Welfare Reform Bill

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Does not the Government’s proposal conflict with what they are trying to do? The Minister says that benefits will not be taken away from those who have nothing, but their measure will take away benefits from, for example, a couple in which one partner is in part-time work. They could be asked to dig into what they have saved for retirement.

[Chris Grayling]

The principle of the welfare state that I described—that it is there to provide a safety net for those who have no other form of income—has operated for a very long time, including under the previous Government. The welfare state provides a degree of support to those who have another form of income, but it is a long-standing principle of the jobseeker’s allowance system that such support is not unlimited. We are simply applying that same principle to ESA for people who are deemed to have the potential, in due course, to return to work.

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[Jenny Willott]

The hon. Lady is right, and many conditions get worse at varying rates—very slowly for some people, and very quickly for others. It is important to make sure that people get the benefit that they should, and that the assessment is right, as the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) said.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Jenny Willott]

I will make some progress, because I have hardly said anything yet, and I am being intervened on left, right, and centre.

The Harrington process is critical to getting the assessment right. I welcome the work that has been done looking specifically at cancer patients, which will ensure that the vast majority go into the support group. That is the right way forward. I also welcome the fact that Professor Harrington is looking at how we assess chronic pain and fatigue, because in many chronic, long-term conditions—particularly fluctuating conditions—those are the elements that cause people most difficulty in thinking about returning to work, and the elements that, at the moment, the work capability assessment is not very good at identifying and reflecting. I really hope that Ministers will implement whatever recommendations Professor Harrington makes on those issues; on past experience, his recommendations have been sensible and have made a significant difference to the assessment.

On the point made by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan, there is evidence that the system is improving. I looked earlier today at the latest figures on the outcome of the work capability assessments, which I found quite reassuring when it comes to the Bill. We have to treat the figures with caution, but they show that initially, following the work capability assessment, more people are going into the support group than the work-related activity group. That is a crucial point. If we are getting the assessment right, and more people are going into the support group in the first place, the time-limit for people in the work-related activity group becomes less of an issue, because the people who need the most care are getting support indefinitely.

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[Mr Nuttall]

Absolutely. We have heard a lot about this means-testing this afternoon. We have heard that the system is insurance-based, which it is, but with any insurance policy there are terms and conditions. In this case, the means test is just shorthand for the terms and conditions of the policy.

[Sheila Gilmore]

What I find so hard to understand in the argument the hon. Gentleman is presenting is that the very people he might be condemning—people who have not worked and have not had savings—will continue to get benefit. The people who are being damaged by this policy are those who have saved, who are working and who have tried hard.

[Mr Nuttall]

We must have rules of policy in an insurance system. The Labour party accepted that when it was in government and the hard-working families in my constituency, many of whom have no savings at all, or less than £1,000 in savings, will ask why their taxes should go towards paying benefits to people who have far more in savings than they have. That is a perfectly logical and sensible view.

[Sheila Gilmore]

If people thought about this they would realise that if they had been saving and making that effort—and we are not necessarily talking about huge amounts because the measures would start to affect people to some degree at £6,000—they would find the measures unfair.

[Mr Nuttall]

I do not agree. We have to ask why people save. They save for a rainy day. They save in case they lose their job or have an illness. The changes will still mean that the most needy in our society will be looked after. There will still be a safety net that will help those who most need help in our society.

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[Ian Lavery]

What I will not accept is that everyone suffering from cancer will be in the work group. That is not the case. They might be in for a short time or a prolonged period, but they are not guaranteed to be in there all the time. That means their benefits will be cut.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is rather strange that a Government who have been saying that disabled people should not be condemned to worklessness and should be encouraged to work seem to be turning on a pin to argue that everything will be all right because all those people will be in the support group?

[Ian Lavery]

If that was the case, there would not be a problem with the legislation. Everybody would get what they were due and there would not be the apparent cut.

For the third time, I shall try to conclude. We must give dignity to those people, who are in most need, and stop the war against those in need.

[Dr Whiteford]

I will try to keep my comments brief, given the time pressure on us.

The Lords has done us a big service by highlighting the impact and implications of these measures for sick and disabled people. The 12-month limit to contributory ESA is arbitrary. Regardless of the people in the support group, the measure will affect people who are adapting to radical and serious changes in their health, income and life. They might be suffering from life-limiting conditions, long-term disability or fluctuating conditions. They might be people who have been used to living on an average income, but will have to get used to living on a very low income. Those adaptations take time; getting better takes time. Some people will take less than 12 months, some considerably more. Macmillan thinks that 94% will need support in the work-related activity group for more than 12 months. In that respect, while I do not accept the principle of an arbitrary time limit, I suspect that two years would catch more of those people and see them getting the support they need.

Fundamentally, these measures will upset the contract that we all like to think we have when we pay our national insurance contributions—that there will be some limited safety net for us if we are unfortunate enough to become sick or disabled. That could happen to any one of us in this Chamber, at any time. We do not know when we are going to have an accident or develop a serious illness, so not only cancer is involved, although we know that people across society are affected by it. Other conditions are just as serious, and the same principles apply.

On insecurity, I should draw an analogy with what happened when banks tried to prey on people’s insecurities about the future by asking them to take on insurance for loans they had taken out. The banks have had to pay out seven-figure sums in compensation to people who were mis-sold insurance policies. I hope that that does not happen again as people think, “If I get a serious illness, there will not be support for me.” I am worried that there will be an opportunity for unscrupulous selling of insurance policies to vulnerable people at the most vulnerable times in their lives.

I am concerned about the knock-on impact of the proposals on carers too. In my constituency, I have seen families working longer hours, often in low-paid jobs, just to provide financially for family members who are no longer able to work, but who once were. There is particular concern around young people; that was mentioned earlier in the debate, but it has not been focused on so much. Parents of disabled young adults have often saved throughout their lives as they are concerned about what will happen when they are no longer able to look after their children. They have saved for their children to ensure that they have independent means and a bit of money behind them for when they are adult and their parents are no longer in a position to provide.

It would be unfortunate if the capital of those young people were eroded at a time when they still had some support from their parents. They might be prevented from having an independent old age and might be made more dependent on the state than they would otherwise be. That is about the dignity of young disabled people as much as anything.

I urge the Government to consider the fact that ESA needs to be assessed on the basis of medical need, not an arbitrary time limit. People should get the support they need according to their health, not some arbitrary category that they may or may not fit into.

[Sheila Gilmore]

What we have heard today is that there is a big divide between the parties on our views of what the welfare state is for. The Minister opened the debate by saying that the welfare state is a safety net, by which he meant a safety net only on financial grounds; those who are very poor get help, but those who are not do not. That is not how I see it. The welfare state was set up to help us through the times when we are in difficulties, including illness and poor health. It is the social security that gives us the confidence that we will be provided for when we need it. This distinction clearly illustrates the divide between the parties.

It was very odd to hear the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott) argue that this matter was somehow not as important as the Opposition think it is because people will end up in the support group. That goes against everything that many disability organisations are saying, which is that people who have an illness or a disability do want to get back to work. Perhaps they are not quite ready to go back to work within a year, but they do want to work. Parking people in the support group is a very odd solution indeed, because we will end up going back to the situation that the Government have so heavily criticised. Where people have saved, they should have that opportunity. If someone falls ill at that age, they will already have incurred considerable financial losses and no doubt bitten into their savings. We are talking not about welfare, but about people who will start to lose benefits when they have savings of over £6,000 a year.

[Sarah Newton]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that people’s circumstances change, but does she not agree that they can go for a reassessment?

[Sheila Gilmore]

One of the things that it would be interesting to discuss if we had more time, and it is dreadful that so little time has been given for considering these important matters, is whether someone who has been in the work-related activity group—

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[Mr Redwood]

No, I like representing my constituents and I suspect that the two jobs would not be compatible. I am very grateful for the kind offer, however, and I notice that the right hon. Gentleman prefers the name Ofcap to Doffcap. As Labour has not yet put forward proposals to deal with the people it describes as fat cat landlords, I think it might well be a case of Doffcap to the landlords, as we seem to be discussing how much money we will route to the landlords through the housing benefit mechanism.

I suspect that if I strayed into the subject of proposals for the housing market and landlords, you would rule me out of order, Mr Deputy Speaker, but perhaps that is a debate for another day. There might be common ground on how we can get better value for the public money being spent while ensuring that we do not cut off the supply of housing, which would be a very stupid thing to do by clumsy intervention. We need more housing at an affordable level for people on modest incomes.

We are talking about a group of people on very modest incomes, and it ill behoves people on decent incomes, such as Members of the House, to be too mean about it. We have the conundrum, however, that we always want to make it worth while for those people to work. We all accept that there will be a cap, but, if it is to be a regional cap, before deviating from the Government’s proposal to the Labour proposal we would need to know what Labour has in mind for the total costings and how the proposal would work fairly within an area as well as between areas.

[Sheila Gilmore]

One thing that the right hon. Gentleman has not mentioned is that when we compare the working family with the non-working family, all too often in this debate we are not comparing apples with apples. The working family would have child benefit for their children on top of the wage that is constantly mentioned and, depending on the number of children they have, they might well qualify for child tax credit. We are not comparing properly, so simply saying that the situation is unfair to those working families gives the wrong impression. Does he not agree?

[Mr Redwood]

I thought it was now common ground that for a large number of people on certain kinds of benefit, work is not worth while. We are trying to solve that problem, so despite all those things that the hon. Lady truthfully reports to the House, we still have that problem, with which both parties are wrestling. That is why the Labour party is not here today saying, “There is no problem: we are going to vote against the whole thing,” but is here with an alternative proposal at the 11th hour—the last possible chance to consider this.

Let us go back to Labour’s argument on the regional cap. If it had come with a properly costed and working proposal, I might have been sympathetic to it, but we do not yet know from Labour what is the total package of money available. We have not even been told whether it wants to live within the budget that the Government have come up with for the proposal or whether it thinks the overall proposal is too mean. If it wants to spend much more, it will not solve the “Why work?” problem because provision will become too generous again and it will have a public spending problem.

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[Richard Graham]

The right hon. Lady makes a perfectly valid point. Some workers receive benefits, but I do not believe that any of them will receive benefits for their family equivalent to, let alone more than, £26,000 a year. I stand to be corrected, even immediately by e-mail to my office, but I am pretty confident.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I tend to agree with the hon. Gentleman. I do not know Gloucester very well, but it would be unlikely for people in Edinburgh to reach that cap, which is exactly the difficulty. Not everywhere is the same. Hon. Members have said that some rents are far too high, but we cannot compare the situation of people in Gloucester with that of people in London.

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Lady is welcome to visit Gloucester. We have lots of things to show her that she will enjoy. If her point was that there are specific problems in London, I agree with her, but I shall come to that later if I may.

The second group of people in my constituency whom I want to address is those on the lowest wages of all. The Government have been clear that one of their major goals—many of us campaigned for this long before the general election—is to reduce, and if possible to eliminate, income tax for the lowest earners in our constituencies. They have done a great deal towards that goal—I believe that 1.1 million have been taken out of income tax altogether. What message do we send to those who are not earning very much and whom we would like to take out of income tax altogether if we do not cap the benefits that those not in work can clock up?

We should send the lowest earners the message that this Government are on their side. We want to take them out of income tax when we can, and at the same time, we want to put a cap on those families who, for whatever reasons, are unemployed. That is a very important message to send, for example, to the young worker at Asda in Barton and Tredworth, who finds that the presents she buys her children at Christmas are not nearly as good as those bought for the children of the family next door, who are living more comfortably on benefits. This is a worker-friendly policy and Bill.

The third group in my constituency whom I should like to address is those who are the most worried and the most vulnerable, including the disabled—I have had several mails from disabled people—war widows and those on PIP or attendance allowances. As the Minister has made absolutely clear, the Bill provides protection for the most vulnerable in our constituencies.

I absolutely recognise that people could well be affected by some elements of the Bill, and the vast majority of them probably live in London. It is not for me to speak on their behalf or on that issue, but the Minister has addressed the problem with three measures: first, the 10-month grace period; secondly, a special nine-month grace period for those who lose their job; and thirdly, a package of discretionary funding. That seems to me to be a significant proposal for hon. Members whose constituencies are likely to be affected.

The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) made a good point when he warned of the consequences of the Bill in a year or two. Many Government Members, including me, are new to the House and indeed to the world of politics, whereas he has years of experience. I do not have his experience of debating measures that sound great on the day but do not deliver quite what they intended, but in 2010 the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, of which I was a member, looked very carefully at changes to housing benefit. There were warnings from well-known charities such as Shelter and speeches from Opposition Members such as the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) that thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people would be thrown out of their accommodation and have to sleep rough on the streets. A year later, none of that has come to pass, although I may have missed something.

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[Sheila Gilmore]

rose—

[Chris Grayling]

Let us ask one of them who was on the Committee. Does the hon. Lady support the benefit cap?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I stood up to say that we cannot simply go to the population in the way suggested. When I was out on Sunday, one of my constituents said to me, “Yes, £26,000 seems a lot of money”, but when I asked her what she thought about so much money going in rents to landlords, she immediately changed her mind. We cannot create policy by giving people insufficient information.

[Chris Grayling]

You’d think they hadn’t been in government for a generation!

As we stand here, we still do not know exactly where Labour stands. I cannot, hand on heart, say, when the House divides in a minute’s time, whether Labour Members will vote for the benefit cap or against it. We asked the question again and again but they would not answer. They dance around the issue and come up with lame last-ditch excuses and new ideas that they did not discuss in Committee. At the end of the day, they do not want to give an answer to the public. In a moment, they will have to give that answer, because out there are millions of people watching us this afternoon, asking, “Will the House of Commons back something we passionately believe in?” We on this side of the House will be walking through the Division Lobby tonight in support of a benefit cap. We will be backing the views of our constituents; the question is: will the Opposition? Will the shadow Secretary of State, will the shadow Minister, will all the people who we have listened to in debates in Committee and in this Chamber—

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[Sheila Gilmore]

Obviously, any change of heart is welcome—I do not think we would not welcome this—but there is something I do not understand. If, as the Minister has said, many people are reluctant to pay, how will charging the applicant—the parent with care—make the other parent more likely to pay?

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Lady and I know that it is very difficult for us to sit in judgment over parents. Family breakdown can be caused by many different things and we need to make sure that the support is there for parents to come together and work together. All our evidence suggests that 50% of people in the CSA system would rather not be there and would rather be working in the way I have described.

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[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

rose—

[Sheila Gilmore]

rose—

[Andrew Percy]

I will not give way; I want to finish in a moment.

When I was a councillor, a lady came to see me. She had inherited a house from her parents. It was her home; she had lived in it with her parents all her life. She would now be considered to be under-occupying that home. I am sure that the Ministers understand this, but I plead with them to take account of the fact that houses are not only public assets; they are also people’s homes, and people have an attachment to them. This is not a simple matter to resolve, even though we should encourage an end to under-occupancy.

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[Jenny Willott]

I want to speak quickly on under-occupancy and the Child Support Agency.

The main concern on the Liberal Democrat Benches about under-occupancy and the housing benefit proposals—as hon. Members have heard from a couple of my colleagues and from Members on both sides of the House—is about the impact on rural areas and, in particular, the Scottish islands. There is also a concern about urban areas where an active allocation policy has meant that families have been given larger houses in areas that are less popular. I appreciate that it is difficult to lay out in legislation the need to ensure that tenants are offered appropriate alternative accommodation, but it is important that we ensure that when alternative offers are made they should take into account issues such as family and support networks, which are particularly important in helping people to get back into work. Offers should also take into account the distance people will have to travel, how that will relate to the communities, the lack of public transport in rural areas and so on, as well as where people are working and how easy it is for them to commute if they are required to move.

I understand that the Government will be doing that through discretionary housing payments, but I would be grateful if the Minister would ensure that guidance making those elements very clear is provided for local authorities. I know that discretionary housing payments are ring-fenced, and that is extremely important, but it is also important that general rules taking into account a sensible approach of looking at community links and the availability of alternative accommodation, or lack thereof, are applied across the country.

[Sheila Gilmore]

rose—

[Jenny Willott]

I am not going to give way.

Another concern is that it will take a while to move people and for accommodation to become available. Registered social landlords are concerned to know how long the process will take, so that they can enable a managed process. While that happens, there will be an impact on their income as arrears are likely to build up before alternative accommodation becomes available. Some RSLs have done work on this, including Riverside housing association, which is based in Merseyside. It has calculated that it will take it at least three years to move everybody around. [Interruption.]