Oral Answers to Questions

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I can confirm that that is right. In all other benefits, when someone is found not to be entitled to it and then chooses to appeal, they are not paid anything while the appeal is ongoing. My hon. Friend is right that employment and support allowance is rather odd in that regard.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Nevertheless, the position is that when people do appeal, their ESA will be reinstated. There is no financial saving to the Government unless they expect people not to claim JSA during this period. It is therefore not just hard for the claimant but administratively expensive for the Department to put people through that process.

[Mr Harper]

This is about making sure that when someone goes for a work capability assessment and is found to be fit for work, the most important thing is that they then engage with the jobs market and get back into the workplace. It is not just about the benefits; it is about making sure that people are getting the benefit of getting into work. For most people with a mental health problem, it is very clear that working will not just be the right thing but will be better for their condition.

Benefit Sanctioning

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I will come to that point; often a part of the communications breakdown is people’s lack of awareness of the hardship payments that they are entitled to. The Government have to deal with precisely that issue as part of the challenge.

In the time I have left, I want to stress the inhumane nature of some of the sanctioning I have referred to. It is clear that, if claimants do not understand agreements, they will not keep them and sanctioning will not have its desired effect as a deterrent against non-jobseeking.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

On the point raised a moment ago, my experience is that some people without dependents or without other needs do not get hardship payments. In Scotland, we have the Scottish welfare fund—our equivalent of devolving responsibility for hardship payments to local authorities—but authorities were telling people, at least initially, that those who had been sanctioned could not apply for help from it.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important clarification. Although hardship payments are available to some vulnerable groups—as I said in response to the hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker), there is a problem even there, and communication is breaking down—there are many groups to whom payments are not available. One recommendation, which the Minister should address, is that access to hardship payments should be given to all householders, not just those in certain defined groups.

Sanctioning is not only ineffective in many circumstances, but deeply damaging. That is particularly the case when it has a knock-on effect on housing benefit and council tax support for those on the lowest incomes. A claimant and their family can soon find that they face rent arrears and that they are unable to pay basic bills. In the case of council tax, non-payment is punishable by imprisonment.

Often, people find themselves in that situation without adequate warning, so they have no time to plan for the shortfall. Emma, another Citizens Advice client mentioned in the report, came very close to losing her home as a result of the knock-on impact of a JSA sanction. Sadly, she is not alone. When margins are tight, the slightest change in income can trigger a downward spiral into deep money problems. The system is not designed for that, and rightly so—how would someone in such dire straits be able to find a job?

The DWP agreed to change its IT software and amend the notification sent to local authorities when a sanction has been applied to allow housing benefit to continue without interruption. Action on that was promised by the autumn, but it is now December. Can the Minister assure us today that that relatively minor change, with the potential to make a substantial difference to the lives of some of the poorest people in our communities, is happening or is imminent?

Will the Minister respond to the report’s proposal that all households, as I said a moment ago, have immediate access to hardship payments to avoid the situations I have talked about? Will financial redress be considered where a sanction is found to have been incorrectly applied, resulting in significant consequences and distress for those involved?

There is much more to be said on the issue, and I have asked the Minister a number of specific questions. I want to end with one point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing this debate. I want to look at two particular groups affected by sanctioning and how changes could improve their situation. The first group is single parents.

Gingerbread, which supports and campaigns on behalf of single parents, published a report in November called “Single parents and benefit sanctions”, which looked at some of the issues. Its concern is that single parents appear to be more likely than other claimants to receive what is called a “non-adverse sanction decision”, where it is decided not to sanction. Single parents receive such decisions in 41% of cases compared with 32% of other claimants, which means that more inappropriate referrals are being made for single parents. Someone might say, “Okay, they don’t actually get sanctioned in the end,” or, “The sanction is overturned within the reconsideration period,” but it increases anxiety and the difficulty people face while they go through the process. A substantial minority of decisions are overturned not before the sanction is applied, but afterwards, during the initial reconsideration period. In that post-sanction period, 26% of low-level sanctions applied to single parents are overturned, 46% of intermediate-level sanctions—that is very high—and 17% of high-level sanctions. That suggests a relatively high proportion of wrong decisions, which is particularly important for departmental working.

The Gingerbread report also cites a previous piece of research done for the DWP and published in 2013, which looked at lone parent obligations in the period towards the end of the previous Government. That DWP study showed that in getting people back to work, the effects of voluntary and tailored back-to-work support were greater than the effects of programmes based on increasing conditionality. Tailored support had a higher success rate. That is important because it was the DWP that commissioned the report.

If single parents or any other group are to be involved, it is particularly important that the claimant commitment that people are expected to enter into is individually tailored. We are told by Ministers that it is individually tailored, but the experience of many constituents is that it does not appear to take their circumstances into account. There are single parent flexibilities in the system, which allow the conditionality applied to single parents to be tailored to their particular needs, but Gingerbread found that in a number of cases that was not happening. When universal credit is rolled out beyond the 17,000 people currently on it, to the whole of the UK, only one in 12 of the lone parent flexibilities will be carried over in its entirety. Gingerbread is concerned that universal credit makes it less likely, not more likely, that single parents will be protected by conditions that take into account such things as school holidays, school hours and the difficulties of working evenings and nights for lone parents responsible for their children.

Gingerbread makes some practical proposals—it has not just put out a report that says, “This is all awful.” It suggests that at the start of a claim there should be a thorough diagnostic interview with a specialist lone parent adviser—a jobcentre provision that seems to have become less common of late—to give appropriate conditionality; that similar processes should be applied if that particular person is later referred to the Work programme; that if claimants receive a sanction, they are given better information on hardship payments and how to appeal, as mentioned by other hon. Members; and, of course, that lone parent advisers be reinstated.

In a worrying trend, another group that appears to be increasingly affected by sanctions is those on employment and support allowance in the work-related activity group who have been through the work capability assessment and have been assessed as not fit for work at this stage. These people are not expected to be job-ready, but they can be referred to the Work programme if their prognosis is that they will be fit again within 12 months, and people are increasingly being referred. Most sanctions for this group appear to arise from the Work programme experience. The number of ESA sanctions in June 2014 was 5,132, up from 1,091 in December 2012. The rise over that period was steady and it is still going up. Of the sanctions, 431 were for failure to attend a mandatory interview, but 4,700 arose from a failure to participate in a work-related activity, which basically means the Work programme. Many of these people have mental health problems or learning disabilities, so we must ask why this group is being increasingly sanctioned and how effective that can be.

However much some deny it, there is a link between the increasing use of food banks and a decision that has been made about benefits. Some of those decisions involve delays, but a survey undertaken this year by the Child Poverty Action Group, Citizens Advice Scotland and other organisations found that 20% to 30% of food bank users said that their household’s benefit had recently been stopped or reduced because of a sanction. I do not deny that often there is a backdrop of other, wider problems, as shown by the report. Many people have a background of homelessness, recent marital separation, relationship problems, ill health or bereavement, but it is against that backdrop that sanctions have a particularly dramatic impact, because people in a more stable family situation can more often get help from family members.

Ministers in this Government sometimes give the impression that the growth of food banks is somehow a ploy by anti-Government campaigners to make them look bad, but I genuinely have not seen that before. Had it been a problem during, say, the Thatcher Government, I am sure that we would have known about it and would have been shouting about, so it is a relatively recent phenomenon.

We are not saying that there should not be any conditionality in the system. I was struck by a report by Paul Gregg that was prepared for the DWP before the last election. His fundamental recommendation was that sanctions must be linked with personalised support. In the foreword to the report, he states that there are

“a number of risks associated with conditionality that need be designed out as far as possible at inception”

of the system. The problem is that the risks have not been designed out properly, which is what causes severe hardship among some of those sanctioned; some people are then directed to inappropriate courses or jobs, which do not help them to move forward; and some are pushed outwith the system altogether.

Paul Gregg’s proposals are interesting when juxtaposed with what has actually happened. He recommended that for a first offence, if we want to call it that, there should be a formal warning built into the system. Interestingly, that there should be such a stage prior to sanctions being applied has also been recommended by Policy Exchange, which is far from left-wing. A second offence would result in the

“loss of one week’s JSA”

and a third offence would lead to the loss of two week’s worth. Interestingly, he recommended that after a fourth offence there should be

“be an investigation by Jobcentre Plus…to determine the underlying reason”

and to talk to those who gave the individual support in order to find out what was actually going on before applying “a non-financial sanction”. He thought it would be a small group, but one that had to be looked at in some detail. Those proposals, and the need for personalised support and a much less draconian system than the one applied by the Government, are worth considering.

In conclusion, perhaps the Minister will be good enough to cut out of her reply the usual generalisations about how good work is for people, with which we all agree, and how it is the route out of poverty. Yes, being employed is a necessary part of moving out of poverty, but it is insufficient in many cases. We can bypass that debate because we keep having it and we are not moving forward. No Labour Member and, indeed, few people that I meet in my constituency think that people should not work if they can, but we do have concerns about the system for deciding who is fit for work. Will the Minister concentrate instead on why sanctions referrals and sanctions have increased, particularly in relation to the ESA group? What is her response to the specific recommendations of organisations such as Gingerbread? What is she doing to evaluate whether sanctions actually work to increase the number of people entering employment, which is meant to be the answer? What research has she commissioned to find that out?

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

The Labour party has already been brought to task by the UK Statistics Authority for talking about a significant increase in zero-hours contracts that did not happen. The contracts began in 2000 as the minimum wage was brought in. We know the number of people on them, and for the vast majority they work. When they do not work, we have not allowed exclusive contracts. We are doing something that the previous Government did not do. We want to ensure that people have a good job—not just any old job, but a job they want so that they have a career and progress. We know that three quarters of the jobs created since 2010 are full-time. I hope that answers the question.

The other key issue—for me, probably the most important thing the Government have done—is that fewer children are now growing up in workless households.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Will the Minister give way?

[Esther McVey]

I will not give way. I am setting the scene. I will answer the questions raised, and then I will take some more interventions, but not at the moment.

We know that the best route out of poverty is to have a job and that children born into a household where no one works are three times more likely to be in poverty. This year, we have reduced that number by 390,000. We are talking about poverty, and about support and help for people to get a job and to move forward. The Government have done significantly more than anybody else to support people on their way and into work. That is the background of sanctions and why they exist, and what we must do to meet and match and provide support.

We have introduced the youth contract for young people, with an extra 250,000 extra work experience places, and sector-based work academies. This year, we have seen the biggest fall in youth unemployment—by 250,000—since records began. We are fundamentally turning the lives of those people around, and sanctions are a tiny part of a massive system of support.

Universal Credit

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

On migrants, we have already made it clear that universal credit is a different type of benefit, so people who come here and are out of work will not be able to claim it as a benefit. The issue of how migrant workers can claim in-work support will be negotiated. We are clear that, under universal credit, family benefits will not be paid to people who are not accompanied by their family, so we will secure such claims, thus cutting costs. On fraud, the automatic processes that check what people are earning and whether they are in work mean that we will cut down on all the fraud related to tax credits.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Given that the Department is such a fan of safe and secure roll-out, it is a pity that it did not take a similar view to the personal independence payment. A lot of people were treated like guinea pigs while it was being rolled out—that topic is being debated in Westminster Hall as we speak. The Secretary of State must be aware that 61% of the current claimants of universal credit are under 24 years old. They are the simplest of cases and, after such a long period, 17,000 is a very small number indeed. We have been hearing the “safe and secure” mantra for at least two years. When will the Secretary of State admit that his Department has very serious problems with implementation?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I would have thought that the hon. Lady, who sits on the Work and Pensions Committee, would be attracted to the idea of trying to land the programme safely and securely. On the one hand she says that she agrees with it, but on the other hand she attacks it for not being fast enough. My view is that it should be expanded and delivered on a safe scale. Of course, the majority of cases will have been simpler ones because we have started with singles, but over the next few months we will see more complicated cases as we roll out to families. The north-west will be fully family when we start rolling out nationally. I am waiting for the hon. Lady to say one day, perhaps in a few years’ time, “You know, they did a jolly good job, because this has benefitted everybody, particularly those on low income.”

Personal Independence Payments

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

I apologise for not being here at the outset, Mr Crausby. I was keen to be here, but as a member of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, I also wanted to hear the statement on universal credit to find out whether there was anything new in it.

I find it surprising that, on the one hand, the Secretary of State takes great pride in having a safe and slow roll-out of universal credit—for the past two years, we have been told that it must be safe and slow, and consequently only 17,000 people are on it after all that time; perhaps that is the right way to do things, but it seems astonishingly slow—but on the other, the Department has presided over the roll-out of personal independence payments and, for the past year and a half, has turned the initial applicants into guinea pigs for a system that was not properly piloted or tested.

At the outset, the Select Committee was concerned that the Department’s ambitions and the speed with which it implemented the change were unrealistic. There are unresolved tensions between its desire to give people a longer and more thorough assessment than the much-criticised employment and support allowance assessments and its desire to get through a large number of people. I suspect that some of the problems encountered are due to exactly those tensions.

As a result—perhaps this is hearsay, but the Minister may have something to say about it—the number of face-to-face assessments has already been rolled back. At one point, about 85% to 90% of new applicants were given face-to-face assessments; I understand that it has fallen to 75%. That may be a good or bad thing, but it shows a lack of pre-planning. This really matters to a lot of people. Most new applicants—I will come to the reassessments in a minute—have no money to cover the particular need for which they are applying. Although the payment is backdated for successful applicants, the longer they wait, the harder it is for them.

It is important to realise how important this issue is. Although the Department has overcome its initial problems even with what are regarded as terminally ill cases, a lot of people have serious conditions that do not fit under the special rules provisions but nevertheless leave people in a difficult position. I have a constituent with motor neurone disease who was in exactly that position. Sadly, his condition developed quickly. He went from being a normal, fit, healthy young man in his late 20s to needing help to get places in only a few months.

[Alison Seabeck]

My hon. Friend speaks with a great deal of experience and knowledge. On her point about the time it takes to get a decision, like her, I have a constituent whose condition deteriorated over a long period. Although our constituents may have just scraped through to one side of the fence when the assessment was made, their conditions were much worse by the time the decision was made, and they should therefore have been assessed differently.

[Sheila Gilmore]

People in that situation find it very hard to deal with that problem.

[Jim Shannon]

That is a very interesting point. Under the old DLA system, going back two or three years, there was an enablement provision. If a person’s condition got worse, that could be taken into consideration in their application and the appeal process, but now it cannot. Does the hon. Lady feel that the Minister should respond to that point?

[Sheila Gilmore]

That is a very interesting point, and I hope the Minister will give us some details on it.

The other group who seem to suffer less from long delays are those who are undergoing reassessment. If a person asks for a reassessment because their circumstances have deteriorated, previously they would have reported that change to receive DLA, but now they must make an application for personal independence payment. They will receive DLA even if there is a long delay, but if they are entitled to a higher rate of DLA, it will not be backdated under the new system. They do not have no money during that period to help them with the needs that their disability or illness brings, but they do not benefit from the increase. If it takes six, seven or eight months for their DLA reassessment to become PIP and they are eligible for a higher reward, it will not be backdated, even if their condition has clearly deteriorated —and they would not have made the application if it had not.

If the process were working smoothly and quickly, that might not matter. Perhaps at the outset it was thought that there would be no need for backdating because the process would be quick. People would be reassessed and would get the new benefit or not, but at least they would not be waiting for months with a much worse condition. If the claiming process is to be this long permanently—I certainly hope not; the Minister can tell us if it is—perhaps he should look again at that.

I am concerned about another aspect of the way that PIP is processed: there seems to be a substantial variation across regions. I hope that the Minister is at least looking at that issue and monitoring it. I find it hard to understand why, among new claims—but not those relating to special circumstances, i.e. terminal cases—the award rate varies so much; it is as low as 25% in Ealing Southall, but it is 63% in Kilmarnock and Loudon. Perhaps Kilmarnock and Loudon residents are substantially less well, and more disabled, than those of Ealing Southall, but the disparity seems substantial.

The published statistics, the most recent of which bring us to, I think, September, show quite wide variation both in the number and proportion of cases that have reached clearance—meaning a decision, whether positive or adverse, for the claimant—and in award rates. That variation may be explicable, and not a matter for concern, but it would be helpful to know that the Department is monitoring those things and will report on them in due course. The rates will never be identical; areas differ, and there are some where endemic ill health has been a serious problem. That is why the number of people in receipt of employment and support allowance and DLA has been higher in some areas than others; I do not have a particular problem with that.

The question is why an award rate should vary so much and be so low in some places. Presumably people apply only if they have an illness or condition. They will read the forms. Unless it is suggested that in some areas an awful lot of people with no real prospect of success apply, and that that explains the low award rate, the variation seems somewhat baffling. The number of applications varies considerably, as one would expect. One of the examples I gave was Ealing Southall, where the award rate is 25%. There were 660 normal registrations there, not made under special rules. In Kilmarnock and Loudon there were 980 registrations, and in Knowsley there were 1,780 registrations, with a 52% award rate.

Our questions are not only about the length of time being taken, although that is the major issue that most of us have had to deal with. They are also about other aspects of the way the new benefit works: how it compares with the previous situation, which people perhaps do not receive an award, and what the circumstances are. Owing to the length of time being taken, it is still quite early to know how many people are successful on appeal, and to judge the efficacy of the assessment process. From my experience with constituents, it appears that the assessment process, when they get to it, evokes fewer complaints than before, although someone recently came to tell me that their assessment took only 20 minutes, after which they received an adverse decision. That person had been profoundly deaf for some considerable time, so I was slightly baffled.

I hope that in the rush to solve the problem of longer assessment periods and to speed the process up we shall not lose some of the possible advantages of the new system—a more thorough assessment process that would obviously be better for people in the longer term.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore]

In the original consultation paper in 2010, one of the justifications for throwing all these things up in the air and putting many disabled and ill people through a great deal of anxiety was that too many people were getting the benefit and that PIP would be different. Some 50% of DLA claims were unsuccessful, but in some cases the award rates for PIP appear to be well in excess of 50%. That may be very good for the applicants, but it suggests that the whole thing was premised on a lack of proper research. The change has made many people extremely stressed and anxious over the past few years.

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend puts her finger on the issue. We may be seeing some sort of cohort effect, because the cases that went through early may have been more likely to have attracted awards, or higher awards. It may be that initial departmental assumptions were simply wrong or over-optimistic about the savings that could be achieved. It may be that the situation will become even worse, because delays in processing claims and making decisions must be suppressing expenditure on the benefit. If, as the Minister intends, those delays are reduced and, hopefully, eventually eliminated, we will see the costs of the benefit increase. Whether the Government’s ambitions to reduce costs will be achieved is very uncertain. As my hon. Friend rightly says, the real problem for disabled people in that context is the huge uncertainty and anxiety. Disabled people are very uncertain about whether they will be awarded the benefit, which creates great anxiety and alarm.

I have mentioned that there appear to be additional costs for the Department due to the payment of compensation for delays. My constituent, Mr W, received £100 compensation for delays that he had suffered, yet when I asked the Minister how much such compensation payments are costing the Government overall, he told me in a written answer on 23 October that the Department does not record such information. What we do know is that spending on DLA and PIP is set to be £1.4 billion more than projected in this financial year. What is his assessment of the continuing trend in the figures? What impact will that have on the Government’s overall welfare cap? Obviously, any significant increase in expenditure will put that cap at risk.

Given the way in which we have seen costs rise, it is surprising that, in a written answer on 14 July, the Minister’s predecessor told me that the Government remain on course

“to make savings against earlier forecasts of £2.8 billion by 2017-18.”—[Official Report, 14 July 2014; Vol. 584, c. 587W.]

Given all the circumstances that we have heard about in this debate, will the Minister again confirm that expectation and tell us what the Government will do if they do not get spending back on track?

Overall, it is clear that the system is working far from smoothly. The picture for the future remains uncertain, and things remain well off course. In June, the DWP confirmed that it expected 752,000 PIP decisions in this financial year; the latest statistics show that about 37,500 decisions a month were made in the most recent months available, and about 30,000 to 40,000 claims a month were made. At that rate, it seems that the DWP will be unable to clear the backlog of 323,000 cases still awaiting a decision, yet bizarrely, the DWP apparently continues to add more areas where existing DLA claimants are being transferred to PIP, including, in the past couple of weeks, my area of Greater Manchester.

In the circumstances, adding yet more pressure to the system seems inexplicable. Claimants will be deeply worried that the Government are pressing ahead while the programme is manifestly still subject to extreme delay. It does not make sense, it is not fair and it is causing deep uncertainty and hardship to thousands of claimants. I am glad that this debate gives us time for the Minister to respond fully to the concerns that colleagues have raised, and I look forward to hearing what he has to say.

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

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) on securing the debate and on allowing other Members to raise their concerns. She started her contribution with some general points. I will touch on them only briefly, as I want to deal with the specific cases that she mentioned and the specific points raised by other Members.

The hon. Lady made a point about judging the Government on their overall approach. I can confirm that we spend £50 billion on disability benefits. The latest unemployment statistics show that our “Disability Confident” campaign has been successful in that more than 250,000 more disabled people are in work, increasing the employment rate for disabled people. Overall, we are supporting disabled people to get back into work and participate successfully in society. However, I will not dwell on that, as I know hon. Members want to focus on the details of personal independence payments.

The hon. Lady mentioned some specific cases, which I will deal with in the order she raised them. She raised the Booth case with my predecessor on 7 July. We had made a backdated decision on that case just before she wrote to us. One point arose out of that case that I wanted to mention, because it was also raised by another hon. Member—I forget whom. The hon. Lady mentioned that the person in the case was out of work. It is worth putting on record that the personal independence payment is designed, as many hon. Members said, to deal with the extra costs of being disabled. It is not an out-of-work benefit. Those who are unable to work owing to their disability or health condition should claim either jobseeker’s allowance or employment and support allowance. Just to be clear, those are income-related benefits; PIP is not. Some hon. Members in previous debates have elided the two, although I am sure she has not done so.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Obviously, the Minister is right about the distinction between the two benefits, but many people do not get out-of-work benefits because they have a working partner or because they have run out of contributory out-of-work benefits. The extra costs of their illness or disability still apply, so the household income decreases considerably over that period. That must be borne in mind.

[Mr Harper]

I accept the hon. Lady’s point. I mentioned it because some hon. Members have raised cases in which there have been two issues: a decrease in income because someone has been out of work, and extra costs. I am simply making the point that, in those cases, it is reasonable to expect PIP to cover the extra costs, but it is not a benefit designed to deal with the fact that someone is not working.

The hon. Member for Bolton South East wrote to us about the Booth case, but I do not think she has written to us on the Pope case at this point, so I do not have the specific details. If she wants me to consider it, I am happy for her to drop me details after the debate. The third case, about which she has written to the Department, is the Syddall case. I put on record my apologies for the delays in that case. When someone has a terminal illness, which was not the case or was not known about in this instance, we obviously prioritise their claim. As the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) mentioned, my predecessor put in place those changes to the process, and we are currently dealing with cases involving people with a terminal illness in about the expected time period of 10 days. In cases such as the one raised by the hon. Member for Bolton South East, when the person does not know that they have a terminal illness and dies while awaiting a decision, we deal with the claim based on the evidence we have. Any arrears of benefit, if applicable, are paid to the estate. A decision has now been made in that specific case. It will be communicated to the family shortly, and I will write to her shortly after that to give her the full details. I hope that is helpful.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend is quite right. The latest reports from the British Chambers of Commerce show that businesses are feeling more confident and are taking on more people. In the north-west, an additional 109,000 people are in work this year. He knows only too well how important it is to get a job that can lead to career progression. He is a working-class Tory who got himself into a job, did a correspondence course in law and then set up his own legal practice. We want those opportunities for everyone.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

5. What change there has been in the number of people claiming employment and support allowance over the last two years.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Harper)]

Based on the latest published national statistics, as at February 2014 there were 2.46 million people on employment and support allowance and incapacity benefits, a fall of 98,000 from February 2012.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank the Minister for his reply. Since the incapacity benefits migration started, 250,000 IB claimants have been found fit for work, yet he is now telling us that the total number has fallen by only about 90,000. That might explain why the Office for Budget Responsibility is forecasting that spending on incapacity benefit alone will rise by £3 billion more than the Government expected in 2010. Is it not time that the Minister and his colleagues realised that, despite all the rhetoric, many people are not fit for work and that the necessary support is not there for those who do want to work?

[Mr Harper]

I would point out to the hon. Lady that we have had some problems with the work capability assessment—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] Before Opposition Members jeer, they should remember that this has happened under the provider that the previous Government appointed. We have taken action to sort the problems out, and Atos has agreed to exit from its contract. From 1 March next year, the new provider that I appointed last week, Maximus, will be taking over and will do a better job.

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform (Disabled People)

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

We were so taken aback and stunned by these remarks, and we considered them so offensive and serious, that we considered it right to bring them before the Prime Minister in the highest forum in this land, this Chamber, in the very first Prime Minister’s Question Time that we had the opportunity to do so.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

I want to go back to the question about increased spending. It is unacceptable to boast of increased spending when that is due to inefficiency and the failure to deliver. In 2010, the Office for Budget Responsibility expected spending on incapacity benefit to fall. That projection has now been changed to an increase of £3 billion, which, put against the sort of savings being made on disabled people through the bedroom tax, is absolutely outrageous. Surely nobody can boast about spending more if it is down to their own inefficiency.

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is right.

As we start the debate this afternoon, let me say that we can send a message of dignity and respect to disabled people in two ways. We can do so by voting for the motion to make it clear that anyone who makes comments that suggest discriminating against disabled people or that demean them should not be in government, least of all in a role in which they make decisions day in, day out that affect disabled people’s lives. We can also show our feelings by the way in which we conduct this debate. The real reason this debate matters so much is that it is an opportunity for us to show disabled people that we understand why Lord Freud’s remarks caused such anger and pain and that we understand what is happening in their lives. Lord Freud’s comments have touched a chord because disabled people are already suffering so much from the policies for which he and his ministerial colleagues are responsible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I am spoilt for choice for members of the Select Committee to give way to. I think the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) was first.

[Sheila Gilmore]

We have heard such assurances for the best part of the past year. Fast-tracking terminal illnesses was promised months ago. Surely the problem is with the policy. At the outset, many people said that it was not necessary to throw the whole thing up in the air and start again, and that the system had not been well thought through. When the Select Committee asked the Minister’s predecessor but two how it would be possible to process so many assessments and reassessments in the time scale given, we were told that there would be no problem, and there has clearly been a major problem. The Government cannot easily sort out the problem, so will the Minister consider whether some of the policy drivers are the wrong ones?

[Mr Harper]

I have accepted openly that there is a problem with delays in the system, but the hon. Lady will know that the independent review is under way. We have appointed Paul Gray, who has taken evidence and is in the process of compiling his report, which he will give to the Secretary of State in the coming weeks. The report will be published for hon. Members and the Select Committee to review. That is the right way to proceed.

Separated Families Initiative

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I understand that the Minister for Pensions, who normally leads for the Government on this area, is unable to be here today, but I am sure we can have a helpful and productive debate. I welcome the Minister for Employment in his place.

Within the past year, the Government have made significant changes to child maintenance policy, implementing the legislation that went through as part of the Welfare Reform Act 2012. First, the Child Support Agency has been wound down. Pre-existing child maintenance arrangements, which are used by nearly 2 million parents, are being terminated over the next three years. Secondly, all would-be applicants to its statutory replacement, the child maintenance service, must first talk to the child maintenance options service, where they are encouraged to make their own arrangements instead. Finally, for those parents who choose to use the CMS, a £20 application charge has been introduced, along with collection charges if parents fail to pay maintenance.

The clear policy intent is to encourage parents to sort out their own arrangements following relationship breakdown. The Government’s argument has been—and, I presume, remains—that family-based arrangements, as they are being called, will be better, because payers will be happier to pay if they have made the arrangements themselves. Further to that, the Government have asserted that the statutory system that has been in place for some years makes relationships between separated parties worse, because it creates bad feeling and anger. They think that the system might reduce willingness to pay, and encourage payers to look for a way to avoid payment.

Throughout, I have been a sceptic about that line of argument. In my experience, the circumstances of separation generate considerable anger and distress, and it is those feelings that often have to be worked with and worked through. As the period of separation continues, a failure to pay maintenance causes ongoing bad feeling. We know that parents with care suffer considerable financial detriment after separation. Indeed, generally both parties to a divorce suffer financial detriment, but the parent with care, whatever their gender, is the one who, in all the research, suffers the most. If proper payment arrangements are not in place, considerable resentment and anger can build up.

Given the Government’s approach, and that the reform is partly about trying to get people to change their behaviour, it is hugely important to ensure that parents get the sort of practical help and support they need to enable them to come to workable arrangements, especially given the changes to legal aid, which mean that people might not be getting the level of legal assistance they once had. That is where the £20 million Help and Support for Separated Families programme is supposed to come in. I will henceforth refer to it as HSSF, rather than saying the entire mouthful. I know it is not always terribly friendly to use abbreviations, but not using this one would become cumbersome and clumsy. I am afraid that the research I have undertaken shows that the programme of support for separating and separated families is piecemeal and inadequate.

There are four main initiatives that come under the HSSF programme, and I will set out my concerns on each in turn. The first is the Sorting out Separation service, which is a key online information and support resource for separated parents, signposting them to relevant help. Between November 2012 and January 2014, only 9,132 users clicked on a signpost to an external organisation, compared with the original target of 260,000. More people visited the front page, but the important thing is whether people are following through to get the more detailed help they need, because the initial information on the website is not sufficient to allow people to enter into arrangements. Given that the website cost more than £400,000 to set up—that was the figure by January, at least—it has cost more than £45 for every user signposted. I emphasise that the figures for this year come after an attempted redesign, which has clearly had a limited effect.

An evaluation commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions and carried out between February and June last year reported that users were often unclear about the purpose of the site and the range of information it offered. They were frustrated by the low level of detail supplied prior to signposting. Videos on the site were felt to be “unreal”, with unrealistically positive endings, and a potentially useful action planning tool was criticised for offering only general signposting and not tailored information. Of particular concern, given that existing formal statutory arrangements are coming to an end, was the finding that the site was “less relevant and useful” for longer-term separated parents. Some 70% of the parents who will have their CSA cases closed have been separated for five years or longer, 40% have no contact with the other parent and 14% describe relations as “not at all friendly”. The inadequacy of the Sorting out Separation service might mean that they will find it unhelpful, and if they find it unhelpful, they will not be able to enter into new informal arrangements and will find themselves back in the formal system through the new CMS.

In April, the Minister for Pensions said that the Department was

“in the process of considering the future direction of the Sorting out Separation web app and will shortly be taking steps to improve the profile of the app through search engine optimisation.”—[Official Report, 8 April 2014; Vol. 579, c. 214W.]

Can the Minister for Employment tell us what the future of the service is, whether usage beyond the home page has risen and what steps have been taken to improve the content so that long-term separated parents are catered for?

The second arm of the HSSF programme funding is the co-ordinated telephone network. It is a telephone service provided by four organisations: Relate, Family Lives, the National Youth Advocacy Service, and Wikivorce. The service began full operation in March 2014 at a cost of £344,000. While I respect all the organisations concerned and the work they do, it is questionable whether they can provide the scale of support necessary for separating and separated parents across the country. Can the Minister tell us more about how the network is working in practice and how many parents have used it?

The third initiative of the HSSF programme is what the Government’s original White Paper referred to as a “quality mark”. It was to

“become a mark that parents can recognise and trust, so they know the service they are accessing is of a consistently high quality and will be able to help them to work together with the other parent.”

It was developed at a cost of £136,500, and 35 organisations have so far been awarded what is now called the HSSF mark. My concern is that the mark is not well understood or even recognised by parents. My impression is that the organisations that put a lot of work into applying for and being awarded the mark have seen little in return. I am unaware of any promotion of the mark to parents by the Department, so I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us what steps are being taken in that regard.

The fourth and most significant element of the HSSF initiative is the innovation fund, which accounted for £14 million of the total £20 million to be spent in the current spending review period up to March 2015. According to the White Paper that preceded the legislation, the fund was set up

“to learn what works best in helping separating and separated parents to collaborate and resolve conflict in order to support their children”.

In the first round of funding in April 2013, £6.5 million was awarded to seven projects across the country over a two-year period. Between them, they anticipated reaching just over 280,000 parents. A second round of funding worth £3.4 million came on stream in April 2014 and was awarded to 10 further projects aiming to reach some 12,800 parents. For the first time, projects aimed at longer-term separated parents were also included. I accept that this is relatively small-scale innovation funding; bearing in mind that nearly 2 million parents who have arrangements through the CSA are being taken off that following the new legislation, innovation projects coming in that will reach only perhaps 8,000 or 10,000 parents will not make much of an impression on the large number of parents affected by this major change.

Since starting in Scotland on 14 March, the family decision making service—one of this year’s funded projects that provides internet and telephone advice from Children 1st, One Parent Families Scotland and the Scottish Child Law Centre—has seen more families making informal arrangements. A particularly innovative aspect of its work has been designing publicity material to appeal more to fathers, which has led to more men using the service than would typically be expected. However, only 13 months’ funding was made available, which is a very short time in which to judge the success of any project.

Moving beyond anecdotal evidence of performance is difficult. In the 18 months since the first tranche of money was awarded, we have received little in the way of objective information. In March, we learned in a parliamentary answer that, as at 31 January 2014, 3,724 parents had participated in the seven first-round projects. Although it was early days—I know that the Relate project started late—that does seem low nearly halfway through the two-year funding period compared with the expected figure of over 280,000 parents by the end of the round-one projects. Unless there has been substantial take-up since then, we will fall far short of what is still a modest number of parents coming into contact with such help and advice. Will the Minister give us an update on the numbers of parents who have participated in the seven round-one projects so far and how that compares with expected levels at this stage?

Evaluation has also been significantly delayed, partly due to Department concerns around data protection. That is particularly problematic given that many projects are coming to an end and closing, and staff are likely to move into new employment, meaning that any evaluation that does take place will happen while the projects are winding down, which seems unsatisfactory. Earlier this year, the Minister for Pensions confirmed that the Government were in the process of appointing an external specialist to lead on the evaluation work. Is the Minister who is present today in a position to tell us whether an external evaluator has been appointed, who they will be and what the time scale of the evaluation will be?

This is about not just getting the evaluation started, but what the criteria will be. It was disappointing to hear the Minister for Pensions state in January that the evaluation criteria for the 17 projects would be published with the final results. We therefore do not know the criteria, and will not know them until the evaluation has been carried out, so people have not had the opportunity to comment on whether the evaluation is appropriate. The difficulty that that presents is that, as far as I can establish, the evaluation will not include receipt of child maintenance as one of the criteria by which the success of the projects aimed at improving parental collaboration will be judged. That is despite the fact that the innovation fund projects flow directly from the child maintenance reforms, and despite the White Paper stating that the initiatives would

“seek to support parents to reach their own arrangements, therefore avoiding both the statutory child maintenance system”.

It seems odd that that particular aspect is not to be evaluated in the process. We will not necessarily know, even at the end, whether there has been any significant success in getting people to not only meet and talk, but enter into family-based arrangements, and in getting maintenance flowing.

The HSSF funding ends in March 2015. My final questions concern what future funding will be made available to support the initiative.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech on an important subject, and I congratulate her on securing this debate. She mentioned the schemes that have gone ahead, but is she as concerned as I am about the parts that did not go ahead—the local and face-to-face support that people were to be get in places where they felt comfortable? I know from personal experience how difficult separation is when one has a young child. There are many new agencies to contact, but is it not important that people can access advice from places where they feel comfortable?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. That is a hugely important part of the process. It is all very well to have information available through modern methods of dissemination—being able to get basic information online cannot be a bad thing—but signposting to other places appears to be lacking.

The process is personal and can lead to difficult periods in most people’s lives, and people do not necessarily get the best information from word of mouth. Family and friends can offer emotional support, but they do not always give people the best advice in such situations. As a family lawyer, I met people who had been told weird and wonderful things about what they could or could not get. Such sources can also be out of date, because people will talk about things that happened to them in the past. However useful such advice can be as a starting point, it is crucial that those who want to get more personal advice—many will—can do so, whether one-to-one, or in a group setting where people feel comfortable and can ask the silly questions that it takes confidence to ask. We do not appear to have reached the stage of even looking at that, but it is important that we do.

On the March 2015 date, and the innovation projects set up to test what worked and what did not, it would be helpful to know how much information we will have, because there has been little evaluation so far. What guarantees do we have that what has been found to work will be scaled up to the numbers necessary? Even beyond 2015, more than 1 million parents will have arrangements with the CSA that have yet to be closed down. In addition, all the people with new separations, whose relationships are only beginning to break down, will want to come forward for help. What system will be in place to help those families sort out their child maintenance collaboratively? If the Government are serious about wanting people to make such arrangements so that maintenance is paid for the benefit of the children, we have to ensure that proper support and advice is in place.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I disclose an interest as chairman of the Mindful Policy Group, which has done some work in this area. I have listened to the hon. Lady’s comments with great interest. May I take her to a related issue, which is the point at which parents split up in the first place? Does she agree that everything she is talking about in the relationship after the separation of the parents would be so much better if children were placed rather more at the centre of proceedings in the courtroom, so that the parents remembered that although they may divorce, children cannot? The continued welfare of their child should be their prime consideration.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. Most people, at least in theory, believe that they are putting their children first; they might not be doing so in practice, but the reason for that is often the huge emotional upset in their lives. In the midst of that, especially if they are not getting the help that they need, they are not best placed to put their children first, even when sometimes they think that they are doing so. I know how difficult it is for many people to behave in a collaborative manner at such a time and to act out the issues around putting the children first.

We need people to be able to work together, not only on maintenance, but in the wider context. The particular change made, however, was about maintenance, and it is crucial to people’s ongoing relationships to get that right. That is crucial to children, not only to ensure that the money is flowing, but because if it is not, the relationship between the parents must be even worse.

Ultimately, given the scale of the task—a huge task has been taken on—and the reality of people’s lives, the £20 million so far allocated to the programme is a drop in the ocean. Given the low use of the Sorting out Separation service, the limited nature of the HSSF telephone network, the lack of promotion of the HSSF mark, the small number of families supported by the innovation fund and the lack of local and face-to-face support, the money being spent is simply not helping enough families.

Family-based arrangements have to be made and also sustained. Relationships change, and what happens when people first separate is not all that matters, because as time passes relationships sometimes worsen; they do not necessarily get better. Sometimes that is because of other constraints that come into people’s lives. The financial reality of separation sometimes bites after months or even years of separation, and new relationships can come into the picture, changing the dynamics of the original relationship and what is financially viable for the people involved. Ongoing support, not only initial support, is therefore likely to be required. Family-based arrangements, even if entered into successfully at the outset, might break down under those pressures.

As I have done in similar debates, I put in a plug for the Government seriously to consider copying and promoting the Scottish minute-of-agreement system, which, without going anywhere near a court, can transform a family-based agreement into something that is legally binding and enforceable. The system has been in operation in Scotland for many years. It has enabled many couples to get something down at a time when they are in agreement. It is as enforceable as a court order, and gives the agreement a status and sustainability that is valuable, although the agreement can be changed if that is required.

I am not familiar enough with English family law to know whether such a system needs legislation. If so, however, I strongly recommend it to English colleagues as one that combines the best of both worlds: people may not only reach their own agreement, rather than having one forced on them, but have something that is enforceable and sustainable through the vicissitudes of separation, which is a process rather than an event.

I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to my questions and set out what the Government will do to address my concerns. I would be grateful in particular for greater clarity on the monitoring and evaluation of all four strands of the HSSF programme to ensure that the Government’s stated objective, which is to reduce families’ need to rely on the statutory maintenance service while ensuring that maintenance still flows to the children who need it, is met.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman wholeheartedly. There are unfortunately occasions on which one parent is restricted from visiting, as he will know, because of circumstances in their past—so it does happen, although there are exceptions—but by and large, for 99.9% of cases, I wholeheartedly agree.

It is important to consider not just divorce, but separation and conflict within families. The evidence proves that stable homes, where the family enjoy good relations, have a far better impact on children and adolescents than homes where that is not the case. For example, children growing up with parents who have good-quality relationships and where parental conflict is low—whether the parents are a couple or are separated partners—enjoy better physical and mental health and better emotional well-being, and sometimes higher academic attainment and a lower likelihood of engaging in what I would refer to as risky behaviours. At the same time, evidence shows associations between parental relationship breakdown and child poverty, behavioural problems and emotional health problems, as well as an increased risk of the children’s own relationships breaking down. Very often, when the partnership between a man and woman breaks down, the children and the effect on them go unseen, but the children are the ones I see when people come to my office.

Arguments over money rank as the No. 1 source of conflict in relationships. When parents break up, arguments over money continue, only this time as legal arguments through the courts. Research by Relate shows that the couples who were worst affected by the recession were eight times as likely to suffer relationship breakdown. I note that the Prime Minister himself has indicated that the budget for relationship counselling is to be doubled to £19.5 million. Perhaps that is an indication of the Government’s commitment to trying to address this issue. Will the Minister say how the money will be distributed and whether there are areas in the country with greater problems than others?

Wages remain stagnant and the price of living continues to rise, particularly for the thousands of families in the UK facing mortgage repayment issues, negative equity and the need to provide for children. Financial hardship is difficult to escape, so I cannot say I find the statistic I have quoted particularly surprising. Again, it underlines the issue of how the system can work best for the children and the separated partners.

Money continues to be an issue even if separation occurs. For example, statistics show that children in single-parent families are twice as likely as children in couple families to live in relative poverty. Over four in 10 children in single-parent families—some 43%—are poor, compared with just over two in 10, or 22%, of children in couple families. Again, that is an indication of the problems we have.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman has raised the issue of the poverty of many separated families, particularly those with the main care of the children, as I mentioned. Is it not particularly important that financial arrangements are put in place and are secure? The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham talked about parental alienation, but money can be used as a bargaining tool as well. If arrangements are too informal, is there not a risk that that will happen?

[Jim Shannon]

That is very much the case. In my constituency, many partners came to an agreement before the legislative change. In many cases that has worked, but in others, money becomes another weapon in the armoury to create division or a reason to hit back at the other person and restrict access. I know of such examples, and there were some from other parts of the country in the Library information pack—I have not cornered the market in those examples. For example, the male partner in the relationship might have a job but then decide to go self-employed, and then when he makes his books up at the end of the year, they show a much lower income than he actually has. I cannot prove emphatically that he is making x amount, but we can always judge what someone is making by the car they drive, the house that they live in or their lifestyle—for example, do they eat out? Sometimes people are quite clearly living a lifestyle that does not accord with their tax returns—that could be worth looking into. The hon. Lady is absolutely right: money becomes a bargaining tool. Some people try to make it work and others do not; it is those others who we are trying to get at.

Just over a quarter of households with dependent children are single-parent families, and there are 2 million single parents in Britain today, a figure that has remained consistent since the mid-1990s. That is one reason why I feel the HSSF initiative merits some support. There is too much divorce, separation and division. It is sad that many of our children are unable to grow up with mum and dad together. For that reason, we should encourage counselling for couples to help them work through issues and, we hope, stay together.

The initial information we have indicates that there is a £20 charge for some single-parent families. Nearly two fifths of the UK’s 2 million single-parent families receive child maintenance payments from the child’s other parent. Perhaps putting a £20 charge on those families has meant that the take-up has not been as good as it could have been, which would indicate that the system needs to be reviewed. Again, will the Minister give us some information on that?

Not every child who has experienced divorce and separation will experience long-term harm. I see that with those who come to my office. The quality of parenting, a lack of financial hardship and whether parents go through multiple relationships following separation are also thought to be key to the well-being of the child. Evidence suggests that helping more parents to work together throughout a child’s life means that the number of children missing out on relationships with both parents and their extended families is likely to reduce. If, as I believe, that is the goal of the initiative, we should support it, but we need to address the issues raised by hon. Members in this debate.

There is no doubt in my mind that a constructive and non-confrontational approach is important. Often, fighting through courts can become tit for tat, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh East has suggested. That in turn will have only a negative impact on children as time goes by and the problems between the couple remain unresolved.

Of course it would be wonderful if divorce and separation did not have to occur, but at times they do. The least we can do in those situations is to ensure that children remain the focus and the priority. Break-ups will affect children; however, by following the aims of the initiative, the impact can be short term and minimal. I ask the Minister to take on board the issue of the initial cost. A system that tries to get a working agreement between both parties is commendable, but will she tell us what action can be taken if it does not work? As the hon. Member for Edinburgh East said, we do not want the two parents fighting over money in the courts. The fact that two parents are separating or getting a divorce does not mean that they are separating or getting a divorce from their children. Children are an integral part of all this, and we must do all we can to make that very clear to the children who are affected.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Employment (Esther McVey)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Streeter, to serve under your chairmanship. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Pensions could not be here today, but I am happy to respond as best I can, and if I do not have the full information, I will write to hon. Members individually. I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) for securing this important debate. As a former family lawyer, she takes a close interest in the matter. I welcome the opportunity to talk about the support that the Government are putting in place for separated families, including through our child maintenance system.

Before I explain what we are doing and what we are putting in place, it is important to look at the present system—the Child Support Agency. We may view it with rose-coloured spectacles but, as many hon. Members have pointed out, how many people have come to our surgeries complaining that it does not work and has not been helpful? How many people have said they have never seen the money they hoped they would receive? That system has not functioned since it was put in place; only about half of parents receive child maintenance, and we remember the significant IT failings at the beginning.

The system is expensive to run, costing almost £500 million; it awards about £1 billion. It has complex calculation rules and a slow assessment process. We must take that on board when talking about it. On top of that, it never really put the child at the centre, nor did it resolve conflict.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Was the system not set up because the preceding arrangements, which were a mixture of people trying to make their own arrangements and the courts intervening, also had severe failures? This is a complex subject that requires a lot of care and attention. We should not necessarily think that the problem lies in having a statutory system, although that seems to be the Government’s view.

[Esther McVey]

No, we have to look at what has worked throughout this journey, so that we can use whatever worked with the CSA and on the ground with families. We must go into the process knowing that, without a shadow of doubt, it is complex. This is about families, emotions and relationships that are not working, but what are we trying to do? We all agree that the sad reality is that too many people are affected by separation and, too often, it is the children who suffer the consequences. In Britain today, there are 2.5 million separated families, and one in three children live in households in which their mother or father no longer lives at home. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, the cost of family breakdown is £48 billion, and he spoke about parental alienation; what are we going to do there, too?

This Government believe passionately in strong families who can provide the stability that is vital to enable children to thrive. The family environment provides the foundation for raising a child, and we are committed to supporting safe and loving family environments. When parents’ relationships break down, we want to help parents to work together more effectively, so it is important to reduce levels of conflict after a separation and to minimise the negative impacts on the children. That is key. As I think we have all agreed today, this is about moving the child to the centre of what we are doing and focusing on their needs.

We do not need to increase conflict; we want to minimise that as best we can. Where we can help people to have a more conducive family environment, that has to be key, because conflict between parents puts children at a greater risk of anxiety, depression and antisocial behaviour, but when children continue to have positive relationships with both parents, they are more likely to do better at school, stay out of trouble, have higher self-esteem and develop healthier relationships as an adult. That was part of the “Impact of Family Breakdown on Children’s Well-Being” evidence review, so that is the context in which we have to view the changes. How do we support those young children going forward? How do we do the best for them?

That is why we have invested some £14 million in the Help and Support for Separated Families initiative, which has various parts to it: the Sorting out Separation online information tool; the HSSF mark; telephony training to promote parental collaboration; and the innovation fund. On the Sorting out Separation service, we have looked at how many people are using that and going on to the website. Some 205,000 visitors have accessed it since it was launched, 120,000 of those being unique visitors. That is close to what we had hoped for, and not to the numbers mentioned by the hon. Member for Edinburgh East.

[Esther McVey]

I have spoken to people who use the site, and I have been on the site myself. There is a lot of information that people can get from it, and there are names and links to the various organisations that they might want to go to. It is not a site where people would do everything at once. They would jot the names down, follow up what they want to, and speak to friends and to other people who would signpost them to the relevant places. What I am explaining is that people do not need to link through; they could get all the information just by going through the site. However, the actual linking through is nearly double what the hon. Member for Edinburgh East said; it is over 9,000. I think we need to look at this in the round. Could people get all the information they want? Could they go back to Google and put in the names that they got from that website? Yes, they could. There are different things that people can go to via that website.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Although I would acknowledge that people might want to go back and do it later, one test of a good website—anybody who is designing one or using one will look at this—is whether it is click-through, and how many people do that. Opening up the website up is not sufficient. Why would we think, “It is all right; we expect people to write it all down, and then type it all in,” when it would be just as quick to go through and get that information? Surely the Minister has to look at that and say, “This may be failing.”

[Esther McVey]

As I said, I have talked to people I know who have used the site, and I have used it myself. The number of click-throughs is nearly double what has been claimed. Equally, it is a usable site in its current form, and people can get all the information that they want from it, then and there. People might reflect and, later on, type all the information into a Google search, so I do not necessarily follow the logic that everybody straight away would have to click through. I have done research among people who have used it, and they did not feel that they needed to do it that way. We are measuring all those who have accessed the site, unique visitors and click-throughs.

We have already begun work on improvements and enhancements to the site. One of those, which my right hon. Friend the Minister for Pensions talked about, was optimising the service online, making it easier for people to reach out and go to that website. Search engine optimisation also means that users can find the relevant pages without necessarily going via the homepage. More people are coming to Sorting out Separation, clicking beyond the homepage and spending more time on specific pages. If they are spending more time on specific pages, that shows that the information has reached out and is speaking to them, and that they are taking more time to read what is on the page.

There are now over 350 HSSF mark holders; the overwhelming majority of those have been awarded the mark via our five umbrella organisations, which is a real indication that the appetite for the mark remains high, and we continue to receive applications from organisations that wish to be assessed. It is particularly reassuring to see the diversity of organisations keen to carry the mark, and the range of excellent support and expertise for families. I want to pay tribute to all the organisations that do valuable work to support families at what can be, as we all know, a very distressing time.

On the question of promotion, mark holders have told us that they are best placed to promote the mark to their clients. It is encouraging that these organisations want to support the HSSF initiative, and we are working closely with them through regular forums to develop a promotion strategy that can take into account the pivotal role that they play in targeting properly the promotion activity, in explaining to parents what the mark stands for and what to look out for, and in parents knowing what they are getting when they see that mark.

The HSSF telephony training is designed to make sure that separated parents get consistent information, messaging and onward support. It is not a network in the traditional sense of one phone line supported by one piece of infrastructure, but over 300 agents have received the tailored training, meaning that the benefits of collaboration can be promoted to parents, regardless of which of the partner organisations’ helplines parents choose to use.

The bulk of the HSSF investment—some £10 million—is being spent on the innovation fund to support separated families, with the aim of helping parents who are going through separation to work together to resolve that conflict. The 17 projects have collectively engaged with 53,500 parents up to September 2014. The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) asked whether we were reaching out to those who have been separated longest, who might have the most trying of relationships, and yes, indeed, that is what we are trying to do. We have gone for really innovative projects, looking for greater engagement. Those are the kinds of people whom we will look to help. The hon. Lady also asked about a specific case. I am happy to get my officials to look at that case, see what is happening, and see how we can resolve that issue.

Hon. Members will know that one of the projects, the family decision making service, funds three key Scotland-based organisations to work much more closely together to enable parents to get help on the wide range of issues that they face during separation. For example, a father recently called Children 1st in Scotland for help. He wanted to know about his rights, and to find out what he should do with regards to arranging contact with his son. Children 1st advised him of the family decision making service and asked if he wished for further advice. The father agreed that he did, and he was transferred to the Scottish Child Law Centre, after which the organisations worked together to provide the help that he needed on all the issues that he faced.

This is what we are trying to do—to get all the agencies working together to best provide the support that is needed. In these instances, the information that we are getting back is that the system has helped. People have managed to follow a clear process and have got the result that they needed. This method of transfer ensured that the father I referred to did not need to repeat himself, and that all the elements of the situation were dealt with through one joined-up service. As a result, the father said that he left feeling clear about his options and very confident about setting up an amicable, family-based parenting arrangement that covered finance and his contact arrangements with his son. Those are the outcomes that we want to pursue and obtain. We want people to be able to follow the path that that family followed, although we know that everyone’s circumstances are different.

As part of these interventions, most projects try to work with parents to establish parenting arrangements, which include child maintenance. Measuring the success of the projects in helping parents to establish those types of arrangements will form part of the evaluation. Evaluation will be crucial to determining the learning from the projects, and we are in the process of procuring an external evaluator to ensure that there is an independent assessment of the projects. The independent evaluator will assess the performance of each project separately, and those results will be published after the projects close and sufficient time has passed to analyse and assess performance. We do, however, have some good news stories about what has happened so far to help families.

[Sheila Gilmore]

The Minister appears to be telling us that the process of finding an evaluator is still ongoing. Can she say how close that is to being done? We are virtually in November, and many of the projects are due to finish at the end of March next year; that is a very short time in which to carry out an evaluation, and it is very unusual to be evaluating so late in the process, not having set up the arrangement in advance. Is it true that part of the reason for the hold-up was the Department for Work and Pensions having concerns about data protection? Will it be possible to scale up the projects in any sensible way soon after March next year?

[Esther McVey]

I can tell the hon. Lady that we will provide further details as part of our overall evaluation strategy, which we expect to publish by the end of this year.

I was giving details of what was working, what we know is happening and various innovative projects. For example, a Birmingham project run by Malachi recently worked very closely with both the mother and the father of a boy who had been excluded from school because of bad behaviour, and who had not seen his father in three years. Now, following the intervention, the father spends time with his son regularly and contributes financially to the child’s household, and the child’s teacher has confirmed that his behaviour at school has dramatically improved. That is what we want to happen. Those are the outcomes that we want.

Of course this is about finances; we know that. The CSA was not necessarily providing that. We need to work with families and the child’s surroundings more generally, and get the father seeing the son. We need the son not to be excluded from school and to have better attendance, which will allow him a better education and support him later in life. It is right that a key strategy and raison d’être of this Government is fighting child poverty, and fighting poverty full stop. How do we go about that? It is through education. It is about getting people into work. It is about supporting the family. All these things have to be key, and not just now, for those parents who have made their decision. They have brought a child into the world; how do we as a society protect that child? That is the only way to prevent poverty.

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[Esther McVey]

As I said, we will provide further information on that, and hon. Members will have that by the end of the year.

A point was raised about the 38% drop in applications. Of course we felt that there would be a drop, but not that great. However, as the application fees have been in effect for less than four months, it would be imprudent to draw any meaningful conclusions from the early data—the data that we have so far. The Department will continue to monitor the rates of application to the 2012 scheme, but the correct time frame in which to consider the effects of the reforms will be in the 30-month review. That is what we have to continue to do. The overall objectives and aims were set out in our strategy, in the bids. That is what we are looking for. Of course the projects will be evaluated and monitored. As I said, we are hoping to bring that information to the House by the end of the year.

In addition to the help and support for separated families, it will be helpful to touch on the support available as part of our reforms to child maintenance. We know that after a relationship breakdown, most parents still want what is best for their children. It is increasingly the norm for parents to be doing what is right by their children and contributing to the children’s upbringing, even if they do not live with them any more. Central to our reforms of the child maintenance system is our belief that turning to the statutory service need not be the default position for all families. We do not believe that Government intervention in setting up a child maintenance arrangement is either necessary or beneficial in the majority of cases. It not only puts an unnecessary barrier between parents, but can increase conflict and reduce the incentive for them to work together.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I am grateful to the Minister for reiterating the Government’s position, which is what we have heard ever since the proposals were put into the Bill that became the Welfare Reform Act 2012. The aims are very clear. The issue is: is that happening? Is it working? Is the kind of support and advice that has been set up scalable? Are there any plans to fund this beyond next March?

[Esther McVey]

I will come to those points, but I believe that it is important that we put in context what we are doing, who we believe should be sorting out the arrangements and how best we can help these families—the mum and the dad—to put the arrangements in place. That is why we believe that family-based child maintenance arrangements are often the best option, and we want to encourage and support families to achieve those. We also recognise that separated parents will need a service that helps them to consider all their options in the light of the introduction of charging for the statutory child maintenance system and the process to close Child Support Agency cases, so, since November, the child maintenance options service has also become the gateway to the statutory child maintenance service. The gateway is flexible and personalised to each individual. It uses the same empathetic approach and is designed to ensure that parents can consider the full range of options, including making family-based child maintenance arrangements.

Where appropriate, the child maintenance options service promotes the benefits of making a family-based arrangement with parents, helps them to overcome the barriers that they face to working together, and provides them with the tools to make effective arrangements. The service also continues to signpost to other specialist sources of support.

The Government are committed to helping and supporting the family, which is why the HSSF initiative and child maintenance reforms are a key part of our overall social justice strategy. As part of that, we are bringing relationship support policy into one Department, with the DWP investing £30 million to deliver successfully marriage preparation, couples counselling and relationship education.

We will take forward recommendations from the family stability review. We will introduce perinatal pilots to provide information to expectant couples about the impact that having a baby will have on their relationship, as well as strategies on how to address conflict. All of that is part of a journey—having a family, and understanding those extra pressures and what will happen in a way that maintains family stability. The hope is that parents will not get to the point at which they are looking to separate and have to deal with the fallout from that. All this has to be part of an ongoing strategy.

We have also announced our plans for local family offer trials—

Affordable Homes Bill

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Friday 5th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Tony Baldry]

I am. I am quoting from the BBC. I can read. It states:

“MPs approve annual welfare cap in Commons vote.”

[Interruption.] Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would rather I did not read this and remind the House of the reality, but I think we ought to share it:

“MPs have overwhelmingly backed plans to introduce an overall cap on the amount the UK spends on welfare each year. Welfare spending, excluding the state pension and some unemployment benefits, will be capped next year at £119.5 billion. The idea, put forward by Chancellor George Osborne in last week’s Budget, would in future see limits set at the beginning of each Parliament. With Labour supporting the idea, the measure was approved in the House of Commons by 520 to 22 votes…The cap will include spending on the vast majority of benefits, including pension credits, severe disablement allowance, incapacity benefits, child benefit, both maternity and paternity pay, universal credit and housing benefit…Under the proposed system, if a government wanted to spend more on one area of the welfare state it would have to compensate by making cuts elsewhere, to stay within the overall cap.”

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Sir Tony Baldry]

Let me finish this point and then I will gladly give way to the hon. Lady.

My hon. Friend the Minister intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) to say that the Government and Department have costed this Bill at £1 billion. Could that calculation and the arithmetic that supports it be put in a written answer in Hansard, and the figures placed in the Library so that we can all see them? This is important because it follows a decision the whole House took overwhelmingly earlier this year that if this Bill for example, costs £1 billion, then £1 billion of cuts must be made elsewhere in the welfare budget.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Tony Baldry]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The whole House must recognise that when we debate issues of welfare, we cannot pretend that we did not collectively, and by a very large majority, vote for the welfare cap.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I heard one of the right hon. Gentleman’s colleagues on the radio this morning saying that there is no problem for disabled people and others affected by this because discretionary housing payments would cover it. Leaving aside the fact that I know full well that such payments do not cover everyone, if they did, it would balance out anyway. Why incur the additional administrative costs, as well as putting people through the anxiety of applying for discretionary housing benefits, if his colleagues think that the money is there anyway? Why not simply exempt those people and make it much simpler?

[Sir Tony Baldry]

If I recall correctly the hon. Lady was one of those who voted for the welfare cap. Discretionary allowances have been working. Indeed, the constituency of the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich still has discretionary grant to spare.

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[Sir Tony Baldry]

The right hon. Gentleman is a little selective in his use of figures. The previous Government were in office for 13 years, and had they not built houses in all those years, we would have been in serious difficulty. As a consequence of the economic mess they got the country into, during their final years in office and during the early part of the recession—the hangover of the recession overlapped with our being elected—the construction industry was in dire straits. I am glad to say that, wherever I go in my patch, I see signs saying “Bricklayers wanted” outside building sites. The construction industry tells me that it finds it very difficult to get the people with the skills it needs because the building boom, with new housing going up, is running apace, thanks largely to the policies pursued by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in turning the economy around.

I should get back to the central point to which I wish to draw the House’s attention. The experience of the pathfinder areas of the local housing allowance led to the previous Government legislating for a national roll-out from 7 April 2008. The local housing allowance measure was contained in the Welfare Reform Act 2007 and associated regulations.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Tony Baldry]

I am sure the hon. Lady will have the opportunity to make her own speech in her own time.

Local housing allowance was rolled out nationally for new claimants in the deregulated private sector from 7 April 2008. The Library note makes it clear that local housing allowance

“is paid at the standard rate to the tenant based on the size of the accommodation they are deemed to need, e.g. a couple with no children would receive the LHA based on a one-bedroom property.”

I suspect that that is exactly the same provision as now applies to tenants in social housing.

Jobcentre Plus

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

The other side of the question of what is being measured is the lack of any measurement and follow-up on people who are not moving into work—it appears that no record is kept. A large number of people flow off benefit, but not only do they not flow into sustainable employment, they appear not to flow into employment at all.

[Dame Anne Begg]

I think people would be surprised to learn that Jobcentre Plus does not routinely record the reason why someone leaves benefit. As far as JCP is concerned, because the primary focus is on benefit off-flows, the important thing is that the person is no longer on a job-seeking benefit. However, as my hon. Friend says, why are they no longer on a benefit? It could be because they have a new job—that is what we hope—and it is possible that they have transferred to a different benefit because they have become ill, but they might be in prison or have gone into the black economy. We do not know, and nor does JCP because it does not gather that information or track claimants’ destinations. We think it is important that JCP does that in order to judge how efficient and effective its work is.

At some point, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, off-benefit is likely to cease to make much sense as a performance measure, particularly with the introduction of universal credit. I think Members agree that a system that merges out-of-work benefits and in-work tax credits, and in which benefits taper off gradually as earnings increase, would be a huge step forward. That is what universal credit is intended to do, but it will require creative thinking from the Government about new performance measures for JCP.

The Department says that it will think about how to formulate such measures once universal credit is implemented—whenever that is going to be. We think that it should be thinking about and testing them now, not leaving it until much later. Even if universal credit continues to slow down, the Committee certainly thinks that the development of a new measure is worth while anyway, whether in conjunction with universal credit or not. The Department must pilot more meaningful performance measures that track JCP’s effectiveness at getting people into work and helping them to stay there for the long term. I hope that the Minister can reassure us that the Government understand the importance of achieving longer-term positive employment outcomes.

Another part of our report that has received quite a lot of attention—perhaps because many Members have experience of it in their constituencies—is Jobcentre Plus’s use of sanctions. There is an inherent tension in what JCP does, between helping and supporting people to find work on the one hand, and, on the other, enforcing strict rules, including financial penalties for claimants deemed not to be trying hard enough to find work. Such is the everyday experience of the Jobcentre Plus adviser and the job-seeking benefit claimant, and it can make for an uneasy relationship.

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[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. It is always a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), who is a first class Chairman of our Select Committee. It is to her credit that she looks at these issues in such detail and manages to ensure that we have a reasonably fair debate across both sides of the House.

The issue has been well put forward and well summarised. One challenge in debates such as this is that a Select Committee report is inevitably a glass half empty rather than half full. Select Committees are not there to look at what is going well; by and large, they hold the Government to account and consider what is not working.

In many ways, it is not being forcefully said that jobcentres and Jobcentre Plus work remarkably well. The hon. Lady said that the National Audit Office stated that they provide value for money and we need to listen to that, because the NAO does not often dish out praise. We need to remember that and give the Jobcentre Plus offices the proportional support and credit that they deserve. It is with regret that I say that many jobcentres are on strike today. However, I am pleased to report that in Newton Abbot we are open for business.

As has been mentioned, the key role for Jobcentre Plus is administering working-age benefit—that is its first purpose—and providing public employment services for the unemployed, and it seems to me that it does well on both counts. Let me discuss first its role as an employment service. It needs to do three things: effectively advise and support those looking for work; ensure that claimants fulfil their responsibility to look for work; and support an efficient and flexible labour market, matching employees to jobs.

As I said, the NAO stated that the Jobcentre Plus organisations delivered value for money and that they responded efficiently to policy changes. I note, as a Committee member, that there are concerns about universal credit, because—steady as she goes—it will be a major change. None the less, the NAO must have been aware of that when producing its report. It was also positive about the ability of Jobcentre Plus to respond to fluctuating numbers, which is a real challenge: managing resource, particularly the numbers that are going to change as the benefits system changes, is a challenge. Again, the NAO was complimentary—and in a time of recession, when Jobcentre Plus would be expected to be under significant pressure.

On Jobcentre Plus’s aim of being an employment service, let me look at the issue of effectively providing advice and support. Much of what the Committee Chairman said is right; there is a need for some sort of tool to ensure that those who really need help the most get it. In our debate, we talked not just about more help for those furthest away from the workplace, but about trying to save time in respect of those who will clearly find it easy to find a job. There was discussion about some people getting lots of face-time support, although they did not need it, and about using that time better for those who are much more needy.

The problem is, however, that if there is no tool at the outset to enable people to work out who needs what, those details are difficult to find out. I support what the Chairman said: we need to look properly at such a tool. The Government have considered the matter, but at the moment we have no clarity about what they are doing and what the options are. We need to know, because it is an important issue, and not only from an economic point of view. Why spend time and resource on those who least need it, when those who need it are not being best helped to get to the workplace?

The Chairman’s second point on advice and support was about the particular challenge of employment and support allowance claimants—particularly those in the work-related activity group, those with fluctuating conditions and those with mental health problems. In a sense, whatever tool we come up with, that group clearly needs particular support. There should at least be some means of identifying that group and considering what we can do for it, because as a Committee we share a concern that the work-related activity group is incredibly wide. It probably would be better to narrow it, if we could find a better way to make decisions about which of the three groups individuals fall into.

On the plus side, the feedback that we received about support—the Get Britain Working tool, which contains six schemes—suggested that it was working well. That is a positive.

I am particularly concerned that youngsters—and, indeed, those who have been made redundant and seek to enter the marketplace again—should have the opportunity to consider self-employment. The all-party group on micro-businesses, of which I am chair, did a piece of work looking at all the Work programme providers, to see how many were able to help people start up their own businesses. It found that fewer than half were.

Certainly, from the feedback that we have received, and my experience with the jobcentre in my constituency, there is now a significant amount of support to help people set up their own businesses. Indeed, specialist advisers are doing that in my local jobcentre. That is positive. There are good stories of people who have set up some interesting, innovative new businesses.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Obviously, there has been a big increase in the number of people who have become self-employed in recent years and there are a lot of advantages for people in being self-employed. However, does the hon. Lady share my concern that the average earnings of self-employed people have substantially dropped over that period? There is a danger that, although some people are regarded as being off benefit because they have gone into self-employment, self-employment is poorly remunerating them.

[Anne Marie Morris]

Having set up and run my own business, I know just how hard it is. Nobody here would say that setting up a business is the way—for most of us—to become a millionaire; there will be one or two, but by and large it is a real challenge and the income from doing so, certainly in the early years, cannot be compared to what people might get later. However, it is much better, both psychologically and economically, to be in work, whether self-employment or employment. I do not really share the hon. Lady’s concerns.

The Chairman mentioned the claimant fulfilling their responsibilities. Overall, the claimant commitment, which I believe has been entered into by 600,000 individuals, is positive. I think we all agree that that is a good thing, because it provides a feeling of self-worth, and because more people should be in work than not in work—quite apart from the economic issue. If there is better understanding between the claimant and the adviser about what exactly is involved, without a sense that it is a choice or option to be on benefits, that is the right thing by the taxpayer and by the individual. That is a positive step, of which the Government should be proud.

Of more concern to me and the Chairman, on the issue of those who have agreed with an adviser what steps they might take to get back into the workplace, is the sanctioning process. The Select Committee met a number of individuals for whom the process simply had not worked, and that is certainly reflected in the constituents who come to my surgeries. That issue cannot be ignored, and it needs to be sorted out. I agree with the Chairman on that point.

From all the evidence we took from Ministers and officials, I get a sense that, although we might not have the clarity we want on exactly what sort of review might take place—it might not be the type we want—the Government recognise the problem and want to do something about it. It will be interesting to hear from the Minister exactly what she is doing and why she thinks it will be the best way of resolving the problem.

The very fact that the Government listened and introduced the new exemption on the homeless, so that the sanctioning process would not operate in the draconian and, in many ways, wrong way that it has, is a good thing. There is a recognition—much to the credit of Shelter, who I think put forward the campaign—that the homeless have particular problems in getting to appointments, because they do not have a home and all the facilities that those with homes enjoy.

Another aspect of Jobcentre Plus is its role as an employment service. Clearly, one of the main things it needs to do is provide a flexible labour market. The Chairman sensibly referred to the challenges of the Universal Jobmatch programme. I found it interesting to listen to both sides of the debate on that. It is clear that the organisation that operates it is, as she said, welcome to look at changes and improvements to ensure that it functions better, but I will be very surprised if I hear the Minister telling us anything other than, “The Government are on the case and the tool must work appropriately.”

One concern, expressed by some of the witnesses, is the challenge of getting a greater range of jobs on the system. Without that range, we will not be able to meet the needs of all the different jobseekers. A little bit of marketing needs to be done to ensure that employers up and down the different sectors and sizes of business see Universal Jobmatch as a useful tool. We had evidence from a couple of individuals who said that it was a fantastic tool that saved them money in recruiting and delivered able people, willing to work, who they would not have otherwise found. People came to us to say that it is a good tool.

The other challenge is on trying to make the tool more accessible and attractive to the smaller business. The bigger business, in a sense, understands these systems—they have human resources departments and it all makes sense. For very small SMEs, it is a different ball game. We all know that much of the growth and recruitment is in that area, so we need to find a way to attract more smaller businesses to use Universal Jobmatch. The Chairman referred to the challenge with jobs that have been filled, spoof jobs and so on. My understanding is that the Government are already looking at that, but she is right that the issue is serious and needs to be addressed.

Another thing that Jobcentre Plus administers is working-age benefit. Despite the NAO report, there are clear concerns about resource and whether the universal credit and the influx of people who have been unsuccessful on the Work programme—and have to be placed on community work places, found training courses or asked to sign on daily—will increase the work load. It will be interesting to hear the Minister’s prediction of the additional need for resource. How can that be met in a flexible way?

At the end of the day, one of the important things in administering a working-age benefits system is to ensure that it works. One of the Chairman’s key points was that if we are simply measuring the number of people off benefit, which is how it works now, we are not getting any insight into where those who are no longer claiming have gone. At the end of the day, we are trying to get people into jobs or self-employment, rather than just getting them off benefit.

Clearly, there are challenges, but I am hopeful that the Minister will explain what those are and why there is a reluctance to look at them. If a system is about trying to get people into employment, we need to have a measure that shows that people have got into employment.

Overall, Jobcentre Plus works extremely well and, frankly, it is to the credit of all parties—the system has been going for some time—that it does work so well. Although we need to address some of the challenges for the minority who use it, we must never forget the strength of what we have.

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[Nigel Mills]

That is exactly the problem—how we motivate engagement on both sides, which we will need with universal credit and any in-work conditionality. We have to find a way of gathering reliable data. It is similar to a high-level instinct, or perhaps real-time information will provide something. Perhaps the RTI feed will show that the person is still in employment or even at the same employer—if we wanted to track the data that far back—but that looks to be a pretty clunky and limited way of checking things. Unless there are flags that show when employment has stopped, flagging it back to the jobcentre, we would not know that people had ceased to be in sustained employment, perhaps meeting the 12 or 26-week target, or whatever was set in that situation. I am not sure that there is an easy solution to anything, but for us to find a set of targets and work routes that work in such a situation will be important to how the jobcentre role develops.

The next area that I want to touch on is one that was topical last summer, when we started the inquiry: what happens to people when their two years on the Work programme finishes and they become the jobcentre’s responsibility again. This time last year, I remember speaking to the staff at my local jobcentre and they were not entirely sure what they were going to be doing with people in that situation when the first Work programme cohorts finished. Jobcentres have an important role to play, because we are talking about people who have not got a job in their first year of unemployment and who then got through the Work programme for two years and have not found sustained work. We could expect them to need some intensive support, but it is a little hard to see that jobcentres would be geared up for that, having not been doing it for people in that key two-year period previously. So what would we do with them?

Last week, I was pleased to meet a new subcontractor, Acorn, which is in Derbyshire dealing with what I think are now called community work placements, a new set of rolled-out private sector providers offering a different type of Work programme service that is not the Work programme and does something subtly different. I confess that the procurement of the service and how we chose the providers has passed me by, but in the east midlands, for example, we have G4S. Luckily for the east midlands in some ways, it is not one of the Work programme providers, because we have a completely separate, third firm in Derbyshire to do things. We have, however, found a sensible programme of community placements that are not meant to be free labour for unscrupulous private sector operators, but are meant to be getting people who have gone through three years of support finding something that at least gets them used to working normal working hours and some skills on their CV, making them more employable.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Obviously, it is early days to know how the post-Work programme arrangements are working, but a complaint of many of my constituents about the Work programme was that it was not particularly intensive. If anything, it was very light touch—“Come in every seven or eight weeks”, and sometimes the only contact was by phone. It seemed to concentrate everything on CV writing and applying for jobs. If the more intensive approach is important, should it not be starting much earlier than three years into unemployment?

[Nigel Mills]

I agree. I was trying to explore with G4S when I had that meeting with it and Acorn exactly what the financial remuneration was for successful outcomes under the community work placement, and how that compared with the rewards under the Work programme for some of the harder-to-deal-with people who are further from the labour market. I was trying to work out whether we could expect Work programme providers to do such work placements if they had someone whom they were struggling with on the Work programme. Is there a need to tweak the contracts or to change the incentives slightly? We could try to get such support provided during the two years, not after the two years. For some reason, they were not totally inclined to give me a clear answer on those numbers. Perhaps it was the wrong time to ask them.

It is always about the sequencing of things—how do we step up the intensity of support at the right time? I am sure that we want a system in which if somebody really needs the most intensive support, they get it early in the process, rather than one in which we see how long we can demoralise them before we give them what they probably needed in the first place.

It is intriguing. When looking at the role of the jobcentre we thought, perhaps slightly competitively, that we had a real chance to prove that where a Work programme provider has failed, the jobcentre can help people and sort the situation out. But we have ended up with another outsourced programme. Does that suggest that in many ways we do not feel that the jobcentre’s role is to provide any intensive support to people—that its role is enforcement plus some coaching in the early days and some relatively light-touch support? I am not saying that that is my view, but it appears now that for every situation we come across we find a different outsourced programme.

Finally I want to touch on Universal Jobmatch and the role of IT. I see Universal Jobmatch as a great success. I played with the old job search system in jobcentres and looking at the new one it is clearly much easier to use—for example, people can work it at home—and looks like the right direction of travel. I share the hope that Monster has managed to fix the problem of the artificial, unethical or non-existent job placements that had been going on to Jobmatch, to try to make it as effective a system as possible. I suspect that there is no way that these things can be perfect, and that people will always be able to get through any filters to put rogue jobs on, so it is a matter of how effectively we can monitor the service and get those taken off once they are found. But clearly the problem should not have been on the scale that it got to.

As for IT, having enough computers in jobcentres—and enough staff to support people using them—is quite important, especially when we are requiring IT job searches and will sanction people who do not do them. The library in Heanor, a town in my seat, had to close for reasons of maintenance—or the lack of it—and we lost the IT provision in the town centre. It then became quite hard for claimants who did not have IT access at home and had lost their library. Trying to convince the jobcentre that it needed to find at least some temporary solution to get IT provision back into the town and to support people while the library was finding an alternative site was not as easy as I might have liked it to be.

I suspect the vision for modern jobcentres is for them to have lots of computer terminals so that IT job searches are perfectly possible. I know that one of the jobcentres in my seat was down for an early upgrade to get extra IT, but we need to make sure that every jobcentre has IT provision. If we are expecting people to use the service themselves and will sanction them if they do not, we have to make IT facilities available to them.

We can do more with the Universal Jobmatch system, as the Chair of the Select Committee remarked earlier. We ought to be looking to see whether we can make all the data on it flow two ways. Surely it can be a great tool. If someone has put their CV on it and has applied for 100 jobs but has never, ever been put forward into the best 50 applicants—or whatever number get prioritised—for the employer to see, that must surely say to somebody that that person’s CV is not good enough and they either need to produce a better one, or they need to have some training urgently to get more skills to put on it, or they are applying for completely the wrong jobs.

There ought to be a way of using the system to spot that some individual jobseekers need that kind of support—a better CV or some more skills—or perhaps even to spot that, say, there have been no jobs within a 20-mile radius that match the skills on a person’s CV in the last year, so there is no point in them keeping on applying for things that they are not going to get. That could then create a flag back to their jobcentre adviser, to say, “Something needs to happen with this person.” If we can find innovative ways of using the system to provide extra support—rather than just forcing people to go on it and mandating them to do so many job applications, some of which they are not too enthused about anyway—we might get a far better result for the investment we have made than if it is used purely as a job search tool.

Overall, the conclusion of the report is clearly that jobcentres do great work and have an important role. To share my own experience, when I have held jobs fairs in my seat the two jobcentres have been extremely helpful in getting employers and jobseekers there. They are working practically to try to tackle the problem, which is a pleasure to see in my seat.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess, and to speak on this very important matter.

One thing that has come out of this report, and has been clear in speeches from across the Chamber, is a recognition that in fact on the whole jobcentres are doing a good job and should be retained for the purposes that they have. A few years ago there was some uncertainty about that. I know that the coming of the Work programme and the change of Government meant that some people—particularly people working in jobcentres—were concerned that the jobcentre’s role could be ended.

Things had already changed substantially in jobcentres. The bad old days—going into a grim office with rows of chairs that were firmly battened down to the ground so that they could not be lifted, to talk through a glass screen to somebody who was behind that glass screen in case someone became extremely angry—had been replaced by an attempt at a more informal atmosphere. People were sitting at a table with their adviser rather than the adviser being on one side and the person using the service on the other, which had felt quite hostile. In some quarters there is concern that taking a heavy approach, through some of the things that I suggest have been happening, could bring that sort of atmosphere back. That would be regrettable. I very much want us not to go back to those days.

Despite some of the remarks that get thrown about in other debates—particularly when we are in the main Chamber—I think we all share the aim of wanting as many people as possible to have the opportunity of employment; we also want to avoid a situation in which people are having long spells of unemployment. It has never been my party’s policy to want people to be unemployed or to think that that is in any way a good thing. Indeed, I have campaigned and argued—and marched, in the past—precisely because we see it as a bad thing. We know it is bad for people’s income, and therefore for their well-being in lots of ways. It is also bad for their mental health and well-being, and their feeling of being a valued part of society. There are a whole host of reasons why we want to see low unemployment.

My party recognises—and again, I hope it might be a shared recognition—that employment is a necessary but not always a sufficient way to get a decent standard of living. That has been one of the differences. It is a simple argument that if people get into employment, all will be well, but, as we have seen of late, that is not necessarily the case with very low-income work and the problems that come with that.

Where we differ sometimes is on the means of achieving the end. That perhaps arises partly from the different perspective there sometimes seems to be about why people are unemployed and their attitude towards employment. Neither the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) nor the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) made this sort of comment, but sometimes there is a feeling that the assumption is that there are plenty of jobs out there—in many areas, there are not—and if only people would get a bit of backbone, which we can give them by whipping them into line, they would no longer be unemployed.

I would argue that that is not the case. An interesting piece of research has been published on universal credit. There was a very early survey of two groups of people: one of people who were about to be claimants of universal credit—it was in its very early days—and one of claimants of jobseeker’s allowance. They were matched for similar areas, ages and experience, and they showed remarkably similar attitudes. There were asked whether it was better to be employed than not employed and so on. I do not think there is a fundamental difference of opinion.

The Select Committee’s report is a serious attempt to find ways of improving performance. In its initial response, the Government seemed to be less than sympathetic to some parts of it, but I hope that as we move forward there may be an opportunity to take such matters into account.

The Chair of the Select Committee spoke at length about what the performance targets should be, and the measure of performance being benefit off-flow. We know, and I think the DWP knows that only some of those who leave benefit go into employment. There is a whole host of reasons why people may leave benefit without going into employment. A few retire because they reach retirement age. Some lose their entitlement to benefit but do not necessarily become employed. After 26 weeks on contributory JSA, people cease to be entitled to it if they do not qualify for income-related JSA. Many people will not qualify for income-related JSA because they are living with someone who is in employment, even if it is only part-time employment. If there is a source of income in the household they will cease to be entitled to benefit. They may be off benefit, but they will not necessarily have progressed into work.

It is significant that the unemployment figures produced by the Office for National Statistics and the figures for claimant count are moving quite widely apart. Of those who are unemployed on the unemployment count, 47% are not in receipt of an out-of-work benefit. We are talking about almost 1 million people because the number who are unemployed is still over 2 million—2.1 million people are still unemployed according to the general definition of unemployment.

It is tempting for people to say that the claimant count is down in their area, and for Ministers to say that the claimant count is down in someone else’s area, but there is a serious issue with people who are not being counted. Not only are they not being counted, they are not being helped. We should deal with the serious issue of why the gap is growing. There are other reasons. Some people on employment and support allowance lose that allowance after a year if they are in the work-related activity group. They may be off benefit, but they are not receiving assistance towards resuming employment.

When ESA was introduced, the previous Government commissioned an ongoing survey of those found fit for work. It looked at a group of people after three months and after a year. The significant finding was that 43% of those who had been found fit for work after a year were neither in employment nor on an out-of-work benefit. I do not know whether things have got better or worse. I do not know where those people are now and whether they eventually got fit and found work, or found themselves back on ESA—I suspect that that was the case for many of them—and DWP does not know either. That research did not go further than that and was not recommissioned. If we do not have such information, we have no way of telling whether policies are helping or working.

As I said during a debate I had on employment and support allowance, I suspect that quite a lot of people are not getting better and their health is not improving, and that they reclaim ESA sooner or later. That may be an explanation for the fact that the total number of those on that benefit has not fallen as much as the fit-for-work decisions. There is a mismatch there.

That ties in with some of the other things we have said here about jobcentres and DWP’s attitude to following through what happens to people, and we should look at that. Even if it becomes easier in future to track people in employment through things such as real-time information and, as the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) said, some of those who now go off benefit stay on benefit with the universal credit, those who come off benefit for other reasons are simply lost in the system.

That brings me to sanctions and pressure on people. It is not necessary to exaggerate the position because this is really happening to people and we all have examples. The fact that so often when people ask for a decision to be reconsidered, especially if they ask through their MP or an advice agency, that decision is often overturned, and overturned quite quickly, suggesting that something was wrong with the initial decision making. That must give pause for concern because if the initial decision making was right, that would not be happening. In the meantime, people are finding themselves without income. Their housing benefit, if they had it, will be suspended at the very least and they will have to contact that department to get it sorted out

What worries me is the people who do not come to us or to an advice agency. What happens to them? Many of them will not be aware of sources of help. I had a constituent who eventually came for help, but he had been sanctioned for six months. He had a learning disability that was not fully acknowledged by his family. He was not a young man—he was in his late 30s or early 40s—and he had just given up. He was not signing on. He would not have been receiving any money anyway, but he was no longer part of the system, and that is a worry. He had family. His pensioner parents were supporting him from their own limited income. He was not destitute or on the streets, so there was not that sort of high drama, but the family were struggling to support him. He had fallen out of the system because of his learning disability. That was why he had not done what he should have done and co-operated. Somehow, that was not picked up. We need to know how many such people there are.

Many people would be concerned that the pressure to get people off benefit also applies to people on ESA. We thought that eligibility for ESA was tested for. We all know about the issues surrounding the work capability assessment, but people who have gone through that, been awarded ESA and been placed in the work-related activity group are not, by definition, fit for work at the present time. They do not need to be hounded back into work because the system has said that they are not ready to go back into work. So why are so many of them being sanctioned?

The number of people on ESA who are being sanctioned is rising. The latest available figures are for December 2012 to December 2013 when there was a fourfold rise in the number of people in that position being sanctioned. The number rose from 1,102 a month to 4,789 a month, but that was not because there had been a similar increase in the number of people in that group, so we cannot just say it is the same number. The number of people in the work-related activity group had gone up by considerably less than that. Many of these people were sanctioned for failing to co-operate with the Work programme, and the number of people on ESA being referred to the Work programme seems to have been going down during the same period in which the number of sanctions have gone up. That is a matter of considerable concern, especially if these people are the least likely to get help and to be able to reinstate their benefit position and will be counted as some kind of success for a jobcentre. They are likely to be people with mental health problems or learning disabilities.

There are what are often regarded as scare stories, in some respects. Yesterday, an article in The Guardian had yet another apparent whistleblower from among Jobcentre Plus employees saying that their performance was indeed measured by the proportion of people they got off benefit, and that included people on ESA. This is not just a JSA matter. It may not be a specific target that is stuck up on a wall, but it is about the performance of that employee, and they are expected to get people off benefit, including people who, by definition and by test—who have already been through the work capability assessment—are not regarded as being fit for work, and I think that is a matter of considerable concern.

I hope that the Minister tells us that the Oakley report will be published shortly. We have been waiting for it now for some time and I understand that it has been completed. It was recognised that that report’s terms of reference were relatively limited, which is why the Select Committee asked for a more far-reaching report to look at such things as whether the sanctions actually work. Are they having the desired effect? If they are not, they become particularly pointless.

It is interesting that a report, called “Smarter Sanctions”, was published earlier this year by the Policy Exchange. The Policy Exchange is not known as a particularly left-wing or radical think-tank—at least in the left-wing sense; it is radical in other senses—and it, too, felt that there were real problems with the sanctioning system. I would not necessarily agree with some of its recommendations and conclusions, but it was clear that too many people were getting low-level sanctions—those might be just for one month, but one month, as my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams)said, is considerable when someone is on a very low income—and that they were given inappropriate sanctions and wrong decisions were made. Despite the fact that we are still waiting for the Government-commissioned report to come through, it is significant that that organisation has given voice to some concerns that people have. I hope that the fact it comes from that source would give it considerable weight.

The Select Committee recommended—and these Select Committee recommendations are unanimous—that the

“DWP take urgent steps to monitor the extent of financial hardship caused by benefit sanctions, including by collecting, collating and publishing data on the number of claimants ‘signposted’ to food aid by Jobcentres and the reasons”

for that. The Minister has to give a real explanation why that comparatively modest recommendation was rejected.

If the Government are right that, as they said in their response to our report:

“The use of food banks is not exclusive to benefit claimants”—

which it probably is not—and that it somehow has nothing whatever to do with welfare reform changes or sanctions, surely co-operating with the request to publish that kind of information might answer those points, so I would argue that doing so is in their interests as well.

Earlier speakers spoke about an issue that the Committee thought was important, which was the mismatch of aspiration and ability to deliver. A good proposal will often be made, such as that people, when they are first unemployed, should be given longer with an adviser. We all know that sometimes appointments with advisers are very short and they become routine—it is a matter of ticking the boxes and asking, “Have you done the right number of applications?”, without going into any real depth. Longer meetings sound very good, but there is a severe doubt whether they are feasible. The last speaker touched on that in relation to the arrangements that had been made when people came back from the Work programme. The sort of intensive help that is promised may not be feasible. If people are going to be asked to sign on every day, for example, how does that affect the rest of the jobcentre’s work? Will it be about someone just coming in, signing their name, and then going away again—in which case, how will it help? How will it improve the situation, unless it is intended to make people get fed up and give up? It is all very well to come up with these ideas, but we need to make them work, which may need a greater resource.

It is a sign of the failure of some of what we have been doing to date that so many people are coming off the Work programme and are still very far, it would appear, from employment. I think the employment Minister herself said, during one debate we had on the issue, that there were people in that situation who still had poor rates of literacy and numeracy, and one thing her Department wanted to do was to help those people overcome those obstacles. That is all well and good, but what has the Work programme been doing for two years, and indeed, what may well not have been happening before that?

It is a criticism of the Work programme that it really is not delivering what we were promised it would deliver. The criticisms made by many of my constituents have not necessarily been that they have been hounded. In some cases, it is almost the opposite: that it was very light touch, that they were not given much help and assistance, and that the idea of specialist help—I remember it was said that people would get help with health problems, debt problems, educational problems and skills problems—just is not happening. People are not able to get skills training and they are being told, “There isn’t the money to do that. We can’t afford to put you on that course. We can’t afford to pay for child care to let you go on that course and improve your chances of getting employed.”

The return of so many people, out of the Work programme, apparently still very far from being employable, is a very serious issue. As a Select Committee, we are looking at issues relating to people who have disabilities and long-term conditions and illnesses, and at what other things we could put in place for them. There is a concern that at jobcentre level, there are not enough specialists to help, and that the number of disability advisers is just not sufficient to help people at an early stage and not wait until very much later.

As I said, I hope that we will see further progress on many of the report’s recommendations, because if we share the same end, as I think we do, we have to will the means and the resources to make it happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

I appreciate the hon. Lady’s request, but she has just taken the question from the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). I will not be taking questions until I have finished responding to everything. I appreciate what she is doing, but I will continue.

We are also increasing technology: we will be delivering wi-fi across all jobcentres, with 6,000 new access devices. All that is key in helping to get record numbers of people into work.

Many Members mentioned segmentation, which is, of course, important and one of our aims. How do we support people best, help them and target support at them? We looked closely at the Australian jobseeker classification instrument and tested it against our own version in 2010. We found that it was not accurate enough at predicting whether someone would become long-term unemployed. For every accurate prediction, it made two wrong predictions. For that reason, it was better for us to pursue what we were doing and make our system better.

That is why we have done things such as introduce the claimant commitment. We are getting people ready for work straight away and really focusing on day-one support so that we can see whether someone needs extra IT support or NVQ maths and English training. That is what we are now doing from day one so that we understand people’s ability, or perhaps lack of ability, and how to support them.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Will the Minister give way?

[Esther McVey]

I presume that the hon. Lady wants to ask the question passed to her by her right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, but go on.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I do not.

[Esther McVey]

Well, he has tried everyone else.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I wanted to ask this: to what extent is the claimant commitment really a substitute for a segmentation tool? Is the Minister now saying that she has given up on looking at such a tool?

[Esther McVey]

Nobody has given up. That is the whole thing about welfare to work—we continue trying and we continue pilots, to see how we can best support people who need to have a job. No, the claimant commitment is not a substitute, but what we have brought in to give both sides greater certainty and it is working very well. It is also about empowering the individual who is looking for a job. Equally importantly, within it we can look at what the barriers are. They could be disability or health barriers, but we would modify the claimant commitment to reflect what somebody needs to do, so that it really is tailor-made for them.

What we have seen with the claimant commitment is that, despite what has been said today about how people who work at Jobcentre Plus feel, actual engagement and positivity within the work force has gone up by six percentage points. Again, that has to be praised, as well as being a positive step in the right direction.

Many people today have brought up the issue of sanctions. We all know that, as the right hon. Member for East Ham said, sanctions have always been a part of the benefit system, ever since it began. We know that there is a balance to be struck between providing support and expecting claimants to meet the conditions for receiving benefit. What the Government have done more than ever before is to increase that support. The number of traineeships has gone up in the past year—by more than 39%, I think. We have changed the rules and regulations, so that it is not only 16 hours that someone has to do for their traineeship; the figure can go up to 30 hours. We are looking at these practical, pragmatic steps that can be taken. We are doing all these things.

We also know that more than 70% of claimants say they are more likely to follow the benefit rules because of the sanctions that might be applied to them. So claimants themselves know that sanctions are key. Academic studies from across Europe show that when there is a sanctions system and regime, people remain in work for longer too. All these things are key in what we are doing.

[Sheila Gilmore]

The hon. Lady has just thrown in a statistic about attitudes of claimants, saying that 70% of people say that sanctions will make them do things differently. Is that part of some published research? Is it perhaps part of the research that we still have not seen? If so, when are we going to see it?

[Esther McVey]

I will give the hon. Lady a copy of that research, and there are other debates—various debates—in which it has been used. I will provide her with that information if she would find that helpful.

Most claimants do not get sanctioned. In an average month in 2013, around 5% of jobseeker’s allowance claimants and fewer than 1% of employment and support allowance claimants were sanctioned. We know that those people who follow the rules and take up all the support—

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

We do, indeed.

We are concentrating on the hardest to help and focusing our efforts on them. As I have said, the Work programme is part of that and we have seen the results from the 1.5 million people who have gone on it: 550,000 have had a job start and 300,000 of those are in sustained jobs. Equally, our Help to Work programme is helping another 200,000 people, whom our coaches will be working with to assess their needs and refer them to further intensive support, whether daily signing or community work placement, to find out what limiting factors are not helping them into work. Is greater support needed? Is it about employability skills? Do they need more work skills? Those are the things that we are really trying to get to grips with, understand and reach out further on. Early trailblazing of this approach shows that continuing this support has a long-term positive impact on claimants. Participants spent less time on benefit and more time in work over a 21-month period.

Many questions have been asked. I shall answer some of those asked by the right hon. Member for East Ham. We have talked about good cause and personalisation, the claimant commitment and extra support, and about the whistleblowers. Yes, the Prime Minister met the Trussell Trust, as did I. I have also been to my local food bank. We will all agree—there is no doubt—that those organisations are doing a good job, supporting people, but we have to look at the bigger implications for society as a whole, which is why it was right that the Prime Minister met the Trussell Trust. We know that it was set up in what was regarded as a boom time, when things were going well, before 2007. That was back in 2002 and the organisation increased tenfold, just as it was setting up, up to 2010. It went to the then Labour Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, asking, “Would you signpost?”, but the Labour Secretary of State said, “We will not”, because the Government did not want it growing even bigger and did not want to help people out, because it was growing on the ground. However, when it approached the Secretary of State in this Government, he said, “I will signpost people to those, if need be, because you need to help people as best you can.”

So many things come into play, as the people who run food banks say: understanding how to cook; prioritisation of bills; debt; and debt cards. So many things are tangled up with this issue that we have to educate and support people, as well as doing things right in an emergency. However, this Government and Jobcentre Plus are getting it right on taking the first step to get people out of poverty, by any standard and according to all parties in the House, because we are seeing record rates of people getting into work.

[Sheila Gilmore]

rose—

[Stephen Timms]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

I have always agreed. I have met the Trussell Trust in my area and the food bank. We decided that the Prime Minister should meet him to discuss the issues.

We are increasing the percentage rate for our processing and getting more people into work.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Will the Minister give way?

[Esther McVey]

I am afraid that I will not at the moment.

When we talk about a change in culture at Jobcentre Plus, about reputation and how people feel about doing their job, the response is that there has been a significant culture change, in that staff are, ever more than before, helping people who come through the door into training and into a job. With the claimant commitment, they are really personalising that support. Yes, there has been a culture change, for the benefit of everyone.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Is the Minister aware of considerable research evidence showing that people on low incomes are good at budgeting, and that her attitude—that many people need somehow to be taken by the hand and taught to do basic things, such as budgeting—is intensely patronising and quite unnecessary?

[Esther McVey]

I certainly do not believe that I have such an attitude. I disagree on that point.

The people who come into Jobcentre Plus need help and support, and we have been led by many of those who have been in debt and have not been so good at looking at their finances, for one reason or another. Perhaps some hon. Members in this Chamber have not always been great at looking at our budgets, or support, and may have been caught unawares, if not in work and if they had been expecting a wage and not had one. It does not matter whence you come; you can always have difficulties with finances, fall on tough times and be out of work.

I certainly do not have an attitude. I always say, “Don’t pass comment on anybody else. You haven’t walked 12 miles in their shoes,” and “There but for the grace of God go I.” I work on a completely different premise to the one suggested by the hon. Lady.

We are pushing ahead with changes to our welfare system and those changes are already paying off. We are rolling out universal credit. By 2016, all new benefit claimants will be for universal credit. The majority of existing claimants will move on to UC by 2017.

I thank the Chair of the Committee and praise all the people who work in our Jobcentre Plus offices.

Universal Credit

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The problem for the hon. Member for Rhondda is that his Government left behind a shambles in welfare—people unemployed, long-term unemployment rising, and youth unemployment rising dramatically—and there has never been an apology about that, or about crashing the economy.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State’s problem is that on numerous occasions over the past three or four years he has given the House and the Select Committee on Work and Pensions different versions of events. He told us that the project was on track and on budget, and he stated to the Select Committee in February that the business case would be approved by April. What is actually going on with universal credit? In what sense is what people are claiming any different from jobseeker’s allowance? Does he know what happens to people whose circumstances change, and is this really universal credit at all?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I do know, actually. As we go along, we are developing universal credit correctly and stably, so that it rolls out properly. To repeat, we are rolling it out for singles in the whole of the north-west; couples development is now rolling out; and family developments are to come. Towards the end of this year, we will have rolled out universal credit to the north-west. I must say that that is the right way to do it: to make sure that what we produce is safe and delivers what we say it will, unlike tax credits and other problems that we got from the previous Government. I would like to know what the hon. Lady really thinks about the failure of her Government to deliver any programme correctly or safely.