Independent Living Fund

Debate between Ross Thomson and Sarah Newton

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Newton]

As I said, we are spending more than £7 billion more than in 2010, and the changes we have made to the personal independence payment mean that more people are now eligible for support. People with conditions such as multiple sclerosis and those with variable conditions are now eligible, as are people with mental health problems. We have widened the range of people with health conditions and disabilities who can apply for the personal independence payment.

[Ross Thomson (Aberdeen South) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that there is a stark difference between perception and reality, and that while some may use that perception for partisan reasons and to play politics, the reality on the ground is that the Government are supporting those who are disabled to live fulfilled and full lives, and helping them to gain choice and control over how their support is delivered?

[Sarah Newton]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing that out. The numbers clearly show a significant contribution to helping people live independently, but these things are not the only things we are doing. He is completely right to talk about enabling people to play their full part in society, including in work, and I am delighted that so many more disabled people are in work. The vast majority of disabled people want to play their full part in society and to be able to work, and we have set up very ambitious plans to ensure that more people have more support.

Let us look at some of that support. Not only do we have ESA and the personal independence payment, but enhanced and tailor-made support is available through the work coaches in Jobcentre Plus—that is more than £330 million. The marvellous Access to Work programme enables people to receive support of up to and over £40,000 a year so that they can go to work and stay in work. The subject of the newly launched Work and Health programme brings me on to the point raised by the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran about working collaboratively with Scotland. I am delighted that in Scotland people are working so constructively on some of that innovation, and testing new ways that we can support people to get into and stay in work. We have a constructive working relationship with Scotland, and Scotland is benefiting from some of the considerable investment we are putting into that programme. Just this year we have two funds, one of nearly £80 million and another of about £35 million. I will, of course, always look to work with colleagues in any part of the country where we can work collaboratively and constructively to learn from each other, so that we can enable more people to play as full a part in society as they possibly can.

We have also talked about other parts of the funding. Adult social care is incredibly important for disabled people, and we have committed to publishing a Green Paper by the summer, setting out how we will reform the system and have a longer-term settlement on social care. An inter-ministerial group has been set up to do that, because it is an essential reform that we need to achieve. It is also important to have a cross-party, whole nation approach to doing that, because various Governments have tried to get it right, but we have yet to come up with a settled view we can all support. I think that is long overdue, and I will work hard to support that inter-ministerial group in coming up with a set of proposals that will aim to command the support of the whole House. Any hon. Members here who would like to join would be welcome.

Knife Crime

Debate between Ross Thomson and Sarah Newton

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that prevention is vitally important—working with young people to explain the risks they are taking if they carry a knife and, once they get into the criminal justice system, making sure they get all the support they need to be diverted from such harmful behaviour. A key part of the announcement we made in July was that we will be doing more work at a community level. We are setting up the new £500,000 community fund to support those very successful grassroots organisations we have heard about this evening, which are key partners for us in the Home Office, such as St Giles and Redthread. I am sure the hon. Member for Croydon Central has had meetings with those excellent organisations in London. We work with and partner such organisations and part-fund them, along with the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and the Mayor of London, to make sure the services are there, and that we are identifying the most vulnerable young people and giving them the support they need to make different choices in their lives.

Building on that evidence base and what we have learned in London, services are being expanded across the United Kingdom. We have heard about the excellent work done in A&E departments—the “teachable moments” that happen in our major trauma centres here in London. The Government are part-funding the expansion of that into cities around the UK this year. So we are working at pace with determination using the evidence base of what works—a lot of that has been learned in London—to make sure other parts of the country and communities that are experiencing such problems are getting the support they need.

That brings me back to the hon. Lady’s primary ask that we work together across the House to look at both a national and a local response. Since we launched our strategy, we have been building the capacity in the system to understand this very complex issue: it is sometimes driven by gangs, and sometimes by organised and serious crime; and whereas carrying knives and participating in knife crime disproportionately involves young people, people of other ages are involved as well. We have funded a whole series of local and area-based reviews. One was done in Croydon; the hon. Lady might not have had a chance to speak to the chief executive of her local authority or her borough commander about that work, but it was very useful. We have had very good feedback from boroughs and places all over the country, enabling all the agencies in the community—social services, youth offending services, schools and teachers, voluntary groups, communities and counsellors—to share data and build a picture of what is happening in their communities, so that they can properly target their resources to join up those services to support young people in the communities to make different choices.

That work extends beyond the immediate localities to deal with the county lines issues. This sort of crime is being exported out of London, Manchester and Liverpool to other parts of the country, so we are funding not only local area reviews but national strategic reviews. With that better intelligence and data, we are making a real difference by joining up the different parts of the public services with businesses and voluntary sector organisations, which are so capable of working with young people, to restrict access to knives. That work is being scaled up at pace to meet the challenge that we undoubtedly face today.

[Ross Thomson]

The Minister talks about knife crime being exported out of London and other cities; it plagues the whole of the United Kingdom. Education, justice and health are devolved matters in Scotland, but will she commit to engaging with the Scottish Government to look at how we could adopt a consistent approach to dealing with this issue across the United Kingdom?

[Sarah Newton]

I can absolutely assure my hon. Friend that I am already doing that in relation to all the new measures on preventing young people from getting access to knives and on banning zombie knives. We have asked the Scottish Government to do those things. I have not had time to do justice to the huge amount of information that we have been given this evening, but I want to carry on this discussion. I very much welcome the way in which the hon. Lady has presented the debate. This is a nationwide issue that requires all of us in this place to reach out and work with each other to bring an end to these appalling crimes—