Social Security

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

I want to make it clear that the responsibility for this matter being debated in the House today lies fully with the SDLP and with Sinn Féin—and the Greens: the wee Green man in the Assembly. They used the powers that were available to block the legislation, created a constitutional and financial crisis in the Assembly, and hurt the many hundreds of thousands of people who found that for the last year the budget of the Assembly had been in disarray. The only way out of the impasse that had been created by the SDLP and Sinn Féin was to bring the legislation here. At the end of the day, common sense prevailed, and that is why we are in our present position.

[Mr Gregory Campbell]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that, on top of the problems that have been caused by the SDLP and Sinn Féin, more than £100 million-worth of fines were levied on the Assembly as a result of that intransigence?

[Sammy Wilson]

Of course, that £100 million-plus could have been used to deal with many of the pressing problems faced by my hon. Friend’s constituents and mine, and, indeed. the constituents of all of us in the House tonight. They could not benefit from hip operations, eye operations or special needs provision in schools because money had been drained from the Northern Ireland budget unnecessarily. Let us be clear about this. The responsibility for the legislation being brought here rests with those who took the view that they did, even after concessions had been made. I want to thank the Ministers on the Treasury Bench who listened to the special case in Northern Ireland, albeit that they made us pay for the changes ourselves. Nevertheless, they recognised that there were special conditions in Northern Ireland and they were prepared to be flexible. I suspect that caused some difficulty for them with their constituents, because the same arrangements were not available here on the mainland. Nevertheless, they were made available in Northern Ireland—although, as I said, the Northern Ireland Executive had to pay for the changes made.

This was always going to be a difficult issue because of the parity principle. It is one of the reasons why at the very beginning when devolution was being set up we questioned whether welfare should ever be devolved; departure from the parity principle was always going to be very difficult. The arrangement was that, so long as Northern Ireland stayed in line with tax changes and benefit changes in the rest of the UK, through the annually managed expenditure, whatever the cost of welfare would be, it would be met by the Exchequer; it would not have to be found locally, but would be met by the Exchequer. It was perfectly legitimate to say, “We’re not going to allow you to go and do your own thing and then expect the Treasury to pick up the bill.” We expect there to be that parity principle and, that being the case, the devolution of welfare to the Northern Ireland Assembly was always going to create difficulties if parties decided to dig their heels in and ask for radically different arrangements.

It has been mentioned that my party voted against some of the things contained in the Bill at Westminster. That is true, but there are many things we voted for. We supported the benefit cap. We supported the move to universal credit and the simplification of benefit arrangements. We supported the principle that benefits should be set at a level to make work pay, and not to penalise people who went out and worked. We supported all those things, but there were things we were not happy with. We voted against them here. In some cases we were able to negotiate differences in Northern Ireland, and in some cases we were not, but we faced up to the reality that once the legislation had passed through Westminster the Northern Ireland budget was not going to be able to bear the cost of not implementing it in Northern Ireland.

It is ironic, however, that the SDLP should say that Sinn Féin and the DUP rolled over to the Government on welfare reform. Let me give one example. When the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) was Minister for Social Development, she put through a lot of statutory instruments that simply reflected welfare changes here and were introduced in Northern Ireland, very often without any debate. Indeed, it was her successor who introduced in Northern Ireland the removal of the spare room subsidy for the private rented sector, and then railed against it when it was introduced for tenants in the public rented sector. There was not a word about it in the Northern Ireland Assembly when her colleague Mr Attwood introduced that. So we can see a certain amount of conflict between the anti-welfare rhetoric of the SDLP and its willingness on many occasions to introduce welfare changes through the Assembly.

[Lady Hermon]

Instead of concentrating only on the SDLP, I would be intrigued to find out what persuaded Sinn Féin, after months and months of saying no to welfare reform, to agree with the DUP—and do not tell me it was the charm of the DUP; just explain why they changed their mind.

[Sammy Wilson]

As I have mentioned to the hon. Lady before, because she has asked me this previously, Sinn Féin has on many occasions adopted an intransigent attitude. It said it would never turn its back on the IRA, but at St Andrews we insisted that it had to turn its back on associations with all those who were involved in criminality before we were—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Obviously, we are broadening the debate into other areas we are not expected to deal with, and I do believe we could have quite a bit more business to come.

[Sammy Wilson]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) is now going to have to do without an answer to that question because you have made it clear—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I am sure you can have a cup of tea later in order to answer it.

[Sammy Wilson]

Mr Deputy Speaker, you have made it clear to the hon. Lady that I would be digressing if I went down that route. The good thing is that Sinn Féin did face up to the reality that we could not go along a route where we did not have a sustainable budget and could not deliver services in Northern Ireland, we were going to hit a constitutional crisis and the devolution settlement was going to be under threat if we did not deal with this issue. I do not see what happened as a cop-out on our part, because we had always advocated that, if this matter could not be dealt with in the Assembly, it should be dealt with here—my only regret was that the Secretary of State did not take the powers earlier. Perhaps it is better that the powers were handed to her by the Northern Ireland Assembly and therefore we have this order tonight.

[Ms Ritchie]

Does the hon. Gentleman not recall that, when I was Minister for Social Development, I facilitated the request by the Social Development Committee, under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell)? He and others asked me whether it would be possible for money to be paid directly to the landlord rather than the tenant as part of housing allowance, in order to ensure the protection of tenants, and I was very glad to do it. Does the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) also agree that the whole purpose of those statutory instruments was to ensure that money was got to people as quickly as possible, in order to take them out of poverty and into a situation where they had money?

[Sammy Wilson]

The whole point of the order before us is that it allows for those changes to be made in Northern Ireland. The range of the changes has been highlighted here tonight: the exemption from the spare room subsidy changes; the direct payments to landlords; the split payments to households; and additional funding for those who would be affected by housing benefit changes to their rates. All those have been facilitated as a result of the negotiations that took place—under the auspices of a Democratic Unionist party Minister; the DUP negotiated many of those changes. As I say, we were pleased that the Government were prepared to be flexible, albeit that their largesse did not extend to funding those changes and those had to be funded from the Northern Ireland budget.

The good thing about this order is that it removes something that was toxic in the Assembly. Until December next year, any welfare changes will be done through this House and therefore the kind of impasse that we have experienced before will be removed. That is good for the stability of the Assembly. It is good that we have an order that reflects some of the changes that we believe were necessary and some of the amendments we wish to have in the legislation. Overall, it is a good part of the package. We are not ashamed of it. We do not believe it dilutes devolution. It is a recognition that the current blocking arrangements in the Assembly created problems that we had to find a way around.

[Lady Hermon]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene again. I am sure that he would like to correct the record. Instead of describing an Assembly Member as a “little Green man”, perhaps he could explain that that Member of the Legislative Assembly is in fact a member of the Green party, and one of the six MLAs in North Down. I am sure that he would like to correct the record.

[Sammy Wilson]

The MLA is a man. He is quite small, and he sits in the corner of the Assembly, and he is also a member of the Green party. Members can take from that what they wish. He and I have a long record of conflict in the Assembly.

I welcome the order before us tonight. There is other welfare legislation that will have to come before this House. I look forward to it going through, so that the problems that welfare was causing in the Northern Ireland Assembly should not cause an impasse in the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Ritchie]

On that point, I can well recall that there was robust opposition to those fines by my colleagues in the Assembly. Let me ask the hon. Gentleman this: do he and his colleagues regret the fact that there was an in-and-out approach to ministerial office by the DUP back in September, which resulted in very long waiting lists for health and in many people still having to wait for surgical procedures?

This debate and this order reflect the Government’s attitude and the disregard for the Assembly’s democratic processes on the part of the Government and Sinn Féin and the DUP. This sunset clause has been presented by other parties as the cut-off point in the Secretary of State’s interference in our welfare system, but of course that is not the case. The legislative consent motion voted through by the DUP and Sinn Féin locks Northern Ireland into the welfare provisions.

May I remind you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that DUP Members walked through the Lobby with us to vote against the provisions, yet they have joined Sinn Féin in signing up to this? My colleague in the Assembly, Mr Attwood, received a letter from the DUP Minister for Social Development last week, confirming that our constituents would face a benefit freeze for four years up to 2020 and that Westminster would have the power to impose an even lower benefit cap—lower than £20,000 for the North. That is what the DUP and Sinn Féin have locked us into. Such a four-year freeze will mean real reductions year on year for people on income support, jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance and universal credit. It will mean a freeze for constituents, whether those of my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), of the hon. Members for East Derry (Mr Campbell), for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) or for Upper Bann (David Simpson), or of the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds).

[Sammy Wilson]

Does the hon. Lady accept that most people in Northern Ireland do not regard a benefit freeze on the scale that she suggests, which is equivalent to take-home pay of £37,000 for someone in work, as unreasonable, and that if we are talking about making work pay, such a benefit freeze is essential?

[Ms Ritchie]

May I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that the standard of living in Northern Ireland is much higher and that we are talking about a benefit cap. I remind the hon. Member for East Antrim not to lead people in a slightly different direction by confusing a freeze with a benefit cap. The debate on this Order in Council, which has 140 clauses, is really about the needs of families and individuals who need to access the benefits system. People do not do that because they want to; they are forced into it because they cannot find a job, have lost their job or they live in an area where there have been considerable job losses. In Ballymena, in the constituency of the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), there will be considerable job losses as a result of closures at Michelin.

We are all united in a desire to build a more united society where there will no longer be peace walls, and we have a stable economy with plenty of economic growth and productivity and stable political institutions. We want to ensure that we can live, and people with families can rear them, in relative comfort. It is not a lifestyle choice to be in receipt of benefits; as I explained, many people are forced into such circumstances because they do not have a job or they have some form of disability.

I would like the Minister responding on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions to explain the calculation of the top-ups and which budget they will come from. Will they come out of the existing Department for Social Development budget or the Social Security Agency budget, or will there be a raid on the discretionary fund, which will disadvantage other people?

I take on board the fact that there is a top-up regime, and I hope that that money will be safeguarded by the Treasury to ensure that money flows to people. We do not want to see a sanctions regime lead to youth homelessness, which has been an emerging phenomenon in Germany and here in England and Wales, where benefits sanctions are in operation. Such sanctions can often bear down on the individuals and families least financially able to tolerate them. None of us, no matter what our political perspective or affiliation, would want that to happen to any of our constituents.

In conclusion, I would like to touch on a rather bizarre criticism levelled at my colleagues by hon. Members representing the DUP. They suggested that there was some contradiction in our argument that Northern Ireland’s welfare powers should be legislated for in Northern Ireland and, in the absence of that, our attempt to protect claimants through our amendment put to this House last week. There is no contradiction. We believe in democracy and in the processes of both the Northern Ireland Assembly and this House to scrutinise and amend legislation. Just because the DUP and Sinn Féin undermined the processes of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the SDLP will not undermine the role, duty and responsibility of this Chamber.

To my knowledge, Sinn Féin has been oddly quiet on this issue. Its only response to the trade unions protesting outside its offices on the issue at the weekend was that it supported the unions in

“directing united opposition against the Tory government in London”—

by handing over powers to that same Tory Government. That is rather bizarre and ludicrous.

The most important thing is that we are able to build on the political institutions and on sound economic growth and productivity in a balanced way throughout Northern Ireland, and that people are not worse off as a result of this measure—that is, people who are forced into the benefits system because of a lack of opportunity and jobs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Durkan]

I will answer the right hon. Gentleman’s question: I think it is a worse deal. We not only have this order to transpose the 2012 Act—all the parties in Northern Ireland said they had difficulties with that legislation—but the way in which this is being taken forward means that the Government in Whitehall now have the power, by order, to transpose the Welfare Reform and Work Bill currently going through Parliament. That needs to be understood, because the legislative consent motion passed by the Assembly endorsed all the welfare clauses of the current Bill, as originally tabled. DUP MLAs voted to endorse all the clauses, even though they had voted for amendments to delete some of them or to insert additional clauses. Within a period of weeks, they voted with an entirely different attitude in relation to the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, hiding behind direct rule. I therefore think that the deal is worse.

We must remember that the order will not only have the immediate effect of transposing most of the 2012 Act as implemented in Great Britain, but also provides a power, simply by virtue of regulations, to change a lot of the terms and conditions of the benefits, and can almost disappear some categories of benefits in the 2012 Act. In essence, we are being signed up to that without so much as a provision stating that when this direct-rule power is exercised, there must still be a legislative consent motion in the Assembly. We have been treated to the fiction that while we have direct rule, we have not lost any devolution because all the powers still exist on paper in the Assembly. That means it will supposedly be entirely in order for MLAs to table motions in the Assembly to amend such areas or to come up with their own private Members’ Bills, so we will have the nonsense of parallel, competing legislative strands. That is the sort of fiction and nonsense to which we are being treated.

Let us be very clear that the problem does not relate to the political or legislative processes; the real problem is the potential impact on people whose benefits and living standards will be affected as a result. Let us remember that when the Welfare Reform and Work Bill goes through—it has now been endorsed by a legislative consent motion—it will change the limited work capability element of universal credit for new claimants from April 2017. It is quite clear that although the decision-making power, which the Secretary of State has under the enabling legislation that went through over a week ago, will end in 2016, the effect of the decisions made under that power will not die with the power. The changes in relation to the limited work capability element of universal credit for new claimants will come in, meaning a reduction in the value of current payments of almost £30 a week—from £102.15 to £73.10. That is why all the health charities and disability campaign groups are so opposed to clauses 13 and 14 of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. Unfortunately, Northern Ireland is now sealed into that by virtue of the legislative consent motion and the measure previously passed by Parliament.

There will be a similar reduction in the amount paid to those in the employment and support allowance work-related activity group. We know from hon. Members representing constituencies in Great Britain that that is one of the notorious vexations. We have heard about just how the work-related activity group has been treated in practice, and about some of the bizarre interpretations, decisions and procedures that people have had to go through. We are now locked into a lot of that courtesy of both the legislative consent motion and this order. We do not have reason to be happy if we take seriously what our friends in all parties across the House are saying in raising their valid concerns. That also goes for some aspects of the sanctions. The time limit on the sanctions is different, courtesy of the efforts that we all made in relation to Stormont House.

I want to make it quite clear that we were signed up for Stormont House in December 2014, because the terms of the agreement stated that the proposals would be developed and brought to the Assembly. When the Bill was brought to the Assembly, however, nothing in it had changed. That is why we tabled a series of modest amendments, which would not have shattered the Stormont House agreement in any way, and which the British Government confirmed would not have stretched or undermined their understanding of what was operable under the agreement. But no, the DUP decided to veto the proposals and, on top of that, Sinn Féin decided to vote down the amendments even though the Tories had voted down similar amendments here in the original 2012 legislation. So those were the people who decided that we were not going to take Stormont House forward on an all-party basis, as had been agreed. I want to put this on record, because I do not think that enough people have understood what happened.

I will make one concession to the Government. A lot of the wriggle room that we had in the Stormont House agreement came about as a result not only of the top-up mitigations from the Executive’s own budget but of the understanding that the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury were going to allow the Social Security Agency in Northern Ireland a certain amount of leeway in the interpretation and operation of some of the measures. That is one reason why the big money that it was thought would be needed to make good some of Sinn Féin’s demands was not actually needed after all. The funds did not need to come out of the Executive’s budget because of that leeway being allowed.

However, some of us recognised that the arrangement was time-limited. We were worried that the effects of the welfare cap—which is not to be confused with the benefit cap—would, over time, squeeze and reduce that comfort. We said that we had to be honest about that. The SDLP was also very clear about saying at Stormont House that we had to be up front and public about the fact that, when the next wave of cuts came, we would not be in a position to say that they could be sustained out of the Executive’s budget and that we could not make a claim on the block grant to try to make good those claims. We said that we had to say that up front so that people understood it. Sinn Féin did not want to acknowledge that fact because it was still locked into the pretence that it could say it was protecting all existing claimants and all future claimants for ever more, amen. We never joined in that pretence, but no other party joined us in making that candid declaration that we could not constantly find more and more hard shoulder to run on.

That brings me to the points that were made earlier about the fines. We were asked whether we regretted the fines. We resented those fines, those penalties, those levies, those savings forgone. We have been told by the Secretary of State that they are not fines but savings forgone. I notice that the right hon. Lady did not contradict DUP Members when they were calling them fines; it is only me who gets contradicted. Whatever they are called, we resented them because they were an exercise in budget bullying. The DUP never objected to that budget bullying; indeed, one might think that they were actually in on the tactic, and in on the threat about not renewing the computer system.

The fact is that the Assembly was being bullied. I have said before that I do not believe that the Treasury will treat the new suite of devolved capacities for Scotland in relation to welfare reform in this way. I know that Scotland’s deal on welfare is not perfect. Its operation will be problematic, but I am pretty sure that the Treasury will not resort to the kind of tactics that it used against the Northern Ireland Assembly when it comes to dealing with clear differences of view between the Scottish Parliament and the Westminster Government. I believe that it will take a different course.

If we are to be honest about this issue, we must be clear that there is a need to consider whether we need to realign the devolution of welfare in future so that the situation is sustainable. When the sunset clause in this legislation kicks in, and if there is some other mid-term welfare reform package in this Parliament, we do not want the Assembly to spasm into crisis for exactly the same reason.

We said at Stormont House and elsewhere that perhaps we should realign towards something more akin to the Scottish model of devolution. In Scotland, the burden is to take an interest in the benefits that people rely on if they have disabilities and long-term conditions. That points towards a way that we could go that would allow us to be more complete in the protections that we say we are offering people and perhaps provide a more sustainable course for the future.

That answers the point that the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) made about the architecture of the Good Friday agreement and devolution in the first place. There might be a need to look at realignment, as we have declared. Indeed, I declared that a number of years ago. However, we have not had any takers at any of the talks. If people want to do that, they will find that it could go ahead.

The way in which the implications of this order and the orders to follow are being sold is wrong. Remember that this is only the first of a number of orders that we will get, courtesy of direct rule. Indeed, it is more direct direct rule than we had before, because when a lot of the Northern Ireland social security legislation was passed under the old style of direct rule, it was taken through the House by Northern Ireland Office Ministers. Now, we have direct rule by the DWP, thanks to the way in which Sinn Féin and the DUP have decided it will happen.

It is wrong for parties that oppose these changes to benefits and sanctions to say in respect of making sure that these cuts and changes will happen by direct fiat and by the hand of a direct-rule Minister in the DWP, “Well, that was a good deal because we saved devolution.” Who was threatening devolution? The only parties that were threatening devolution and the institutions were Sinn Féin and the DUP. They contrived the brink and we all had to teeter on it. When they were saved from themselves in the end, they said that they had done a good job by getting concessions that were available anyway—they were not concessions at all.

That is the nonsense and dishonesty that lies at the centre of the politics of this. We are not one bit happy or content. We are not thankful to the Government for this at all. There were ways of dealing with these issues. They should have been taken in a mature way by devolution—

[Sammy Wilson]

Mature?

[Mark Durkan]

They should have been taken in a mature way by devolution, using the Assembly to anticipate when the legislation which has come through here—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for East Antrim is one of the people who said that we did not need to worry about the implications of the Welfare Reform Bill when it was here in 2011. He said that we were scaremongering and he voted down moves to deal with the issue in the Assembly. Now he is saying that we should be happy with what direct rule will do over the next 13 months. That will have an effect on benefits and people’s living standards for a long time to come, not least people with disabilities and long-term health conditions.

Those people are not just worried about the implications of the Welfare Reform (Northern Ireland) Act 2015 and dissatisfied about the arrangements for personal independence payment, which need to be improved on the basis of the experience in the pilot areas in England, but they are also very concerned about the implications of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, which will change a lot of the terms and conditions attaching to universal credit. The very basis on which the original 2012 Act was sold here and the very basis on which the DUP tried to retail that Act in the Assembly was the prospectus for universal credit. Already, those terms and conditions are being changed adversely. As we pass this order, other legislation is coming through that will fundamentally change them. That is not a good deal for the people who are on these benefits.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the draft Welfare Reform (Northern Ireland) Order 2015, which was laid before this House on 26 November, be approved.