Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Graham Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Harrington]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question, and I totally agree with him.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the difficulty with Labour’s proposal on pension credit is that it does not reflect what is actually sought by the WASPI campaign, which goes right back to the Pensions Act 1995? That would almost certainly be illegal—[Interruption]—under the rules of fair progress for both sexes on pensions, and it would cost an absolute fortune?

[Richard Harrington]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. I heard a Labour Member shouting, “Tell that to the destitute.” Well, we have a very good benefits system in this country, and I am sure that those people who are destitute are very familiar with it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Graham Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

The Treasury already publishes cumulative distribution analysis, including welfare spending, health spending, employment support and infrastructure investment, but we also need to consider increases in employment, increases in hours and earnings, universal credit, PIP, personal tax allowance changes, health spending, employment support and investment in infrastructure.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Stephen Crabb)]

On 6 July I appointed Paul Gray to lead a second independent review of PIP. A call for evidence has been published today, seeking evidence from individuals and organisations to inform the review. The review will consider how effectively further evidence is being used to assist the correct claim decision. It will also look at the speed and effectiveness of information gathering, as well as building on recommendations from the first review. I am today announcing the Department’s intention to conduct an evaluation of PIP, with initial findings to be published by early 2017.

[Richard Graham]

To help deliver our manifesto commitment of bringing a million people with disabilities into work, will my right hon. Friend consider extending the current exemption from employer national insurance contributions for apprentices both to additional apprentices and to full-time employees with disabilities, so that, like the US, the Netherlands and Ireland, our tax system benefits employers who see the abilities as well as the disabilities of all our constituents?

[Stephen Crabb]

When it comes to closing the disability employment gap, I am absolutely clear that no options have been left off the table. We want to look at the widest possible range of solutions, including financial incentives such as our small employment offer, which will support small businesses to increase local job opportunities for disabled people.

Employment for People with Disabilities

Richard Graham Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Derek Thomas]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I welcome her intervention. The mistake in the rhetoric of how we challenge welfare is that it is about saving money, but it is not. It is often about trying to provide people with full lives so that they feel confident and able to contribute and have satisfying work. My hon. Friend is right to mention that. I want to concentrate on learning difficulties because they present particular challenges and I believe I have identified how to resolve them. Anything we can do to help people to grow in confidence and to manage their health issues by supporting them to feel that they have something to offer is good for everyone. Thank you very much for that.

I have recently had the great and amazing privilege of meeting the people behind Helston and the Lizard Works. I used to work in Helston. The Lizard is a lovely part of Cornwall and a tourist area, but it had the highest number of people not in education, employment or training of any rural part of the country. I take a particular interest in the challenges facing people, particularly the young, on the Lizard and how they access work. Helston and the Lizard Works is unique. Many people believe the challenge is too great and that we should accept that some people will never be able to work, but Helston and the Lizard Works does not believe this and through a unique back-to-work business and community-based project in my constituency it has shown that with the correct support people can overcome enormous obstacles and take control of their own future.

It is important to make the point that being jobless is not just an individual’s problem. It is a business and community issue that can have a business and community solution. Helston and Lizard Works has engaged with local businesses and encouraged them to give their time to inspire and support jobseekers. It has run community projects to allow jobseekers the chance to get involved in their local community. It set out to help 40 people into work—I have explained how challenging Helston and the Lizard are geographically—and ended up achieving this for 104 people, which in a rural area such as west Cornwall is remarkable. It has helped many other people besides.

I selfishly mention these projects and examples in my constituency because each one and many more like them throughout the country have three things in common. They are brilliant in what they do, they are well placed to develop this work further and to help the Government to achieve their target for getting for helping people into employment, and they are all strapped for cash. I am arguing that as the Government develop their Green Paper, they should recognise that such groups are well placed to support people as they prepare for work and find work and when they are in work. If we get this right, we can transform the lives of many people, and I am excited about the opportunities ahead.

As I prepared for this debate, I thought back to some of the barriers I encountered when supporting people with learning disabilities. I will touch on them briefly simply to emphasise the contribution that many community groups already on the ground can make and that they are ready to act. The transition from school to work for people with learning disabilities has particular challenges. The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) referred to this, and it is also true for people with autism. Community-based organisations could be funded to work with schools and colleges to identify suitable work placements and apprenticeship opportunities, and to support youngsters in this transition period.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Hearing about my hon. Friend’s experience of bringing people with disabilities into the workplace is incredibly valuable to us all. In the Works and Pensions Committee yesterday, one of the ideas I floated over some of the people from whom we were taking evidence was that to encourage more young people into apprenticeships we should incentivise small and medium-sized businesses as we did some years ago for people without disabilities. Does he agree that allowing SMEs to have up to two apprentices with disabilities without having to pay national insurance would help to incentivise them to take on apprentices with disabilities?

[Derek Thomas]

I certainly think that such initiatives are important in breaking the deadlock when employers are not absolutely sure that they can provide those opportunities. I am looking at how to make that possible in my office. I understand that support and grants for apprenticeships continue to the age of 25 for people with disabilities. It is important to recognise that advantage, but we should do more.

--- Later in debate ---

[Derek Thomas]

Actually, until today I had been wanting to hurry on the process of the Green Paper, but having achieved this Westminster Hall debate, which I had been seeking for some time, I am glad that we have not had the Green Paper yet, because I am hoping that everything I am suggesting and the other suggestions made today will be included in it. I will be looking to see exactly how my local community organisations will benefit from this morning’s debate in the Green Paper.

[Richard Graham]

One issue that the Green Paper will have to tackle is how the Work and Health programme will use what resources it has most effectively. The Work Choice programme has been incredibly successful, but we suspect that there will not be enough money for that programme to be available to everyone, with any disability, so there are some quite difficult choices to be made. Do we focus on the people closest to the workplace or on those with the most severe disabilities, or do we try to do a mixture of both? Does my hon. Friend agree that the way we use things such as Work Choice, which has been so successful, will be key to success after the paper has been written and the policy is implemented?

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to speak with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) for securing the debate.

I recently spoke in the Chamber during the debate on the disability employment gap. In that speech, I welcomed the announcement by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions of the Green Paper on health and work. I welcomed it on the basis that it would involve a genuine consultation process, that the Government would genuinely listen to stakeholders and that there would be genuine investment in the resulting service. The Green Paper cannot be a conduit for further cuts. It must be boldly resourced if the Government are to get close to their employment gap target. I made clear that this should have been done before the cut to employment and support allowance for those in the work-related activity group and before the cut to universal credit work allowance.

The mistakes of the past cannot, sadly, be undone, but we must do all we can to amend them. Above all else, that requires the publication of a properly-resourced Green Paper to a cast iron, copper-bottomed, concrete timetable. The delays and changes are well known: the White Paper became the Green Paper; the Secretary of State changed from the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) to the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb); and the proposed publication date of

“well before the summer break”—[Official Report, 14 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 633.]

became “later this year.” The Secretary of State is currently seeking employment elsewhere, and depending on who the eventual winner of the Conservative leadership contest wishes to surround themselves with, his position may be filled by another candidate anyway. Given that, it is imperative that a clear deadline and concrete timetable are announced as soon as possible. The Government should then abide by that schedule regardless of any future changes in ministerial personnel.

Given some of the ideas that have been floated today, in spite of some of the comments made by the hon. Member for St Ives I hope that he will be an ally in the Scottish National party’s call for an early and immovable timetable for the publication of the Green Paper. The fallout of Brexit and the Conservative party’s internal squabbles may be grabbing the headlines, but hon. Members and Ministers must never forget that such issues, which affect the day-to-day lives of thousands of our constituents, should always be our main priority. Nothing can justify the matter being pushed even further into the long grass. Government must go on.

[Richard Graham]

This debate has been a good example of a non-partisan, non-party political discussion of issues of crucial importance to many of our constituents. The hon. Gentleman disappoints me by going down the track of what might or might not happen in the leadership of the Conservative party. That has no relevance to the debate. It is not about having a precise timetable, to the day and hour, for the publication of a Green Paper. It is about good, long-term solutions for people with disabilities, and I would be grateful if the hon. Gentleman endorsed that.

Disability Employment Gap

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb]

The hon. Lady mentions an extremely important point. We are doing that, particularly for people with disabilities. More broadly, with our universal credit reforms, that is one of the things that we will be doing generally for people moving off benefits. The support does not end the day that they find a job. The support continues, to ensure that the employment is sustainable.

On top of the long-standing barriers disabled people have faced, there are serious long-term demographic changes. They require serious and long-term cross-sector solutions. No single policy or initiative from my Department or any other will serve as a silver bullet to immediately close and seal the disability employment gap. We will only make the strides we all want to see by working differently and by working in a truly collaborative way; yes, with the health service and the welfare system, but also with local authorities, employers, charities and voluntary organisations. It means we also need to listen to, and speak with, those who know what support will work best—disabled people themselves.

That is why I announced that we will publish a Green Paper later this year to do just that. I make no apology for taking the time to ensure we get such important reforms right. The reforms have the potential to transform so many lives. It is important to build consensus and to seek the views and support of the individuals and groups involved. It is also about understanding what works with groups who perhaps have not been heard from enough so far, such as smaller, local organisations who have a lot of expertise and understanding of what works on the ground, and importantly, groups such as employers to look seriously at the role they have to support and help the disabled people they employ.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

The Secretary of State will know of the work done by the charity Pluss. Indeed, his colleague the Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People, my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), attended the showing of a recent video it produced about people who had returned to work. Does he agree with Pluss and me that there may be opportunities to attract more smaller employers into taking on people with disabilities if there is a tax break on national insurance, in the same way as there is a tax break on apprenticeships for smaller employers at the moment?

[Stephen Crabb]

It is exactly that kind of incentive that I hope the Green Paper process will explore. Those are exactly the kinds of ideas that we need to examine. My colleagues in the Treasury will obviously take an interest, but we have to think differently right across Government if we are to have any hope of closing the disability employment gap. I am particularly keen to know what small businesses think about what they can do to employ more people with disabilities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

May I first start with apologies from my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith)? He is attending a debate on the EU with the former Secretary of State, taking the opportunity to consider that issue in relation to its impact on disadvantaged people.

We have had a very interesting debate, with many well-informed and well-argued speeches. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) and wish his nephew with cerebral palsy all the very best with his GCSEs. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] My hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Sue Hayman) talked about her constituent who had gone through the PIP process and how it was affecting her ability to work. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) gave a characteristically brave and honest speech, which we in this place have come to expect from her. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) talked about his experience as a care worker and said that he has a family member with muscular dystrophy. He is the chair of the all-party group on that condition and made a very well-informed speech.

The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), with characteristic forensic analysis, talked about the issues we currently face in social security policy, in particular the lack of evidence for many of the measures the Government have introduced. The hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) focused on the disability employment gap and the variations relating to different conditions—a very important point. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) described in detail her constituent’s dreadful and deskilling experience of working for the Fit for Work programme. The process focused on data, not people. We need our interest to be focused on people.

About 12 million people in the UK are living with a disability, an impairment or a limiting, long-term illness: 5.7 million are of working age; 5.2 million are over the age of 65; and 0.8 million are children. Although 4 million people with disabilities are working already, another 1.3 million are fit for work and want to work, but they are currently unemployed. However, as we have heard, the gap in the employment rate for disabled people, compared with non-disabled people, has grown under the Government to 34%—a 4% increase since they took office. Given that the vast majority—90%—of disabled people used to work, that is such a waste of their skills, experience and talent.

As study upon study has shown, the Government’s pledge to halve the disability employment gap rings hollow, with estimates that it will take until 2030 to do that at the current rate. The shelved White Paper, with the promise of a strategy defining support for disabled people, is yet another broken promise. Although I recognise that the Green Paper is coming, why did that not happen in the first place? Why has there been this about-turn?

The issue comes down to whether the Government believe in the principles that underpin the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, to which we are a signatory. Fundamentally, disabled people should be able to participate fully in all aspects of society, including work, and to access the same opportunities as everyone else, and that includes being able to use their talent and skills to the best of their ability. No one should feel that they are unable to reach their best potential or that their hopes and dreams do not matter. Do the Government therefore support the principles and articles of the UN convention? If so, when will they publish the UN committee’s report investigating the UK’s breaches of the convention and their response to it?

[Richard Graham]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Debbie Abrahams]

I am sorry, but I will not—I have a lot that I want to say.

The Government set the tone for the culture of society explicitly through their policies and laws, and more subtly through the language they use and what they imply. Collectively, those things tell us who they think is worthy or not. The Government have made their views abundantly clear. Their swingeing cuts to social security support for disabled people—including the recent ESA WRAG cut of £1,500 a year—total nearly £30 billion since 2010 to 3.7 million disabled people.

The Government’s overhaul of the work capability assessment manages to be both dehumanising and ineffective, and it has been associated with profound mental health effects, including suicide. Their sanctions policy targets the most vulnerable, bringing people to the brink, and some have died under it. The PIP debacle is making it harder for disabled people to stay in work. There is also the closure of the independent living fund. I could go on and on. This is happening across all Government Departments—Business, Innovation and Skills; housing; Transport; Education; Justice; and Culture, Media and Sport. Disabled people are being completely marginalised.

Universal Credit (Children)

Richard Graham Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kate Osamor]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. There are many lone workers and people who have their own businesses in my constituency, and they have come to see me in my office to say that they are very concerned because they need to use benefits to top up their salaries. This is an issue that I hope the Government will take into account.

I conclude by asking the Minister to review the impact that work allowance reductions are having on working families, particularly single families. Secondly, will the Government agree to review annually the decision to freeze most key children’s benefits for four years?

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Were you here at the beginning of the debate, Mr Graham?

[Richard Graham]

Not right from the beginning, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Okay, I call Richard Graham.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I am very grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Today’s debate comes at an interesting time. The right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) introduced it with his usual reasonableness on an issue of concern to everybody here. There are two or three points that I would like to highlight in a brief contribution. The first is the biggest strategic challenge for the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues, which is where the balance of the strategy that Labour Members are trying to pursue will lead the country. I offer two thoughts. The first is that Labour Members have still not told us what reforms to welfare benefits they would make to reduce the budget deficit that we and all our constituents still face. At a time when the country is spending more on the interest of our debt than on the education of our children, it has to be wrong to ignore this part of the equation.

I think I am right in saying that Labour opposed every one of the welfare reforms pushed through by the coalition Government in the last Parliament, which amounted to some £20 billion of reductions in expenditure, and indeed have opposed everything in this Parliament as well. This comes at the same time as consistently opposing in this Parliament measures that the Government have taken to improve conditions for businesses that generate, directly and indirectly, 75% of all the tax that pays for the services, the welfare and the pensions that we all know are so important to our constituents.

[Ms Buck]

rose—

[Richard Graham]

I give way to my colleague on the Select Committee.

[Ms Buck]

Does the hon. Gentleman believe that giving a tax cut to the richest people in society and introducing the married person’s tax allowance are a better use of public money than investment in universal credit?

[Richard Graham]

I have two points in response to that. First, when it comes to generating more tax, I subscribe to the philosophy of the former Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, who said:

“It matters not whether the cat is white or black so long as it catches mice.”

On this occasion, when we lowered the top tax rate from 50% to 45%, the additional tax revenue was £8 billion. My question to the hon. Lady and her colleagues is this, “Would you rather have an extra £8 billion of tax revenue to spend on our vital services, or enjoy the ideological thrill of raising the top tax rate and collecting less tax revenue with less to spend on services?” I know what I would go for; I am not sure about her.

[Ms Buck]

indicated dissent.

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Lady is shaking her head, which suggests to me that my colleague on the Select Committee on Work and Pensions is still from the school of thought that prefers to raise taxes and get less tax revenue. I would have thought that the period of Reaganomics and Thatcheromics had made it very clear that we incentivise businesses to grow, to generate more revenue and to employ more people by creating a business-friendly environment rather than the opposite. It is something that the hon. Lady and her party will have to work out.

The hon. Lady’s second question was on the married person’s tax allowance. All the evidence from research done over a period of years shows that we have happier families and less dysfunctional behaviour when we have closer families, and marriage plays a key part in that. I recognise that not all Members subscribe to the importance of marriage as a contributing factor to a happy society, but we should probably leave that debate for another day.

My second main point relates to what the right hon. Member for East Ham said about universal credit, in particular the part of the motion that states that

“many may struggle with elements of the new approaches to payment and administration”.

There is a philosophical issue here, too. Originally, the current Minister for Welfare Reform, Lord Freud, acted as an adviser to the last Labour Government, and he recommended many solutions to the problem of tax credits, which he has now implemented in government with our party. I once asked him what the difference was between the work he had done for the previous Labour Government and our own Government. He said that the difference was simply that we would implement it.

The former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer and Member for Edinburgh South West, now Lord Darling, said in this House that Labour had not implemented universal credit simply because it was “too difficult”. His party has always struggled with the fact that we are implementing something that it had decided was too difficult. Labour Members have not been able to work out whether to oppose it all in principle, which would be odd, given that they had looked at it, or whether to attack it in detail on the basis that it is too complicated to do. As universal credit continues to move forward on its journey across the country, affecting a growing number of people, I suspect that that challenge is going to be more and more difficult, and those on the Labour Front Bench are going to have to reconcile these problems.

The assumption behind what the right hon. Member for East Ham said today is that universal credit is basically all too complicated, with the twist that it now cannot be understood by those who are going on to it. I do not know how many Members have actually been to their Jobcentre Plus and spoken to people working there about the implementation of universal credit, as well as to their customers, namely our constituents who are receiving it. I suspect that those who have done so, as I have, will find that people working in Jobcentre Plus find universal credit to be a huge step forward. More than one officer working there described it to me as a quiet revolution, while those receiving it find it much easier to understand than the plethora of often contradictory benefit systems that our country built up over a long period of time.

I fundamentally disagree with the right hon. Member for East Ham—reluctantly, because I agree with him on several things—on the notion that universal credit cannot be understood by those either receiving it or responsible for administering it. He claimed that there were “long delays” to universal credit claims, and that the Trussell Trust had said once again, having said it several times before, that the increase in demand for food banks was largely down to the delays in benefits. Because I had heard that argument for quite a long time, last year I set up with my local citizens advice bureau a service agreement that obliged it to refer to me any instance of any of my constituents who are waiting longer to receive benefits due to them than the accepted norm set by the DWP. That covered any situation. In the last six months, how many people had been referred to my office for unnecessary delays to their benefits? One—one single constituent. It could be argued that there is not a complete correlation between people referred to the food bank by the CAB and those who go to the food bank. That could be true. A number of organisations in the city of Gloucester, including my own office, refer people to our food bank. None the less, the CAB is probably—I do not have the precise statistics—the biggest single organisation handling the welfare difficulties of my constituents. It is, I think, telling that over the last six months there has been only one case of unnecessary delays in the receipt of benefits.

[Stephen Timms]

The hon. Gentleman has got slightly the wrong end of the stick in relation to what I was saying. The problem with universal credit is that the five-week delay is built into the design of the benefit. That is not a fault; it is how it is supposed to work. The assumption is that someone who has last month’s pay cheque in the bank can cope for a month. That is the problem that the Trussell Trust is starting to identify, and Citizens Advice is saying that, in practice, it is proving to be a very serious problem for many claimants of the new benefit.

[Richard Graham]

I do not think that I have grasped the wrong end of the stick, but I may have grasped a different part of the stick, and I think it is important for all parts of the stick to be considered in this context. I will, however, respond directly to the point that the right hon. Gentleman has made.

I have sought permission from the Department for Work and Pensions and my local Jobcentre Plus to install a DWP adviser in the George Whitefield Centre—appropriately, as the right hon. Gentleman will know, named after the founder of Methodism—where there is both a food bank and a health service for the homeless. I hope that, should I be fortunate enough to receive approval from the Department and the Jobcentre Plus, the adviser, with access to a computer, will be able to see precisely where the problems are, and I hope that if, as the right hon. Gentleman suggests, the inbuilt delay is a real issue, that fact will be revealed. I put it to him gently, however, that there are a number of alternative scenarios, one of which is—to put it bluntly—that when people go to a food bank and are asked why they have done so, it is very easy for them to say, “I have had problems getting my benefits.” I hope that one of the advantages of the presence of a DWP adviser will be the ability to establish the extent to which that claim is correct, or possibly slightly exaggerated. The reality of life, I think, is that people get into financial difficulties—through no particular fault of their own—in a series of different ways, and I think that that is an aspect of the Trussell Trust feedback that has not been explored in enough detail so far.

[Neil Gray]

It is not just the Trussell Trust that is reporting circumstances in which people find themselves requiring emergency food aid from food banks. In February last year, the Poverty Alliance in Scotland reported that delays in benefits and cuts in social security support were the direct responsible contributing factor in those circumstances. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will reflect on the fact that that is being said not just by one organisation, but by many.

[Richard Graham]

I sort of thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I do not think that he should rely on statements made by particular charities that tend to generalise. I encourage him to look into the position in his own constituency in detail, so that he can establish what the issues are.

At some point, the hon. Gentleman will also have to face the same strategic issue to which I referred the right hon. Member for East Ham and his party. If the position of the hon. Gentleman’s party is that all welfare expenditure is sacrosanct from now until the end of all days, he and his party will have to think about where they will find the revenue to fund that, and how they will do so without building up excessive debt on which interest has to be paid, which reduces the amount of money that is available to be spent on services.

If the hon. Gentleman studies—as our Select Committee has—the ratio between our country’s budget expenditure on welfare and that of some of the largest comparable nations in Europe, such as France and Germany, he will see that we spend more on welfare than they do. That is the challenge there for him and his party. He shakes his head, but reality will have to intervene one day, as my colleague Ruth Davidson in Scotland has pointed out several times.

Other Members wish to speak. Let me end by addressing one particular aspect of child poverty. There is a philosophical divide between different parties in the House on this issue, but an important part of the motion tabled by the right hon. Member for East Ham is the request for the Government

“to ensure that the number of children in poverty…falls as a result of the introduction of the new universal credit system.”

Evidence suggests that the highest poverty exit rate is strongly linked to the children of families who have gone into work, and have moved from part-time to full-time employment. I believe I am right in saying that 75% is the figure that enables the number of children referred to in the motion to be reduced. I think that that tells us that any welfare system which encourages people to work longer hours, obtain promotion and advance themselves in different jobs will have a hugely beneficial impact on the number of children in poverty, and I have no doubt that the steps taken by the Government to improve the chances of those receiving universal credit of moving up the ladder in the workforce will have a positive effect on the number of children in relative poverty.

I have made four points. First, there was the philosophical point about the strategy of welfare relative to tax revenue. Secondly, there was the point about the value of universal credit to our own constituents. Thirdly, there was my gentle challenge to some of the assumptions of the Trussell Trust about why people are going to food banks, and the role of DWP advisers in shedding more light on that issue. Finally, I drew attention to the relationship between getting into the workplace and moving on, and relative child poverty. On the basis of those points, I cannot support the motion.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Graham Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vara]

I have a huge amount of respect for the right hon. Gentleman—I had the privilege of serving in the coalition Government Whips Office when he was one of the deputy Whips. At the time, he supported the Pensions Act 2011 and was responsible for persuading his Lib Dem colleagues to do likewise. One thing that was always the case with the Lib Dems before the coalition Government was that they blew with the wind. There was a temporary pause during the coalition Government. He is now proving that blowing with the wind is part of the Lib Dems’ DNA, and that they are back to normal.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

The Opposition suggestion that the Government could allow that group of women to take their pensions early from the age of 63 has not been fully costed by anyone. Will my hon. Friend share with the House what the implications might be in terms of cost, whether it needs primary legislation and whether men over the age of 65 will be affected?

State Pension Age

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Exactly, Mr Speaker, thank you. I say to the hon. Member for Pontypridd that, as I stood up, somebody told me—rather unfairly, I thought at the time—that he is shallow. Sadly, I now think that he gives shallow people a bad name. His response was pathetic and the urgent question was asked by an Opposition who have no policy and who jump around opposing everything and racking up spending commitments. No wonder they haven’t a hope in hell of being in government.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Every western democracy surely has a responsibility to review its state pension age on a regular basis and in a totally non-tribal, non-party political way so that its people know, a long time ahead, what changes will be made to the state pension age. If, in the past, we took too long to change the state pension age and then moved too quickly, surely now the cross-party consensus that was reached shows us that the right thing for the House to do is to set up the review, and that it should report back next year.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend, who has spoken about the matter on a number of occasions, is right, and I thought that we had that consensus. We certainly had it during the last Parliament, because the Liberal Democrats in the coalition agreed with us. The hon. Member for Pontypridd has mentioned the former Pensions Minister, who was keen to get a state pension age review. The Pensions Commission has said that increases in the state pension age are essential and that an independent body should be established to review them. We are doing exactly that.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Richard Graham Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I have just touched on what we are doing to find extra employment support. As I have said, we are working with other organisations, and I have named only some of them. However, the issue of mental health is crucial to the way in which we connect our systems, working with the NHS. A joint working group from the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Health is looking into how we can help members of the ESA work-related activity group with mental health conditions, provide signposts for them, and secure treatment for them as well.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

When the Opposition talk about income, what they really mean are welfare benefits. That is not what we mean when we talk about income. All the evidence shows that 75% of children in relative poverty will be removed from the poverty indicator if both parents in the household are working. There are now more children in families in which people are working than ever before: that is this Government’s record.

As for ESA, some of us have met people with significant disabilities who are working, such as the people from National Star College in Gloucestershire who are now working with EDF Energy. It is amazing to see what a difference that makes not just to their incomes, but to their overall life chances and life happiness.

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of work to people who have previously been locked out of employment opportunities. We have many schemes, but Disability Confident is a very good example of how we can work with employers to deliver sustained employment opportunities for people with disabilities. The Government are doing additional work on a wide-ranging employer strategy, working with employers specifically to establish how we can address the disability employment gap and how they can give people with disabilities more structured and sustained employment opportunities.

It is important to recognise that the changes in employment and support allowance and universal credit work together, and cannot be dealt with in isolation. We have invested a significant amount in universal credit to ensure that we keep people connected and engaged with the labour market from the outset of their claims. Unlike those claiming employment and support allowance, universal credit claimants with a health condition or disability are offered labour market support, when that is appropriate, at the very start of their claim. That helps them to remain closer to the labour market, even if they are not immediately able to return to work. It also provides them with employment support, advice or training to get back into work, which, in the long run, will help them to obtain jobs.

I stress that this change does not affect those in the ESA support group or the universal credit equivalent. It also does not affect the premiums that form part of income- related ESA. Moreover, existing ESA claimants will not be affected. There will be no cash losers, and the policy applies only to those who apply for ESA and subsequently enter the WRAG from April 2017. We also aim to protect those who move off ESA to try to work. Those who were receiving the component and returned to ESA within 12 weeks because they could not cope with work will be able to reclaim ESA and receive the component again. Hopefully, that will help to dispel the myth that everyone who is currently in the work-related activity group will be affected by the change. Universal credit works in a different way from ESA, but we aim to put similar protections in place.

This reform is a first and necessary step towards a wider reform package. In the autumn statement, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced that the Government would publish a White Paper this year that would set out our plans to improve support for people with health conditions and disabilities to further reduce the disability employment gap and promote integration across health and employment. That will include exploring the roles of employers.

Clauses 13 and 14, together with the additional practical support announced in the Budget, will provide the right support and incentives to help people with limited capability for work move closer to the labour market and, when ready, into work. In the light of those arguments, I hope that Members will feel able to support the Government.

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[Debbie Abrahams]

No.

So how does living in poverty affect children’s development? People—

[Richard Graham]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Debbie Abrahams]

May I just make these points? Then I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.

People on low incomes are often juggling to heat or eat, as we heard in this morning’s Westminster Hall debate on the bedroom tax. Being able to pay their rent is an increasing issue; 443,000 are currently affected. Having a secure, warm home with healthy, nutritious food are basic physiological needs. When these needs are not met, people’s health suffers both physically and mentally. This is particularly the case for children as they are developing. Being in work or well educated does not guarantee these essential needs; money does. Again, I make my key point: two thirds of children in poverty now are from working families.

The lack of evidence, to which my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) was alluding, is stark. Why was there no Government impact assessment of these proposals? We should look at the evidence from the United States, for example. It has been analysing the effects of its social security reforms, and that shows that programmes that focus specifically on parental employment failed; in fact, they had no effect or exacerbated children’s health issues. Conversely, programmes focused on supplementing the income of low-income families improved health.

[Debbie Abrahams]

The point here is about making the Government accountable for their policies that may in turn be affecting those measures.

I know the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) wanted to intervene, too.

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Lady is very kind. Both her party and ours are committed to ending child poverty, so the starting point is the same. The difference, in a sense, is the value of the relative indicator. She knows that one of the difficulties with the relative indicator is that quite often it will apparently improve during times of recession, but go down in times of growth. How effective does she think that is, therefore? About £300 billion was spent on benefits between 2003 and 2008. How effective does she think that expenditure was?

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[Debbie Abrahams]

Again, my hon. Friend sums it up perfectly.

[Richard Graham]

This is a serious question. If the hon. Lady is saying that the evidence shows that the mortality rate of poor children in this country is worse than in the whole of the rest of Europe and the benefits that we are giving are greater than those in the whole of the rest of Europe, something is not working. What does she think needs to be done to improve that?

[Debbie Abrahams]

Again, the hon. Gentleman possibly does not have all the evidence. On spending-to-GDP comparisons, we do not do particularly well. The Marmot review of health inequalities concluded:

“One quarter of all deaths under the age of one would potentially be avoided if all births had the same level of risk as those to women with the lowest level of deprivation.”

Again, we should recognise that we are talking about people living in our constituencies. Evidence to the all-party inquiry showed that eliminating UK child poverty would save the lives of 1,400 children under 15 every year. Furthermore, good early development is strongly associated with many positive outcomes in later life, including higher educational attainment and improved employment prospects in adulthood. As another of the witnesses to the inquiry said, we are facing a child poverty crisis. Having made real progress in reducing child poverty in the UK, it is imperative that we continue to invest in our children, and protect and support the most vulnerable in our society. The introduction of the so-called “living wage”, the increase in personal tax allowances and more free childcare will not, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has clearly shown, offset the net loss to low-income households from tax and social security changes, including those in this Bill. I therefore urge Members from all parts of the House to support this amendment—our children’s futures depend on it.

Lords amendment 8 seeks to remove clause 13 and Lords amendment 9 seeks to remove clause 14. Clause 13 seeks to abolish the employment and support allowance work-related activity component for new claimants from April 2017 and replace it with universal credit. That would mean that social security support for people with a disability, impairment or serious health condition will reduce from £102.15 to £73.10, a cut of nearly £30 a week or £1,500 annually. The Government have argued that this is needed to

“remove the financial incentives that could otherwise discourage claimants from taking steps back to work.”

The Lords rejected this on a number of grounds. First, people in the ESA work-related activity group have gone through the work capability assessment and been found not fit for work. This includes 5,000 people with progressive conditions such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s—conditions that will not improve. It also includes people with cancer. A survey conducted by Macmillan Cancer Support found that one in 10 cancer patients would struggle to pay their rent or mortgage if ESA were cut. The key issue is that these people are not fit for work, so suggesting that removing financial incentives will somehow make them fit for work is ridiculous.

[Richard Graham]

rose—

[Debbie Abrahams]

I am sorry but I have given the hon. Gentleman a number of opportunities to intervene.

Secondly, there is overwhelming evidence of the extra costs faced by sick and disabled people, the associated poverty they experience as a result, and the clear implications for their condition. We know that 5.1 million out of the 12 million disabled people in this country live in poverty. We also know from the Extra Costs Commission that disabled people are twice as likely to live in poverty, 80% of which is due to the extra costs they face because they are poorly—because they have a disability.

Lord Low of Dalston, Baroness Grey-Thompson and Baroness Meacher’s excellent report “Halving the Gap?” expressed real concerns that the Government’s assessment of the impacts of this cut on disabled people, including the potential increase in the number of disabled people living in poverty, was inadequate. They assessed that the cut in financial support would have an injurious impact on this vulnerable group. The Equality and Human Rights Commission agreed, with its analysis being that it

“will cause unnecessary hardship and anxiety to people who have been independently found unfit for work.”

Thirdly, there is scepticism that there are employment opportunities for those sick or disabled people who may recover from their condition in the future. Approximately 1.3 million disabled people who are fit and able to work are currently unemployed, accounting for the disability employment gap of nearly 30% between disabled and non-disabled people. The Government have rightly said that we need to halve that, but they have been less open on how that can be achieved, and I agree with what the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) said about the disability White Paper. There is one specialist disability employment adviser to 600 disabled people trying to get into work.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Graham Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

Of course the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We are working with that organisation. I have been in touch with the National Autistic Society, too, to discuss what more we can do to work with employers and find more employment engagement for people on the spectrum. The hon. Gentleman is also right to highlight the need for more support for women with autism—and that is exactly what this Government are committed to do.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Increasing the number of women in employment is a key goal for this Government. Many good things are happening, but one thing going on in my Gloucester constituency highlights that more needs to be done—helping women on employment and support allowance back into employment. In that context, will the Minister join me in thanking a partnership called Forwards, which, led by the county council and in tandem with organisations such as Pluss, is making a huge difference to the lives of individuals who are now coming into work for the first time?

[Priti Patel]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point and for his observations from his own constituency. He is right to say that more support can always be provided for women on ESA, but also for people in general on it. That is why this Government are committed to the reforms that we have outlined. Importantly, we are committed to working in partnership with other organisations, including charitable organisations—as well as local authorities—such as the one my hon. Friend mentioned from his own constituency.

Under-occupancy Penalty

Richard Graham Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

In fairness, I am the Minister who responds on housing issues in Parliament. In terms of fairness, we all talk to families on the housing waiting list. Try explaining to them why we should not make more of the accommodation available to them. We have already provided greater flexibility in Scotland through devolution to do what you wish to do with discretionary housing payments.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Clearly, we shall all wait for the Supreme Court judgment that will be delivered in due course, but two points must be clear today. Does the Minister agree that the incredible indignation expressed by the shadow Minister is blown apart by the fact that the family in question are receiving exactly the same amount of benefits as they were before the introduction of the spare bedroom subsidy? The Opposition’s opportunism is shown clearly by the fact that they took away the spare room subsidy from the much larger number of people in the private rented sector.

[Justin Tomlinson]

That is right. The people in these cases are in receipt of payment, which shows that discretionary housing payments work. It shows that, through flexibility, a co-ordinated approach is possible with the police, social services, medical professionals and other agencies.