DWP: Performance

Sandra Osborne Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)]

I can tell the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) that the only wailing I hear is the wailing from my constituents, many of whom are very poor. He should be more respectful of that fact. The overall impact of UK tax and benefit changes between January 2010 and April 2015 will be to cut the bottom half of the population’s net household income by over 2%, with the bottom 20% seeing a loss of 4% or 5%. The top half of income distribution other than the richest 10% see a loss of less than 2% of net income. If the hon. Gentleman could tell me how that is fair, I would be interested to hear it.

I shall concentrate my remarks on the effects that the current policies are having on my constituents. I come from a former mining area and a coastal area that is suffering badly with increasing poverty. It is a disgrace that child poverty is heading for the steepest rise for a generation, which will wipe out the progress made since 1998-99 and push at least 50,000 children into poverty in Scotland alone. That accords with independent projections, which the Government of course ignored in their child poverty strategy report for 2014 to 2017. Half of the respondents to the consultation are concerned about the impact of welfare reform on low-income families.

The Child Poverty Action Group says that the Government’s strategy does not amount to a plan to end child poverty and fails to set out what actions, milestones and progressive measures could set child poverty on a downward trend. Instead, it is more of the same, even though it is clear from expert studies that families are being impoverished across the UK, at a cost of £29 billion a year. This can only get worse. Two thirds of poor children live in working families, so the problem is not just about getting people into work. What kind of work is provided and what support is given to families with children are what really matters. Tackling low pay and promoting affordable housing and affordable child care are fundamental.

In my 17 years as an MP, I have never witnessed so many desperate people appearing at my surgery with little or no money in their pockets. The Minister has a lot of explaining to do regarding the abject failure of universal credit to date, especially in respect of simplification of the system, in spite of the fact that the Secretary of State has held up universal credit as the pinnacle of welfare reform.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) said, the Secretary of State has bitten off more than he can chew. I want to thank my hon. Friend for coming to my constituency recently to give a talk on the implications of independence for welfare issues. I will not try your patience by going into that any further, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I just wanted to mention it because it was very welcome.

I am most concerned about the number of vulnerable people being thrown off benefit as a result of a work capability assessment that is not fit for purpose. Some people are terrified of the impact that PIP will have on their daily lives—even if they can get an interview at all—and of a Work programme that provides very little work.

The sanctions regime can be described only as bullying. Citizens Advice Scotland is not the only organisation inundated with people needing help with inaccurate assessments or unfair sanctions. In years gone by, I had very few cases where sanctions had been applied and it was usually for fair enough reasons. There are now numerous cases each week and sanctions are applied for the flimsiest of reasons. No doubt Conservative Members will think that to be a good thing, and perhaps it would be if it was fair. In a recent case, a young man with learning difficulties had been sanctioned three times since last September because, apparently, he had not done enough to look for work. On looking at his calendar and diary in which he had to fill in details of the jobs he had applied for, it was clear that he had applied for a reasonable number of jobs, most of which he had absolutely no chance of ever getting.

This is a farce. Employers are fed up with being inundated with unsuitable applicants, and, far from raising the confidence of the jobless, the system is undermining morale and increasing poverty. In the case that I have cited, it has increased the pressure on the young man’s mother to support him, although she herself is poor. In another case that I encountered, a woman from New Cumnock was “sanctioned” because she did not have access to a computer, although it is not easy to have such access in her community.

The Minister should be embarrassed by the amount of taxpayers’ money that is being wasted while distress is being caused and parents are being deprived of an opportunity to meet the most basic needs of their children and provide them with food. On Saturday, I will go to one of the local food banks to help with the collection. There are now about six food banks in my constituency. Is it not deplorable that the Government have tried to hide the fact that referrals to food banks often result from delays in benefit payments, including hardship payments? Adding insult to injury by presiding over an inefficient and frankly cruel system only makes things worse.