in their own right? They do not want the Government or the House to prescribe how they do everything, or how and where they spend their money.

[Richard Fuller]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. However, there are also requirements on the part of the Government to provide some guidance and clarity. If we can get clear evidence of the original intent—the changes are required because of differences in provision—people could move forward more confidently, empowered to exercise their rights. We are going through a process that we have not yet completed.

The second rationale that I wish to discuss—I will not take too much of hon. Members’ time—is No. 7 on the charities’ list:

“Local authorities’ contracts with care homes should cover personal mobility needs”.

The charities’ response focuses very much on ability to pay. Local authorities do not have the money; care home providers are not in a position to pay. That comes again to my earlier point: this issue should not be driven by the need to make cost reductions, but by the need to ensure that there is clarity about what we expect to provide on both a local authority and care home basis. If insufficient money is being provided, that should be the answer. If too much money is being provided and there is a better way of getting value for money, that should be the answer. That is what we are driving for in achieving an answer.

My final point is that this is not just about mobility. The issue is independence. A personal expenditure allowance of £22 a week is not sufficient for the broad range of an individual’s requirements. That measure was not set by this Government—they inherited it. It is a little insulting to tell someone, particularly someone who is vulnerable or people who have spent much of their own lives looking after a child or a mother who is in need and thereby saving the Government so much money, that we will leave them with just £22 a week to cover the wide range of their personal expenditure.

I ask the Minister, as she looks at the mobility component, to bear in mind the broader picture of providing decency overall for people in care. She has done an excellent job in reaching out and listening to people, and I hope that she will listen to the contributions to the debate.

Disability Allowance

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Clarke]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Like other hon. Members, I have received a huge amount of correspondence making the point that he just raised.

In order to seek clarity, I will turn to the question put to the Prime Minister last Wednesday by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain). He asked:

“How can he possibly justify this cruel cut of either £18.95 per week or £49.85 per week to some of the most decent people who have paid their taxes all their lives?”—[Official Report, 24 November 2010; Vol. 519, c. 264-265.]

To my complete dismay, the Prime Minister chose to trivialise his response. I say that because I had expected him to show greater sensitivity towards people with disabilities. In fact, he served as an office-bearer in the all-party group on learning disability and his input then was regarded as positive and welcome. I hope that the Prime Minister will think again.

In any event, the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander), put the Opposition’s position beyond doubt when he said following Prime Minister’s questions:

“The Prime Minister, after a word in his ear from his Chancellor, got it flat wrong today.

He was asked about his own government’s plans to cut mobility support for people in care homes but confused it with separate reforms…But when the Chancellor went back in his Spending Review and scrapped mobility support for people in care homes, we are clear that goes too far and is a punitive measure that could leave people in care homes more isolated.”

That clarifies the Opposition’s position on the matter, but my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East may want to add to it; I shall welcome what she has to say later. It is in complete contrast to what the coalition has said. We are calling for clarity.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making some good points, but on the issue of clarity, will he help those of us who are perhaps not as learned as him on this topic? Is there an underlying issue that different amounts of the mobility allowance go to people who are disabled based on their route into the care home? Will he provide clarity on that?