Amendment of the Law

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

My right hon. Friend made his points so powerfully I did not see the need to repeat them, but I will certainly look into the matters he raises and respond to him. However, the Government have a very good record of investment in infrastructure, including the largest programme of rail investment since Victorian times; the largest programme of rail investment since the 1970s; and a huge investment programme in broadband infrastructure.

This is a Budget for fiscal responsibility that meets the supplementary target for debt as a share of GDP that the Government set in 2010. The deficit has fallen by a half over the Parliament, and every year we have borrowed less than set out in the autumn statement. This is a Budget, too, for a strong economy. The UK is the fastest-growing major economy in the G7. We have record numbers of people in work and the highest employment rate in our country’s history. It is very different from the predictions we heard from Labour Members, who said that jobs would be lost this Parliament. Instead, nearly 2 million jobs net have been created. Astonishingly, more jobs have been created in the UK since 2010 than in the whole of the rest of the EU combined. That is a truly extraordinary record.

There were measures in the Budget to support job creation and key sectors in the economy. I have mentioned the measures to support the oil and gas sector, which have been widely welcomed by Oil & Gas UK, Sir Ian Wood, who authored the Wood review, and many other figures in the oil and gas sector who see the package as one that will increase confidence in the sector.

I could mention the measures we took on alcohol duties, which were particularly warmly welcomed by the Scotch Whisky Association, as I discovered at its reception at the Scottish Liberal Democrat conference in Aberdeen on Friday evening. We also announced radical new measures to pilot full retention of business rate increments in Manchester and Cambridge, and a number of hon. Members have welcomed the wide review we announced of the way in which the business rate system operates.

This is a Budget that delivered on several key Liberal Democrat party priorities. I particularly note the package of measures to support mental health. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) wrongly said that the Budget did not mention the national health service. In fact, it contained a full package of measures to help fund additional support for people suffering from mental ill health. I pay tribute to the Minister of State, Department of Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who worked very hard to devise this package. It is a £1.25 billion package that provides measures for children’s mental health services, perinatal mental health services, and to improve support for the mental health of people who are out of work. Worth more than £1 billion over the next five years, we will be able to start new access standards and see 110,000 more children cared for over the next Parliament. Some £118 million will be invested over the next four years to complete the roll-out of the children and young people’s increasing access to psychological therapies programme. The measures to support mental health in this Budget mark a radical departure and a radical change. It is perhaps not surprising that some hon. Members said that the national health service was not mentioned in the Budget—so weakly has mental health been accorded its proper status under previous Governments. Because of the Liberal Democrat involvement in this Government, that particular thing has changed.

The Budget included further big increases in the income tax personal allowance, increasing the tax-free allowance to—[Interruption.]

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Danny Alexander]

No, I am not giving way. I am going to make some progress. The hon. Lady was not here for the debate, so I am certainly not giving way to her.

Housing Costs (Reformed Welfare System)

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman should acknowledge that the proposals from the late Malcolm Wicks involved incentives to move, not financial penalties to be applied immediately whether or not houses are available.

[John Hemming]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, but my reading of all the documents, including those memoirs, is different from hers. It was not about an incentive to move, which I do not think anyone would criticise. I think that his proposals were very similar to those that have been adopted by this Government, as seen in the written parliamentary questions.

[John Hemming]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. The scheme for working out how much space people need and paying them for it was introduced in the private sector many years ago. The Opposition will make the valid point that they did not make it retrospective, but the Government then say that if we want to deal with overcrowding and the like, this is one of the difficulties. Speaking personally, I would rather not do any of these things, but we do not have the finances for that. If we had chosen to take the Greek approach and said, “Can’t pay, won’t pay”, and then run out of money, we would not have had to do a lot of these things, but sadly we have to try to bring the books into balance over time.

[Sheila Gilmore]

The fundamental problem with this whole policy—I think the hon. Gentleman is taking this position as well—is whether it is about saving money or making better use of houses. The amount being saved even on the Government’s own initial estimates was not enormous, and when we factor in discretionary housing payments and all the other things that have to be taken into account, the savings diminish even further. This is not really something that will save a lot of money. [Interruption.]

[John Hemming]

From a sedentary position, the Minister says, “£1 million a day”, which is about the order of magnitude that we were talking about. A policy can have more than one objective. It can be designed to save money and also to deal with overcrowding. This year, I have not had anyone in my office complaining about social services criteria, but I often get people complaining about being overcrowded.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Hon. Members agree that there are serious problems when payments of housing benefit rise so high. We disagree on our analysis of how it came about and what we should do about it. Unless we tackle the underlying issues, we will simply trim the edges, to the detriment of many households and families. As the Office for Budget Responsibility says in its review of spending on benefits and pensions, the main drivers for the increase in housing benefit are increases in rents and the number of people on low wages who have to claim housing benefit to make ends meet. The OBR was concerned that those two things would continue to be drivers in the coming decade unless action was taken. There is very little—I would say virtually nothing—in the steps that the Government have taken since 2010 to tackle those problems. Indeed, they may have made them worse.

We were told by Ministers during the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill that the private rented sector had become so intrinsically dependent on the housing benefit market that rents would fall as a result of the changes. Rents have not fallen. In many places, they have risen considerably above inflation. That is certainly true in my city, in the city represented by the Chair of the Select Committee and in London. The DWP accepts that this is the case. For the private rented sector, it has introduced additional payments in some areas to top up the local housing allowance—after it previously made reductions—because it accepts there is a growing gap between the actual rents available to people who want to rent and need housing benefit, and the payments they would otherwise receive. The promises that rent would fall as a result of the policy have not come about. I hope that in looking to see what savings are supposed to have been made, those additional payments will be factored in.

We are repeatedly told that this policy is about saving money. I think the Minister from a sedentary position said, “Oh, it’s about £1 million a day,” but that was based on the Government’s original statement that the policy would save about £500 million a year. Other experts said, at a very early date, that it would be lucky to be somewhere nearer £350 million, and that does not take into account the very high cost of discretionary housing payments, which are a cost to Government and so detract from any savings made. It is therefore not correct for the Government to say what they say.

For individuals, households and families, the impact is extremely serious. This is not the same, as is often said, as what happened previously in the private rented sector, dating back to about 1998 when size was taken into account. This is an impost on people now, whether they can move or not and whether there is anywhere for them to move to or not. One of the amendments tabled during the course of the Welfare Reform Bill by the Opposition—it was followed up through the House of Lords and incorporated into a private Member’s Bill that was not allowed to progress in this House recently—proposed that if people were offered a suitable alternative house and did not take it, then the cut in their benefit could apply. For many people, however, that just is not practical. I have just checked yet again, as I do constantly, the number of houses available for social rent in my city. This week, there were 54 in the whole city. Of those, 31 were one-bedroom, but eight were sheltered. The people affected by the bedroom tax are by definition under pension and retirement age, and so would not qualify for those eight.

[Debbie Abrahams]

That is not just the case in my hon. Friend’s city. In Oldham in my constituency, 2,048 people are affected by the bedroom tax and there are only 50 properties for them to move into.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention.

In Scotland, the priority given to people who are homeless—a much wider definition of homelessness has been adopted by the Scottish Government—means that there is real competition for smaller houses. The majority of people who present as homeless are single people, so they too need the small houses that other people are trying to fit into.

[John Hemming]

I refer the hon. Lady to the answer that the then housing Minister, the late Malcolm Wicks, gave to a question from the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown):

“We hope to implement a flat rate housing benefit system in the social sector, similar to that anticipated in the private rented sector to enable people in that sector to benefit from the choice and flexibility that the reforms can provide.”—[Official Report, 19 January 2004; Vol. 416, c. 1075W.]

If he said that then, why is it now such a bad idea?

[Sheila Gilmore]

It is interesting that the flat-rate housing allowance for the private rented sector should be raised. What the hon. Gentleman mentions was discussed as a possibility during the Labour Government. I was very much involved in housing, as the convenor of a housing committee in my council, and I remember that being discussed, but it was not implemented and there was a lot of opposition to the idea of doing that for the social rented sector, for all sorts of reasons. However, what the bedroom tax does is immediately say to people, whether they can move or not and whatever their circumstances are: “You may have to pay this extra money.”

To argue that discretionary housing payments are sufficient is not good enough. Even in Scotland, where the Scottish Government eventually agreed that extra money for the discretionary housing pot should kick in, there are still people who either do not know about making a claim or make a claim and do not get it, and who have to keep making claims. What the Select Committee said—I do not think this was unreasonable; we are a cross-party Committee—was that if we take the view that disabled people who have substantially adapted houses will receive long-term discretionary housing payments, which is what is always said, it would be simpler to exempt them. It would be administratively simpler, because there must be administrative costs in taking forms from people, processing them and working out whether they are still eligible. I do not think that was an unreasonable proposition. As the Government have taken so long to read our report—presumably considering it and working out whether it is workable—I hope that the Minister will stand up today and tell us that they have accepted that reasonable proposition. If he did that, we would all be extremely glad.

I want briefly to say something about the housing benefit cap. If a lot of people—this was the evidence to our Committee—are in temporary accommodation, it is utterly unreasonable to stop their benefit suddenly because they find themselves in that position. The Government are fond of saying that, as a result of the cap, people have moved out of temporary accommodation, but I suggest that it is likely that they are moving from temporary accommodation to permanent accommodation. There is a movement of people in and out of the scope of the household benefit cap, but the amount that some people are losing is very significant indeed. Again, I fear that the legislation was more symbolic than something that seriously addressed the underlying issues. If we have a lot of people receiving high amounts of benefits overall—because, for example, they are living in very expensive temporary accommodation—we need to build more affordable houses.

This is an issue north and south of the border. The Scottish Government have not been building sufficient low-cost affordable homes. The number completed in my city last year was the same as it was in 2007, which was the year that the current Scottish Administration took office. They have not been building low-rent affordable homes at an increased rate, even though they may sometimes try to say that they are. Without those homes, people will be paying excessive rents in the private rented sector, and not just in temporary accommodation. That is the issue we need to tackle.

Compulsory Jobs Guarantee

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

But because of what we are doing with local authorities, working through the local enterprise partnerships, and with all the local provision that we have been pushing down, if they want to create additional programmes, Jobcentre Plus will support them through that. We have to be slightly careful, when starting to calculate figures, about one group coming on the back of others, because we will not know how many of those went to work as a result of Jobcentre Plus and how many as a result of the programme. If local authorities, rightly, want to help, we are all in favour of supporting them with extra help.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will make a little progress before giving way again.

The issue still remains for the Opposition which I thought this debate was about. I thought they would have a fantastic motion that answered all these questions, but they do not. These are the biggest questions: which businesses have signed up to the jobs guarantee, and how many jobs have they guaranteed to provide? In the absence of any answers, I will quote the OECD’s view of these kinds of make-work schemes. For the past 20 years it has demonstrated that such schemes are expensive and counter-productive. Its jobs strategy states that having

“large deadweight losses, displacement and substitution effect… direct job creation in the public sector has been of little success in helping unemployed people get permanent jobs in a more open labour market”.

That is probably the final word on the structure of Labour’s jobs guarantee.

Let us look at how the Opposition propose to fund their jobs guarantee, which I had thought would be dealt with clearly today. The right hon. Member for East Ham said something about it, but they seem to have gone back to their original position. Her Majesty’s Treasury has estimated that for 2015-16 the jobs guarantee would cost £1.54 billion for the over-25s and a further £540 million for the under-25s, so over £2 billion in total for only one year. To pay for it, the Opposition have proposed two measures.

First, they would restrict pensions tax relief for earnings over £150,000. Let us deal with that first. They originally committed that funding for the purpose of increasing working and child tax credits, so they seem to have done a little dodge. I have no idea whether they still plan to use it for that, but I am sure we will find out. Apparently it will now pay for the jobs guarantee. Never mind the fact that it would take—this is a real estimate from those who know—until 2018-19 to implement, leaving three years with no funding to cover the annual cost of £1.5 billion. They cannot just wave a magic wand and say, “The money’s there”; they also have to position the money at the right time. The right hon. Gentleman was forced by the shadow Chancellor to say that there would be no borrowing. Well, that looks to me like a chunk of borrowing.

That is even if the proposal raises any money at all, because the CBI has called it “simply unworkable”, the National Association of Pension Funds has warned that it is a “disaster in the making”, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that it

“would be expensive to administer… unfair and would inappropriately distort behaviour.”

The Opposition would create a problem in the pensions industry and damage people’s savings, and all to fund a programme that simply would not work.

The second source of funding is repeating the one-off bankers bonus tax. I have to tell the right hon. Gentleman that no matter how many ways he cuts this, Labour has spent this money 11 times over. That is the 11 that I can find; I am sure my hon. Friends will find a lot more. There were proposals on reversing the VAT increase, at £12.75 billion; reversing tax credit savings, at £5.8 billion; more housing, at £1.2 billion; reversing the child benefit savings, at £3.1 billion; more capital spending, at £5.8 billion; and more child care, at £800 million. It is almost like one of those game shows—“Come on down, there’s another box to be opened and we’ll spend that money as well.” These sources go on and on and on; it is quite fascinating. Yet it has been said time and again that this is a one-off tax. When in office, Labour’s last Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), said of the idea of repeating this tax that it is

“a one-off thing…because the very people you are after…will find all sorts of imaginative ways of avoiding it in the future.”

He had no time at all for the idea of a repetition of Labour’s bankers bonus tax. So there we have it: the cobbled-together nonsense of Labour’s jobs guarantee, destined to fail and wholly and utterly unfunded.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore]

The Secretary of State always says of the work experience programme that about half of young people who take part in it go into work. His own Department’s evaluation—I do not know whether there has been a more recent one than 2012, but I have not seen it—suggested that following the work experience programme there was a difference between a participant group and a non-participant group, but it was only a small one. Does he not agree that nearly half of those who did not participate in work experience also went into work?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is always a pleasure to listen to the hon. Lady. She has tortuously wound her way around all these figures, but I come back to the simple point that the work experience programme, at a twentieth of the cost of the future jobs fund, ensures that over 50% of those who enter it will go into work. By the way, I did not invent the work experience programme—it was invented for me by somebody on the floor of the job centre because young people were saying, “Can’t we have more time for work experience than the last Government allowed us to have?” I do not know if she has seen the really interesting figure that the claimant count in her constituency is down by nearly 50%. That is a very good story. I know she will want to write that up as well, as an excellent statistic.

The record jobs figures under this Government stand as a testament to our success, with more people in work than ever before, up by 1.75 million, and more people in private sector jobs than ever before, up by nearly 2.2 million. Since 2010, two thirds of the rise in employment has gone to UK nationals—the Opposition never achieved this—thereby reversing the damaging trend of Labour’s last five years in office, when the majority of jobs went to foreign nationals. What is more, we now have more women in work than ever before, more lone parents in work than ever before, and more older workers than ever before—and employment for young people and disabled people is up on the year as well.

Let me now deal with the suggestion that these people are moving into part-time, low-quality work. That is not true. The Opposition constantly harp on about a figure that has no basis in fact, so let me give the facts. Full-time employment is up by over 1.3 million since 2010—over 80% of the rise in employment in the past year alone. Permanent employees are up by 1 million since 2010—nearly 80% of all people in work. Three quarters of those in employment since 2010 have come from managerial, professional or associate professional jobs. The Opposition constantly put about the nonsense that there are nothing but zero-hour, no-value, low-skilled jobs, but that is simply not true.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

I thank the Opposition for giving the House the opportunity to discuss jobs and their compulsory jobs guarantee scheme. [Interruption.] I am told that that is very generous, and it is. I am a little surprised that the Opposition have been unable to rustle up more than half a dozen Members, aside from their Front Benchers, to debate their own motion. [Interruption.] I apologise, one additional Member has walked into the Chamber.

The aspiration for any political party should be full unemployment, and no Government should rest until that is achieved. It is always correct to say that more can be done on jobs; frankly, more needs to be done following the downturn that did so much damage to our country’s economy. This Government have made great strides in restoring economic credibility with plans that are working and will continue to work if we stick to them.

It is worth reminding the House about the record of the previous Government. We are all aware that long-term unemployment almost doubled between 2008 and 2010, from 381,000 to 788,000. We also know that under Labour unemployment rose by almost 500,000, female unemployment rose by almost a third and youth unemployment almost doubled. The number of households in which nobody worked or had ever worked also almost doubled, and more than 2.5 million people spent at least five years on out-of-work benefits. In my constituency, the number of people out of work in May 2010 was higher than in May 1997. According to the Office for National Statistics, every period of Labour Government since 1945 has concluded with unemployment higher than when it began. That is not a record that I would be proud of.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Will the hon. Gentleman concede that the figure that he gave was not correct? In fact, unemployment was not higher in 2010, even after the recession, than when the Labour Government came to office.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

In all the debates on this issue, sweeping statements are made about how Labour Governments have higher unemployment at the end of their term than, it is implied, Tory Governments do. The Tory Government of 1979 to 1997 inherited an unemployment rate of 5.2% and left an unemployment rate of 7.4%, and in 13 out of 18 years unemployment was over 10%. We really should not take lessons from a party that produced those kinds of results during one of its longest periods in government in recent years.

I was slightly wrong when I intervened on the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams). Unemployment rose slightly between 1997 and 2010, in the midst of a world economic recession—it was 0.4% higher in 2010 than it was in 1997, and that is after a major recession. Between 1945 and 1951 unemployment fell, so I hope we will hear slightly less of that generalisation.

One of the other generalisations made by the Secretary of State was meant to frighten people outside this place with the notion that Labour creates a situation in which nobody works. He said that under Labour 20% of households had never worked. That is one in five of all households. If someone heard that, they would think it shocking and dreadful, but what he did not say was that 48% of those—nearly half—were students who had never worked because they were students, 14% were carers, 18% were sick or disabled and only 10% were unemployed.

The number of workless households has fallen slightly under this Government, but it has gone back to where it was in 2008. After the recession, there has finally been a slight fall in the number of households not in work, but, again, many are not in work because of caring responsibilities, because they have children or because they have taken early retirement. We must be realistic about the figures.

Conservative Members always throw figures at us to show how unemployment has fallen in our constituencies, but they always use the claimant count. The gap between the claimant count and the unemployment rate has been very high under this Government and that is something that we must consider. What is happening to those people who are unemployed but not receiving any benefit? Who are they, what is happening to them and how are they living? Are they getting any of the help that we are so often told about and that they are supposed to be given? I know that many of those people are living on much reduced incomes and many are not getting benefits, either because they have lost them in some way or because they have a partner in what might be only part-time work.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Listening to the hon. Lady is reminding me of Nicola Sturgeon’s speech. She is arguing for more borrowing, more spending and more tax, so is the hon. Lady buying into the SNP agenda?

[Sheila Gilmore]

We say that there is a different way to tackle the budget deficit. We said that we would do it differently in 2010. Of course, the Conservatives went to the electorate and said that they knew the answer and would eliminate the deficit in five years. They set about trying to do that and have manifestly failed. We said that we wanted to stimulate the economy rather than depress it as they did month after month in their first three years when growth fell. Despite all the measures in the so-called emergency Budget, the Conservative party has not achieved what it said it would.

We always have an argument about work experience, and the counterpoint to anything we propose is that the work experience scheme is, to use the words of the Secretary of State, unbelievably successful. As he constantly says, half the people who go through the work experience scheme get a job. What he did not say is that nearly half those who did not go through work experience in a matched cohort, according to the DWP’s own research, did not get a job. Being in the work experience programme did have an effect, but it was not the type of effect the Government suggest.

After 21 weeks, 50% of those who had been through work experience were back on benefits, but those who did not go through the scheme did not do much worse. There is no point in exaggerating these schemes. A real and proper job, which involves real training and will get people into permanent employment, is worth much more than a short-term work experience scheme, which is not to say that there should not be work experience. We are proposing that particularly for young people because they need it.

Employment and Support Allowance and Work Capability Assessments

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I am grateful to all the members of the Work and Pensions Committee, who have done a great deal of work over the past months and years on this issue. I want to look first at a couple of slightly more detailed aspects of this matter that were not fully covered—no one can cover all of it—in the introductory remarks.

The first is mandatory reconsideration, whereby someone who has had a decision that they wish to dispute goes through a stage in which the decision will be reconsidered. People now have to go through that step before they can go to a formal appeal. The Committee recommended that claimants who had been deemed fit for work following the process, and who have requested a reconsideration, should continue to be paid ESA at the assessment rate until they receive the reconsideration decision.

That issue has been raised repeatedly, not just in the Committee’s report, but on a number of other occasions, but it has been repeatedly rejected by the Minister and his predecessors on the ground that it would be wrong to pay ESA when the claimant has been found fit for work. Ministers say that there is no legal basis for making such payments. However, if the claimant is still found fit for work after reconsideration and subsequently appeals, ESA is reinstated at that point while awaiting appeal, which could be some months, not just weeks, and it can be backdated.

In December 2014, the DWP published statistics on mandatory reconsideration, stating that of the 177,000 ESA mandatory reconsideration decisions made between October 2013 and October 2014, 75% were cleared within 30 days, which still leaves a quarter—some 44,000 individuals—taking more than 30 days. I would argue that that increases the need for allowing ESA to run on, rather than decreases it. If reconsideration for 75% of the people involved is over inside a month, why go through a process of applying for a different benefit, with a different conditionality, and then have to go back to the previous benefit, for such a short period of time? The payment made is exactly the same—the ESA assessment rate is the same as JSA, so there is no difference in the amount of money people would be given.

However, there is a cost of administering a new application, and then presumably moving it back again. Citizens Advice has calculated that the cost of doing that is £160 per claimant and that if all claimants took up a JSA claim at that point, it could cost around £30 million in administration costs in a year. That just seems to be a pointless activity, which leaves some people who do not make the claim for JSA without income at all during that period. If they apply for JSA, they may find themselves subject to conditionality, stress and upset, all for a cost—not a saving—to the DWP; that does seem strange indeed. If there is a legal reason why this cannot be done, it is not beyond the bounds of imagination for Government lawyers to resolve the matter fairly quickly, presumably through regulation.

Another issue that remains missing from the published statistics on reconsideration is outcomes. What has been the outcome of the mandatory reconsideration process? How many of the requests for reconsideration result in a decision being overturned? How many mandatory reconsideration requests that are not overturned go on to an appeal being launched? At the moment, we still do not know.

I raised that issue with the previous Minister and the Office for National Statistics last year. Before reconsideration became mandatory, there were far fewer reconsiderations, but one way of judging the performance of the assessors and the decision makers, and the efficacy of the whole process of the WCA, is in part—and I accept that this is only in part—by the proportion of successful appeals. If any organisation receives a large number of appeals that are then successful, it will want to look at its processes and say, “Why has that happened? Perhaps we are doing something wrong and could do it better, so people would not have to go through that.” It is therefore important to know what is happening in the process.

At the moment, in the published statistics, when a decision is overturned at the reconsideration stage, it is counted in with the original decisions. Given the large number of mandatory reconsiderations, I would argue that it is very important to separate out the outcomes at each stage; there are the original decisions, the decisions after mandatory reconsideration, and the decisions after appeal. That is particularly pertinent given the advent of a new company carrying out assessments, because it will be one method—I appreciate that it will not be the only method—of judging the ongoing performance of the new provider. Will the Minister confirm when those statistics on reconsideration will start to be published, so that we can see what is happening in that respect?

I also want to raise the issue of reassessment. There has been a temporary stop on routine reassessments, not as a managed decision because of concern about reassessments, but because of the backlog. Therefore, in response to a backlog that has built up considerably over the last couple of years, the decision was taken to suspend most routine reassessments. That must be a great relief to a lot of people who were being called in at yearly intervals for reassessment, but it is not a considered approach to the question of reconsideration. The temporary halt, however, gives us an opportunity to look at the purpose and practice of reassessment and decide how we want to handle it better.

The Government frequently refer to the previous incapacity benefit as leaving people languishing on benefit. I have always argued that that was an exaggeration. The many IB claimants who went through reassessment prior to 2008 and the new system coming in would have been surprised to hear that there was no reassessment, because they certainly experienced it. Further, this is a time when we have to look at the outcomes of the migration process from incapacity benefit. Far higher numbers of people have been found unfit for work and been placed in the support group through the migration process than was originally predicted. We might therefore want to ask whether actually, people are genuinely far less fit than might have been assumed. On that basis, why does one have to go through very frequent reassessments that will not prove anything different from what has happened before?

Over-frequent reassessment is stressful for applicants. People describe being really worried when the brown envelope comes through the door with yet another form to fill in to go through the whole process again. It is also expensive, time-consuming, and, I would argue, partly why we got into having the backlog in the first place.

The last independent review from Litchfield recommended, specifically for people suffering a severe incapacity from degenerative brain disorder and who were in the support group, that the reassessment period should be extended to five years. The recommendation was accepted by the Government, but so far, there has been little sign of progress on when that will happen, who it will cover and how many people it is likely to have an impact on. The Committee report, however, asked for the matter to be dealt with without further delay—I would like to hear from the Minister whether that will happen or whether it will just drift on for a long time—and for ways of looking at wider aspects of the reassessment criteria to be considered. As we are moving to a new provider and a new contract, the Committee felt that this was an appropriate time to allow the new contractor to plan its ongoing work. Surely a provider that is trying to allocate its staff and its time wants to know how many reassessments it will be required to do. If the view is that we can push back a bit on that, we need to know at this stage.

One aspect of the system that the Government clearly do not want to get into now—perhaps it will have to be for another Parliament—is whether the test is doing what it should, or whether it is still trying to do two, in a sense, contradictory things. The Chair of the Select Committee went into that to a degree. It is a test for eligibility for benefit that is supposed to determine how close people are to employment and what help and support they might get. However, as it is, those two factors do not seem to get the fullest possible exploration. If people are to be able to make a journey towards employment, their circumstances need to be looked at.

The extent of the challenge people face was illustrated well by the expert panel who looked at WCA as part of a process on whether new descriptors and ways to test people would be appropriate. It looked at the outcomes of some such tests and said clearly that while there was agreement with a fit for work finding, many people who were found fit for work needed a great deal of support before they could find work and 25% would require a support worker to engage in work. If such people have been found fit for work, we must ask what the situation is for the people in the work-related activity group who are supposedly nearer to employment but likely to have greater need of support, adaptations and help to get into employment.

From all the work done on employment of people with disabilities and long-term conditions, we know that a great deal needs to be done with employers; that is a huge part of the process. Indeed, the Select Committee has looked at the whole spectrum. We also looked recently at access to work, because that is a means by which to help people to get into employment. We must look at the process as a whole.

I am concerned that the Government, in their response to the Select Committee’s report, said that they will not take up the recommendation of a fundamental review of WCA or even many of the specific recommendations. It is not only that: the whole of the introduction to the response seems to be more focused on reducing the numbers on benefits than on improving the process and outcomes. Many have been saying this for some considerable time, but it has obviously now dawned on the DWP that the number of people receiving benefit has not reduced as much as had been anticipated, given how many people have been found fit for work. According to the Minister’s own figures, which were given to the Select Committee, slightly under 100,000 fewer people are receiving ESA or IB than were receiving the comparator benefits in 2008. We have been through an expensive, stressful and upsetting process—worse than that for many people—and the outcome has been a reduction in claimants of less than 100,000 at a time when, compared with 2008, the labour market is picking up, so one might expect some people to be going back to employment in any event.

There are two ways to look at that. One is to say, “Maybe people are genuinely sicker or less able than we thought, so what do we do about that?” The other way is to say, “Oh, it has been made too easy for people to reapply, so we will try to make that harder.” I was struck that the introduction to the Government’s response to our report said that the DWP will make it harder for people who want to reapply for ESA for a second or subsequent time to receive that benefit—they should stay on JSA until their claim had been looked at.

There is also a suggestion about introducing the claimant commitment for ESA claimants. The words used here are interesting. It says claimants should be helped in

“their work related requirements including, where appropriate, proactive work search that treats looking for work as a full-time outcome”.

While modified slightly by “where appropriate”, that sounds similar to the claimant commitment that JSA claimants have to go through: for them, job search is a full-time job. Apparently, the DWP is now suggesting that that should be applied to people in the work-related activity group of ESA.

I accept that the words suggest that that should take place where appropriate, but why pick out full-time job search as the one example of what might be in a claimant commitment? If people need help with adaptations, being introduced to employers and sometimes with reskilling, depending on the nature of their previous work—for some, their health means that they cannot do the type of job they did previously—an appropriate claimant commitment, if there must be one, should cover that and not be about endless job search. All too often, when constituents describe what happens when, as ESA claimants, they go into the Work programme, they say that they feel what they are given in the way of help, if anything at all, is endless job searching, as if that will suddenly overcome their problems. I do not believe that it will.

There are people on ESA whose jobs are being held open for them, but they have to claim because they are still too sick to work and their statutory sick pay has run out. I met a constituent in that position last week and she could see little point in being put through lots of job searches when she was confident that she could return to her employment when she was fit. In the meantime, she was unclear why she should be expected to go to constant interviews with an underlying threat that she might lose her benefit. Are we really saying that people who, by definition, have been judged as unfit for work are to be treated in the same was as JSA claimants?

If the Department is keen to introduce some sort of commitment, that must be sensitive to the needs of that group. It must look at their distance from employment and obstacles that they may face. The Department should also look at the vast experience of specialist organisations in the field who have done excellent work with people with all sorts of health conditions and disabilities and helped them into work. That also needs to be done in a positive way, because the last thing we need is for people yet again to get the impression that the emphasis is, “You are not trying hard enough in some way, so we will make you try harder. If you are not trying hard enough, you aren’t really entitled to benefit.” That is the kind of message that is coming across.

If we really believe that the best thing we can do is help people back into employment in a positive manner, we need to put in all those support mechanisms sensitively. People will respond to that, as they do to many of the specialist providers. I hope that the Minister will tell us why the Government’s response focused so much on those aspects.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

May I rely on Front-Bench Members to split the remaining time equally between them? Thank you.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Disabled People (Mr Mark Harper)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. My heart sank when you said that you would call the Front Benchers at six minutes past 4. I thought that we would have only 11 minutes each, but I have a few extra minutes. I doubt that I will be able to cover the Select Committee’s report, our response and all of the many sensible contributions that have been made this afternoon, but I will do my best.

I thank the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), the Chairman of the Select Committee, for opening the debate, and the other members of the Select Committee who were here for at least part of the debate and who contributed. I welcome their interest in the WCA and ESA.

We carefully considered the Committee’s recommendations, and we published our response on 27 November. On the same day, as a number of Members have mentioned, Dr Paul Litchfield published the fifth and final review into the work capability assessment. We responded positively to the Select Committee’s recommendations in a number of areas, and where we did not agree with them we set out why. I will say a little more about the recommendations that have been referred to. The Government also took the opportunity to announce a package of short-term ESA measures and to set out our view of the challenges ahead for those who make policy in this area.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) spoke about improving delivery. We will make a significant amount of progress once Maximus starts the work. I have been impressed by its performance so far in preparing to take over the contract, and I said a little about that to the Select Committee when I gave evidence recently. I want us to ensure that the assessment process is hugely improved.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot and the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) referred to the number of disabled people in work. I think it is fair to say that my hon. Friend looked at it from the glass-half-full end of the spectrum, while the hon. Lady looked at it from the glass-half-empty end. The good news, which leans more towards my hon. Friend’s side of the argument, is that this year there are a quarter of a million more disabled people in work in Britain, compared with last year. Although the disability employment rate is too low, and although it is lower than the rate enjoyed by those without a disability, it increased by 2.5%, which I believe is the largest year-on-year increase in a decade. I acknowledge that we have more to do, but we have made good progress.

As my hon. Friend and others know, our ambition is to ensure that the UK is at the top of the G7 employment league table, and that we effectively achieve full employment. We can do that only if we are much better at keeping people who develop health conditions and disabilities in work, and getting those who have health conditions and disabilities back into work or into work for the first time.

Let me turn to the points in the Select Committee’s report that Members raised today. The first point that the Chairman of the Select Committee raised was about the work capability assessment itself. As she knows, and as the Committee said in its report, there was an evidence-based review, in which experts tested the WCA against a set of alternative descriptors. Therefore, a lot of bright people have thought about whether there is a better way of assessing people’s ability to work and the impact of their health condition or disability on their ability to work. The evidence that it published in its conclusion showed that there is not a strong case for replacing the WCA with the alternatives, because they are not better than the WCA at coming up with the information.

Dr Litchfield’s report specifically referred to the number of changes and improvements to the WCA in recent years, driven by the independent reports of Dr Litchfield and his predecessor, Professor Harrington. Dr Litchfield specifically called for a period of stability to let the assessment bed down. He recognised that although the WCA is by no means perfect, it is the best means available, and there is no ready replacement. He said:

“my counsel would be to let the current WCA have a period of stability—it is by no means perfect but there is no better replacement that can be pulled off the shelf.”

I agree. I also think, as my hon. Friend said, that the last thing that we should do, as we bring in a new provider, is to start changing the process and how the system works. In my experience of having to implement tough operational processes, I do not think that that is the way that we will improve the performance of the system for all those going though the process.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) and, I think, the shadow Minister referred to the other changes that we set out at the same time as we responded to the report. We are allowing JSA claimants with short-term health conditions to stay on JSA for up to 13 weeks, and, importantly—the hon. Member for Edinburgh East did not focus on this—we are tailoring conditionality to keep people closer to the labour market. We recognise that if a person has a health condition, the claimant commitment may have to be different. Work coaches in jobcentres have the ability to flex the claimant commitment. Although I heard a lot of general assertions that that does not happen, I did not hear any specific examples. If people have got specific examples, I want to know about them, because we can then address whether work coaches are using that flexibility. They have the power to flex the claimant commitment, and they should be using it.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Given what the Minister has just said, why were similar words not used in the Government response, rather than giving as the only example people making a full-time work search? That gives the impression to anybody who reads the response that that will be the main issue for a claimant commitment.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady may be reading too much into the wording, and she is straying into conspiracy theory. I cleared the language in the Government response, and I have tried to give the same impression in what I have just said. It certainly was not our intention to give the impression in the Government response that the hon. Lady took from it. I think that I have set out clearly what we are trying to do.

We are introducing three new measures, the first of which is a voluntary early intervention pilot for new ESA claimants, in which we are trialling occupational health advice and support prior to the WCA. We are doing so for a sensible reason. My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot, the hon. Member for Edinburgh East and the Chair of the Select Committee referred to the fact that the WCA was designed to be two things: a benefit eligibility test, and a test of the barriers that an individual faces to entering work, and the support that they require to do so. We ought to see whether we can intervene when somebody first applies for ESA, to see what support they need and get them that support early in the process.

That is important because—I know that this is an area in which you take a particular interest, Mr Walker—46% of people who claim ESA do so for the primary reason that they have a mental health condition, and 60% have a mental health condition as part of the issue. We know from the evidence, and from all the campaigning organisations that are expert in this area, that being out of work for a significant period of time makes a mental health condition worse, not better. If we can identify mental health problems earlier and deliver support earlier, we will either keep people in work or enable them to go back to work more quickly. There is a nugget of truth in what hon. Members have said about that, and that is why we are piloting some interventions to see what is effective. They are voluntary, so people do not have to take part in them, but we think that they will be useful and produce useful evidence. I will not set out anything about the other two measures that we are introducing, because I recognise that time is pressing.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot and other hon. Members referred to the WCA’s ability to deal with mental health issues. When we designed the ESA50 questionnaire and assessment criteria, we had input from mental health organisations and groups that focus on other hidden impairments such learning disability and autism. Several hon. Members, including the shadow Minister, referred to my remarks at the Select Committee about the redesigned ESA50 form. That will be implemented this month, and we are also looking at all the communications that we use for claimants following Dr Litchfield’s recommendations in his fourth independent review. We expect those to come into force over a rolling period this year.

The letter that we issue to claimants when a decision is made, the ESA260, was revised in the autumn of last year, and I referred to that in the debate initiated by the hon. Member for Edinburgh East earlier this week. That letter now makes it very clear—the shadow Minister made a point about this—which group somebody has been put into. It informs them in clear, plain English about the time limiting for someone who is in the work-related activity group and on contributory ESA. It makes clear the consequences and implications of the decisions that have been taken, enabling the individual to act accordingly.

Let me say a word about information sharing, to which several hon. Members, including the Chair of the Select Committee, referred. As I believe I said at the Select Committee, we share information from the WCA with the personal independence payment assessment process if someone is going through both of those, and we have done so in a significant number of cases. We will look at the evidence, but the initial indication is that that has enabled PIP decision makers to make decisions on paper without having to call somebody in for an unnecessary face-to-face assessment. That is our goal, because it is sensible to make such decisions on paper, without having to pull somebody in, where it is possible to do so.

The Chair of the Select Committee spoke about looking at other organisations, and her suggestion of using information from, for example, social care assessments is a sensible one. We ask those who apply for the benefit to produce the relevant information. I have asked officials to engage with colleagues in the Department of Health and the Department for Communities and Local Government to think about such ideas. In the new social care environment, more assessments will take place as a result of the new, consistent assessment criteria introduced by the Care Act 2014. I want us to think carefully about how we can do that sensibly, because we must not place an extra burden on local government or those who deliver social care. The general point is a good one, however. We do not want people to go through multiple assessments if we can share the necessary information.

I will hurry through one or two other points, because I am conscious of the fact that I need to give the Chair of the Select Committee a couple of minutes at the end of the debate to sum up. I have mentioned conditionality for JSA, which is relevant to the point that several hon. Members have made about what happens when people are found fit for work. When people are found fit for work, they are not entitled to ESA any more and they should claim jobseeker’s allowance. As I have said, however, work coaches have the ability to flex the claimant commitment so that it fully reflects somebody’s health condition or disability. If hon. Members have specific examples of where that is not happening, I want to know about them, so that we can investigate whether they were isolated incidents in Jobcentre Plus or whether there is a wider problem with training, information or communication. Several hon. Members asserted that there have been such problems, but I did not hear any specific examples. If hon. Members have such examples, I would like them to share those examples with me.

I am conscious, as ever, of the fact that time in the Chamber is short. I welcome the Select Committee’s work on ESA and the WCA. We agreed with several of the Committee’s recommendations, a number of which were very sensible. Some of them were things that we were working on, and some were things that we had not thought of. We made it clear where we did not agree. At the end of this month, Maximus will take over the delivery of the WCA from Atos. Maximus has experience in this area, and I know that it is keen to improve the experience of our constituents who go through the WCA. There may be some hiccups at the beginning, because that is inevitable when a big change occurs, but I am confident that we will deliver an improved level of customer service, which is important to everyone who has taken part in the debate.

UK Poverty

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Why did the Conservative party support the Labour Government spending plans up to 2007, and never, as I recall, suggest that changes should be made to avoid a recession?

[Mr Spencer]

Of course, the Labour party now supports our funding pledges, so there is friction between what is being said about reversing some of our changes and other statements about supporting our spending regime. It will be interesting to hear the Labour Front-Bench justification of that.

In another life, I was a farmer, involved in food production and supply. Interestingly, the OECD says that 9.8% of people had difficulty affording food in 2006-07, but the figure had fallen to 8.1% in 2011-12. That shows we are going in the right direction. There will always be individuals who get themselves into difficult circumstances and where the system has frankly gone wrong. The hon. Member for Wigan raised several such cases and I have encountered some in my constituency office, when clearly the system has broken down and some incorrect decisions have been made. It is my job as a Member of Parliament to try to help people through the system and solve their ills, and we have succeeded on a number of occasions in helping individuals in difficult circumstances to work their way through the system to the right point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Across the House, it is accepted that employment is a good thing and that it helps people to improve their standard of living, but the problem is that it is not sufficient; it is a first step. The last few years, above all, have shown us that for very many people, it is only a preliminary step that still leaves many living in poverty. That is why we are seeing so many people who are in work having to claim housing benefit to meet their housing costs, which pushes up the overall housing benefit bill, and why so many people are still dependent on some form of help when they go into employment. The route out of the low-paid, low-hours economy is not as easy as is sometimes suggested. That is one aspect of where we are at the moment—yes, work is good, but it has not proved to be sufficient to get people out of poverty.

The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) mentioned issues relating to single parents. It is important to say that some measures that were helping single parents have been removed. The number of single parent specialist advisers in jobcentres, who knew the particular difficulties faced by women in that position—mainly women, but it could be men—has been reduced. There are very few such advisers. Others have reported that the flexibilities that used to exist for jobseeking and job finding have been removed or reduced, or people claim not to know about them. One of my constituents was asked, “Why can’t your mother come and help?” Her mother lives 300 miles away. She could not simply come and help while my constituent made herself available for what the jobcentre wanted, which was an evening job. The lone parent flexibilities mean that that should not happen, so again, that change appears to have happened in practice, and it is making it difficult for that particular group.

Yes, there are choices—there are always financial choices to be made. Constantly talking about raising the tax threshold is all very well, but three quarters of the gain from doing so went to earners in the top half of the income range. A lot of money has been paid out in that direction, and apparently the Conservative part of the Government—I am not sure about the other part—wants to increase that further, without telling us at all how it will be funded. The problem is that it may be funded by things we do not know about, such as a VAT increase. I notice that the Prime Minister, pressed on the matter week after week, does not say “No”—he talks about “no plans”. A VAT increase would affect those whose earnings are already under the tax threshold and who would gain nothing from any further increases in it.

Such people have lost tax credits and income in all sorts of ways. Some might seem small-scale, but family household income has gone down. There are people who have to leave work due to illness. Take a family, for example—a couple, perhaps, whose children have grown up. They may have two incomes, or one and a half incomes. If one person loses their job through ill health, their income is in that position slashed as they go on to benefit under rules introduced by this Government. After a year, some of those people are losing even their employment and support allowance, because they have a partner who is in work, although that partner may only be working part time. That loss of income, meaning that a one-and-a-half-income family becomes a family getting barely half a wage, is catastrophic for their well-being.

Many of those people had been moving towards what they hoped would be a slightly more comfortable retirement. A lot of them are older, because that is when ill health strikes—in people’s late 40s and 50s. Such people are now having, in effect, to eat up the savings that they had hoped to keep until their retirement. In my view, there are a whole lot of different ways in which people are being directly affected by this Government’s policies.

Work-related Activity Group

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

One of the conclusions that my hon. Friend and I reached as part of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions inquiry was that the work-related activity group was too wide and trying to do two contradictory things: to give support to people who are not fit for work without being in the support group; and at the same time to move those who might be fit for work closer to work. Those two different aspects of the WRAG meant that it became the default for everyone who either was now not fit for work, or definitely could not work in future. The group is too wide and too unwieldy.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Select Committee, for that contribution. I will come on to this in more detail later, time permitting, because the situation we are in now is important. If we end up with a default group and people in it for a long time, one of the questions that has to be asked is, how much further have we progressed from where we started?

One of the problems seems to be that different rules or practices from those for people previously on incapacity benefit are being applied to new claimants. The new claimants who go into the support group may be placed there without a face-to-face assessment. In some situations people are having a paper-based assessment and, if people go into the support group, that might seem acceptable. The WRAG, however, has a detrimental effect on income and circumstances, which I will come on to, so if people go into that group because of a paper-based assessment, they will not have had the opportunity to explain more fully their particular circumstances. That might seem a rather strange thing to say, given the debate about there being too many assessments—I have been part of that myself in my Adjournment debates—but it is important that we get things right.

The Select Committee called for the rules to be aligned, so that no claimants could be placed into the WRAG without having an opportunity to explain their particular conditions and their impact to an assessor, but the Government in their response of November last year refused to accept that recommendation. I hope that the Minister has had further thought and might want to reconsider.

Between 2008 and 2014 about 30% of new claimants with Parkinson’s or multiple sclerosis were placed in the WRAG. Of those, some 5,000 were given the prognosis that they were unlikely to return to work in the longer term. The Select Committee recommended that all claimants with such a prognosis be allocated to the support group, not the WRAG, but the Government’s response was disappointing, stating that “with the right support”—which I will go on to say is not there—

“that person might be able to return to…work”.

The Government also consider that individuals might be able to adapt to their condition or that advances in treatment might become available. If someone goes into the support group, however, regular reassessments are carried out, so even if claimants were able to adapt successfully or treatments became available, that would be picked up. On its own, therefore, that is not a good enough reason for placing people in the WRAG.

That leads me on to the quality of support. When ESA was first introduced, the intention was that Jobcentre Plus would provide the support, but since 2010 the number of disability employment advisers has declined, meaning many ESA claimants receive no more than two face-to-face interviews per year or, in the experience of some of my constituents, sometimes fewer. Many are now referred to the Work programme, with numbers increasing significantly following the October 2012 decision to expand the range of people referred from those thought able to return to work within three months to those thought able to return within 12 months. Concerns about the Work programme are well documented, but it is particularly inappropriate for those incorrectly placed in the WRAG.

A constituent of mine was placed in the WRAG and referred to Work programme contractor A4E, but her only activity was to search for jobs on the internet, despite the fact that she has complex regional pain syndrome and would have been unable to take up any job offered. She was given little help with how her particular condition might be alleviated or supported, or about what contact she would require with employers to make that happen. Rather, the result was that her treatment was disrupted and her condition exacerbated. Indeed, recent analysis, quoted in the Select Committee report, found that only 5% of claimants from the WRAG who were placed in the Work programme have moved into sustained work since 2011, against a target of 16.5%.

A few months ago, an evidence-based review of the work capability assessment, the test for deciding whether people are eligible for benefit and which group they go into, examined whether different descriptors would work. Part of the process was to ask expert panels to look at the WCA outcomes. Interestingly, they identified that, of the claimants who were found fit for work, 83% would require, on average, two or three adjustments to be able to undertake employment, 50% would require flexible working hours, and 24% would require a support worker. That was a review of fit-for-work assessments; those requirements are likely to be even more necessary for those in the work-related activity group. Such support just is not happening through the Work programme.

I do not have a particular view on whether support should be provided through Jobcentre Plus or a contractor or other provider, but in addressing these concerns it is important that provision is not forced upon people who cannot benefit from it, and that those who can receive it get it in a form that is applicable to their needs and local circumstances. In that respect, I strongly support the devolution of responsibility and finance for the Work programme to local authorities, as many specialist local providers offer a much more effective and personalised service to those with health problems or disabilities.

As my hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee pointed out, there is a major flaw at the heart of the system, which explains some of the problems. The work capability assessment is trying to be a test of both eligibility for financial support and how close people are to being able to work. At the outset, there was in fact a further assessment called the work-focused health-related assessment, which was intended to explore the difficulties and obstacles that people would face in returning to work—that is, after eligibility for benefit had been determined, issues such as the obstacles to and distance from employment would be looked at.

In July 2010, the work-focused health-related assessment was suspended for two years on the grounds that it had not delivered the intended outcomes, although it seemed somewhat early to make that judgment as it was barely 18 months since the introduction of the benefit as a whole. In 2013, it was suspended for a further three years to await evaluation of the Work programme and universal credit.

[Dame Anne Begg]

The WFHRA, as it came to be known, was actually suspended before any existing incapacity benefit claimants had even been migrated on to ESA. It was that group in particular that would have benefited from some kind of assessment of their current and future barriers to work.

[Sheila Gilmore]

My hon. Friend is correct. There is no sign whatever that any evaluation was made that showed that it was not working. Do we need something better than the WCA to measure the obstacles and propose support measures? The answer must be yes. Does that necessarily mean two tests? I do not know—perhaps, or perhaps not—but it should be looked into properly so that we can decide how to deal with the issue. Scope, a leading charity in this field, has suggested replacing the WCA as a whole with a distance-from-work assessment to assess support needs rather than medical capacity.

The third issue that I want to address is the fact that the Government have both reduced the value of ESA payments to those in the WRAG and placed restrictions on its receipt that have significantly changed the character of the benefit. Although the value of payments to people in the support group has been uprated by inflation in both 2014-15 and 2015-16, payments to those in the WRAG have been subject to uprating by only 1%. Those in the WRAG are subject to the overall household benefit cap, whereas those in the support group are not. The Government justifies those differences on the basis that people in the WRAG are better placed to move towards the labour market, but I do not think that that is how the original architects of ESA would have envisioned the WRAG working. Under incapacity benefit, most of these people would have been given unconditional support, so it is wrong that the fact that they now receive some level of support with a view to an eventual return to work is being used as a stick to push them to get a job sooner than they are able.

The sorts of changes I have described have fed into the media perception that people in the WRAG are in reality fit for work. For example, on 1 April 2013, the Daily Mail ran a story under the headline “Just one in eight on sickness benefit is truly too ill to work”. It reported that of nearly 1.5 million new claims assessed for ESA since 2008, 837,000 were found fit for work and 232,000 were

“deemed by doctors to be too unwell to do any sort of work”—

that is, they were in the support group. It then said that

“a further 367,300 were judged able to do some level of work”,

which was clearly a reference to the WRAG and implied that such claimants were not truly too ill to work. Actually, the whole point of the test is to say that at this point in time they are deemed unfit for work.

A related change was the decision to time-limit the receipt of contributory ESA to one year for those in the WRAG, on the basis that they are likely to get better anyway and so will be in less need of the benefit than people in the support group. However, in contrast to incapacity benefit, ESA was designed with regular reassessments in mind, so were there to be any improvement and therefore lost of entitlement, that should be determined through the process of reassessment, rather than an arbitrary one-year time limit. Such a limit particularly affects people who have been in work for much of their life and therefore made their contributions, but who may, for example, have a working partner—possibly earning only part-time wages—and so reach a position in which they receive no payments whatever.

Another issue is that the letters that people receive to tell them about changes in their circumstances are very unclear. One former incapacity benefit claimant came to my surgery last year after he had received a cryptic letter from the DWP. He understood it as saying that he would continue to receive benefit, but became concerned several months later when he learned that his benefits were due to stop in a few months’ time. It turned out that he had been placed in the WRAG but was time-barred from appealing the decision. I hope that the Government’s proposed review of all ESA-related communications will address such issues. My experience is that people are still receiving letters that are hard to interpret. They tell them that there has been a change in circumstances and perhaps that there will be a slight change in the amount of money that they will receive, but they do not make it clear why, which of the ESA groups they are in, and the overall implications. It is important that people are given the information that they need in order to take the appropriate action.

In conclusion, it is worth quoting the Select Committee again, which concluded:

“The WRAG is by far the most problematic of the three ESA outcome groups.”

I know that it is likely that many of the policy changes that I have mentioned have been driven by financial considerations, and I do not necessarily expect the Government to change all their positions in the remaining few months of the Parliament. Nevertheless, I would like to think that these matters are under consideration and that there is a real attempt to overcome some of the problems and issues that I have mentioned. For example, good communication should not be beyond the bounds of possibility, even in the dying days of this Parliament. That could save money in the end, because if people understood what they were being told they would be much more likely to take the appropriate steps.

It is profoundly unfair that people in the WRAG seem to be shouldering a disproportionate burden in reducing the deficit, and I hope that whichever party or parties are in government after the election take a different approach. No claimants should be placed in the WRAG without a face-to-face assessment, and only those able to benefit should be referred to the Work programme, if it continues—I hope that it can be improved considerably, or devolved so that we can use the specialist providers with which we have all had contact and that do such a good job. Ministers must acknowledge that those in the WRAG are currently too ill or disabled to work.

[The Minister for Disabled People (Mr Mark Harper)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sanders. I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) on securing the debate and raising these important matters. I will come to her point about communication later, but there is common ground there, and I hope to update her on that. We may not agree about some of the policy changes, but it is very welcome that we agree that we should communicate clearly and put in place plans to improve communication.

I think that the hon. Lady acknowledged this in her speech, but to be clear, the policy intent of the work-related activity group, as well as that of employment and support allowance more generally, remains as it was when it was introduced by the Labour Government in 2008: to help people to return to work wherever that is possible. We know that there are generally health benefits from working and work-related activity.

The hon. Lady mentioned people with progressive conditions. I touched on this issue when Dr Litchfield published his final report. If they are arguing that the diagnosis of a progressive condition such as Parkinson’s or multiple sclerosis effectively means that someone should go into the support group, with the assumption being that they will probably never work again, some of the groups that represent those people should think about that, because it has a lot of consequences for how we treat people with progressive conditions. It kind of sends a message to employers that if someone gets diagnosed with one of those diseases, they should just be sacked because they cannot contribute anymore, even though some of those conditions are progressive over a long period of time. We have to think about how we treat people with those conditions.

Clearly, there will be a point in a progressive condition when someone is perhaps not able to work, and perhaps not able to work again, but we should not assume that the diagnosis of a progressive condition automatically means that someone in the support group is never able to return to work. That would send out some unhelpful messages that those groups—when they are not arguing about whether people qualify for benefits—do not themselves argue. They argue that people should be able to remain in the workplace while they can, and should be properly supported in that.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I point out to the Minister that the reason why people are claiming this benefit at all is that they have fallen out of the work force. Often they have been through a period with their former employer in which they were trying to stay in the work force. We are not necessarily dealing with people who will find it easy to work under any circumstances.

[Mr Harper]

I accept that point, but employers vary in their ability to deal with people with health conditions and disabilities. Some are better than others. For example, we know that some employers retain almost everyone in their organisation who develops a mental health problem, because the employers can deal with that effectively. Some employers, however, are not good at dealing with that. The only point I was making was that the diagnosis of a progressive condition should not mean that we automatically assume that the person will go into the support group. The other thing is that there are many conditions in which the symptoms fluctuate. It may be that someone has to have a more flexible work regime—sometimes they can work and sometimes they cannot. All I am saying is that it can be a little more complex, and a progressive condition should not automatically trigger a diagnosis-based referral to the support group.

[Mr Harper]

I accept that point. There are of course people in the support group who do permitted work. I think that the hon. Member for Edinburgh East was arguing that it was somehow inappropriate for those diagnosed with progressive conditions to be put in the work-related activity group and expected to undertake some form of work-related activity. I was simply making the point that it does not follow that putting someone with a progressive condition in the WRAG is inappropriate, and that they should automatically be in the support group. That was the only point I was trying to make.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh East made a good and sensible point—she raised this at my Select Committee appearance last week, and I promised that I would respond to her—on some of the communication. Letters that say to people that they are not expected to return to work—I cannot remember whether it said “indefinitely” or “ever”—are not very well worded. We are looking at all our communication. We have a freeze on IT changes until we do the cutover from Atos to Maximus, but once that is out of the way, we will change the wording on the assessor recommendation. The hon. Lady made a good and reasonable point in the Select Committee session last week; the wording as set out does not accurately reflect the position.

The hon. Lady also raised the point about the work capability assessment generally. We will respond to Dr Litchfield’s report in due course, but he said that the WCA was not a perfect assessment, and I would not pretend that it was. He also made the point, however, that there is not a magic alternative assessment that can be pulled off the shelf. As the hon. Lady knows—I think she remarked on this in her speech—a number of experts looked at whether there was an alternative way of assessing people’s need for benefits and for support to move into the workplace, and there was not a magic solution there either. That demonstrated that the WCA is a pretty good assessment. I would not pretend that it is perfect, but it is probably the best that there is. One thing Dr Litchfield suggested is that we give the WCA a period of stability, so that it can settle down, rather than continuing to make changes to it on a permanent revolution basis.

The hon. Lady also discussed whether we should be able to refer people to the work-related activity group without a face-to-face assessment. As we said in our response to the report—I think this blends the two slightly contradictory points that she made—we should not have unnecessary face-to-face assessments. Decisions are made on the basis of the papers without a face-to-face assessment only if the decision maker believes that the information in front of them is clear and provides sufficient evidence to make a decision. The person about whom that decision is being made will not always agree with the outcome, which is why they can apply for a mandatory reconsideration, and if they do not agree with that, they can appeal.

In cases where the decision maker is clear that there is sufficient evidence to make a decision, having an unnecessary face-to-face assessment—an assessment that, in other cases, the hon. Lady is not a fan of—is not an enormous step forward. She will know from the statistics we publish that the average length of time to complete a mandatory reconsideration is 13 days, and we complete three quarters of them in 30 days; that is not an enormous barrier put in the way of someone having their case looked at again and then being able to appeal the decision if they think they need to.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I have certainly come across cases where the decision made on a paper-based assessment turned out not to have used all possible sources of information. That did not come to light until a later date, and that is one of my concerns about the process. People can be placed in a detrimental position, both financially and in terms of the conditionality they are expected to follow.

[Mr Harper]

I think the hon. Lady’s point, which is perfectly good, is that we need to ensure that we make accurate decisions using all the information, that we get the information in the first place, and that we have properly explained to the claimant what information we need. She is right that we should make those decisions accurately, but that does not in itself suggest that making those decisions on the papers is wrong where there is sufficient evidence to do so. Saying that everyone has to have a face-to-face assessment when there is sufficient evidence is not a good argument. The fact that there are some cases where someone might not have made a good decision does not in itself invalidate the system. It is inevitable; however brilliant the system, there will always be cases where someone does not agree with the outcome, and is successful either on a mandatory reconsideration or on an appeal.

The hon. Lady referred to the communications that we send out. In Dr Litchfield’s fourth review, he recommended that we look at all the key ESA letters and forms to ensure that they are in plain English. The main ESA50 form has been reviewed and will be issued later this month. The decision letters are on a later time frame. The ESA260 form, which notifies someone of the decision in the first place, was revised last October. I looked specifically at the point on contribution-based ESA and the time limit because I know she is concerned about that. If someone is getting contribution-based ESA, it is clear that that is what they are getting. It is clear that that is time-limited, and that the time limit does not apply if they are in the support group. We are starting to do that work, as Dr Litchfield recommended, to improve our communications. There is more to do on that, and the hon. Lady is right to highlight that.

On the Work programme, which the hon. Lady referred to, it matters what time period one looks at. It is perfectly fair to say that in the first year of the Work programme, only one in 24 of the people claiming ESA moved into work, but up to the end of June last year, one in 10 ESA claimants had had at least three months of work within the first 12 months of being on the Work programme, which is a considerable improvement on its initial period and above the minimum performance level of one in 14. We want to improve the one in 10 figure, but she should acknowledge that the Work programme has improved its performance for this group of claimants. It has got a lot better, but we want to continue to improve it.

On the specific case that the hon. Lady referred to, an employer should have dealt with adaptations and hours of work through reasonable adjustments. On the issue to do with support workers, people can get support through the Access to Work programme. It is about ensuring that someone who goes through the Work programme has—

Oral Answers to Questions

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We shall squeeze in one more. I call Sheila Gilmore.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

18. What recent assessment he has made of the reasons for changes in the number of employment and support allowance claimants.

[The Minister for Disabled People (Mr Mark Harper)]

Under this Government, the number of people in receipt of out-of-work benefits has fallen by 899,000, and there are 93,000 fewer people on incapacity benefit since May 2010.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank the Minister for that answer, but I think he is absolutely clear that the number of people on incapacity benefit who have been found unfit for work is far higher than the Department for Work and Pensions predicted. Is it not time that Ministers dropped the scrounger rhetoric and accepted that if people are to move back towards employment, they need real help and support?

[Mr Harper]

I do not know whom the hon. Lady has heard using that rhetoric, but it is certainly not me or members of this Government. [Interruption.] It is no good her waving at us. It may be reported like that in newspapers, but Ministers do not use that sort of language. I have been very clear that people who are able to go to work with the right support will receive employment and support allowance. I am sure she was listening to the long exchange we had earlier on mental health support. Half the people on ESA have a mental health problem. She will have heard me set out the considerable range of things we are doing to help them to get back into work.

Benefit Claimants (North-east)

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

It is, as ever, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Riordan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) on securing the debate, and I applaud the graphic, detailed way in which she outlined the problem faced by all Members of Parliament in the north-east. Sadly, the cases she outlined are not unusual. They are common—even the case where the gentleman died. There has been more than one such example in recent times in the north-east, and that is completely unacceptable.

I will start by talking about the staff at Jobcentre Plus and the DWP in general. They work hard and are put under enormous pressure. Staffing levels have diminished dramatically since 2010. We hear anecdotally about the pressures of informal targets on sanctions—we all know they are in place—from people who are too frightened to say something, so they tell us off the record. I sympathise enormously with them about the job they are being asked to do every day.

The other thing I want to discuss before I go on to the example I will talk about is the north-east’s economy. I have lived in the north-east my entire life. I live two miles from where I was born, which is very common in the north-east. We are a close-knit, supportive community, and that is replicated throughout the north-east, not just the part I am from. We have had high unemployment throughout my lifetime—obviously, there have been peaks and troughs, but it has been consistent. Although more jobs are available at the minute, their quality has to be questioned: a lot involve zero-hours or temporary contracts, so they give no stability.

We have a lot of people who, through no fault of their own, rely on benefits. We are also a low-wage economy. Furthermore, most people’s families do not have massive wealth, so if people fall on hard times, their families do not have the wealth to support them informally. If somebody’s benefits are sanctioned, they really do have no money. They cannot go to their families to ask for a little help, because their families simply do not have the money. It is not that they do not want to help—they simply do not have the finances to.

The other thing to say about the background of people in the north-east is that we are a hard-working area. Life is pretty tough for many people, but people have an ethos of working hard, paying their way and doing a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. That is the mindset of people in the north-east, and I take great offence when I read or hear about people criticising the area and talking as if people there were just scroungers, because that simply is not the case. I have no truck with people who really try to fiddle the system, and I would be the first to remove their benefits and sanction them, but they are not the norm, and they are not the people we are talking about.

People who need to claim benefits should be treated with dignity and respect, not only by those they deal with at the DWP and Jobcentre Plus, but by the rest of society. They should not be made to feel that they are worth any less than the person next to them because, for whatever reason, they have to live on benefits. However, the treatment people receive often falls short; in some cases, it is absolutely appalling and unacceptable.

I want to give an example of a case study I have had. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central, I get a staggering number of cases every week. A few months ago, I had a constituent who was unable to attend an appointment at Jobcentre Plus because he had suffered an asthma attack and was in A and E. He telephoned his adviser to tell them, although, to be fair, it would have been perfectly reasonable if he had not managed to do that. However, he did, and he spoke to the receptionist about the Jobcentre Plus appointment that had been scheduled for that day, which he would clearly be unable to get to. He explained his reasons and, on returning from hospital, he sent a letter.

A few weeks later, he received a letter saying that he had failed to comply with the scheme’s requirements and that his jobseeker’s allowance would be sanctioned for one month. Extraordinarily, the letter went on to say that an asthma attack was not a sufficiently good reason for missing an appointment. I am an asthmatic myself, and I know how crucial it is for people to get to hospital pretty darn quick if they have an attack that is out of control. The difference between not getting treated correctly in a timely fashion and surviving is paper-thin, and we read every year about the tragic cases of people who have not got to hospital quickly enough. However, if people get to hospital in time, they can be treated and brought back to health quite easily. The time element is crucial, which is why I said that, although my constituent took the time to ring, it would have been acceptable if he had not.

Miraculously, when my constituent came to me and I got involved, the decision was overturned. The most annoying thing is not that it was overturned—that was absolutely the right thing to do—but that it was made in the first place and that my constituent ever had to come to me. That is the problem, and that is what needs sorting out.

If people are ill, or have other genuine reasons for not being able to get somewhere at a certain time, they need to be treated fairly. They need to be treated like anybody else in any other system, and to be believed. In this case, my constituent had discharge letters from hospital; there was no question but that he had been at hospital, but that was not seen as a reason not to attend an appointment. That is just one case, but it graphically explains the problem.

I do not want to go over other cases, because we all have them. The people we are talking about are vulnerable. Many have not always been on benefits, and the unemployment that has arisen in the last few years is new to them. They are not part of a culture of benefit claiming. Treating them in this absolutely inhumane way is wrong and unacceptable—there is no other way of saying it—and it reflects badly on the DWP, the Government and, in broader terms, us as a society. We should be proud of the fact that we have a safety net for people who fall on hard times.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Let me take the debate slightly further north. I was recently astonished to read reports that the DWP was issuing stories and details about people they alleged were scroungers to the media to feed this attitude that my hon. Friend describes. This is therefore coming from the top, not just from a local office level.

[Julie Elliott]

That is not something I have read of, but it would not surprise me, quite honestly.

This week, the Select Committee on Work and Pensions held its first oral evidence session on benefit sanctions beyond the Oakley review. The review was highly critical of what was going on, and I look forward to seeing what comes of that. The Minister needs to accept our comments as constituency MPs who have witnessed the same problem at different jobcentres and offices. It is not one office that is to blame; this is about a culture. I hope that she will listen and act on our comments, because we are genuine people, and I am sure that the way we have described the system working is not what she would intend. I am interested to hear her comments on the situation as it actually is.

Housing Benefit (Abolition of Social Sector Size Criteria)

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

No, I will not. I have barely started my speech, and I want to make sure that I finish in the 20 minutes or so that the occupant of the Chair indicated. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) says from a sedentary position that the shadow Secretary of State gave way. She gave way generously to Members on her own side of the House but not very generously to Members on our side. I am happy to give way when I have uttered more than one sentence.

Today of all days, Labour would rather talk about anything than the positive jobs figures that we are seeing. More people are in work than ever before—up by 590,000 on the year and up by 1.7 million since 2010. More women are in work than ever before— up by 300,000. More disabled people are in work—up by over a quarter of a million.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

Labour Members do not like to hear this, do they? Let me just finish this good news on today’s jobs figures and then I will be happy to give way to the hon. Lady. More people are in private sector jobs than ever before—up by nearly 2.2 million since 2010. At the same time, unemployment has fallen, youth unemployment has fallen, long-term unemployment has fallen, and the number of people on the main out-of-work benefits is at its lowest for 24 years.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Any suggestion that any Labour Member does not welcome the fall in unemployment is simply not the case. In relation to this debate, is the Minister not aware that people in work can be, and are, subject to the bedroom tax?

[Mr Harper]

I am very familiar with the way that the policy works, and that is why it is perfectly relevant for me to point out how many people are in work. I did not say that Opposition Members did not welcome the fall in unemployment; I simply pointed out that they do not like talking about it. It is not the only thing they do not like talking about.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

Once again, we are debating the bedroom tax—the policy that I believe will come to define this Tory-Liberal Government and their four-year-long assault on people with low incomes who live with disabilities and health problems. The bedroom tax has caused real hardship for some of the most disadvantaged people. More than 70,000 households in Scotland are currently liable for the tax, 80% of which are home to a disabled adult. Those are the people who already have the least choice about where they live. They are already living in the cheapest housing available—housing that has been allocated on the basis of need, not of household size.

The bedroom tax is making those disabled and disadvantaged people the scapegoat for the systemic problems in the housing sector, as well as reducing their incomes. It is a policy that should never have happened, and I hope that people will remember, when the election comes round, that the Tories, backed up by their little helpers on the Lib-Dem Benches, were prepared to put disabled people on the front line of austerity cuts.

My colleagues and I will be pleased to support the Opposition motion today, but I have to ask those on the Labour Front Bench what took them so long. It was only in September 2013 that Labour announced that it would repeal this pernicious piece of legislation, and reports in The Guardian on 25 October suggest that the Scottish Labour leader was actively prevented from criticising the bedroom tax for a year prior to that while Labour made up its mind.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I understand why the hon. Lady wants to make those remarks, but I find it extraordinary that she should suggest that we did not speak out against the bedroom tax. We voted for various amendments in Committee and we voted against the Bill’s Third Reading, so it is not true to say that we did not vote against the bedroom tax.

[Dr Whiteford]

I did not say that Labour Members did not vote against the bedroom tax; I was talking about what was alleged in the report in The Guardian on 25 October. If that is true, it is a shocking indictment—[Interruption.] That is what I said.

I am pleased that the Scottish Government have taken action that has fully mitigated the effect of the bedroom tax for those affected this year and in the next financial year. I understand that, as of next week, the section 63 orders will be in force to allow local authorities to make discretionary payments—as they have been doing for some months on the basis of assurances—to ensure that no one in Scotland will lose out. I am relieved that tenants will no longer be experiencing hardship or accruing rent arrears due to the bedroom tax, but we should make no mistake that while it remains on the statute book, legal liability will remain with the tenants. Moreover, the £35 million that the Scottish Government have allocated to mitigate the bedroom tax this year has had to be found from other devolved budgets at a time when public spending is under pressure. So this is far from being an elegant or sustainable solution, and it is interesting to note that the Welsh Assembly has refused to go down a similar route.

The issues underlying the problems with the bedroom tax are the chronic shortage of social housing and the serious mismatch between our existing housing stock and the needs of present-day tenants. In Scotland, research by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has found that the implementation costs of the bedroom tax exceed the projected savings by around £10 million—money that could have been reinvested in social housing.

I recognise that the Government want to cut the housing benefit bill, but squeezing disabled tenants is a vicious way to do that. When we look closely at the increases in housing benefit over the past 10 years, we see that almost a third of the UK increase is attributable to London alone. By contrast, in Scotland the total cost of housing benefit has increased by 22% in inflation-adjusted terms over 10 years, but the increase has been much lower in the social rented sector, at only 6% over 10 years. Housing benefit inflation is being driven by out-of-control rent increases in the private sector, a problem that is most extreme in the London area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

The first thing I want to address is the claim that all the Government are trying to do is make the situation in the social rented sector the same as that in the private rented sector. I have revisited the debates we had when the Bill was in Committee and found not a single mention of that argument, so it is not the case that I have forgotten. Strangely enough, it was not the prime motivation for the legislation. Rather, it is one of the arguments that were made after the Government realised that the other arguments were not holding up.

Of course those arguments are not the same. There is a big difference between someone taking up a new private rented sector tenancy and knowing what size property they are looking for, as in fact has been the case since 1989—it was not introduced by the Labour Government—and someone being told that the house they have lived in for 10, 15 or 20 years is now deemed to be too big for them and that they will have to start paying extra for it right away. If this argument was about people refusing to make a reasonable move, that might be a different matter. That would be more comparable to the private rented sector.

The hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) included an amendment in his Bill which was initially proposed by the Opposition. Our earlier amendment went to the House of Lords and there was ping-pong on it. Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman, who supported it at the time, could not get his colleagues to join him, or this would have been put right at the outset.

If we want to be fair to the private rented sector, perhaps we should look at other ways in which we could make the two sectors the same. However, the Government are not quite so enthusiastic about improving quality or security of tenure in the private rented sector, or looking at longer tenancy periods or limiting rent rises in the private rented sector. The Labour Government did that with things such as the decent homes standard, while in Scotland there was the Scottish housing quality standard. We want to equalise the sectors. There are many ways in which we could do that, but the bedroom tax is not the right one.

We are told that housing benefit is not rising and there has been some sort of saving. I know the Prime Minister no longer seems to be quite so keen on the Office for Budget Responsibility, but it has said that its forecasts for housing benefit spend have had to be revised on each occasion it has reported on this because of the rise in the number of people in the private rented sector, weak wage growth, and rent inflation that has been higher than expected.

Post Office Card Account

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful for the work that my hon. Friend has done on this. As she will recall, we met to discuss how we could deliver this contract when she was postal services Minister. About 4,000 people in her Cardiff constituency currently have Post Office card accounts, and they will welcome this announcement. She is right that we have to work out how we can develop and expand this in future. We are trying to make sure that we have the right accounts for the right people. The number of pensioners with these accounts will gradually decline. For people of working age, we want, where possible, financial inclusion and transactional accounts. Many people with POCAs do have other bank accounts—for various reasons, they hold both—but we will make sure that the most vulnerable people have access to their money at the post office.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

I am sure that it will be a great relief to many people running post offices to know that the contract is going to be extended in this way, because there was uncertainty for some time. On being able to move from the Post Office card account to a basic bank account, I understand what the Minister said about credit checks, but would it not be possible for the Post Office to establish a basic bank account to which people could migrate, because that might speed up the movement of people into proper transactional bank accounts?

[Steve Webb]

Post Office Ltd is coming up with a range of accounts, some of which have monthly charges and other different features. The basic bank accounts of the largest nine clearing banks, among others, are all Post Office-accessible. The key thing is that Post Office Ltd is a business that can develop accounts of different sorts, as it is now doing—perhaps it has taken a bit longer than we might have wished—and customers can choose between them. For us, the crucial thing is that people will, if they wish, be able to get their cash at the post office, whether from a POCA, a basic bank account or a Post Office account.