Universal Credit

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

The DWP is delivering the biggest welfare reforms for a generation, improving services for claimants and cutting costs concurrently. The objectives are: to control the costs of welfare; to get as many people as possible into or back to work; to strengthen incentives to work by making it pay; to support people who need welfare; and to be fair to the taxpayer. Benefits have been capped so that no household can receive more on out-of-work benefits than £26,000, which is what the average working family earns. That is still very generous, as many people in full-time employment do not earn as much as £26,000; we are talking about an equivalent of £500 a week for couples and those with children and £300 a week for single people. Housing benefit has also been capped so that benefit claimants face the same lifestyle decisions as other working people have to make—living where they can afford and limiting the size of their family to what they can afford.

The most radical reform is the introduction of universal credit, a new single benefit integrating income support, income-based jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance, housing benefit, child tax credit and working tax credit. At the heart of this hugely ambitious UC programme is the intention to make work always pay. The scale and complexity of administering UC cannot be overestimated, and its introduction will necessarily be incremental. Under UC, 1.1 million households will keep more of their earnings when starting work of 10 hours per week; and 3.1 million households will have a higher entitlement, with 75% of those being the poorest households. Replacing that complex range of benefits with one new single benefit offering incentives to work and protection for those who cannot work is a significant challenge, and a policy of incremental expansion is the right way in which to introduce it.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady consider the fact that UC is not going to be a single benefit? Some recipients will be the equivalent of jobseeker’s allowance claimants now, and they will have one set of conditions and so on, and another set of claimants will be people who have been deemed to be unfit to work. Inherently, UC will not be a fully singular benefit.

[Dame Angela Watkinson]

As my hon. Friend—I will call her that as we are co-members of the Work and Pensions Committee—will know, there are component parts to UC and different claimants will be entitled to different components. As the Chair of the Committee has said, people’s lives are immensely complex and they change, which all adds to the complexity of running any benefits system. Let us consider housing benefit, for example. Family members move in and out of the home, which changes the entitlement, and people have fluctuating health conditions, which make their circumstances change. It will always be a complicated system, but the intention is to simplify it and to minimise the cost of administration.

The National Audit Office has said that the United Kingdom will benefit by £38 billion as a result of universal credit. This Government have grasped the nettle that the previous Government avoided. After 13 years of Labour, welfare spending increased by 60%, costing every household an extra £3,000. Housing benefit increased by 35%. Between 1997 and 2010, spending on tax credits increased by 340%. Long-term unemployment almost doubled between 2008 and 2010, from 396,000 to 783,000. The number of households where no member had ever worked doubled. The maximum housing benefit award reached an eye-watering £104,000 a year. Labour subsidised people to live in the private sector on rents that other ordinary working people could not afford.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Will the hon. Lady tell us how many claimants received the sum of money that she just mentioned? How many claims were in that region?

[Dame Angela Watkinson]

I am not for one moment giving the impression that that was typical of the average claim; of course it was not. The fact that there was no cap meant that it was possible, in certain circumstances, to rise to those really out-of-control levels.

The reforms to the welfare system will ensure that as many people as possible who are fit for work are helped into work, and only those people who are either unable to work for a whole complex range of reasons or who are on very low incomes are eligible for benefits. The scale of that task is gargantuan, but we have made good progress and we continue to progress towards improving the lives of the long-term unemployed and bringing the welfare budget under control for the benefit of the working people who pay for it through their taxes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Some social security commentators have described a universal credit-type proposal as the holy grail of social security thinking. It is certainly true that the idea is nothing new. It was not invented by the current Government; it has been debated and investigated by previous Governments. In an earlier debate on the subject—I think it was an urgent question —my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) made it quite clear that when he was Secretary of State for Social Security, he looked at the project and concluded that without very significant time and money being invested, it would be too difficult to deliver.

There has obviously been a learning curve to which, for whatever reason, the current Government seem to have decided to pay no attention. If we sometimes seem quite cynical and sceptical about the whole process, it is because of a lot of what we have heard over the past four years. There was total confidence that UC would be the answer to all sorts of questions, and would be relatively easy. I do not think that many people present, except my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), were on the Welfare Reform Bill Committee in 2011. The then Minister of State for Employment, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), who responded to most of the debates in Committee, was prone to describing his proposals as an empty bookcase. The Bill was the architecture; a lot of other things would come along later. I think he spoke more truly than he thought he did, because clearly it was a rather empty bookcase; a lot of the issues had not been fully bottomed-out and talked about in the way that they should have been.

One example of that—I will come on to others—is free school meals. We discussed the issue in the Bill Committee in 2011. Various people made written submissions and proposals, and there were discussions, about how that might or might not work as part of the project. We learn now that the Department still does not know how it will deal with free school meals in the further roll-out of universal credit. Three years later, we have not made much progress on something quite important and basic.

[Dame Anne Begg]

Does my hon. Friend agree that anyone building a bookcase has to know the size of the books that will be displayed on it before they can get the architecture right? Perhaps that was a lesson that the Minister forgot.

[Sheila Gilmore]

That is a very good analogy for how we have arrived in this position. The trouble is that it is not some sort of blunder: my hon. Friends have referred to some of the other big changes going through the DWP, and the same pattern has been seen with disability living allowance and the personal independence payment. First, a straw man was erected: there was a statement about certain things in the previous system, some of which were not entirely accurate, being really bad and having to be changed. There was then a brief initial consultation period before the Department went ahead with the change, which was not properly piloted. As a result, every new PIP applicant since June 2013 is part of the testing process. That is not a pilot, unless it is a pilot on a gigantic scale. Many people who are anxious and worried while they wait for their PIP payments to come through, are being treated as guinea pigs, after a failure to analyse the problem, implement the scheme or test the proposals. The pattern is not unique to universal credit.

Had we been told from the outset that there would be a slow roll-out because of the need for testing, we might not be standing here now debating whether the glass is half full, but we have been told so often that the glass is full and everything is going well. When the Select Committee prepared a report in November 2012, we concentrated on vulnerable claimants. At that time we were told that all the implementation plans were on track for 2013, which was not the case. By February 2013, the Major Projects Authority told the DWP to reset the entire project—that was an internal, private report of which Members had no knowledge at the time. That information did not come out clearly until July 2013, when the Secretary of State told the Select Committee that there were major changes to the roll-out. The NAO reported in September 2013, and the Secretary of State’s response was, “Oh, I knew about all those problems all along.” Perhaps he did know about the problems all along, but he did not tell many people about them. There were further changes in December 2013.

Some speakers, in trying to support universal credit, suggested that at least we have some people on it. There are 6,000 people on universal credit, and it will be rolled out to more jobcentres, but those are the very simplest cases. In essence, for those claimants universal credit is little different from jobseeker’s allowance. There is little to say that universal credit is a big breakthrough to a different form of benefit, because until now claimants have been single people. Apparently, we are now able to roll out universal credit to some couples, but the claimants so far have been single people. Some 70% of claimants are relatively young. They are new benefit claimants who do not have complications, basically. If universal credit is to bring together various benefits successfully, the difficult cases will be the real test, not the straightforward ones.

One bit of universal credit thinking that has been rolled out is the claimant commitment, which has been rolled out to JSA claimants, not merely those who are technically in receipt of JSA-style universal credit. The Government have rolled out the stick without rolling out the carrot. One of the problems with the claimant commitment is not necessarily getting people to agree what they will do to find work but that minor breaches of that agreement can lead to loss of benefits. The carrot—the bit that is meant to help people not only to find work but to make work pay—has not yet been introduced because the vast majority of people are nowhere near being on universal credit.

Since our original debates on the Welfare Reform Act 2012, we have experienced obfuscation through the use of computerese. MPs, like many lay people, are not IT experts. Initially, concerns were raised about the size of the IT project—various Governments have run into trouble with IT in the past—and people asked, “How do we know this will be different?” Any concerns were simply brushed aside because the Government had a new “agile” way of doing things that meant everything was going to be fine. About 18 months later we learned that that way of doing things had been abandoned, so clearly everything was not fine, but that is what we were told.

Other things that were “fine” included security, establishing people’s identity and the difficulties with online transactions. Those concerns were raised from the outset. I recall an informal briefing at which the Minister, Lord Freud, was asked questions by people who were expert, such as people who had served on housing associations. They asked, “What about the verification of people’s housing claims? How is that actually going to be done?” At the moment, those claims are done fairly intensively with people having to produce information, although housing associations have been allowed to verify that information because they have seen the lease, and so on. Lord Freud simply ignored all that and said, “No, universal credit will have far less fraud and error, and it will all be fine.” But of course it has not been fine, and it is now recognised that the notion that everything could be done online has not only been delayed but will never happen. One reason why that will not happen is that security has been recognised as a major issue. The same Ministers who told us that security was not a problem have now told us that it is a problem. When a Department is paying out substantial sums of money to millions of individuals, doing it fully online is not practical. After Ministers initially enthused about how everything would be straightforward, and after having been told different things at different times—even when the reality was that something else was going on—we are somewhat sceptical.

As other speakers have said, we were told that a certain type of IT is being used for the very small number of current claimants but that, at the same time, the Department was working on what in February 2014 was called the end-state, open-source, web-based solution. [Laughter.] Exactly. I know the meaning of each individual word, but I have never been clear about what the phrase means. We were told that it was a digital solution—it therefore seems to be an important aspect of the whole programme—and that it would be ready to be tested on 100 claimants by November 2014. As the Select Committee report found, the system is still a long way from being viable. There is a huge difference between operating something like that for a small group of 100 claimants and operating it for far more people.

The Select Committee thought that what we were being told about was a different and digital way of doing things, and we specifically asked for more detail. The Government’s response to the Select Committee report evaded the question, and it is all there. First, the response talked about the claimant commitment, which I have already mentioned and did not have anything to do with the digital solution. Secondly, the response talked about a

“more challenging and supportive relationship between claimants and coaches.”

“Coaches” is the new name for jobcentre advisers. Again, that does not really tell us anything about the digital solution. There are concerns about how scalable those intensive relationships will be. Thirdly, we were told that there will be more online services, but many JSA claims are already made online, so again it is unclear whether that has anything to do with the end-state or digital solution.

Therefore, having gone around the houses about the claimant commitment, the things that are already happening online and the more supportive relationship, all that we have been told is that the digital solution is

“a multi-channel service that makes greater use of modern technology”—

I am glad that it makes use of modern technology, rather than ancient technology—

“to ensure the system is as effective, simple and transparent as possible.”

Those are all worthy aims, but they tell us nothing about what the end-state solution actually is, what it does, how much progress has been made towards it, how many people are working on it, what it will cost or what the interface will be between claimants and the system. It is nothing more than an aspiration.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend, who is making some extremely pertinent points, but many of my constituents who are in work receive varying pay packets. For example, one week they will work overtime but the next week they will not. Some of them, such as school meal supervisory assistants, are employed only in term time. Does she have any confidence at all from what we have heard so far that the system could be sufficiently sophisticated and robust to take into account natural human activity, which does not consist of people earning exactly the same wage for 52 weeks of the year and with exactly the same family circumstances?

[Sheila Gilmore]

Again, there is the theory and then there is what happens in practice. If in all cases the information from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs works, it should be reasonably accurate, but when people have very variable earnings there will be considerable problems, particularly with monthly payments, because it will take a long time to adjust for somebody whose earnings vary a great deal. That will leave some people in considerable hardship.

[David Mowat]

To answer the intervention made by the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), the whole purpose of having the real-time information interface out of the HMRC systems, which was a prerequisite to universal credit, was to address precisely that point.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but obviously there are other complications for people with very variable earnings, and I am not confident that they will all be overcome.

Finally, on the IT that we are expected to believe will be in place at some point, last week the Secretary of State delivered absolutely no clarity when we debated this in the Chamber. When I intervened to ask him what the end-state solution was, he replied:

“It is universal credit completely delivering to everybody in the UK. That is the end-state solution—live, online and fully protected.”—[Official Report, 30 June 2014; Vol. 583, c. 645.]

Again, that is describing the end aspiration in a very generalised way, but it tells us absolutely nothing about whether it will work.

Any change of this sort requires a lot of thought and practice. One of the issues about which there remains considerable concern—we have not heard a great deal about this from DWP—is the direct payment of housing benefit to the claimant and then to the landlord. To be fair, DWP has been carrying out pilots for two years to see how that would work, and I think that they have now come to an end. I understand that an independent evaluation is now with the Department, although it has not yet been published—perhaps the Minister knows more about that than I do. However, the data from the organisations that have been piloting it are now in the public domain. They looked initially at some 6,700 people —in different small groups across the country—that it was tested on. At the end of the pilot, 4,700 were still on direct payments, but 1,993 of the original group had been returned to having payments made directly to their landlord. That is a considerable proportion of the total. That rings some alarm bells on how well it will work. The landlords involved in those pilots have said constantly that it worked only as a result of very intensive work that has been done precisely because they are pilots. There is considerable concern that that will not be scalable to the required extent. Although I certainly commend the Department for running those pilots, we need to hear what lessons have been learnt, whether any further changes to the plans are required and how these things will be made to work in the longer term.

There are many other aspects of universal credit that people have raised concerns about. In many ways we have almost forgotten about some of the downsides, such as second earners being less incentivised to work under universal credit rules, as drawn up by the Government—they could be changed—than they are under the current system, and there is the fact that some families with disabled children will receive less than they do at the moment. There was a lot of debate about those issues, and the fact that we are nowhere near including some of those people is probably why those concerns have gone off the boil, but we should not forget about them. Even if universal credit is properly implemented, it is not a case of all winners and no losers, because a significant number of people will still be worse off under universal credit.

The detailed rules for universal credit can be changed, and in some ways that is where the bookcase has its merits. Some of the concerns about the rate of tapering of income, which has been changed since the original proposals, and how we deal with school meals, child care and families with disabled children could all be addressed. I think that it is a pity that at this stage we are so far away from those people being included in the new system that we do not even need to look for the answers. Just over 6,000 people are on universal credit, and that is predominantly JSA with a few changes, so the simplest of cases and situations. That is not really a fantastic achievement. I am sorry if that is describing the glass as being half empty, but that is certainly how it appears to me.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore). This is the second time in a week that we have had the opportunity to debate universal credit. I will focus my brief remarks on some of the comments made by Labour Members, which I think can be characterised thus: “We are doing our job. If only the Secretary of State would do his job, everything would be okay.”

I had thought that it was agreed that universal credit is a much-needed project. It is a project of national significance. I think that it is analogous to the Olympics, but in fact harder to deliver. Opposition Front Benchers might give that some thought when considering how to conduct themselves in this debate. The project might be harder to deliver than the Olympics, but it is as important to our country. I will comment on the progress and some of the issues around that, and also talk at some length about Labour’s four-point plan—it has now been published—to “save” the programme, and a rattling good yarn it is too. I will not repeat the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), but the project is a national imperative. We are trying to make work pay, to streamline benefits and to mimic the whole process of transition to work.

Developing a set of IT applications to be used by 8 million users is quite difficult. Frankly, neither political party has shown a great deal of success in doing that over the past decade or so. If we accept that it is a hard thing to do, then perhaps Members might try to do a little more than they have today in getting behind the 1,000 or 2,000 people who are working on the programme —working weekends and doing the stuff that needs to be done to get this to happen.

Are there problems with this project? I do not know; I am not an expert on it. I hate to say this, but I do not even serve on the Select Committee. Perhaps I am here as an imposter. I have had some experience of IT. I have spent a large part of my life explaining to people why IT projects are late and why it is not my fault but somebody else’s—I got quite good at that by the end. During a quality assurance test on an IT project—in fact, we do not have IT projects any more; this is a business change project—one of the indicators of difficulties relates to the number of project managers. If the project manager has changed a lot, there will be reasons for that: it is a very clear flashing red light. This programme has been unlucky—I use that word advisedly—in that it has had a number of different project managers who have had to move on for different reasons. Of course, that creates issues about how things are done, as in this case.

I listened carefully to what the hon. Member for Edinburgh East said about roll-out. It was not clear that she thought that the Secretary of State was rolling it out wrongly; rather, she seemed concerned that he had not told her in advance, at the start, how he was going to do it. That is an entirely different matter, because sometimes things are changed for tactical reasons. When the Olympics are being delivered, things are sometimes done in a different order. That is not unreasonable and not necessarily wrong.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman would not want to misinterpret what I said. There is nothing wrong with changing one’s mind and trying to adjust as one goes along, but what has been wrong has been the complete confidence, with each turnaround, in everything being fine and in how we should not be worried any more. We have seen that on several occasions.

[David Mowat]

As I said, I have not been serving on the Select Committee and I have not heard about the confidence she mentions. My point is that decisions are made during the life cycle of a programme that effect changes, and if, every time that happens—

[David Mowat]

I do not know, because I was not aware of that. The hon. Lady’s intervention, like much of her speech, is along the lines of, “We’re doing our job; if only the Secretary of State would do his job and hurry up and get this delivered, everything would be all right.” My substantive point is that delivering this application is harder than delivering the Olympics, and it behoves all of us to get behind the 1,000 or 2,000 people who are trying to do it. That is not to say that individual mistakes have not been made. There have almost certainly been lots of mistakes; it would be odd if there had not been.

As to progress, the issue is not that things have not been done; it is what we do now and how we deal with it. I am going to be kind to the Opposition and talk about the Olympics rather than the national health service project that wrote off about £10 billion. The Olympics was a joint success—a success for our country—and yet its budget increased by a factor of four. When the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) came to the House and announced that the budget was going up by a factor of four, Members on both sides of the House, broadly speaking, tried to understand why that had happened, accepted it, and knuckled down to get the project delivered. In the end, there was not a cigarette paper between the two parties in terms of the approach to that project of national significance—as this one is. The Secretary of State and his team are trying to do a very difficult thing in delivering this application, to be used by 10 million people, in parallel with existing systems which, every week, continue to be used by 10 million people. Of course mistakes have been made; as I say, it would be odd if they had not. The issue is whether, on the whole, it is being managed correctly and whether, structurally, we are doing the right thing.

I had thought that Labour supported the basic tenets of universal credit, but some of the comments by the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) about scope implied that she has severe reservations. She may be right; I am not an expert. It seems odd that Labour Members are raising issues such as scope at such a late stage of the programme. To some extent, they are the Opposition and perhaps it is reasonable that they oppose, but there is a difference between opposing and what I would call opportunistic carping—not only that, but opportunistic carping that is destructive, not constructive.

That brings me to Labour’s four-point plan, to which Mr Baldrick would have been delighted to give his name. Point 1 is to stop the programme and think about it for three months—not to review it, not to stop rolling it out, but to stop it completely. It is not totally clear to me what they would be stopping—development, implementation, the front end, the legacy systems and interface work, or perhaps all of it. It is not totally clear to me what they would do with the 1,000 people—to take a round number—who are currently doing all these tasks. They are saying, “No, let’s just stop it, with an immediate write-off of all that.”

Point 2 is to get the NAO to have a look at the programme. That is fair enough; one cannot argue with asking the NAO to look at something. Of course, it would have to use people with expertise in programmes of this type, of whom most of the good ones are in the civil service and working on this programme. Nevertheless, let us do it anyway.

The really interesting thing about the plan is points 3 and 4, which represent major, significant scope changes. If we make such changes to a programme right near the end, that is when everything goes wrong—when things have to be retested, budgets change, and all the rest of it. The great thing about these major scope changes is that, according to the four-point plan, they will be done at “no additional cost”. The two points propose to remove some of the onus on self-employed people and to continue to pay the primary carer.

On the train this morning, between Watford and Euston, I costed Labour’s four-point plan at £89,611,207.31. That costing—I am very happy to take an intervention on it—includes 11 new applications, 47 new screens, 190 database changes, 201 reports, a 40% test rerun, and 88 new interfaces. I may have spent only 11 minutes on the calculation to come up with that number, but that is 11 minutes more than Labour Members have spent on putting it into their plan and saying they can achieve it with “no additional cost”. I would be delighted if one of them wants to intervene on me—but intervention came there none.

[Sheila Gilmore]

rose—

[David Mowat]

Ah!

[Sheila Gilmore]

The hon. Gentleman should be clearer about why he thinks, for example, that making payment to the primary carer would have such huge costs, especially at a point when, it is fair to say, the systems are unlikely to have reached implementation for families with children.

[David Mowat]

The problem arises precisely because the systems are nearing completion. Costs in the life cycle of an IT project escalate the nearer to the end we get. To repeat a couple of the estimating parameters I used, Labour’s plan would require 11 new applications and 47 new screens. If the Labour party has its own estimate and it took it more than 11 minutes to put it together, I would be very happy to accept that it is right, but all it has done is write a sentence.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)]

I have listened to everything that has been said and I have a hefty set of answers to give, but let me put everything in context by starting with what I hope we can all agree on. In between the doom and gloom that swept across the Chamber from Opposition Members, they seemed to agree that the benefits system needs to be changed, and this Government are bringing about the fundamental reform that is needed. The biggest reform in 60 years will ensure that we reward work, support aspiration, encourage responsibility and help those who need it most. As my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) said, this piece of work is of national importance. We cannot run away from making the significant changes that are so necessary; it is because they are so imperative that we are making them.

Universal credit is at the heart of our reform. Its aim is to make work pay by ensuring that claimants are better off in work than on benefits. It will promote personal responsibility by ensuring that people actively seek work and increase earnings. At the same time, we will continue to provide support for those who need it most. Universal credit will have a positive impact on claimants. Up to 300,000 more people will be in work, and about 3 million more households will gain from universal credit, with an average gain of £177 per month. We are investing £600 million in child care support, with about 100,000 extra families becoming eligible for such support for the first time. From April 2016, 85% of eligible costs will be covered by the child care rate. Alongside that, thousands of disabled adults and children will receive more support, including a higher rate of support for all children who are registered blind.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Will the Minister give way?

[Esther McVey]

If I may carry on for a while, I will then answer the hon. Lady’s question.

I want to thank the Select Committee for continuing to support the policy objectives of universal credit—improving incentives to work and, as has to be key, smoothing the transition from benefits into work. Public and parliamentary debate has focused on IT systems, and IT is an important enabler, but universal credit is much more than that; it is a transformational change that is building a welfare system fit for the 21st century. It is already making a difference to people and their lives: we have stronger work incentives, there is more support from work coaches and universal credit claimants are spending twice as much time looking for work because they have the extra support.

We know that 90% of universal credit claimants are claiming online. Many Members spoke about the IT system.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Is it not the case that very high levels of jobseeker’s allowance claimants are claiming online anyway, so that is not really to do with universal credit? Is it not also the case that the number of hours people are spending looking for work has nothing uniquely to do with universal credit, because the Department has rolled out the claimant commitment far beyond those who are in receipt of universal credit?

[Esther McVey]

Obviously more people are going online because that is key to all our changes. When we were providing support during the roll-out, we were enabling people to get online and use IT. That was part of the system. Obviously it is working and more people are using IT and getting online. As for the claimant commitment, that is an integral precursor of universal credit. We had to ensure that all of our 26,300 members of staff knew how that worked. Of course they are working with JSA claimants, but that is one of the changes towards universal credit that we have put into place.

Members have spoken about the IT system. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South, who has worked so ably on such systems, spoke with much knowledge on this matter. I am afraid that there was no knowledge from Opposition Members on this matter. We all agree that it is a complex IT system. I believe that there is a logic that we can all follow in what is happening. We are ensuring that it is slow, it is steady and it is working. The IT system is probably best described as a series of component parts. Some of it will stay—that is known as the legacy system—some of it will be built on, some of it will be plugged in and other bits will be newly built and form part of the enhanced digital solution. As we are rolling out the system, we will constantly be learning and working on it to inform the enhanced digital solution. It is like a pincer effect: we are rolling out what we have and learning as we go along to inform the enhanced digital solution.

DWP: Performance

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

As the hon. Gentleman will have heard, the example that I gave involved personal independence payments, which were introduced by this Government, not the last one. We have made our position clear. Although we appointed Atos, we said last autumn that it should be sacked. However, it is not just a question of replacing Atos; it is a question of reforming the work capability assessment and introducing targets relating not just to the number of decisions, but to the correct decisions.

Another couple came to me after applying for personal independence payments last August. The husband was asked to attend an assessment on a date when he would be in hospital for a spine operation. Nursing staff at Leeds General Infirmary advised the Department for Work and Pensions that he would be unable to attend the appointment, and he was told that a home assessment would be arranged, but he then heard nothing for months. In May, I wrote to the Department on the couple’s behalf. The reply that I received said simply:

“we will respond to your query as soon as possible but due to the volumes being received and the PIP system still being in its infancy there may be delays in getting back to you”.

Meanwhile, we also referred that couple to a food bank when their money ran out. These people deserve better.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend share my surprise that, although the problems with Atos were known about—and it is now being suggested that they had been known about for some time—a contract was given to that organisation for PIP? Was due diligence carried out before the new contract was issued?

[Rachel Reeves]

My hon. Friend has made a very important point. The PIP contract was awarded to Atos although we knew that there were problems with the work capability assessment. It was this Government’s decision to give a contract to a provider that we already knew was failing.

Since this debate was announced at the end of last week, my office has been inundated by communications from people from all over the country with similar tragic and appalling stories to tell. This morning I spoke to Malcolm Graham from Romford, who last September was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus. He underwent 10 weeks of chemotherapy and a 10-hour operation. He had been unable to work, and he finds it hard to get around. He applied for a personal independence payment and employment and support allowance on 23 September last year. After phoning the Department nearly every day since then, he finally had his assessment for personal independence payment on 16 May. On 20 June—five weeks later—he received a letter from the Department saying that it now had all the information it needed in order to make a decision, but today, more than nine months after his application, he has yet to receive notification of what support, if any, he will receive. In the meantime, he has had to rely on help from family and friends. He has struggled to keep up with his bills, and has even been visited by a debt recovery firm.

Until he was struck by cancer, Mr Graham had worked all his life. For 40 years he had paid his tax and national insurance. However, he told me today “When I needed it, the help was not there. I never knew what it would be like to be on the other side of the fence.” He added: “But now that I do, I wish that the Secretary of State would imagine what it is like being on this side of the fence—what it is like being in my position.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Duncan Smith]

What an excellent intervention. It is a testing one, but I will try to live up to it.

Let me move on to universal credit. Across all 44 programmes of change in the Department, we are taking a careful and controlled approach to achieve a safe and secure delivery. For example, the benefit cap started with an early roll-out and is now fully implemented, seeing 42,000 households capped and 6,000 move into work. Universal credit is on track to roll out safely and securely, against the plan I set out last year. The hon. Member for Leeds West quoted a figure of £12.8 billion but, as ever, shows a poor grasp of the finances. We have always been clear that universal credit’s total budget is £2 billion, and we will not overspend.

Furthermore, we have taken decisive action so as not to repeat the way in which programmes were rolled out under the previous Government. The reset will avoid the “big bang” concept that they put forward at the last election. They did a number of things that led them to have to write off huge sums of money. For example, their benefit processing replacement programme was not even introduced; it was just scrapped after £140 million had been wasted on IT that could never be used. Lectures about money that has to be written off with nothing to show for it should be directed at them, not us.

We have introduced the pathfinder in order to test and learn. We are now rolling it out, as I announced the other day, to 90 jobcentres across the north-west, and that process will be completed in the autumn. Furthermore, I have announced that, from today, new universal credit claims for couples will be rolling out into the live status, and claims for families will follow that roll-out. That will complete universal credit’s roll-out in the north-west, as we set out last year.

On the digital solution, nothing offers clearer proof that the existing live service works. It is delivering universal credit and will continue to do so. As I have always said, the majority of the existing IT will continue to be used, even as we develop the final element, which is the digital service, using all that equipment. It is about an end-state solution—fully online, fully secure and responsive to all digital threats—enhancing what we have already built. Universal credit will roll out on time, and it will deliver what we have said it will deliver—at least £38 billion in net benefit to the Exchequer.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I wonder whether the Secretary of State can explain what an “end-state solution” actually is, or what it will mean, and why he did not properly test PIP, which had only a two-month pilot, meaning that every applicant is now a guinea pig?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I think that I have been pretty clear about the end-state solution. It is universal credit completely delivering to everybody in the UK. That is the end-state solution—live, online and fully protected. Perhaps I need to spell it out to the hon. Lady again. On PIP, I will simply say that we did not rush it. We have kept control of the level and scale of the roll-out. As we have learnt what the difficulties are, we have made changes, working with the providers. I will demonstrate in a moment that we are driving those numbers down to reasonable levels, as expected.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

The motion before the House is wide-ranging, and I will concentrate on three fairly niche areas in some detail. The motion notes that the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) recently commented in the Work and Pensions Committee on work capability assessment throughput, but it fails to note what officials then said about that issue before the Committee. Those officials told the Committee that the Department has hugely improved performance. What does that mean? They said that a month has been taken off the front end of the application process for WCA, which has been reduced from 92 days to 60 days. Clearly, that is not good enough yet, but it is a huge important improvement at the front end. Once the WCA decision has been made, the further decision has also been reduced by a month: from 42 days to 12 or 14 days. Considerable changes have been going on in the Department that are beneficial to applicants.

We also know that the number of benefit decision appeals fell by 79% to just over 30,000 between January and March this year, compared with the same time last year. Why? It is because mandatory reconsideration put itself into the mix and ensured that fewer such applications go to appeal. I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) will say that some of that is to do with legal aid, and I suspect she may be right. However, the load on the costly appeals process is also reducing, so it seems that the Department has an exemplary track record, within itself and its own machinations, of reacting positively to the changes to WCA.

Where is the delay occurring? The answer has to be, with Atos. To understand that, we must look at where the WCA came from. The WCA was introduced in 2008, and within that legislation five annual assessments were put into the mix. We have now had four of those—three from Harrington and one from Paul Litchfield—and it is clear that the design, scope and outcomes from the WCA were wholly inadequate from the beginning. Large numbers of improvements were recommended. Those of the three Harrington reviews and Paul Litchfield have largely been not just accepted by the Government but implemented, but in short, Atos’s capacity does not match the increase in quality demanded. That is because the original contract and the price the Government paid for it is simply not enough to allow it to do the job that Parliament, quite rightly, demands.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[George Hollingbery]

No, I will not, because we all have a limited speaking time.

I think the Minister was right to end the Atos contract and re-let it because it seems that Atos did not have the capacity to do what it needed to do. It is somewhat ironic that the Opposition motion should seek to emphasise something that was caused entirely by actions taken by Labour when in government and that this Government are taking huge steps to improve, and which Opposition Back Benchers have—quite reasonably and vociferously—demanded. I believe that that improvement, which we all want, has made it more difficult for Atos to pursue what it is supposed to pursue.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[George Hollingbery]

No. I have already made it clear that I am not going to give way. The risk register is also identified in the motion—[Interruption.] I notice that my time now seems to be infinite, which is absolutely splendid—[Interruption.] The clock has now dropped down to three minutes. I should have said nothing.

The motion demands a publication of the risk register held by the Department. That is hardly a new argument, and in the short time I have been in this House it has been made many times about a similar document held by the national health service. Let me quote the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham)—the shadow Health Secretary—from 23 March 2007 when he was asked whether he would release the NHS risk register:

“Putting the risk register in the public domain would be likely to reduce the detail and utility of its contents. This would inhibit the free and frank exchange of views about significant risks and their management, and inhibit the provision of advice to Ministers. We cannot therefore agree to place a copy of the current version of the register in the Library.”—[Official Report, 23 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 1192W.]

That was then, as now, very sensible advice.

Do we really think it a good idea for the Government to make public all their plans for the management of every conceivable risk that they might encounter in any particular programme? Surely we cannot. As the right hon. Member for Leigh pointed out, it is essential that Ministers and officials can have free and frank exchanges behind closed doors on the risks to their Department. If they are inhibited from doing so in any way, they are most likely not to consider those risks in a free and frank way, and we will not have the benefit of the exercise in the first place. It is a preposterous proposition. All officials and all Ministers need a place where they can talk safely about what might happen to their Departments in extremis.

Finally, I have some facts and figures on the Work programme—I am sorry, but it is hard to avoid statistics in the argument. Some 300,000 long-term unemployed people have found lasting work using the Work programme. There has been an increase of 44,000 people in jobs in the past three months alone. Long-term unemployment has fallen by 108,000 in the past year, which is the largest fall in 16 years. Some 296,000 people have so far found lasting work, which is up from 132,000 a year earlier. The vast majority of those who find sustained employment remain in work beyond the six-month point or, for the hardest-to-help, the three-month point. More than 274,000 participants have gone on to find work beyond those points.

Performance has continually improved, with all contracts meeting the minimum performance levels in the third year of the programme. In the most recent cohort, nearly 28% were placed in a sustained job, up from 22% of those who joined at the beginning of the programme. Out of any group, young people proportionately have secured the largest number of sustainable jobs—71,640 have done so since the programme began. In short, the Work programme is truly working for those participating in it, and I shall certainly not support the motion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

I am confident that the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) will forgive me for not responding meticulously to five minutes of sanctimony and histrionics.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on making an important set of points that received only giggles from the Opposition. The hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne), who is not in her place, demanded respect, while those on her Benches laughed at his points.

I agree with the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith), who pointed out that the title of today’s debate on the Order Paper, “Performance of the Department for Work and Pensions,” is a big bash at civil servants. As I make the first of the four points I want to make during my substantive contribution, I pay tribute to the staff of the Department for Work and Pensions with whom I work at the jobcentre in Norwich—in particular, Julia Nix, the district manager, Tom Adams, a project manager, and a young man called Jamie who is on work experience.

I have had the great honour of working with those three people on a project that seeks to halve Norwich’s youth unemployment and I am delighted to say that we are succeeding. Only last week, we were able to announce the 1,000th young person to go into work through that project. That has only been possible through the hard work of those civil servants. I have been humbled to be able to help them in that project and I want to continue to do more of that.

Secondly, we need universal credit to come in. It is crucial to make work pay. Let me give two examples from my constituency that demonstrate that. One father of four is trapped needing housing benefit at the level at which he receives it. He is unwilling to ask his wife to go to work because if he did so they would lose the benefits they receive. He is frustrated as heck in that trap and it is not fair on him.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Is the hon. Lady not aware that once universal credit is finally extended to couples and couples with children, second earners will be worse off than they are at present?

[Chloe Smith]

I will make sure that I discuss that with my constituent, who is disgusted about what Labour ever did for him during its 13 years in office.

I also want to talk about the group of mums I recently met at Asda, which had kindly organised an event off the back of its Mumdex, a scheme that will be known to Members of the House. I hold my surgeries in Asda anyway, so it was a doubly good opportunity for me. Hon. Members will know very well the trap that occurs at 16 hours, which we have spoken about at length.

The next point I need to make about universal credit is that it will start to treat people as individuals. It will not continue to put people in the boxes of income support, JSA and ESA. It is crucial that we consider people’s individual circumstances and I suggest that the desire to free people from labels is what divides this side of the House from the Opposition. That is what drew me to the Conservative party and that is what I am proud to stand for. I resist any attempt from the Opposition to suggest that it is not respectful to see people as individuals rather than to label them.

Thirdly, I welcome the benefit cap. Many hon. Members have spoken about it already. I know many people in Norwich who would be only too happy to see the benefit cap set at the minimum wage rather than at average earnings. Norwich is another place where those things are out of kilter. It is a crying shame that Labour opposes the benefit cap and that shows the truth of what my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) said: Labour seems to think that it owns voters. That is another disgraceful demonstration of how Labour likes to label people as its people, but there will be no people left in support of the Opposition when they are not on the right side of the welfare debate.

Finally, I want to thank the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), who is responsible for disabled people, for a move that he has recently made. He has changed the location of the work capability assessments carried out in Norwich. The company, Atos, which we have talked about many times today, formerly used an office on the second floor of a building in Norwich. The Minister has just put the wheels in motion to change that location. It is obviously not acceptable for some of the most vulnerable people represented by me and my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Simon Wright) to be turned away and sent to Ipswich by public transport or sometimes by taxi. None of that is acceptable and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister for turning that situation around. It is the right thing to have done. Do you know what? Who signed the contract on that building in the first place? Who has forgotten history, in the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban)? Who thinks that that it all began in 2010? The Labour party signed that contract in 1998 and my right hon. Friend the Minister has put things right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Some of the aspirations of the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) are indeed shared across the House. The problem is that for all those cheery words, many of the policies that the Government have put in place are not working. That is a fact and that is the purpose of this debate, not necessarily to reprise the entire debate on the Welfare Reform Bill, on the Committee of which the hon. Lady and I both sat. Many of the things that we said at the time were wrong and would not work have come to pass.

On Saturday morning I spoke to a constituent who cares for her daughter who has severe learning disabilities. She said to me, “My daughter is 25. She’s not going to get better. She’s not going to change, so why is she constantly being reassessed for employment and support allowance? What is all that about?”

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

Picking up on the point that my hon. Friend is making, I know a young girl, Nieve Evans, who has cerebral palsy, which of course is an incurable disease. She is four years old and is on the highest rate of DLA. Her parents are forced to fill in forms continually, and those documents are endlessly long. Every time they have to apply for the highest rate of DLA for her, and she will never improve. Is this the type of welfare state we want?

[Sheila Gilmore]

The issue that I want to raise is not just the stress caused to my constituent and her mother, but the extra expense and time involved. In debate after debate, I and others have suggested that one of the simple changes that could be made, which would be humane and would save money, is not to carry out constant reassessment. Even that minor change has not been accepted by Minister after Minister who has been responsible for people with disabilities.

The Minister for disabled people now admits that there is a backlog of 700,000 people awaiting ESA assessments. That comes as no surprise to us, because our constituents have been telling us for the past few months that the delays have been getting longer and longer. All these things—ESA, PIP and universal credit—seem to follow a pattern. First, Ministers deny that there is a problem, arguing that the Opposition, voluntary groups and advice agencies are scaremongering. Eventually an announcement is made that some changes are necessary because the benefit is not quite working out, but that is accompanied by a reassurance that everything will be fine very soon.

In 2011 the Government ignored concerns about how ESA was working out and rolled out the migration from incapacity benefit, despite the Select Committee’s concern about capacity. Simultaneously the Minister told us that Atos was being asked to make savings. I wonder whether some of those savings are in part the cause of the further capacity problems. Last year we heard that there was a slight glitch and Atos was being asked to improve its reporting. Within months, Atos was out of the door, so the problem was much more serious than we were told at that time.

Ministers want to blame anybody but themselves for this situation. Suddenly Atos is the bad guy, after years of being defended whenever Opposition Members dared to criticise it. The current Minister for disabled people has occasionally tried to claim that Atos was allowed to take the original contract knowing that it could not make it viable, so it was therefore the Labour Government’s fault. If that was the case, why did one of his predecessors tell the Select Committee in 2011 that there was room for cost savings? Why did the Government roll it out if they had concerns about the nature of the contract?

More recently, the Minister for disabled people has tried to blame the previous Government for the current backlog of 700,000, suggesting that it was somehow inherited in 2010. If there was any truth in that, why go ahead with the roll-out? Why did his predecessor say in March 2012 that there was a small backlog caused by some improvements that followed the Harrington report, but that it was on track to be cleared by the summer of 2012? He was not aware of any huge backlog inherited from the previous Government; he is just trying to avoid any responsibility for what is happening.

Crucially—this is fundamentally important—we have a system that is not only really hurting many of the people going through it, but is not succeeding, even on the Government’s own terms. The number of people in receipt of either incapacity benefit, as some people still are, or ESA has not fallen by anything like as much as we might expect, given the number who have apparently been found fit for work, who no longer get ESA on a contributory basis and who fall out of ESA altogether. The numbers just do not add up, and that is probably one of the major reasons why the savings are not adding up either.

Why is that important? What is actually happening to people? When we ask the DWP, it says that it does not know because it does not track what is happening to people. I think that many people are being found fit for work but are nowhere near finding work. The Work programme is failing people with disabilities, and sooner or later—in a few months or perhaps a year—they reapply for ESA. The numbers are not falling in the way the Government are trying to claim. That suggests that the system is failing even on its own terms. It is not making the savings, but it is making life very hard for individuals. It is time to look at it all again and quickly make some changes, some of which are quite straightforward, in order to bring savings and improve many people’s experience.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Oral Answers to Questions

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We regularly talk to all the employers. New employers are seen by advisers in the jobcentres in the local area. Fraudulent jobs are rare on the site; it is estimated that fewer than 0.1% of these vacancies have been fraudulent since go-live, and those have been removed. We constantly monitor the Universal Jobmatch system and we crack down on abuse. In addition, employment advisers are meeting all those employers they are not aware of or who have just come up on the system for the first time.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

The problem is that that is just not happening, and perhaps the Secretary of State should accept that. For example, I saw a job advertised in my constituency today for a care assistant in a care home that has just closed down. Jobs are being wrongly categorised. Among sales assistants, we find jobs for account executives, for which qualifications are needed. What exactly is happening with Universal Jobmatch?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The problem is not what the hon. Lady describes. It is with Labour Members, who cannot bear the idea that, when they were in government, they had an archaic system that worked only from 8am to 6pm. Our system works for 24 hours. It works while people’s computers are shut down. It nominates jobs, and advisers can offer advice online. This is a major success story. The problem is that Labour does not get it. We are getting more people into work, higher levels of employment and falling levels of unemployment. In fact, we have some of the lowest levels in the European Union.

Points of Order

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

My appetite for hearing hon. and right hon. Members ask questions is insatiable. I would happily run the session on for longer, but I am afraid that it is not within my power. Not only is the hon. Gentleman here every day during working hours, but I sometimes fondly imagine that he probably sleeps here as well; I do not know. He knows that his request is unfortunately beyond my powers, but he has made his point with his usual alacrity, and it is on the record.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. During Question Time, the disability Minister, the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), stated that he had inherited the current backlog in ESA claims from the previous Government. How can we put on record the fact that his predecessor told the Work and Pensions Committee that a small backlog in 2011 was going to be eliminated by the summer of 2011? The two statements clearly cannot be consistent.

[Mr Speaker]

The evidence is that the hon. Lady has found her own salvation. She asked how it could be done and at the same time she did it. It is on the record, and we will leave it there.

Work Capability Assessments

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to have secured this debate. I have been pursuing work capability assessments for those on employment and support allowance since I was elected to this House. Indeed, I think I mentioned in my maiden speech that I would take up this issue. This is my sixth debate on specific aspects of the WCA.

I want to develop an issue I first raised on 6 September 2013: the support that people receive while they challenge a decision on their entitlement to benefit. This will generally involve somebody who has been found fit for work, but who believes that the decision is wrong and that they are entitled to ESA. It could, in some circumstances, also apply to someone placed in the work-related activity group, as opposed to the support group.

In the past, a claimant could immediately lodge a formal written appeal with a judge from Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. A Department for Work and Pensions official, known as the decision maker, would look at the original decision again, and either change it in the claimant’s favour or uphold it and pass the appeal on to a judge. That initial stage was, and still is, referred to as a reconsideration. What has changed is that since October 2013 claimants have to apply for reconsideration formally and separately before they can lodge an appeal. This two-stage process was introduced following the passage of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 and its subsequent regulations.

I emphasise, as I have done before, that I do not object to the introduction of even a mandatory reconsideration process. It can be quicker, less stressful for claimants, a lot cheaper for taxpayers, and, as I think the Minister himself said last week, it may be contributing to a reduction in the number of formal appeals. There are, however, serious practical consequences to mandatory reconsideration: the gap in payment to claimants prior to the formal appeal process, long delays in receiving a decision on reconsideration, and the lack of statistics on outcomes.

Claimants, although they may not be aware of it, have never formally been entitled to employment and support allowance during the reconsideration process. However, prior to October last year the benefit was usually paid at the assessment rate because reconsiderations —we could, perhaps, call them informal reconsiderations —took place under the auspices of having lodged an appeal, and when claimants lodge an appeal, they are entitled to receive assessment-rate employment and support allowance. Now that claimants have to apply for reconsideration and then appeal at a subsequent date, there is a gap in payment. Official advice suggests that during this period claimants can apply for jobseeker’s allowance, rather than employment and support allowance, while their reconsideration request is being considered. They can then go back to claiming ESA at the assessment rate if their original decision is upheld and they submit an appeal.

As I noted last year, however, JSA comes with a high level of conditionality. Claimants have to be available for work, actively seeking work, attending work-focused interviews, searching for jobs and making a minimum number of applications every week. In itself, that can prove tiring and stressful, and can exacerbate existing physical or mental conditions. Even more important is the fact that those who apply and fail to meet these conditions can be sanctioned or refused benefit altogether. In my previous debate, I predicted that this would lead to people having no support from the state, with people being too fit for ESA and too sick or disabled for JSA. I have encountered many such examples in my constituency. Citizens Advice Scotland, which has given me a great deal of support for this debate, has today published a report on this issue. It describes some of the situations in which people find themselves. These are real cases that have come to their bureaux. I suggest that the Minister look at the report.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am glad that my hon. Friend has secured this debate. She mentions the Citizens Advice Scotland report, which I too have seen. Does she agree that the Minister should look at its recommendations? Like her, I deal with many of these problems in my constituency casework. The Government cannot just leave the situation as it is.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Indeed. The report’s recommendations are very sound. One fundamental recommendation is to reinstate the payment of ESA for practical reasons, and I will come on to that.

Of those cases, most who applied for JSA while their reconsiderations were ongoing were either refused outright or failed to attend necessary appointments, owing to their mental health condition, perhaps, or, in some cases, their learning disability. Others did not apply because they could not face another benefit application, or simply because they did not know that they could. In one case where a claimant applied and was paid JSA, he emphasised that this was only as a result of support he received from his Jobcentre Plus adviser. For those who did not receive JSA, few had savings or other income to fall back on and had to rely on already overstretched food banks. Others took out high interest loans, amassing debts they will struggle to repay even if they subsequently receive backdated payments at a later date. One constituent sold off his few remaining possessions to survive.

When I first raised these concerns last September, the then Minister, the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), assured me, as he did in subsequent correspondence, that claimants with an outstanding reconsideration request could ask for what was described as “flexible conditionality” when they met their Jobcentre Plus adviser. Last week, however, the Benefits Director at the DWP acknowledged to the Work and Pensions Committee that

“not all advisors had been aware of this”

and that new guidance to jobcentres had been circulated at the end of April this year—several months after the introduction of mandatory reconsideration. That is welcome, but it is hard to have confidence in the Department, given that previous assurances were clearly unfounded.

In addition, we were told at the same meeting that people should never be refused JSA outright without the opportunity to have a meaningful conversation about conditionality with a jobcentre adviser. However, the DWP’s own guidance specifically states that

“a claimant will not be able to remain on JSA if their period of sickness exceeds 14 days”.

Citizens Advice Scotland has suggested that this is a particular problem for those claiming JSA during an ESA reconsideration. I would be grateful for the Minister’s comments on that.

More broadly, however, I question the whole rationale for preventing claimants from receiving ESA at the assessment rate during this period. Last week the Minister tried to hide behind legal semantics, arguing that claimants are deemed to be fit for work during this period and must apply for benefits accordingly. However, that ignores the fact that claimants are also deemed fit for work during a formal appeal, yet because of the way in which regulations are framed, they are entitled to ESA at the assessment rate during that process. If the problem is how the regulations were set out following the Welfare Reform Act 2012, they can be changed. There is no real reason why people should be treated differently during the reconsideration period and the appeal period.

There is also an administration cost involved in a claimant receiving the assessment rate of ESA, ceasing to receive it, claiming JSA and then potentially claiming the assessment rate of ESA again. These are significant costs when multiplied by the number of people involved. In addition, if everybody claimed JSA successfully, they would receive benefit at exactly the same rate as they would have been getting on ESA, so if there are any savings to be anticipated, is it because Ministers thought that people would, in fact, struggle to claim JSA during the reconsideration process, given that administration costs are likely to outweigh anything else? I am sure that cannot be the case.

The other issue that has come up as mandatory reconsideration was rolled out since the end of last year is the length of time that people are waiting for decisions. We were initially told that reconsideration should take around two weeks, but in many of the cases I have seen, as well as in those seen by Citizens Advice and many of my colleagues, the time taken has varied between seven and 10 weeks. Those delays have exacerbated people’s health conditions and the financial and other issues they face as a result of receiving no benefit at all. The Minister acknowledged in evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee last Wednesday that there was a backlog. My staff have been told by our local office that there is indeed a backlog—that is how it was referred to. I would like the Minister to confirm today how long claimants are being told they will have to wait, and when he will publish statistics on average times and the total number of claimants who are waiting for a decision.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

My constituents are served by the same office as my hon. Friend’s and we have had the same experience. Would it not also be useful for the Minister to tell us whether the backlog is increasing or declining? If measures are not taken to deal with the problem, the danger is that it will get worse, not better.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I agree. One of the problems with many of the backlogs we are experiencing is that they are increasing.

Last week the Minister also defended the decision not to set a statutory time limit on how long reconsideration decisions take. This issue was raised with Ministers when the legislation was going through the House and in subsequent sittings of the Work and Pensions Committee, for example. In April 2012, the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council warned that the absence of a time limit could have the effect of

“delaying indefinitely the exercise of the right of appeal to an independent tribunal”.

Just last month, Judge Robert Martin expressed concern that judges could no longer intervene if they felt the reconsideration process was taking too long, because cases do not reach them until after reconsideration is completed. Setting a time limit will be one option before the Government at this stage, but a much simpler option might be not to have to do so, and instead simply to reinstate assessment rate ESA during that period. Indeed, that might be an incentive for the Government to speed up the process in any event.

Finally, I return to another issue I have raised previously. In a debate on 9 April this year, I argued that, given that reconsideration is now mandatory and that, as a result, we might expect many more decisions to be overturned in that way, the DWP should now publish statistics on the number of successful reconsiderations—something that is currently done only for successful appeals. Successful reconsiderations are lumped in with original decisions, so it is impossible to tell exactly what has happened. If we do not have separate overturn figures for reconsiderations, that might make the performance of whichever contractor is involved—including a new contractor in future—more difficult to monitor and track.

The Minister’s response at that time was that doing so would be premature, because mandatory reconsideration had only started in October 2013 and would need some time to take effect. However, it would appear that informal reconsideration has been taking place for some considerable time, even before the mandatory process was introduced. A previous Minister—I think it was the previous Minister but one—told the Work and Pensions Committee in March 2012 that the Department was

“effectively putting every case that is going to appeal, or where a person is not happy with it, through a reconsideration where we look for additional evidence”.

It would therefore appear that, as long ago as March 2012, reconsiderations were taking place in virtually every case that went to appeal. By this stage, therefore, we must have a considerable amount of management information—at least two years of reconsideration decisions—which could be published as official statistics in due course and which would give us an impression of what was happening.

Although I have to go on what the Minister said on that occasion, that might or might not have been an entirely accurate reflection, given that in the same evidence session the same Minister told us that although there had been a slight backlog at that time because of the implementation of some of the Harrington recommendations, everything was back on track and by the summer—the summer of 2012—there would be no backlog of ESA assessments. Two years later, however, there are now apparently 700,000 people awaiting an assessment as new claimants.

However, there is other evidence to suggest that the statistics are there to be captured and reported on. There appears to have been a reduction in the number of appeals. The most recent statistics on appeals—which were published just last week, on Thursday 12 June—appear to show a reduction in the rate of cases going to appeal, from around 42% to 43% up to mid-2011 to around 35% for claims begun in November 2012, with possibly a further reduction, to perhaps even as low as 25%, for cases started in March 2013. I say “possibly” because some of the March 2013 cases may well be still in the reconsideration process—indeed, they might even have barely got out of the assessment process, because of the backlogs.

However, there appears to have been some change in the number of cases going all the way to appeal. That is not necessarily a bad thing, because we have all criticised the cost of appeals, the stress of appeals and the time taken. That is happening, and even though this may be in everyone’s best interests, we really need to know what is happening. The publication of statistics at the earliest possible opportunity, based on at least the last two years of experience, if not more, would enable us to judge the performance of the contractor far better. Given that we are going to have a new contractor for these assessments very soon, it would be good to have this in place well before that starts.

In conclusion, will the Minister confirm when he expects statistics on successful reconsideration to be published, and will he reconsider his position on the statutory time limits? More than anything, I want to emphasise to him that many claimants who claim JSA in this situation are, in effect, being denied it. They are told that they are too fit for one benefit and too sick or disabled for another. Let me ask the Minister again: why not amend the law, so that ESA claimants can continue to receive the benefit at the assessment rate during the reconsideration process? The only way that could be more expensive for the Government would be if Ministers expected sick and disabled people to go without any benefit—and I am sure that that cannot be the case.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) on getting here this evening. I know that she was delayed on the train. I think it very important for a debate that is on the Order Paper following a Member’s success in the ballot to be heard: that is only right and proper. Actually, this is a bit like groundhog day. According to my file, this is the hon. Lady’s fifth debate on the subject. She said that it was the sixth; perhaps we missed one.

I thank the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), for being present this evening. I am slightly concerned, because I said many of the things that I am about to say to her Committee only a few days ago. I hope that its members will pay attention to what I say, because during the speech of the hon. Member for Edinburgh East I feared that the report might have already been written. I said openly and honestly that I wanted to do exactly what the Chair of the Committee said should be done—to make the process fairer, better and quicker, which I think is what we all want.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Penning]

I should like to make some progress first, not least because I want to congratulate the hon. Lady a little more. We have plenty of time, after all—with your permission, Mr Deputy Speaker.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore]

May I just say, for the purpose of clarification, that any comments that I made about the Select Committee related to evidence that had been given in public? I was not in any sense referring to what the Committee would or would not recommend in due course, because we have not yet reached that stage.

[Mike Penning]

I was questioned extensively by the Committee about mandatory reconsideration delays, which are the subject of this evening’s debate. As you will probably have noticed, Mr Deputy Speaker, I rarely speak from notes, but I shall try to stick to what I said during the Committee’s evidence sessions.

There are two or three points I can make, but in some respects we will have to wait for the statistical analysis. I would love the data to be published now, but it is not ready. As soon as it is ready, I will publish it. As I said to the Select Committee recently, the statistics are being analysed and they will be published as soon as they become available.

Mandatory reconsideration is being done in order to get decisions right—to give decision makers the opportunity to look at things and make sure we have got the decision right. If there is any new evidence, it can be brought forward at that stage. That, among other things, is clearly having an effect on the number of appeals going to the tribunals—although we do not know to what extent, as the statistical analysis has not yet been released—and I think that is a good thing. As I said to the Select Committee, if this means that fewer judges are employed handling tribunals, that is a good thing. I am not certain the judges feel that way, and some of the comments from some judges more recently may indicate that. However, it is important that tribunals are gone to as a last resort in order to make the judgment as to whether DWP officials and decision makers have made that final decision correctly to the best of their ability.

If we can have fewer people going to appeal, that will be better. Appeals are dropping across the benefits handled by the Department, and especially those in respect of WCA. That is not solely due to mandatory reconsideration. There are about 80% fewer appeals, like for like.

Have delays been caused as we brought in the process? I have been open and honest about that before, and the answer is yes, but I would rather have slightly more delays than have decisions incorrectly taken and then turned over at tribunal. The decision on the mandatory reconsideration was prompted in part because I had sat in on a tribunal hearing and so much evidence was being brought in on the day of the tribunal. Everybody has the right to do that, and judges certainly have the rights and powers to look at that evidence, but my decision makers and officials had had no opportunity to look at that evidence. It is very important that we get this right.

At this stage in the process, the decision has been made that the person concerned is not going to get ESA. That is why we refer them across to JSA while the process is continuing.

The hon. Lady quoted from the DWP guidance specifically on the 14-day question. She pointed this out:

“The 14 day Temporary Periods of Sickness rule in JSA is in place to protect people from losing their entitlement when they have a short period of sickness. It was never intended to protect people with long term conditions.”

The following bullet point is very important, however:

“Claimants with longer term conditions can have their availability”—

for work in this case—

“restricted because of a physical or mental condition as long as the advisor thinks it is reasonable to do so”

based on the information before them.

[Sheila Gilmore]

The guidance the Minister quotes is one thing, but there is clear evidence—not just from Citizens Advice Scotland and my advice surgeries and those of my colleagues, but from up and down the country—that people in this position are not being allowed to claim JSA. They are being told that, because of their unfitness for work and in order to keep to the conditions, they cannot receive that benefit and they are turned away. Can the Minister assure us that he will make sure that will not happen?

[Mike Penning]

I will do everything I can, but I think it would have been right and proper for the hon. Lady to have gone on to say that there is specific guidance for people with long-term illness, as it is important to put that on the record. On the point she makes, I want all the staff in the DWP who have face-to-face contact with claimants and members of the public to have as much information as possible to make sure they can make the right decision. That is exactly why the guidance was changed in April. It was a decision that I made, and I asked my officials to make the change. I am not in any way saying that mistakes do not take place. We have a very large benefit with huge amounts of face-to-face contact across the board, whether it is in Jobcentre Plus or with officials in my own Department, and we make mistakes; no one could say otherwise. It would not make any difference who the Government were or who was standing here as Minister. I hope that they would all say, “We never get it perfect all of the time.” However, we should get as much of it right as we can and as often as we can, which is why mandatory reconsideration is vital to ensuring that the system works. As the hon. Lady and the Chair of the Select Committee said, when we are re-looking at a case and find that a person is entitled to benefit, we should ensure that their housing benefit and council tax benefit are not affected. All that must join up together.

Without a shadow of a doubt, we will work very hard to put in place the right training and guidance to ensure that the decision makers get things right. It is a big job, and I have only been here a short time, but we are getting there. As a Minister in the DWP, I am absolutely determined that we will ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent wisely; that it goes to the people who need it; that we put in place training for the right people; that any delays that are taking place—and they are taking place—are brought to a minimum; that we get out statistics; and that we are open and honest with the public, which I will be if there is a debate again next week or the week after, and that will remain the case for as long as I am a Minister in the DWP.

Question put and agreed to.

Jobs and Work

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

It is a pleasure to respond to the Opposition amendment, and to introduce a debate on the general topic of jobs and the world of work on what is a very good day for jobs. I was struck by the fact that, in something over half an hour, the shadow Secretary of State—the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna)—did not make even a passing reference to today’s unemployment figures.

I shall take a three-pronged approach to this debate. I shall deal first with the creation of jobs. Job creation depends on enterprise and business, and a key element of the Queen’s Speech is support for business through the small business Bill, which covers issues such as access to finance, Government procurement, prompt payment and, of course, pubs.

Secondly, I shall make it clear that as our economy recovers—and the recovery is now very firmly embedded —we want to ensure that that recovery is translated into higher-paid jobs and more secure employment. The small business Bill contains measures relating to zero-hours contracts and the minimum wage. It will also ensure that people have decent pensions when they retire, which is another thing that the shadow Secretary of State did not mention. Over a long period, for demographic and economic reasons and as a result of policy failures, there has been a gradual decline in the defined-benefit system, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), the Pensions Minister, are reconstructing a sensible, durable environment for pensioners.

Thirdly, I shall talk about the issue of trust in business. One of the blows to our economy, and many other western economies, during the financial crisis has been a loss of trust. The Bill contains a serious of measures—to which the shadow Secretary of State did not refer—relating to transparency of ownership and the duty of directors, which will be important to the reconstruction of that trust.

Let me begin, however, by commenting on the Opposition amendment. I try to be polite, but the amendment is not exactly bulging with creative policy initiatives. It contains only one recommendation, which relates to a

“target to raise the National Minimum Wage faster than average earnings”.

The shadow Secretary of State seems to be telling me to do what I am already doing, which is giving guidance to the Low Pay Commission so that it can do exactly that; but I am not entirely sure what the Opposition’s policy is. Is the target to be mandated? If so, that undermines the autonomy of the Low Pay Commission. If not, what the shadow Secretary of State recommends is exactly what we are doing at present, which is giving forward guidance.

I should like to clarify another point. Two or three weeks ago, the Opposition had another policy on the national minimum wage, namely that it should be indexed to earnings. There is no reference to that in the amendment. Is it still the Opposition’s policy? I suspect that, when they did the sums, they discovered that indexing the minimum wage in that way would make it lower than it is now, and quietly dropped it, but may I ask what is the current status of the proposal?

In the amendment, the shadow Secretary of State sensibly acknowledges that the Low Pay Commission must

“take account of shocks to the economy.”

However, he does not mention whether the commission should take account of the impact on employment. That has been at the heart of its work. If it is indeed to take account of the impact on employment, why—as my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) asked earlier—are the shadow Secretary of State and his colleagues now promoting the idea of higher taxes on employers through national insurance? If this is to be the major theme of the Opposition’s attack on the Queen’s Speech, their approach will require a great deal more clarity and a great deal more consistency.

Let me now say something about today’s figures, because they are important, even if the shadow Secretary of State did not think it worth his while to talk about them.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Vince Cable]

May I finish this point first? As the hon. Lady knows, I am happy to take interventions.

In the last quarter, 340,000 new jobs have been created; 780,000 have been created in the last year, and 2 million have been created since the Government came to office. The level of unemployment is now 6.6%, and is one of the lowest in the developed world. We are approaching German levels, and our figure is significantly better than those in almost all the other European countries. We have 600,000 job vacancies, and if the shadow Secretary of State goes around the country talking to businesses, as I do, he will know that the talk is increasingly of job shortages rather than unemployment. In many key categories— those aged 65 and over, women, disabled people, and lone parents—more people are in work than before the recession began. Of course there are serious unemployment problems among young people —we acknowledge that—but youth unemployment is 100,000 down over the year, while long-term unemployment is down by 108,000.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Does the Secretary of State share my concern about the growing gap between the unemployment figures and the claimant count? More than 2 million people are still unemployed. It is clear that many of those people are not receiving benefits of any kind, and they seem to have disappeared from the statistics. Is the Secretary of State, perhaps in partnership with his colleagues, trying to find out why that is and what we can do to help those people?

[Vince Cable]

I have been quoting the figures from the International Labour Organisation, which provides the international accepted definition, and they include the people whom the hon. Lady has described. Of course, many people are self-employed, and many of those are potential entrepreneurs. I am sure that she would not want to diminish their contribution.

Opposition Members often say “The job figures are fine as far as they go, but are those jobs full time?” As a result of the strengthening of the labour market within the last year, three quarters of all new jobs have been full-time. Moreover, some interesting information has emerged during the last few weeks. People who are doing part-time work, which is often criticised, have been questioned to establish how many of them wish to do full-time work. The current figure is about 20%, and it is useful to compare that with the figures for the European Union as a whole, for France and for southern Europe, which are 30%, 40% and 60% respectively. The underlying trends in the labour market—not just the top-line figures—are significantly healthier in this country than they are in almost every other part of the European Union.

Bedroom Tax (Scotland)

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Davidson]

That is absolutely correct. In our hearings, we had a whole string of witnesses telling us how worried they would be about taking an unknown lodger into their home in circumstances where they would fear that their children might be at risk.

I also want to consider the issue in the context of devolution. I have been a long-time supporter of devolution; I was a member of the campaign for a Scottish Assembly before such things were fashionable. As well as the arguments for devolution because we wanted to move power closer to the people, there was also a strong argument that we wanted a devolved Scottish Parliament as a bulwark and protection against a Tory Government, to mitigate the worst effects of Tory economic and social policy. It is therefore doubly regrettable that right from the beginning, the present Scottish Government failed to use the whole range of their powers to mitigate the impact of the bedroom tax on the people of Scotland.

In our investigations and witness sessions, it became eminently clear to us that discretionary housing payments were inadequate and not an appropriate method of reaching everyone affected by the malignant impacts of the bedroom tax, who included those with mental health issues, learning difficulties and chaotic lives, as well as those too proud to apply for another benefit. It was clear that, despite the best efforts of local authorities of all political persuasions, they were unable to reach all those who were adversely affected by the bedroom tax.

In those circumstances, people who were unable to mitigate the effects themselves or with the assistance of the local authority were left with the alternatives of paying up and suffering, building up arrears and debt, or moving. We discovered that if people were able to move, they were often obliged to move into the private rented sector, which actually cost the public purse more in housing benefit than if they had remained in their existing home.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Perhaps my hon. Friend would not be surprised to know that the real problem is the shortage of homes, which is why people end up in the private rented sector. In Edinburgh this week, out of all council and housing association homes, only 22 one-bedroom properties are advertised, and six of them are in sheltered housing, which by definition does not suit people affected by the bedroom tax because it is for retired people. However, it has also not led to any increase in the number of larger houses available: only five three-bedroom houses and one four-bedroom house are available in the city, which is much the same as before the introduction of the bedroom tax, so it has not solved that problem either. Yet, at the same time, the number of new starts of affordable homes in Scotland has fallen dramatically in the last three years.

[Mr Davidson]

That is absolutely correct. I notice that there are numerous other Members here who will undoubtedly want to speak. I did not intend to spend most of my time on the iniquities of the bedroom tax, because that is common ground for the vast majority of us here; I wanted to discuss what is to be done and what should be done. For those reasons, I will turn to the campaigns that have been run and that have sent witnesses to us, which have exerted enormous pressure on public representatives to do something about this.

I regret that from a very early stage, the Scottish Government refused to use the full range of powers available to them to mitigate the effects of the bedroom tax. The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, who is the appropriate Scotland Office Minister, said that the Scottish Government had powers beyond DHPs; the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said exactly the same thing. We understand from both Ministers that the Scottish Government never made the least effort to contact them to find out what, in their view, might be legally available alternative methods of mitigating the bedroom tax.

Work Capability Assessment

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)]

As usual, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Weir. I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) on securing this short debate.

I have looked extensively at some of the correspondence that the hon. Lady has had with Sir Andrew Dilnot, who runs the UK Statistics Authority. She had let me see a copy of her speech—she has stuck rigidly to the letter of it—so that I could do some research. I was slightly surprised, as I believe that Sir Andrew has answered, in his letters to her, many of the questions that she raised today. However, I will try to elaborate on that a bit.

Mandatory reconsiderations were brought in for reasons that I think we would all agree with: to ensure that we get the decisions right before we go down the enormously costly and lengthy route of tribunals and appeals—costly to the taxpayer and to the individual. A mandatory reconsideration can produce the right decision earlier.

We have debated at length as to how we can get a shorter distance, so that we can get the right decision through. Tribunals and appeals are enormously stressful for claimants, and sometimes the length of time is unnecessary. If we can get the decision appraised before it goes down the tribunal route, which we are doing with mandatory reconsiderations, we can save a lot of time, and it would be unnecessary to go through the tribunal. It still leaves an opportunity for the individual, should they wish, to go through the appeals and tribunal process, but if we can get the decision right, there will be no need to do so, which I am sure is what we would all like to see.

The issue about reconsideration of the statistics, which is the main thrust of the hon. Lady’s speech, was something that I thought Sir Andrew Dilnot’s letters to her, copies of which I have seen, have extensively answered, particularly the one of 21 February 2014. She quoted extensively from the letter, but some other quotes from that letter are relevant. He stated,

“since the publication of the statistics is up to 10 months behind the application reference point, we expect it to take some time for the effects of such procedural changes to flow through into the published statistics.”

He went on to say that departmental statisticians

“will consider your request for more detailed presentations of the statistics”.

That is exactly what the letter said. He went on to look at that.

The hon. Lady will know, as will the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, who is in the Chamber, that it is not possible for a Minister to instruct his departmental statisticians to do statistics in a certain way. We can look at something—that is exactly what we are doing—but I cannot instruct the statisticians to produce statistics in the way that the hon. Lady has asked. I think there is some merit in what she is asking to be done, but it will be for Sir Andrew Dilnot and his team and my statisticians to work together on that. I know that the hon. Lady corresponds extensively with Sir Andrew Dilnot and I am sure that he will confirm what I have said.

It is important that the statistics are right; all hon. Members would want that. The rationale behind mandatory reconsideration was to get the whole thing right. Sir Andrew Dilnot stated in his letter of 21 February that it was too early to have the sort of statistics that the hon. Lady mentioned. I am more than happy—and I have—in the light of the letters that I have seen, and in the light of the hon. Lady’s requests in correspondence with Sir Andrew Dilnot, and his comments, to ask my statisticians to look at this to see whether what she has asked for is possible. But I stress again that, as a Minister of the Crown, I cannot instruct statisticians in my Department to do what she asked. It was for them to make sure that we have a robust situation, but I can imagine the controversy that there would be in the House if a Minister was speaking in the House and it became public knowledge that statisticians had been instructed by a Minister to do things in a certain way.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I can understand why it would be a matter of concern if a Minister told statisticians not to record something, but surely a Minister will have a view about the form of statistics and the kind of information to be published; and presumably, these are bits of management information which are there anyway.

[Mike Penning]

Certainly, Ministers have a view on lots of things, but there is a difference between having a view and instructing departmental statisticians to do their statistics in a certain way. I have asked whether I have the powers to do so, should I wish to do so, and I understand, having received advice, that I do not. It is for my statisticians to work on producing statistics on mandatory reconsideration in a way that is as informative as possible, working with the UK Statistics Authority.

Regarding the clarification of that point, and with regard to the very narrow title of this afternoon’s debate, I honestly thought that Sir Andrew Dilnot had answered the questions that the hon. Lady has asked in this debate, which is why I reiterate that I was slightly surprised that we had the debate. The hon. Lady knows that my door is always open. We could have openly discussed this matter, if she had had anything to clarify. I know that Sir Andrew Dilnot’s officials are listening to this debate and want to work with her.

At the moment the information is not ready. It is not in the format that she is asking for. As soon as it is ready it will be published. It may not be in the perfect format that the hon. Lady is looking for. I have asked for this matter to be reviewed, and Sir Andrew Dilnot is doing the same thing, and I look forward to the response. However, I cannot instruct the statisticians to do so and I would not do so.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I was not suggesting that a lot of the data would already be there, but we are expecting far more such decisions to be taken. It is important to start planning for that, as I am sure the Minister would agree.

[Mike Penning]

That is exactly what the statisticians are planning for. Actually, with mandatory reconsideration we were trying to see whether we could get the decisions right before they went to appeal. It is early days yet—it is a bit like the early days with the personal independence payment, which we were discussing only this morning, where the early data reveal that the number of cases going to appeal is a lot less than expected. It does appear that the mandatory reconsideration work is working, but when the statistics come forward that will be for everybody to know.

I know that those in Sir Andrew Dilnot’s office are listening to this debate and I am sure that they will correspond with the hon. Lady on the points that I have raised in the debate and on points raised by her as well.

Question put and agreed to.

Incapacity Benefit Migration

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving me the opportunity to have this important debate. I hope that during the course of it, we can tease out some of the issues that remain.

The context is that the last Labour Government, as we know, replaced incapacity benefit, severe disablement allowance and income support on grounds of disability with employment and support allowance in 2008. Since then, the benefit has attracted a great deal of criticism. Under the Conservative Government between 1979 and 1997, the total number of people claiming the predecessor benefits that I mentioned more than doubled from 1.2 million to 2.6 million. That rate of increase slowed after 1997; total numbers peaked at 2.7 million and dropped to 2.5 million again by 2008.

I regularly hear Ministers say that the last Government did not care about that and that they tolerated people being on incapacity benefit, although clearly that had been happening for a considerable time. The rise under the Thatcher and Major Governments was due in part to a lack of any proper strategy to get people into work who had lost their jobs after the decline of heavy industry. There was a clear pattern: the number of claimants rose during that period in areas that had been major heavy industry areas, where jobs had been lost and people often had health problems resulting from their employment. Miners are an obvious example, but people in other heavy industries also suffered considerable health problems. During that period, people were almost encouraged to claim incapacity benefit rather than unemployment benefit, and we arrived at the situation that we had.

The position has not been static, however. It is interesting to look at the situation between 1999 and 2008. At some point over that period, 5.7 million people had their incapacity benefit closed, and 5.6 million new claims were made. The often made assertion that nothing changed, nobody moved and people were left to rot is not borne out by the statistics. There was perhaps more movement than people normally credit.

That said, the Labour Government—particularly at a time when unemployment had fallen considerably—wanted to consider who might be able to work even though they might have been unable to do their previous job. That is why we introduced employment and support allowance, which acknowledged that some people who are ill or disabled can work, given the right support when preparing to re-enter employment and after obtaining a job. It also acknowledged that although some people with particular conditions might not be able to work, others with the same condition might be able to, and that it is often better for people’s mental and physical health—I would certainly not want to dispute this—if they are working rather than staying at home.

The issue for many people is being able to get a job, being able to get support if they do get one and whether their employment conditions enable them to stay in that job. In my city, we had a BlindCraft firm, which was not part of Remploy but which, as its name suggests, had long provided for people with severe sight difficulties. It was closed on the basis that it needed a subsidy, which was a cost to the council that ran it, but it was a place where a lot of people got self-esteem, income and the feeling that they were part of their community because they could work.

The work capability assessment—the testing process that determines eligibility for the benefit—was designed to consider people’s functional capability rather than simply their condition. It was meant to identify what people could do, rather than what they could not. It was introduced in October 2008, but it soon became clear that ESA was not working as it should.

My interest in the matter was kindled when I was a parliamentary candidate between 2009 and 2010. I started from the perspective that we had to change things. I felt that the move away from incapacity benefit was not a bad idea in principle, but meeting people during that period convinced me that we had a problem. I met people who were still recovering from cancer but who had been found fit for work, as well as a young woman whose employment with the local council had been terminated because she was unfit to continue but who, within weeks, had been told she was completely fit for work.

All of that told me that far too many claimants were being incorrectly assessed as fit for work. Regardless of which Government had introduced the scheme, I was absolutely determined to come to Parliament to fight for changes to the system. At the time—this is a marker of whether the system is successful—one in 10 decisions were overturned on appeal. That is not one in 10 of all appeals, because 40% of all appeals were successful, but one in 10 decisions. That remains broadly the case today. In addition to the emotional costs faced by claimants and their families, the annual cost of appeals is about £66 million.

Those concerns were widely shared by advice agencies, charities and MPs, and were far more profound than any raised about incapacity benefit. In 2011, the Select Committee on Work and Pensions reported on the subject and concluded that the WCA was flawed. There are many examples of the impact on individuals and the distress and upset caused, and I do not intend to reprise them here, but we should never forget that this is about people.

The incoming coalition Government were largely unmoved by the concerns about the benefit that were already being widely expressed. They renewed Atos Healthcare’s contract for the face-to-face part of the WCA, reduced the time limit for receiving contributory ESA from two years to one year for people in one of the recipient groups and started the migration of people from incapacity benefit to the new benefit. The process of reassessment started with pilots in Aberdeen and Burnley in November 2010, was rolled out nationally in April 2011 and was due to be completed this month.

The Government have always given the impression that those policies would lead to a significant reduction in the total number of claimants. Upon commencement of the incapacity benefit migration pilots, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions told the Evening Standard that

“there are around 2 million people receiving incapacity benefit, parked out of sight of any support system and at a cost to the taxpayer over the past decade of almost £135 billion. We estimate we will find around 23% of people fit for work immediately”.

On Second Reading of the Welfare Reform Bill in March 2011, he said:

“We are picking up an incapacity benefit system in which they left people parked, never seen by anybody for years and years.”—[Official Report, 9 March 2011; Vol. 524, c. 932.]

By November 2012, he had ramped up the rhetoric to such an extent that on one occasion, he claimed that he would get all the 2.5 million people who had previously been parked on incapacity benefit into work.

Has the migration, then, lived up to expectations? We now know that between the start of the migration and March 2013, when there were at least 12 months of the process to go, 234,600 people out of 1.015 million incapacity benefit claimants who were reassessed were declared fit for work. However, the number of claimants on ESA and its various predecessors—obviously some people have still not gone through the migration process and are still in receipt of one of the previous benefits—fell by only 150,000 over the period, from 2.597 million to 2.362 million.

Clearly, the work capability assessment is designed to be tougher for new claimants than the equivalent assessment for incapacity benefit, and that has caused much of the furore. I am not in a position to say whether the number of people found fit for work under the WCA as new claimants differs much from the number under incapacity benefit, because the Department has not published the equivalent figures for incapacity benefit up to 2008. I assume—because it was the intention—that fewer new applicants have been successful. In view of that, it would be expected that the flow on to employment and support allowance, after the initial assessment period, would be lower than it had been for incapacity benefit.

It has also been decided to reduce the time limit on contributory ESA to one year for people in what is called the work-related activity group. Some time ago I asked for figures about that, and the then Minister told me in a letter that in 2012-13 alone, 82,000 people had lost their contributory ESA and did not qualify for the income-related version of that benefit. In other words, they were off benefit altogether. From the perspective of those individuals, they were losing £91 a week. Yes, they would often be in a household with someone else who was working—they probably had a working partner. However, that partner might have been working only part time. For a household that has already lost a salary through someone becoming unwell, losing a further £91 a week is extremely serious. If the number of those people is taken from the 150,000 by which total numbers have gone down, it seems that the changes have eliminated only 68,000 from claiming.

The reduction in the total number of claimants would be expected to be significantly more than the number found fit for work during the migration, but in fact it is less even given the other changes, such as people coming off contributory employment and support allowance, and despite the fact that we are constantly told that the test is tougher, more people are being found fit for work and fewer people are getting benefit. Where have the people gone? What has happened in the system?

One possible explanation is that more people are becoming ill or disabled and so the number of successful new claims is rising. That seems unlikely; there seems to be no particular reason to suppose there has been such a change in patterns of illness and disability. I suspect—I would be interested to hear the Minister’s view—that some of those who have been declared fit for work, either as new claimants or as previous incapacity benefit claimants, are not recovering. They are not really fit for work, and their health may well deteriorate after they go through the process, so sooner or later they reapply for ESA and are awarded the benefit the second time round. I presume that the Department has some capacity to check whether that is happening. If it is, then despite everything that is going on and the cost of the system, including the human cost, the outcome seems relatively small.

We do not know what happens to people, because the Department does not track that properly and, as far as I can tell, no research has been commissioned on the subject since 2010. The one piece of published Department for Work and Pensions research came out in 2011. The previous Government commissioned it to examine the impact of the changes that had been made, which was an appropriate thing to do. A large sample of ESA applicants who had been found fit for work was followed up. Nine months on from the fit-to-work decision, 29% were in employment, 22% were on jobseeker’s allowance and 43% were neither in work nor in receipt of an out-of-work benefit. A qualitative survey followed some of the people up to find out what their circumstances were. Its conclusion was that a number of people who were not receiving JSA or another benefit

“were reliant on a range of sources of income, for example, savings, cashing in insurance policies, or borrowing or being supported by friends or family. In some cases people were under considerable financial pressure and these income sources did not seem sustainable in the long-term.”

If that pattern has continued—of course, if research had been done we might know whether it had—a large number of people may have dropped out of both work and benefit. Further follow-up research would be useful. Perhaps, however, some people ended up reclaiming employment and support allowance, because their health did not improve or deteriorated while, of course, their financial position got worse. That might help to explain why the overall numbers in receipt of employment and support allowance and its predecessor benefits have not gone down as much as one might expect. I also contend that the poor quality of support for people trying to find, retrain for and hold down a job leaves people who might be able to work with little option but to reapply for employment and support allowance.

When employment and support allowance was introduced there were two categories of beneficiary: those considered, at least for the foreseeable future and perhaps for ever, to be unable to return to work—the support group—and the work-related activity group. The purpose of the two groups was to make it possible to provide assistance and support for those who could return to work in the future. There are serious concerns about whether all the people in the work-related activity group should really be there. For example, there still appear to be people in that group who have degenerative conditions that will never improve.

Even if all the right decisions were being made, however, very little assistance or support is being given in practice. Substantial numbers of people have been in the work-related activity group for two, three or four years. That does not make it seem that they are anywhere close to being ready for work, and it raises the question why people so far from being capable of working were put in that group. I have a constituent who has been in the WRAG and has been reassessed yearly for four years. She has never had more than one work-focused interview in a year. She goes to the interview and is told “That’s fine, come back in a year’s time.” If she is thought capable of work at some future time, which is what the test is supposed to have established, one would think that some further help and assistance might be given. Otherwise, the experience that she has had so far will go on year after year, which seems to be little different, in many ways, from what happened before. Perhaps the WRAG is now the new parking place, if we want to use such language.

In practical terms, of course, those things matter to people. There are individuals who receive a lower rate of benefit because they are not in the support group, even if they are in the work-related activity group for years on end. Some people lose their benefits after a year because they live with a partner or have a small pension. Specialist disability advisers in jobcentres, who help people in those situations, are not available to the extent that they are needed; the Select Committee on Work and Pensions flagged that up in several of its reports.

There are not the opportunities to acquire new skills and build the confidence and experience to make the journey from not being able to work to being able to find employment. Some of that group—those with a prognosis that they will be fit for work within 12 months—end up in the Work programme, where they join those who have been found fit for work. So two groups may end up in the Work programme: those still in receipt of ESA, but with a prognosis of being fit within 12 months, and those who have ceased to receive ESA, but previously did so.

In 2010, the Secretary of State said:

“People who are found fit for work will move directly on to our new Work programme…They will receive an integrated package of support…It will provide personalised help based on individual needs…Using the best of the private and voluntary sectors, that will help get people into work as quickly as possible.”—[Official Report, 11 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 35.]

Ministers did not set minimum performance levels for former incapacity benefit claimants in the Work programme, but other types of claimants can be used as a basis for comparison.

By year three of the Work programme, where we are now, the Government expected 30% of new JSA claimants over 25 and 15% of new ESA claimants to be in work. Between the launch of the programme in June 2011 and December 2013, only 2,500—about 10%—of the 24,000 ex-IB claimants declared fit for work and on the Work programme had found a job; and only 760—1.7%—of the 44,000 ex-IB claimants still in receipt of ESA, but referred to the Work programme, were in work. Of those who were found fully fit for work and went into the Work programme, only 10% had found a job; of those who remained on ESA in the work-related activity group, only 1.7% had found a job.

The Secretary of State said that people would receive an integrated package of support to provide personalised help based on individual need, but the trouble is that that has simply not materialised. Ministers make much of how cheap the Work programme is, but its very cheapness means that the money available to spend per person is low, so the specialised help that former IB and ESA claimants need is not present. The financial structure of the Work programme is not operating so as to give that help.

In theory, providers will get larger payments—up to £13,500 per individual in some cases—for the groups seen as being furthest from the labour market, but even if only one in 20 of that group is sustained into permanent work and earns the provider such a sum, the money spent has to stretch over all 20 in the programme. What is on offer is simply not adequate, and that explains why so few people are being found employment through the Work programme.

Many people are suffering real distress and upset, which will have an effect on their health. For all the efforts made and the cost of assessments and appeals borne by the taxpayer, the Government’s attempts to reduce the numbers on incapacity benefit have fallen well short. If a policy is not working and not achieving its intended ends, it must be time to look at the whole system again.

When will the migration be completed? The planned completion date for the migration, which was meant to be the start of this month, appears to have been missed. The total number of incapacity benefit claimants due to be assessed was about 2.2 million in 2011, but two thirds of the way through the process, in March 2013, fewer than half that number had been assessed. In 2011, the Work and Pensions Committee warned that the DWP target of 11,000 assessments per month as part of the migration process was over-ambitious. Those concerns appear to have been justified.

One of the reasons why we are in this situation is that even sensible suggestions about the process, certainly in the four years I have been in Parliament, have simply been ignored or swept aside. The insistence that existing claimants be reassessed frequently, sometimes as often as every three or six months, not only causes considerable stress and anxiety to the claimants, but creates unnecessary expense. It means that new and existing ESA claimants and those on incapacity benefit who have been migrated all have to wait long periods for the assessments and, if necessary, for the appeals. In recent months, many of my colleagues have been reporting longer waiting periods than ever for all those categories of people.

In my Adjournment debate on 5 December 2012, the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey),said:

“To ensure that people receive benefit correctly, it is important that they are called for reassessment from time to time, to ensure that they still meet the entitlement conditions. People’s health conditions can change and we need to ensure that they remain in the correct group…This active approach to the benefit is crucial and is having an impact.”—[Official Report, 5 December 2012; Vol. 554, c. 318WH.]

Earlier this year, however, the Benefits and Work website published a leaked DWP internal memo saying that staff had been told to stop calling existing claimants for periodic reassessments from 20 January, because the system was not coping. Indeed, the Minister present today said in a recent Question Time that he had

“turned off the tap on reassessments”—[Official Report, 31 March 2014; Vol. 578, c. 592.]

Given that we were previously told that the reassessments were important and had to happen—with that level of frequency—regardless of the impact on individuals, we seem to have put people through unnecessary stress and strain.

We now learn that Atos, which delivers the WCA for the Government, is set to withdraw from its contract before the expiry date in August 2015. It is easy to focus on Atos as the problem, because it has had a lot of criticism, but that energy would be better directed at the Government.

Ministers decided that Atos was capable of undertaking new claims, periodic reassessments and the migration to ESA. This year, in addition, it has also had to undertake—perhaps this is the final straw—half of new claims for the personal independence payment. On top of that, Atos was required to make savings on its ESA contract between 2011 and 2015. As far back as 2011, the Select Committee pointed out that that was problematic and that taking on such a high level of assessments while making savings would be extremely difficult. The Committee rightly queried whether it would be possible. The Minister, in his recent statement on the Atos contract, said:

“My Department is committed to learning the lessons from these past failures and ensuring they are reflected in the design and management of future contracts”.—[Official Report, 27 March 2014; Vol. 578, c. 57WS.]

I genuinely hope that that is the case, but I fear that the only substantive change proposed for the long term is the move to multiple assessment providers.

In March 2011, Professor Paul Gregg, who was involved in planning the original introduction of ESA, stated in written evidence to the Select Committee that he felt that things should move more slowly and that recommendations for change should be tested before moving ahead with migration. An important recommendation was that the Department should track what was happening. He characterised what was happening at that stage as

“an interactive process of changes being followed by a chorus of complaints, revision, a wait to see if complaints diminish, and further revision when they don’t. The current national roll out will not be the end regime but just the latest iteration in my view. This is no way to introduce such a fundamental reform affecting so many vulnerable people.”

That indeed is what we have seen: complaints, some changes, more complaints and more changes, but no fundamental look at whether the system is delivering what the Government want.

The fourth independent report, from Dr Litchfield, made recommendations about simplifying the WCA process, improving how people are treated as they go through the process, decision making and knowledge about mental health among decision makers and health care professionals. We have been here before, however, as we have with all the independent reports. As Professor Gregg said, it appears that we are simply tinkering and making changes without fundamentally improving the position.

One change proposed in the Litchfield report—I hope it will be implemented speedily by the Government—is that people in the support group with long-term degenerative conditions, and other conditions from which they are not likely to recover, should not have to be reassessed more frequently than every four years. In practice, we appear to have dropped reassessments, but only temporarily.

Oxford citizens advice bureau submitted evidence for the Select Committee’s new report. It said it had seen little change and that 90% of appeals from ex-IB claimants or new claimants are successful, which suggests there is still something fundamentally wrong with the system. Other citizens advice bureaux can give similar reports. The Government must make fundamental changes to the process before tendering for new contracts.

Reforming the audit process, encouraging the submission of proper evidence at the outset so the right decisions are made first time and requiring all assessments to be recorded are all important changes. However, we must look at the overall process and ask whether we are getting the results we intended or we are putting people through a stressful and upsetting process that makes many people’s health worse, and without getting the results we need. If the results do not improve the savings will not materialise either.

I have talked a lot about statistics and the process, but I want to conclude with the story of my constituent, Brian Green. Mr Green has suffered from depression for a considerable time. He has been on employment support allowance for nearly the whole of the past three or four years—he started on it in 2010. When he was initially assessed, he was placed in a work-related activity group. He was called back for a reassessment after six months and was declared fit for work. He had to wait for an appeal hearing and was put back in the work-related activity group. That pattern has been repeated several times over the past three years. In 2011, he was put on the Work programme with A4e for two years. These are his words:

“A4e wasn’t helpful at all in helping me find employment. Throughout the two years all I did was regularly search for jobs using their PCs. Also I was put in a group to be shown how to set up my CV, which given I have ample experience of being employed and had already had help from Careers Scotland, seemed a waste of time. After all the jobs I applied for, very few sent acknowledgements, and I was never even called to interview.”

Mr Green’s case neatly demonstrates the problems with the work capability assessment. It needs to be reformed and we desperately need to improve employment support for people with disabilities. Mr Green was on the Work programme for two years and employment support allowance for nearly four years. He is no nearer to being ready for work or getting a job than he was at the outset. That, from his point of view, is a tragedy; it is not that he does not want to work. He needs proper help and support, not a scheme that does not acknowledge where he is in his life and the mental health issues with which he needs help. He was not getting that help through his Work programme provider.

Overall, we must ask whether the system is efficient, working and—after all we have gone through—worth while. We must also ask whether it is working for individuals. On both counts, I say it is not. I hope the Government will take the opportunity to look at the whole system and make serious changes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I do not want to leap from that to the suggestion that someone who is in receipt of disability benefit is not a hero. The situation often depends on someone’s family and community support, the nature of their condition and so on. Sometimes a single condition may be predictable in how it will play out for the rest of the sufferer’s life. Other conditions, particularly degenerative ones, are much more chaotic and their effects cannot be predicted.

[Sheila Gilmore]

There will always be people at all levels of society who try to exploit the system. Many people who are being found to be fit for work may need much more attention to their special situation. Many people with learning disabilities need a lot of help and support to hold down jobs. A voluntary organisation in my constituency runs a café and bakery, and trains learning-disabled youngsters, but the problem for many of them is that working in mainstream catering would be difficult, and they could not cope with McDonalds or Starbucks.

[Chris Bryant]

I do not go to Starbucks any more because of tax issues, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right.

I do not want to stereotype the Rhondda, but my surgery is held in a room with thin walls and by the end of the encounter with my constituent we were shouting at one another. When he left the room saying he was going to report me to the police—I was not sure what for—everyone queuing outside applauded me, not him, because they had the same attitude as everyone else: stealing from the system is fraud, and it is theft from other people. There is no innocence, and in one sense it is the worst form of theft. However, the level of such fraud is small, and such stories are sometimes blown up out of all proportion so people get the impression that everyone is at it, which is not true.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

No, not him personally—paying the Government. Will the Minister clarify exactly how anyone is arriving at a figure and what that figure is likely to be, because it will undoubtedly affect whatever the tender process is for a new contract? Will he also lay out exactly how he thinks that new tender process will go? Does he have a time scale for it? When does he think that might be in play?

I note that Atos said that it has been worried about death threats for its staff and so on. Even if we were to take out of the equation the fact that lots of people think Atos has done a terrible job—people have been able to point to some terrible mistakes and hideous instances where people who were either already dead or nearly dead were being told that they were fit for work, which has undoubtedly inspired a great deal of anger—whoever is doing work capability assessments in future will have to make unpopular decisions, by definition, because they will be turning some people down. What assessment have the Government made of the provision that there needs to be in any tender process, or for that matter, in future ongoing relations with whatever company will be doing this, to make sure that there is protection and that security is not compromised?

Capacity is another issue. Certainly by mid-2010 or by the end of 2010, it was pretty clear that there were not enough doctors and other medical staff—or, for that matter, administrative staff—to be able to do the work at Atos, so how do we make sure in any future tender that that does not happen all over again? It means that even if the Government want to say, “We are going to do more assessments,” they are unable to do so, which is why, because of the capacity problems, the Government have had to change what they are doing about people who are already coming up for reassessment after two years. Making sure that the capacity is there from the start is an important part of it.

As I said, the Government have now suspended reassessment for those on ESA for two years. I wonder what the cost of that is now going to be. I presume that the Government have made an assessment of that, because they would have been presuming that the reassessment was there for a purpose and that it would take more people off ESA. I wonder how many people they reckon will stay on who, in a sense, they would have thought otherwise might not be on it. The Government made assumptions when they introduced the policy, which they are presumably now unbundling. What are they assessing the future cost to be for each of the future years? How many people does that affect? How many people on ESA for two years would have been being assessed now, but are not being assessed?

On cost, the Office for Budget Responsibility report states:

“ESA is higher by £0.8 billion in 2014-15 and 2015-16…because the latest evidence suggests the caseload is higher than we assumed in December, despite substantial upward revisions made at that time. We have also updated the modelling on repeat work capability assessments, which has increased our assumption about the length of time and number of claimants waiting for a repeat assessment, meaning more claims continue for longer”.

It may be that I have just answered my previous question to the Minister, because it may be that the £800 million is all to do with not doing the extra reassessments—in which case, does he have any idea when we might be able to start doing reassessments? That might be a capacity question, but that £800 million is a significant cost.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Given that reassessments have been delayed or suspended—out of necessity, it appears, rather than conviction—does my hon. Friend agree that this might be an appropriate time to look again at reassessment periods? Part of the criticism has been that people, even those in the support group, are being called back for reassessment relatively frequently, and that that is an expensive, distressing and probably pointless activity. Given that we now have a hiatus in the system, is it not time to look at all that again?

[Chris Bryant]

I think that we always have to keep the matter under review; otherwise we are wasting time and energy on a process that is just injurious to the health of people whom we are trying to help, and at a cost to the taxpayer that does not provide a dividend. So, yes, of course the Government should do that. I was just hoping that the Government would be able to say whether the £800 million relates to the people who would have been reassessed. How many people will continue to receive benefits even though the Government have basically decided that they should not?

I want to talk about access to mental health services, because one of the issues that arose in Health questions earlier this week was that there has been a significant fall-off in the availability of talking therapies, and there is clear evidence that talking therapies, whether cognitive behavioural therapy or others, are predominantly concentrated in areas where there are fewer people on the various kinds of incapacity benefit. That is rather unhelpful to the process of trying to get people with mental health needs back into work, so I wonder what strategy the Government have to try to ensure that it is addressed.

Incidentally, one other thought occurs to me in relation to the point that my hon. Friend has just made. There are only so many doctors in Britain. If the Government decide to take a lot of doctors into Atos to make assessments of people’s fitness for work, there is a danger that they will simply be taking doctors out of the national health service, and that may have an impact locally on whether people are being helped back into work by getting better, rather than being forced back into work by being assessed by Atos. Of course, that is where there has to be a joined-up Government approach.

I want to ask the Minister about the Work programme, because, as my hon. Friend rightly said, there is a significant problem in that respect. The Secretary of State effectively admitted that in Work and Pensions questions on Monday. I think that he had hoped and expected that a much larger percentage of people would have been helped into work through the Work programme. Of those with disabilities, it is something like 5%, which is a very low level.

Of course, we all know from our constituency case load that some people need dramatic intervention to be able to get into work. Drug and alcohol abuse, leading to and coming from chaotic lifestyles, often makes it very difficult to assist people, even though there are many people with addictions of various kinds who are fully functioning in a work environment—we have only to look at the history of Parliament to see that. What assessment have the Government made of how the Work programme could be improved to enable more people with disabilities to get into work, or do the Government believe that the situation is not improvable and that 5% is what the level is going to be?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)]

It is a pleasure to respond under your chairmanship, Mr Turner, to this wide-ranging debate on incapacity benefit migration. Let me touch on the last point made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). He knows me well enough to know that I will naturally write to him and other colleagues on any points that I do not manage to cover in my contribution. I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) on securing the debate. She and other colleagues know that my door is open. She has used that opportunity to come to see me in the past, and I am sure that she will come to see me in the future.

If it is okay with you, Mr Turner, I will not go back over the history of this matter, because the hon. Lady covered it eloquently. I will touch on some of the relevant issues that are around now; obviously, some of them have existed since the system’s inception.

There will be some Members and other people who passionately believe that assessment should not take place. I disagree with them, and I think that the hon. Lady is agreeing with me, from a sedentary position, that assessments should take place; I think that that is her position.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I certainly agree that assessment should take place. I am not sure how, without assessment, we could establish that people were unwell or incapable of work, however we want to define it. The question is really about the process that we use.

[Mike Penning]

I wanted to give the hon. Lady the opportunity to clarify her position. In some cases, face-to-face assessments are what is required, unlike on IB where it was hardly ever face to face.

[Sheila Gilmore]

On the question of face-to-face assessments, one of the interesting points has been that sometimes they are better and sometimes they are not. It depends on the person. One of the things that I have come across in the past year or so is that quite a large number of people have been reassessed on paper rather than face to face, but have been placed in the work-related activity group and later discovered that not all the information was in the paperwork in the first place. I can see that we need both.

[Mike Penning]

As I said, there are some who agree with us that in certain circumstances, face to face is required. I passionately believe that face to face is not required in every case, whether in the WCA or in PIP. We have to make sure that we get it right. There are people who do not think that that should be the case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Penning]

Clearly, as the Select Committee knows, Atos was already getting into backlogs. That is why I talked about turning off the tap—stopping the reassessments and doing only the new applications, to ensure that we got those right. By doing that, we were allowing people who needed it to get through the system as fast as possible, and we intended to get to those who already had it later, because the backlog was becoming intolerable and unacceptable.

When I made the statement last week, we also issued an invitation to tender. We had already put out an invitation to tender for multiple contractors. We cannot go as fast as we would like with Atos leaving, so we will now be seeking a tender from a single contractor, and within that process there will be the decision to move to multiple contractors. That gives us a great opportunity to make the contract into a better format than we had before. We can deal with capacity issues by making sure that we get the flow correct and take care of the backlogs. Atos is still committed to working on the backlogs as we approach the date of its exit. There are issues around the software that we are using, which is Atos’s software and which we will continue to use. The new contract gives us an opportunity to migrate to a new supplier with the capacity and the skills that we need. We also have an opportunity to learn from Dr Litchfield’s report so that we get the assessments right, particularly when it comes to mental health, which the shadow Minister mentioned.

[Sheila Gilmore]

There clearly is a capacity problem, which has been building up. The Select Committee raised that point back in 2011, when there were problems with potential capacity. Will it be more expensive to take on a new contractor to get the capacity right, or does the Minister feel changes could be made, for example on reassessments, which could keep the cost down, similar to that with Atos?

[Mike Penning]

I think we are going to have to wait for the tenders to come in, but we are asking for a contract of a different sort from that let to Atos in 2008. No Minister coming into government is allowed to see advice from a previous Administration. With hindsight, that is probably right, although I have struggled with it in the three Departments I have been in over the past four years. One difficulty is that I therefore cannot see the assumptions that Atos made, based on the bid, about how it was going to make a profit out of its part of the scheme. I can now see such detail going forward, and there will be assumptions in the contract about what the profit margins will be, but the biggest thing for me will be putting capacity and quality together simultaneously. If we do not get that right, we will end up in the position to which the hon. Lady alluded.

Capacity is important, but—this falls partly within my ministerial portfolio, but not wholly—so is getting individual help to those moved on to the Work programme. Getting that right is really important. I will write to colleagues with more up-to-date figures on where we are on that, but it is crucial that we give confidence to people who want to go into work that they can go into work. Many people think that they cannot work until we give them the confidence and skills to return to the workplace or to enter it for the first time.

Something that I have touched on a couple of times, but will mention again, is the fact that when the Prime Minister asked me to take on my new portfolio, which is very different from how previous Administrations, and indeed the current Government, have previously run things, I asked for responsibility for the Health and Safety Executive. One of the biggest reasons was that I am an ex-firefighter, so I have seen how health and safety can work to make the environment we live in much safer, but I have also all too often seen health and safety being abused and used as an excuse for why something cannot be done, whether in the leisure or commercial sector. I was passionate in thinking that if I could look after health and safety along with my other responsibilities, I could break some of the myths about why people cannot get back into the workplace, or ensure that disabled people already in the workplace did not have to leave. We are currently working on that, and that has gone down particularly well with commerce and a lot of disability groups.

There have been some myths out there about why people cannot work. It is all about confidence. That is why I have been taking the Disability Confident campaign around the country, asking employers to give people an opportunity and to have the confidence to take people on. The larger companies have always been good at that, but small and medium-sized enterprises, which employ more people in this country than all the corporates put together, have some real confidence issues. We have been ensuring that they have as much confidence as possible.

[Mr Adrian Sanders in the Chair]

It has been a real eye-opener for me to be in a position to see Atos coming away from the system and the new contracts being issued. I have tried desperately to ensure that we listen, because no matter what our political colours, I passionately believe that we need to get this right. That is true not only of me—Ministers and Governments come and go—but of all of us, because we must get the right system in place for those who need it. It must be right for the taxpayer and for those who need help.

It has been a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for about 30 seconds, Mr Sanders. I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh East on her debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. He is right. As I have said, new enterprise generation stretches across the UK. Long-term youth unemployment in his constituency is down by 28%. I hope it will go down a little bit more and reach the national average—youth unemployment is down by 32% nationally—but a lot of good things are going on across the country.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

22. Despite all the talk of new jobs, 2.3 million people are still unemployed, only 58% of whom are on the jobseeker’s allowance claimant count, which suggests that it is not the generosity of benefits that is keeping people out of work. What steps are the Government taking to get that number down?

[Esther McVey]

I do not know whether the hon. Lady was smiling when she was describing all the good news that is happening. There is a record number of people into employment—over 30 million—youth unemployment has gone down for six consecutive months, and there is a record number of women in work. Perhaps she did not hear that, which is why I have repeated the good news that our long-term economic plan is working.