Housing Benefit (Under-occupancy Penalty)
Sheila Gilmore Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Dr Whiteford
The hon. Gentleman makes a really spurious point. Given the impact that the measure will have on his constituents, he would be better sticking to the real issue, which is the fact that the measure will not work and will harm people across Scotland.
Steve Webb
I am grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker.
On the analysis that the hon. Gentleman says he profoundly disagrees with, he made two comments and I will address them both. He disagrees with the analysis that there was a deficit of £150 billion, when the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) famously left a note for his successor saying that there is no money left. The hon. Gentleman may not be aware—I do not know—that the previous Labour Chancellor set out spending plans for this Parliament, which involved tens of billions of pounds of spending reductions. The two biggest things on which the Government spend money are paying their employees and paying benefits. We have already squeezed public sector pay. The Opposition initially opposed and now accept that policy. The second biggest item of Government spending is benefits, tax credits and pensions. If the hon. Gentleman can tell us how we can save tens of billions of pounds from public spending without touching benefits, tax credits and pensions, I would like to hear from him. He has not given us that answer.
Sheila Gilmore
The Minister has now clearly established that he sees the purpose of this change as saving money in the welfare budget, so will he please spare us all that stuff about making better use of houses? He knows that if everybody did reshuffle into the right size of house, there would be no saving, so will he just cut those pages out of his speech?
Steve Webb
The context is the need to save public money, but there are a variety of ways that we can do that. One way has already triggered the better use of social housing stock, but we are still in the overall context stage at the moment.
Greg Mulholland
I do not think that the Government have got it right, and I ask them to address the issue compassionately and with common sense, not only through the application of discretionary housing payments, which are essential and welcome, but through the provision of further exemptions for certain categories.
Sheila Gilmore
I welcome some of the hon. Gentleman’s approach, but he appears to be proceeding on the basis that the measure is about making better use of housing in a planned way. However, the Minister has made it very clear that it is about saving money.
Greg Mulholland
It is clearly about both things at the same time. Were it not about both, the Government would not be pursuing it. Were it not for the fact that the measure will save money, it simply would not have been put forward and no Member on the Government side of the House would have been asked to vote for it in any shape or form. That stands in great contrast to the hon. Lady’s Government, who, for over 13 years, dealt with neither point and allowed the problem to be ignored entirely and the welfare budget to get out of control. We have to make difficult decisions. It would be good to hear—
Greg Mulholland
I will not give way to the hon. Lady again, but I will give way to the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown) if he still wishes to intervene.
Jane Ellison
No, I want to develop this point a bit further. The Government have put forward a lot of measures. No one would claim that they are all perfect and thoughtful contributions were made earlier in the debate about areas that the Government need to address. That could be through discretionary housing payment or the rolling review—I welcome the Minister’s reference to that because it is sensible to say that a policy such as this should be kept under review so that the Government can move swiftly to take any action that might be needed. However, that is not the same as blanket opposition to the measures.
As the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown) said, I am a new Member of the House, but it strikes me that, in the past couple of years, the Labour party has relished the opportunity to oppose everything, but that is not credible. My hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) referred to the speech of the shadow Secretary of State. He tried to re-establish economic credibility, but he comes to the House week after week and month after month to oppose everything.
There will come a point when Back-Bench Labour Members have to make difficult decisions. My strong suspicion is that reality will dawn on Labour Front Benchers as we approach the election, and they will start to make speeches that begin to reflect something like the economic reality that Britain faces. At that point, the Labour Back Benchers who sit in the Chamber week after week relishing the opportunity to oppose everything and say that the Government’s measures are dreadful must make difficult decisions. One Member said in the debate that we are killing communities. Such exaggeration is grotesque.
Jane Ellison
I will give way to my colleague on the Select Committee on Work and Pensions.
Sheila Gilmore
The hon. Lady is, I fear, attempting to defend the indefensible, but her problem is that, despite all the cuts being carried out and the hardship, there is no growth, and debt will rise more than the Chancellor predicted. In other words, the cuts and the hurt are not working.
Jane Ellison
I am glad the hon. Lady has given me an opportunity to respond on that point. It was always predicted that debt would rise for most of this Parliament. It is true that that period has had to be extended, but that is not a surprise. The structural deficit is being reduced. To return to an intervention I made on the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill, who spoke for Labour, if Labour had begun to address some of the structural deficit problems when the financial crash hit in 2008, the current Government might not have had to take some of the difficult decisions they are taking now. Housing benefit is a classic example.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
I want to address first the comparisons between the private and the social rented sector. As was said earlier, we are comparing apples and pears. The private rented sector is not where the majority of people intend to spend their lives. Research has shown over and over again that people see it as a transitional part of their life—they use it when they are younger and they hope to move on. It is true that in the past few years it has become more difficult for people to move on—it is difficult to get a mortgage and move into the owner-occupied sector, and there is a shortage of social rented housing. Nevertheless, people do not see the private rented sector as a long-term home.
The social rented sector provides long-term, low-rent homes. The people who live in them might have been out of work at some point in their lives, but they are often in low-paid work and want to be able to afford to do that work. The people who will be affected will often have lived in those houses for many years. Some have compared this situation with the introduction of the local housing allowance, but that was not introduced retrospectively, which is what is happening here—that was made clear in an intervention earlier.
When people live in a council house or housing association house for many years, they put in a lot, using their DIY skills, or decorating the home and making it how they want it. They have invested in that home, so to tell them that they must pay up or leave entirely ignores the investment that they have made.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I had a visit from a constituent whose daughter is disabled, has just obtained local employment and really needs routine. As my hon. Friend has said, they have made great investments in their home. They have a tiny box room that nobody could fit in, but they have been told to have a lodger—having a lodger in a home with a disabled daughter would, of course, have great risks. Does my hon. Friend agree that displacing such families is totally unfair and affects the development of those children?
Sheila Gilmore
That is a good example. We are talking about real people, not just apparently unused and unloved bedrooms—despite the fact that the latter appears to be the view of many people on the Government Benches. Real people will experience real harm, but I suspect that that is part of a wider view of social housing and is not entirely accidental.
Mark Lazarowicz
On the question of people having spare bedrooms and houses that are too big for them, will my hon. Friend also bear in mind the fact that on occasion local authorities trying to let houses in hard-to-let areas have encouraged people to take houses that are slightly bigger than their immediate need would suggest in order to ensure that they are not left empty? Is that not the kind of approach that would be undermined if the policy was to go ahead?
Sheila Gilmore
I know that that has been the case in many areas. My hon. Friend comes from Edinburgh, as I do, and he will know that the problem is not always about hard-to-let areas. As far back as the 1980s, single people in Edinburgh have been housed in two-bedroom houses in some circumstances. That is partly to do with the nature of the stock, as there are not enough one-bedroom houses to match the number of people, and it also acknowledges the fact that people’s lives are not static.
We have heard a lot from the Government about dynamic benefits, but people’s lives are pretty dynamic and they change. The single person housed in a two-bedroom house might well have a child. If we insist that they can never be in a two-bedroom house, they might have to move later. The same happens in reverse, as people’s families do not stay static. Even grown-up children, as many of us know, do not necessarily simply go and stay gone. They take a job and move away, but the job or relationship might not work out and they come back. Families also want to visit. Part of this change is about saying to the not very well-off, “You cannot have the normal elements of family life; we are not going to let you.”
I was about to make a point on the general view of social housing. I think perhaps this policy is part of a pattern, because we have heard from UK Housing Ministers—those dealing with England—that they do not want social housing to be permanent housing; they want to introduce short-term tenancies of various types so that people can be moved on. This policy may not be as much of an aberration as some of my colleagues think.
Mrs McGuire
Does my hon. Friend share my concern that there may be an ideological trend in the Government’s philosophy whereby social housing is seen as welfare housing only, and not as homes for many people in our communities?
Sheila Gilmore
I think we can see a large element of that in this policy.
As many hon. Members have said, if people move to the private rented sector, the housing benefit bill may actually increase. In Edinburgh, the local housing allowance, which is not especially generous, is £114 for a one-bedroom house. Some of my constituents have asked me about moving into the private rented sector. If they move from their two-bedroom council house, for which the rent is £91 a week, into a private rented property, it will cost more. Rather than a saving, there will be an increase in spending.
The vision set out by the Government is of a lot of single people rattling around in big houses with three or four bedrooms. We are asked, “Doesn’t that seem unfair? Why shouldn’t they move on?” In fact, the vast majority of my constituents affected by this tax are not living in especially big houses. It is suggested that people take in a lodger. I visited a constituent—a woman in her 50s who is on ESA, although she has always worked previously. Her home has two bedrooms, although the second is pretty small, and the kitchen is off the living room. Having a lodger is not just about having someone in the spare bedroom; it involves sharing all those quite small facilities with somebody else. While my constituent is sitting in the living room, perhaps enjoying watching television or whatever she enjoys doing in the evening, the lodger will come through the room, go into the kitchen, make a cup a tea and come out again. Hon. Members have to understand the kind of houses people actually live in.
Local councils in particular are making real efforts to mitigate the impact, but there is a downside to that, because this is another example of where savings in general public spending will not be achieved. How is money saved if, as my council will do, local authorities find additional funding to put into their DHP fund because they believe that that is the humane and common-sense thing to do, given all the disruption that various categories of people might otherwise suffer? That is additional public spending, so we will be saving with one hand and spending with the other. Crucially, the saving that central Government want to make will result in councils having to pick up the pieces.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
Many Members here who do not represent Scottish constituencies will not realise that the rate capping process carried out by the Scottish National party in government has left local government strapped, with 85% of the cuts last year being to local government budgets, so there will be less money available for the very funding my hon. Friend is talking about.
Sheila Gilmore
That is an important point. The council tax freeze which has been going on for nearly six years now—people in England will share the joys as well—has resulted in local councils being unable to go to their populations and say that they would like to put up council tax, so that they can perhaps borrow money to build more council houses. Of course, the people who do not benefit in any way from the council tax freeze are those on the lowest incomes, who do not pay council tax directly because they receive council tax benefit, but they are the very people who will be affected by the bedroom tax. For the lowest earners, the council tax freeze is not a blessing; it has reduced the services they received and hamstrung a lot of councils. I hope the Scottish Government will look again at the policy, which might appear populist but does not benefit the lowest paid.
Sheila Gilmore
I am not going to give way, because I have done so several times already.
If councils are going to put their money into this policy, by increasing discretionary housing payments, or trying to acquire or build more houses, they must be given support. In Scotland, as in England, sadly, we are seeing a substantial reduction in the building of affordable homes. In Scotland, the number of such homes was boosted briefly, but it has gone down from 7,900 two years ago to only 3,400 this year. Some of those homes are for mid market rent, which has its role but is expensive, so it could lead to higher housing benefit payments. The outcome of more mid market rent housing is similar to what is happening in England. We have heard people on the Government Benches saying that the Government will ensure that more affordable houses are built, but I thought they had made it clear that those so-called affordable houses were going to be at up to 80% of market rent, which is expensive. In Edinburgh, a council one-bedroom property is £275 per month, but a mid market one-bedroom property is currently being advertised at £439 per month. Mid market is no substitute for low-cost affordable housing.
The high housing benefit bill will be reduced not by measures such as the bedroom tax, but by measures that address the supply of housing and the huge cost of the private rented sector. A couple came to see me who, after six years, had got the two-bedroom wheelchair-accessible house that they need. It is no use saying to them, “You can apply for a discretionary housing payment.” In a Westminster Hall debate recently, the Minister said that discretionary housing payments might have to become permanent in such cases, but that couple will still have to apply every year, and will have uncertainty, and that is not fair to them. If such payments have to be permanent, where is the saving? Why not have an exemption?
Pensions and Social Security
Sheila Gilmore Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Steve Webb
The rate of CPI has been 2.7% for four consecutive months. We were aware of the level of inflation when we made these judgments about 2013. Clearly, there are things we can do to help ourselves with the cost of living. For example, the cost of petrol is 10p a litre lower than it would have been if we had implemented the previous Government’s escalator; council tax bills, which are a huge cost of living for many people, have been frozen in many places for three years; and people in low-wage work will receive a substantial income tax cut in April. Those measures will all help people with the cost of living.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
It is interesting that the Minister should mention council tax, because in large parts of the country many working-age people, working and unemployed, will be paying substantial sums in council tax, and that will have a big effect on their standard of living.
Steve Webb
The unprecedented three-year freeze in council tax in many areas is a huge boost not only to those on the lowest incomes but particularly to those whom one might describe as not rich and—
Steve Webb
I wonder if the hon. Lady would allow me to finish replying to her previous point before she intervenes with the next one. The three-year freeze will help particularly those whom I would describe as not rich and not poor—not poor enough to get benefit and not rich enough not to care. We meet them all the time; they have saved a bit, worked hard, and feel penalised. Our freeze will benefit those people in particular.
Sheila Gilmore
It may be an unprecedented freeze in England, but it is not unprecedented in Scotland. It is a very regressive form of assisting people, because the higher their level of council tax banding, the more advantage they get from it. Someone who is already in receipt of council tax benefit gets no benefit from the freeze, and the effect on councils is to lead them to raise the cost of many fees and cut services. In fact, therefore, the poorest and most vulnerable do not benefit from a council tax freeze.
Steve Webb
In responding to the hon. Lady, I occasionally lose count of the logical flaws in her argument. However, I will take one in particular. The Government have made available for this coming year, 2013-14, an additional £100 million to help local authorities to dampen down the effect of the council tax benefit changes. Many local authorities have reduced the subsidy given on empty homes and on second homes—which are not generally associated with poverty, I would add—and many have damped, or reduced to zero, the impact on council tax. Some Labour authorities have chosen not to do that, which is an unfortunate political decision.
I remind those who might consider voting against the order—the interventions that we have heard suggest that the Opposition are considering it, or perhaps they want to give that impression—that they would be voting against an above-inflation increase in the state pension, a full increase in line with CPI for disability benefit, and any increase in any benefit this coming April.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
It is a shame that if we talk for as long as many of us would like to talk tonight, we will probably be slightly unpopular with some. However, people who will be affected by these changes will be watching these proceedings, and they will be dismayed to see that this important debate has been tacked on to the end of the parliamentary day and not a single Conservative Back Bencher is sufficiently interested to want to take part in it. When I was standing for election in 2010, the Liberal Democrats used to like to position themselves, at every hustings I was at, somewhere to the left of Labour, but it is their Back Benchers who are defending the Government’s choices—for they are choices. The public have to be well aware of that.
One regrettable thing about what has been happening for nearly three years now is the constant pitting of one group against another: older people against younger people, and people in work against those not in work. That is not helpful because it provides no analysis of the real roots of the problems facing us. The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) has been doing a good job of defending the Government. He made the point about how out-of-work benefits have risen by more than earnings in the past five years, using it to justify the 1% rise. However, he knows that if we look at a different time period, we come up with a very different figure. Since 1979, unemployment benefit and its successor benefit, jobseeker’s allowance, has fallen from 22% of average earnings to 11% of average earnings. We are starting from a very low base indeed, and it is not right or fair therefore to say that 1% is adequate for people who are struggling.
Why are we in some of these spending positions? The irony of all this is that so many of the policies we are facing will drive up spending, be it on some of the benefits under discussion today or on the related benefits—the ones that would come under the tax system at the moment, such as tax credits. Some 90% of new housing benefit claimants in the past couple of years have been people in work, and that has been because of the level of wages and because these people are in part-time work. That has been driving up the housing benefit totals, which the Government are very concerned about, as I am. I am not comfortable with the fact that, as we are told repeatedly, the housing benefit bill has risen so much in the past 10 years, but we need to examine the reasons for that. The major reason is that so many people on low incomes are finding themselves with no other housing choice but the private rented sector, the cost of which in housing benefit is very high. If we do not tackle that underlying issue, in one way or another, be it by creating more affordable housing or by dealing with the issue of private sector rents, the housing benefit bill will still creep up and up, and in a couple of years’ time we will not have made any progress in reducing it.
In the meantime, many of our constituents living in low rent housing are about to have their income cut substantially. I have a constituent in her 50s who lives in a house that is not grand—it is a two-bedroom house, where the second bedroom is small and the kitchen opens off the living room. That removes the notion that she could have someone in to share—one of the Minister’s fondest examples. At her age and stage of life, why should she be expected to live in that way? She will be losing £50 a month in April, and I can assure the Minister that in my city the choices of where to move to are very limited, even if she wanted to move or should move.
When we are looking at a figure of 1%, we have to consider what is happening in the wider sphere. If just one thing—one change—were happening, it would not be quite so painful for a lot of families, but these things are happening to the same people. I give the example of a lady who is on employment and support allowance in the work-related activity group. She will be suffering from the 1% rise as well as from the £50 knocked off her housing benefit. People such as her have to deal with the cumulative effect of what is happening. She did not want to be claiming benefit. She did not want to fall ill in her 50s, but it is something that, after a working life, has happened to her and to thousands and thousands of people like her up and down this country.
Instead of dealing with the issue in this rather rushed way, perhaps the Government could do as some organisations have asked and make a cumulative impact assessment of the effects of the change on disability. Why do we not have that, and why do we not make time available for a proper debate? We need to see what is happening. Some people may see the change as relatively small, but a whole package of measures is coming in.
I am seeing a big change. A couple of years back, people would say that the Government’s welfare reforms were all about “those terrible scroungers—it’s not me and mine, it’s somebody else.” Now, people come to my surgeries and ask, “Why is this happening to me? I’m not a scrounger. How come this is happening? I’ve worked hard all my life, so why is it happening to me?” People are not inherently either workless or working. People move in and out of work, particularly at the lower-paid end of the spectrum.
We know why the measure had to be brought in this year. It was because the Government’s economic policies had failed. I am glad the hon. Member for Eastbourne decided to raise the question of jobs. It is frequently said in this place that 1 million private sector jobs have been created, and therefore our economic policy is working. The Prime Minister says it all the time. In January 2011, within a short time of coming into office, the Government told us that half a million new private sector jobs had been created. Presumably that was the true figure at the time. Many of us think that one of the reasons for the increase in jobs was the economic stimulus applied by the previous Government; it was certainly very soon for the coalition Government’s policies to have taken effect. If that figure was correct and the figure of 1 million is correct, since then—two years ago—apparently only half a million jobs have been created. But—it is a big but—in that period, 170,000 jobs in colleges were reclassified from the public to the private sector, and 100,000 jobs appear to be unpaid work placements. At the last Department for Work and Pensions questions, the employment Minister, the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban) admitted that unpaid jobs were being counted in the total. Apparently, the Prime Minister does not know, because he still talks about his million jobs and how wonderful it all is.
Ian Murray
I am delighted that my hon. Friend has allowed me to intervene to point out that the other big contributors to the million new jobs total are people on short and zero hours contracts. They are classified as employed when they are not being paid.
Sheila Gilmore
I thank my hon. Friend for that point. I was about to say that many of the jobs are exactly of that nature, which ratchets up the support payments. People on low earnings or who work very part-time hours are the very people who depend on housing benefit and, in many cases, tax credits. When we look at that situation, we see that the wonderful recovery in jobs is really not so wonderful. Indeed, some of the jobs are so part-time as to be almost invisible.
Life is very difficult for people who work in those kinds of jobs. They often have to start work at very difficult hours. A constituent who came to see me was desperate to work, and she found a job, but it meant that she had to get from Edinburgh to Livingston, which is about 20 miles. Without a car, it is quite a long way—it may be 18 miles; my figures might not be quite right. She had to get there for 7 o’clock in the morning. How can someone do that when they do not have a car and public transport is either non-existent or very expensive? That job did not last long, because she could not keep it up.
Another constituent was told by a large department store, for which she had worked for a number of years in a job that fitted with her children’s school hours, that that option was no longer available to her. She now had to work for just 12 hours—she had previously managed to work for 20 hours—or she had to go on a flexible contract so that she could be called in whenever the shop wanted her. That was difficult—in fact, virtually impossible—for her because of things such as child care arrangements. She could not just suddenly come in on a Saturday or come in of an evening. The job had suited her needs, and it had brought a reasonable income that enabled her to support her children. Now she was told, “Well, if you don’t like it, there are plenty of people looking for these jobs and we can fill them very easily. If you do not want the new contract you can simply leave.”
That is the kind of job offer that many people are getting. If, on top of that, tax credits, which have been frozen for the past couple of years, go up by only 1%, and housing benefit payments are limited, those people will indeed suffer.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
Has my hon. Friend made an estimate of the number of people who have to juggle two, three or more part-time jobs? How many of the new posts that have been created are occupied by just one person who is trying to juggle different jobs and doing just a few hours in each one every day?
Sheila Gilmore
That is a good question. We need to know far more detail about those figures. We know from the people who come to see us, the people we talk to and the people we meet when we go around our constituencies exactly what is happening: if people can get more than one part-time job they will do so in order to make up their income, but it can be difficult for them.
That is the backdrop to these provisions. That is the bigger picture that the public will want to understand, as they realise that this will actually happen over the next few years. It has begun to hit many people hard, and it can only get worse. We must make it clear that if we are to be part of a society that is truly one in which we are all in it together, we should not go down that road.
Mr Brown
My hon. Friend is spot on. It is very difficult for families at the moment and it is about to get worse. The Minister mentioned the housing benefit changes. Some places are under-occupied and we all have families coming to us regularly—almost weekly—saying that they need an extra bedroom. Surely the Minister and other Government Members know, however, that to marry up families who are under-occupying and those who are overcrowding is a mammoth task.
Sheila Gilmore
Not only is it a mammoth task, but, in fact, if it was possible to reshuffle people into the right-sized houses within a reasonable time scale, there would be no saving to the Government; and yet they have a saving in their budget.
Steve Webb
I will finish the sentence. It goes on to say
“when looking at the fiscal consolidation as a whole.”
In other words, when looking at everything, which is what we were asked to do.
Sheila Gilmore
The other half of what the IFS said referred to the people in the lowest income deciles and the losses that they will incur. The cash reduction for people on the highest incomes will not impinge on their well-being in anything like the same way as these measures, including the 1% increase, will impinge on the poorest.
Steve Webb
In fact, the IFS figures are based on the percentage increases and, as we have been reminded repeatedly in the debate, the cash amounts for the very highest income earners are far higher for any given percentage figure. So, even taking percentages instead of cash amounts, the highest earners have, in the IFS’s words, been “hit the hardest”.
Oral Answers to Questions
Sheila Gilmore Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
Clearly, the cap and the principles behind the cap are supported by Government Members—that is, that people who are on benefits should not be earning more than those, for example, on average earnings. Those who are exempted are those who are entitled to working tax credit—because this is about getting people back to work, not stopping them doing that—war widows, widowers, those in receipt of disability living allowance/personal independence payment, attendance allowance, industrial injuries benefits, those on war disablement pension and compensation scheme and the support component of employment support allowance. There is also a 39-week grace period for those who fall unemployed so that they can get back to work without having to change their arrangements.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
Despite what the Secretary of State has just said, it is clear that he sees the need now to delay an implementation that was previously seen as so important. What about those households where there is an adult receiving DLA and where there are parents who act as the carers? They are two separate units for benefit purposes. Will the Secretary of State undertake to ensure that those households are not penalised?
Mr Duncan Smith
First, I must say to the hon. Lady that she is talking complete nonsense. I would much rather implement a programme learning the lessons as we implement it, than follow the practice of the previous Government, who had a period of collapsing programmes because they rushed them. This is the right way to do it and it is a shift in culture. On the second part of her question, under the Government that she supported—and it is still the case today—when someone becomes an adult, they effectively form their own household. We have discussed and are discussing those matters continuously, but households are formed when someone becomes an adult, and the previous Government never saw any reason to change that in all the years that they were in power.
Housing Benefit Entitlement
Sheila Gilmore Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) for this debate. We could be here for much longer, as is increasingly the case with our debates on these so-called reforms. I hope that when the Minister replies, he will not waste time pretending that the aim of the measure is to re-allocate social housing. There are other ways of doing that, and building more houses is one of the more important ones. However, the measure does not do that. If every local authority successfully reshuffled people in houses, almost certainly the same proportion would be on housing benefit, so there would be no saving. The Government have the saving in their budget, so it is not about that and they should not bother to pretend that it is.
A constituent who is in her 50s lives in a two-bedroom housing association house near the city centre, and has been there for six years. She has received a letter suggesting that she could take in a lodger. Her second bedroom is very much a single bedroom and very small. I do not know whether most people who support the measure ever go into the sort of houses that are being built. The kitchen is off the living room, which is fine for a family, but how does that work with a lodger who may be a stranger? Not only would she be sharing a bathroom, perhaps with a younger person whom she had never previously met, she would be sharing a kitchen off the living room. That is not even semi-practical, and my constituent was outraged at the prospect, but £50 from her benefit is very steep.
Many local authorities will do their best to help people, as will housing associations. They will look at the allocation policy to see whether they can make things easier, although they will merely be moving the deck chairs on the Titanic. They may manage to move some people, but the majority of homeless applicants are single people who will have to be housed in one-bedroom houses if they need housing benefit. Local authorities will be juggling one group of people with another. Even if some tenants in two-bedroom houses are moved into one-bedroom houses, homeless people who are waiting for one-bedroom houses but cannot be moved into those two-bedroom houses will wait even longer.
This week, I looked at what was available not just in my constituency, but throughout my city. Some 36 one-bedroom properties are advertised. The council and all the housing associations, bar two very small ones, advertise together. Ten of those properties are sheltered housing, and people who are not eligible cannot be housed in those houses, so that is 10 out of the way already. Another 11 properties are ground-floor flats, which are mostly allocated to people with what is called gold priority—top medical priority—for housing, because they are on the ground floor and if a ramp is necessary it can be put in.
Some people with gold priority may also be affected by the bedroom tax, which might be convenient, but the chances are that they will not. If we give those ground-floor flats to able-bodied people who do not need them, people who are waiting to get out of a third or fourth-floor flat for medical reasons will become angry. People frequently bend my ear about that if they think it is happening. People who must be moved because of the bedroom tax cannot be prioritised.
That leaves 15 houses available for let this week. A one-bedroom third-floor flat has attracted 110 online bids—that is not the total because paper bids can also be made—since last Friday. A one-bedroom first-floor flat in the city centre attracted 303 bids. Even a one-bedroom flat in a multi-storey building has attracted 35 bids. Those are active bidders, not people on a waiting list that might be described as not real. Those people are probably not yet affected by the bedroom tax, but the houses are simply not available. The real reason for the spiralling housing benefit bill is not under-occupancy of social housing; it is the huge expansion of the private rented sector and its high rents. That is what the Government should be addressing to bring down the housing benefit bill.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) on securing the debate. This is indeed an important issue. This is the second debate on it this week to which I have responded. It is good to have the opportunity to put on record the response to a number of the issues that have been raised and to deal with the myths that are growing up around service personnel, but it is worth briefly setting this debate in context. Most of my remarks will be about the specific matter in hand, but it is almost being implied that the Government woke up one morning and thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could take some housing benefit off people?” It is important to understand why this is being done.
In the final year of the last Labour Government, every time the Government raised £3, they spent £4. The word “morality” has been used extensively in this debate. Borrowing money that we expect our children to pay back is not a progressive thing to do. Parents who go out and blow money on their credit card and say to the kids, “When you grow up, you can pay it off” would be regarded as irresponsible. That is what we have to deal with now. Whichever party had taken control in 2010—
Steve Webb
No, I will not give way. Both parties set out deficit reduction plans, which involved spending cuts worth tens of billions of pounds. Public spending consists fundamentally of public sector pay and social security and tax credits—those are the two big areas. Both sides agree that public sector pay has to be held back, but benefits and tax credits also have to be part of the mix. Within the benefits budget, where could we have looked? Where is the low-hanging fruit? Where are the easy things to cut? Of course there is precious little of that. Housing benefit is a large part of the benefits budget and it has been rising fast, so is there an area in the housing benefit budget—
Steve Webb
No, I will not give way. Is there an area in the housing benefit budget where we can save money and tackle some of our housing problems?
Steve Webb
I have said that I am not giving way. This is an area of the housing benefit budget where we can better manage the housing stock. Let me give a specific example. It has been said in this debate that for housing benefit not to cover a spare room is immoral; that is the tenor of what has been said. When Labour introduced the local housing allowance, private sector tenants did not get housing benefit for a spare bedroom. Where is the morality in saying to private tenants that they cannot have a spare room, when social tenants, who are paying a subsidised rent, can? They could be living next door to each other, and we are favouring the social tenant over the private tenant. Why should housing benefit not cover spare rooms for private tenants when it does for social tenants? It is simply not fair.
The second unfairness that we have to tackle is overcrowding. A quarter of a million households in England are overcrowded, and they have had no voice in this debate. They are trying to get family homes, and homes that they need. They are living in overcrowded accommodation—
Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Sheila Gilmore Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Reid
I want to speak in support of amendment 10, to which I am a signatory. It is important to set the debate in context. In 2010, the Government inherited an economic mess from the previous Government, including a huge budget deficit, which is why difficult decisions have to be taken. It is important to remind the Committee that just before the previous Government left office, for every £3 they raised, they were spending £4, so borrowing was going up and up. It was interesting to listen to the opening remarks of the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms). There was a lot of sound and fury, but little actual policy. In fact, Labour’s amendment would replace the 1% in the Bill with a blank space. Labour does not seem to have any policy at all. His remarks seemed to indicate that the policy, whatever it is, would cost a lot. I think that Labour’s policy of borrow and spend is still in place.
Sheila Gilmore
I ask the hon. Gentleman to consider, in terms of what is or is not happening, that this measure is not part of what the Government came into office to do. This measure has been made necessary because they have not managed to reach the position they had anticipated they would reach, and that is because their policies have failed. Had they reached the position they had anticipated reaching, these further reductions in benefits would not be necessary.
Mr Bain
I would not endorse that policy because, as the hon. Gentleman knows, that figure includes the transfer of between 200,000 and 250,000 college staff from the public sector to the private sector. I am not going to endorse that figure; he knows that it is not accurate.
Sheila Gilmore
Would my hon. Friend like to refer the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) to recent articles—including some in The Guardian, which he would probably discount—that show not only that those jobs were transferred from the public sector to the private sector but that the Government are counting unpaid work in the total of new jobs being created?
Mr Bain
Yes indeed, I have seen that report, and it was scandalous. I was somewhat perplexed by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) when he said that people who were in part-time work were satisfied with that situation. The truth is that, as the TUC has established, 3.2 million people in this country are stuck in involuntary part-time work because of weak demand, low growth and low investment in the low-productivity economy that is being presided over by this Government.
Sheila Gilmore
Does the hon. Gentleman not appreciate the reason why this particular Bill and its measures have been called political? It was clear in the autumn statement that the Chancellor intended these measures to be some sort of political trap. In making choices, any Government would not be looking only at the contents of this Bill. I would be happy to talk about a much wider range of choices, so why can we not have a wider Bill?
Kwasi Kwarteng
In my opening remarks, I made a wider point about the eurozone. This is exactly what goes to the heart of the issue. What those countries have done to deal with their fiscal crisis—I am not saying we should follow it, but we have to remember that their deficits are better than ours at the moment—is to make swingeing cuts to public spending in the form of benefits. We have not done that. We have spared our people that measure of severity, but we have to recognise that a large portion of spending goes in this direction and that the savings we are making are in the region of £3.7 billion a year.
Our coalition colleagues, the Liberal Democrats have said that the time frame is arbitrary. Some people have talked about 1912—more than 100 years ago—and some have talked about the last 30 years. I am not interested in the last 30 years. I am interested in what has happened since the financial crisis. I am interested in what has happened since Labour got us into the mess we are in. I accept that it is an international mess and that there is a world crisis, but the fact remains that, at £170 billion, this was a much larger deficit than that of any of our competitor or partner countries in the OECD. In that context, something had to give. We had to make some very tough choices about spending.
Let me consider some of the provisions. There is clearly a measure of disagreement over how we should approach this aspect of welfare spending. I have yet to hear from Opposition Members by how much they think benefits should rise. We have heard one suggestion, although admittedly it came from the only member of the Green party in the House. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) seemed to be saying that she would have raised the rate in line with the retail prices index. When asked how much that would cost, she blithely replied “£7.4 billion”—I am sorry, it was £7.6 billion—as if that were a snip. It is to her credit that she at least had the honesty to spell out what are, in my view, the disastrous fiscal implications of her policy. Labour members have given no such undertakings. They have made no such statements about what their policies would actually cost. They have simply wailed and moaned about the harshness of the Government, without in any way recognising the severity of the crisis that we face.
Richard Graham
The right hon. Gentleman, with his great experience of these matters, asks a technical question which I am fully confident the Minister will answer in detail in due course.
I promised I would be brief, Mr Amess, so let me come to the point. In effect, tonight we have debated in practical terms the benefits of tax credits against the benefits of tax allowances. I argue that tax credits, the chosen policy of the previous Government, were flawed by their cynicism, having been increased by 58% just before the 2005 election and by 20% just before the 2010 election. I am sorry to say that those were giant electoral bribes that led directly to the greatest bust of all times. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East spoke about moral divisions, and to hear that from a Member whose Government created pension credits, which divided pensioner from pensioner, discouraged saving, enabled arguments between—
Richard Graham
I am sorry, but we have no more time for further interventions—
Steve Webb
I will not give way; I would like to respond to what has been said in the past four hours before taking further interventions.
A number of my hon. Friends asked perfectly reasonably about why we needed to set out in legislation exactly where we were going. We all want our constituents to continue to enjoy, for example, the low mortgage rates that are absolutely crucial to their standard of living. We all know that for those of our constituents in the position of owning their own homes, the mortgage is their biggest single outgoing by a long way. It is vital, therefore, that we keep interest rates under control.
Steve Webb
But that is kind of the point—not at the moment, because we have kept interest rates under control.
Why is that necessary? Let me share what the International Monetary Fund’s “World Economic Outlook” said as recently as October 2012:
“To anchor market expectations, policymakers need to specify adequately detailed medium-term plans for lowering debt ratios, which must be backed by binding legislation”.
That is the important point. Were we to go year by year, seeing how it went, we would not have the credibility of deficit reduction to which all of us who signed up to the coalition agreement are committed.
Likewise, the OECD’s economic outlook said:
“The government’s fiscal policy stance and strong institutions have secured the confidence of financial markets, as evidenced by the near record-low government bond yields.”
In other words, this is for a purpose—the purpose of tackling the vast, sprawling deficit. To give a sense of scale, my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) was absolutely right when he said that in the final year of the previous Labour Government, for every £3 raised in tax, £4 was spent. What did that add up to? We are talking about a Bill and related measures that will eventually save about £3 billion a year. Labour was borrowing £3 billion a week, so we would need, say, 50 of these Bills to tackle just one year of Labour borrowing. That is the scale of the situation. When Labour Members airily take the moral high ground and pretend that there is a free lunch to be had—that we do not have to do this or make all the other cuts, but that somehow the deficit will disappear—we need to remind people that these are Labour cuts tackling Labour’s deficit.
People should not just take my word for it regarding the need to include social security as part of deficit reduction. Clearly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) said, this is not comfortable stuff, and it is not something that any of us take any pleasure in. However, the IFS has said this about why social security is part of the mix:
“When cutting public spending dramatically to help reduce an unsustainable budget deficit”—
that is the IFS’s language, not mine—
“it is almost inevitable that spending on benefits and tax credits—which account for 30% of the government’s total budget—will be targeted.”
Steve Webb
Not for the moment.
We have a target for 2015-16 of £10 billion of spending reductions. We have not yet found that £10 billion. Even with this Bill, we are on about £6 billion, and without the Bill and related measures we would be down to about £3 billion. The challenge for Opposition Members who have said that taking money away from benefits takes spending power out of the economy is that so do other forms of spending cuts. If the money comes not from benefits but from local government, that will be money out of the local economy; if it comes from infrastructure projects, that will be money out of the local economy. There is not a free way of finding money without any impact.
Let me deal first with amendment 12, tabled by the right hon. Member for East Ham. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) put it very well when he said of Labour that there is a vacuum where there should be a policy. That is a metaphor for the Labour party. In relation to a Bill that says that benefits and tax credits should go up by 1%, the amendment would take out the figure of 1%, so what would be left? Presumably, “Benefits should go up” but by how much? Perhaps by a fraction of 1%—we do not know. The amendment is incoherent; it would take something out and put nothing in its place. It would remove the heart of the Bill but gives no guidelines on whether the figure should be below inflation or above inflation, below earnings or above earnings.
Steve Webb
My hon. Friend is quite right. There is nothing progressive about vast borrowing, because then we are asking our children and grandchildren to pay for it.
There has been much discussion about percentages during the debate. Several Members have said that a small percentage of not very much is not very much—I think their argument was that the answer was a slightly bigger percentage of not very much. However, even a small percentage of a £200 billion bill for tax credits, pensions and benefits is a vast sum of money, which is why we have to take the difficult decisions we are talking about.
Sheila Gilmore
Is not the reality that we have already had all the welfare reforms, and the only reason we are debating this issue is because the Government’s policy has not worked? They have now had to find extra savings, and that is what the Bill is about.
Atos Work Capability Assessments
Sheila Gilmore Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
It is important that we acknowledge that we now have to look at how this test is working. After all, it is not good enough for us just to trade insults and say that the previous Government left people to rot, because the system was actually introduced by the previous Tory Government. We could therefore pass these comments backwards and forwards, but the important thing is to ensure that if we are going to test people, we get it right.
Bob Blackman
I share that view, and I was coming on to discuss some of the issues raised in my constituency about the tests and some reforms that we could reasonably request the Minister and Atos to implement.
My constituency has a relatively low unemployment rate, but I have received a succession of complaints from constituents who have been put through the work capability assessments and clearly believe they have been treated unfairly—I agree with many of them. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) described how he visited his constituents at home, and I have had a similar opportunity to visit some of my constituents at home to see the position they are in and the lives they lead. These people are and should be entitled to full disability benefits, yet they have been denied them.
I want to discuss one specific example, that of a constituent who came to see me in late 2011 to make a complaint against her employer. She suffered from a degenerative spinal condition and struggled to stand for long periods of time. She had asked her employer to split her two eight-hour shifts into three four-hour shifts so that she would be able to continue to work. After some discussion, her employer eventually consented to changing her shift pattern. The point is that this woman was committed to work for as long possible and in a job that she could clearly do. After receiving higher rate mobility allowance and lower rate care allowance for several years, my constituent had her claim reviewed as part of these reforms. Following an Atos work capability test, all her benefits were suspended and she spent the following year appealing the decision. She got full support from me and my office, and I am delighted to say that after the appeal process and a successful tribunal she had her benefits fully restored. Of course, the pain and suffering for a full year was outrageous.
It is worth pointing out some of the medical conditions from which my constituent suffered. She has had a disc removed from her spine, and I understand that its removal caused a mid-posterior annular tear. Those conditions have brought a lifetime of mobility problems and associated side effects, amounting to a debilitating spinal injury. When we add that information to my previous comments about her keenness to work, we see that this is not someone who seeks fraudulently to claim benefits; she seeks only what she is entitled to. At the original work capability assessment my constituent was assessed by a physiotherapist. I have no doubt that the physiotherapist was reputable and qualified, but as an assessor they were clearly not sufficiently qualified to understand the complex medical needs of my constituent. Having had the opportunity to review some of the cases brought to me, I can say that it is clear that Atos and its employees do not have the required expertise.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
I was not expecting to be called to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I shall say a few words.
The debate has been very valuable and there has been cross-party consensus, which shows that there is a great deal of concern about how Atos is performing against its contract. That is not to say that all the language used today is acceptable, and I feel that some of the constructive changes that have been implemented have been ignored. For example, when I was on the Welfare Reform Bill Committee, one of the key issues of concern for me was how the work capability assessments would deal with cancer patients. It is a fact that more cancer patients now qualify for unconditional support than ever before, yet we have had no mention of that. In the midst of making constructive and, in many cases, justified criticisms of Atos, it is important that Members are careful not to frighten people listening to this debate who might be cancer patients and might feel that they have no hope whatever of a fair hearing from Atos. I also want to highlight the fact that more people—double the number from two years ago—now qualify for unconditional support.
Those two points—about cancer patients and the number of people getting unconditional support—are important reasons why the proposal made by some Opposition Members that we should simply throw the whole system out and start again is dangerous. It does not take into account some of the constructive changes that have been implemented.
Sheila Gilmore
I do not deny that there have been some improvements—although one speaker said that they had happened at a glacial pace, which was probably a fair comment—but we must bear it in mind that the unconditional support is not available without the person being re-subjected to an assessment. One complaint is about the frequency of reassessment, even for people whose conditions are so serious that they have been put in the support group but who sometimes, a year later, still have to come back and go through the whole process again.
Guto Bebb
The hon. Lady’s point is important, because although we all subscribe to the principle of a review, when a condition has been assessed as demanding unconditional long-term support there is a question about whether an annual review is justified. That is an issue that a constituency MP who takes case work seriously would not ignore, so I take her point on board.
There are a couple of aspects that I welcome, but about which I still have concerns. One is the way in which the system deals with patients who suffer from mental health problems. Mental health services are often the Cinderella service of the NHS, but when it comes to people who have difficulty accessing work and feeling confident to do so, the way that Atos deals with such patients has been less than acceptable. I understand that the Department and Atos are putting in 60 champions, but given the number of issues that I have seen in my own constituency, I question whether 60 will be sufficient for the whole of the United Kingdom. The way in which we deal with people with mental health problems is not acceptable in the health service and it is not acceptable at this point in time in Atos, even though the problem has been recognised and work is being done to try to deal with it.
The other matter, which has been touched on by several hon. Members, is the issue of people with chronic long-term illnesses. The problem that I have seen in my constituency surgeries is that quite often somebody may turn up at an assessment centre and on that particular day would be capable of a certain type of work, but the situation could be completely different the following day. The problem with the system that we have put together is that it does not take into account those long-term chronic conditions that could result in somebody occasionally being able to take on work, but not on a long-term basis. That is another weakness in the system.
Heather Wheeler
I do get that point; I am saying that the champions ought to be there when the interviews are taking place. I find the juxtaposition astonishing—according to Professor Harrington’s report, people need that extra bit of care. I find it interesting that we have just heard that there will be 60 champions in the country. Patently and obviously, that is not enough. Perhaps the Minister will advise us that that number represents a pilot and, notwithstanding what we are saying in this debate, it will be increased in short order.
Sheila Gilmore
In Scotland, there are mental health champions in only Edinburgh and Glasgow. This is not a pilot; the Minister has previously said that he has implemented Harrington as far as mental health champions are concerned.
Heather Wheeler
I am sure the Minister has heard every word that the hon. Lady said.
I finish on two final points because time is short and many people want to speak. People have mentioned the tick-box nature of the interview; my constituents find it hugely frustrating that they cannot expand on an answer. After all this time, perhaps the interview process could be tweaked to allow that. My last point is about the absolute frustration of GPs and consultants who feel that no account whatever is taken of the fact that they take their time to write the letters. That is desperately frustrating and a huge waste of public money.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
Like everybody else, I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) for securing this debate and the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to it. Clearly, we could have done with double the time or even more. Most of us could probably speak for at least an hour on these issues.
Getting the system right is hugely important for individuals. People have spoken about the effects on people’s mental state and their well-being, but I will mention some of the financial effects, which the last speaker began to touch on, for people who go into the work-related activity group. If that decision is not right, those people lose their contributory benefits after a year. The people who suffer the most from that are those who have a working partner—that partner may only work part time—and who have built up some savings, because they cease to get any benefit. If they want to get their national insurance credits, they still have to go through the assessment or they will not get the credits that will help them in the future with their pension. They may not be getting any money, but they are still going through the assessments.
Depending on the prognosis that is given in the recommendation—we are told it is not a “decision”—by Atos, many of the people in the work-related activity group will be mandated into the Work programme. That happens if the prognosis is that they might be fit within six months, but we are told that that will shortly be increased to 12 months. That means they could experience sanctions if things go wrong with the Work programme. If something goes wrong, perhaps because they have a learning disability or a mental health problem, and they do not turn up or are deemed not to be co-operating, they could be sanctioned. I have a constituent in that position who was sanctioned for six months for that reason. The people in that group are the ones who are most affected by having only a 1% increase in benefits for the next three years, although it must be said that people in the support group are in large part also affected, contrary to what has been said.
Getting it wrong can mean that people slip off benefits altogether. Research commissioned by the previous Government, which I understand is not being continued by this Government—the Minister might reassure us on that—found that 43% of those found fit for work were neither in work nor in receipt of an out-of-work benefit a year later. We must ask where they are. What is happening to them? We should know and we should care. It is not good enough for Minister to say, “We have reduced the number of people on out-of-work benefits,” and to imply that those people are happily in work when that is almost certainly not the case.
The Minister will probably say that things are improving, but the work on the descriptors shows that the pace is glacial. In November 2011, Professor Harrington suggested that new descriptors be tested. The Government said then that they would look at the suggestion in early 2012. The current position is that the testing has only recently begun, and we will be lucky if we get a full response and report on it by autumn 2013, which is nearly two years since Professor Harrison made that suggestion.
Another problem—this has already been touched on by others—is that some people are falling into a hidden trap. They are found fit for work, but are told that they cannot sign on for JSA, which is the only benefit for which they are eligible, because they are not fit for work and hold a medical certificate. Potentially, people in that situation get no benefit. I am not sure whether Ministers are even aware of that procedural issue.
On appeals, finally, after a lot of pushing, tribunal judges are giving limited information on their reasons, but it is not good enough—it is too general. But that information is being used by Ministers, and it was used by Atos in a briefing that I presume was sent to all MPs, to say that all is well, because it was found that Atos was found to be at fault in only 0.5% of cases. That is very misleading, because people are winning their appeals on the basis of new oral evidence.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
We have a heard a large number—26, I believe—of extraordinarily powerful speeches in the debate. There is no doubt that the current WCA arrangements are causing immense problems and anxiety for people for whom all hon. Members want anxiety to be minimised.
In opening the debate, my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) mentioned the distress, indignation, fear and anger that have been caused. His assertion was amply supported by contributions from both sides of the House. We should not allow the system to continue. It needs fast and fundamental reform. I put it to the Minister—this struck me as I am sure it did him—that calls for such reform have come from both sides of the House, which does not often happen. It certainly happened today.
Part of the background to the debate is that a very small proportion of people who are placed by the WCA in the work-related activity group of ESA are getting into work. The invitation to tender for the Work programme said that the minimum performance standard would be that 5.5% of new applicants for ESA get into sustained job outcomes within one year, but the data published in November show that the proportion was 1%. The Work programme has performed terribly for the group of people we have spoken about in this debate.
What has gone wrong? The structure of the employment and support allowance is right. In the 1980s—my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) was absolutely right to remind the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) of this—thousands of people were encouraged to move from unemployment benefit to invalidity benefit in order to reduce headline unemployment. People who worked in benefit offices at that time have explained to me how staff were given incentives to encourage people to make that shift. Once they had gone on to invalidity benefit, later incapacity benefit, that was it—they were abandoned. No further support beyond the cash benefit was provided. It was only in 1997 that that began to change. It was recognised that the vast majority of people in receipt of incapacity benefit would prefer to be in employment, if they could be. Starting with the new deal for disabled people and later with pathways to work, new ideas were developed. Nothing previously had been done to practically support people with serious health impairments into work. The approach can be summarised as: work for those who were in a position to work, and support for those who were not.
Out of that experience was drawn the design of the employment and support allowance. From that, the work capability assessment was designed to allocate people into the three groups: fit for work, work-related activity group, and support group. That is the right structure and architecture for the benefit, but it is the assessment—the topic of this debate—that is now in doubt. The key problem is that very soon after the election, the Government announced that they would reassess the entire incapacity benefit case load on a very fast timetable. At that time, the WCA had been introduced less than two years previously. Problems were still being ironed out and the organisation had not properly bedded down, yet on to this still developing system was placed the enormous burden of reassessment. Atos tells us it carried out 1 million work capability assessments last year. The load has just been too much, resulting in the problems that we have heard about, and which have been expressed so impressively in this debate.
The Minister will be aware of a good deal of concern among disability rights organisations about the Employment and Support Allowance (Amendment) Regulations 2012. They were laid before Parliament just before Christmas on 17 December, and come into force on 28 January. They include the changes that will allow people recovering from cancer to go more frequently into the support group—a welcome change that was referred to by the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb). He said that the changes had already happened, but in fact they will take place on 28 January. A lot of people are worried that the regulations appear to give Atos permission to take account of non-existent, imaginary adaptations or medication in the assessment, and introduce a false distinction between physical and mental impairments. There is a lot of concern and I am sure the Minister is aware of it. Will he be able to say anything to address it?
The Government have recognised that the WCA needs modification. However, as we have heard from a number of speakers, they have gone about the task in an extraordinarily leisurely way, which has been described as “glacial” by a number of Members. I hope that the Minister can encourage us and tell us that the Department will now get a move on. I want to put to him a number of specific points. When will the changes to the descriptors for fluctuating conditions and mental health conditions, which were recommended months ago by the disability organisations, be implemented? He answered a question that I tabled last week on this, and there still seems to be a terrible, lackadaisical approach. He said:
“The Evidence Based Review (EBR) remains a priority for the Department and work is continuing at pace. The final report is due in 2013.”—[Official Report, 7 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 180W.]
That was the first alarm signal, because his predecessor, in an answer on 25 June 2012, had told me that the final report would be due in spring 2013. Now the Minister is saying it will be in 2013. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East suggested that it will not be until autumn 2013. If that is right, that is another six-month delay. We really need to get a move on.
In his reply to me last week, the Minister said:
“We have undertaken extensive work with these charities throughout the summer”—
that was an answer last week, and the summer was the season before last. What happened in autumn?—
“to ensure that the ‘alternative’ WCA assessment combines recommendations from both the mental functioning and fluctuating conditions groups, and that the descriptors are suitable for testing.”—[Official Report, 7 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 181-82W.]
The mental health descriptors were signed off by the charities in March last year. I really hope that the Minister will get the Department to get a move on and not just try these things out, which is what the evidence-based review—when it finally happens—will do, but introduce the changes that are clearly so urgently needed.
On progressive conditions, does it make sense to push everybody with a progressive condition, such as Parkinson’s disease, through regular reassessments when we all know that those conditions are only going to move in one direction and get worse. My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) made that point in an intervention. The Minister answered a question from me recently about this. He said:
“Around 360 people with Parkinson’s disease in the Work Related Activity Group have undergone a repeat assessment following their initial assessment…Of these, around 20 people…were found Fit for Work at their first repeat assessment.”—[Official Report, 15 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 725W.]
No doubt some of them will have appealed and had their appeals upheld. Is it really worth putting 360 people with Parkinson’s disease through reassessments in order to find that perhaps 20 should be fit for work—although, as I say, a number of those would no doubt have been overturned? I also asked how much the reassessments were costing. As a number of Members pointed out, the Minister simply will not answer any questions about cost, on the grounds of commercial confidentiality. This is public money, and we need to know where this money is going and how it is being spent.
We need to make better provision for people to be able to supply their own supporting medical information in their assessment—a point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton in opening the debate, and by the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon). The application form should be amended to invite people’s own supporting medical information, and Atos assessors need to be more open to being informed by that information.
Atos assessors should be told why previous assessments were overturned on appeal—a point raised with me by Atos itself some months ago. We have heard how often people have won their appeal, gone back to Atos and immediately been found fit for work again. Part of the problem is that Atos was never told why a person’s appeal was upheld. I believe that changes are in hand or perhaps have been introduced to assess that problem. My hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash), however, was among those who referred to the seriousness of this revolving door problem. It needs to be addressed. I was also troubled by what she said about the difficulties people had getting their assessments recorded. That was supposed to have been sorted out, but her comments, and those of others, suggest otherwise.
Sheila Gilmore
Is my right hon. Friend aware that although tribunal judges are giving brief statements of reasons, these are not enough to help the decision makers or Atos understand?
Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend makes a telling point. That information needs to be provided.
The architecture of ESA is sound, but the assessment system is clearly not up to the load it is being asked to bear. That is why we need fundamental and much faster reform, with a much greater sense of urgency than we have seen from Ministers so far.
Mr Hoban
The hon. Gentleman says that I am a Minister, but the judges are independent—one of the strengths of our system. I hope that the judges have heard the comments that have been made—not only in this debate, but in other debates—about the need for more detail. To get the system right we need better feedback from the judges, but let us not forget that where we ask judges for the reason for an overturn, in a large proportion of cases they say it is the presentation of fresh evidence. They are very explicit in saying that the primary reason for overturn in only 0.3% of cases is the Atos assessment.
Sheila Gilmore
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, because this is an important point, especially as it has been briefed on so often. What I want to know—the Minister has to ask this question too—is this. I suspect that the question of overturns is simply one of some fairly simple error in the form, but according to the same judges, in 40% of cases they made their decision because they disagreed with the presentation of the case. That still suggests something wrong with the initial assessments—whether because the people concerned did not present them well or because the Atos assessors rushed them through. In 40% of cases the judges came to a different decision.
Mr Hoban
Just because the statistics do not suit the hon. Lady’s argument does not mean that they are wrong. A lot of this debate is about constituency casework and experience. Sometimes we also need to look at the overall stats and figures behind this issue to put those cases in context, which is why I made the point about the overturn rate.
It has been suggested that GPs should make the assessment. The British Medical Association has been prayed in aid. Let me quote what the BMA said about that idea:
“However, it is not part of the GP’s role to provide any opinion…on the patient’s capability to work as part of this process. It is vital that these two roles are kept separate and that GPs are not asked to provide an opinion on their patient for the purpose of receiving the Employment and Support Allowance; doing so could damage the doctor-patient relationship.”
It has also been said that the work capability assessment does not take full account of mental health conditions. Let me say a bit about that important issue. We have sought to improve the process and the support for the health care professionals who are undertaking the assessments. All Atos health care professionals receive specific and additional training in assessing mental health conditions—
State Pension Reform
Sheila Gilmore Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Steve Webb
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning the self-employed. At the moment, the self-employed build up rights under the basic pension—the £107—but not the equivalent of the £144. In our world, there are just people who pay national insurance, build up qualifying years and build up a pension. The self-employed are therefore potentially substantial beneficiaries of the new and simpler system.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
Will the Minister confirm that workers currently in the private sector who contracted out may also see, in addition to having to pay higher national insurance contributions, either higher contributions towards their private pension or a reduction in benefits?
Steve Webb
Yes, the hon. Lady is right. We have talked to the CBI, the National Association of Pension Funds and major pension employers. They are clear that they do not simply want to take the national insurance rise on the chin; they want the freedom to adjust their private sector pension scheme in response. However, we have calculated that, even allowing for that, the bulk of people who are within 20 to 25 years of pension age will still get more back, from the extra national insurance and any reduction in their private pension, through the enhanced state pension than they have lost.
Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Sheila Gilmore Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
The hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) was first.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has stated that benefits have been raised in line with inflation, but he did not say that tax credits— 2,000 people who are affected by the Bill are in work and receiving benefits such as tax credits—have not been increased for the past two years. In fact, they have been frozen.
Mr Duncan Smith
It is interesting that the hon. Lady raises that point, because under the Labour Government, tax credits absolutely boomed. In 2005, there were increases of 58%. Overall, there were 340% increases in tax credits, 70% of which goes to child tax credits. The hon. Lady says that tax credits should continue to rise, but she can make that argument in due course.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
This is obviously a difficult debate. Any debate that discusses cuts or limits to payments is difficult, and no one should take any pleasure in it. However, two fundamental elements need consideration. The first is the tax credit system as a whole and its purpose, and the second is how benefits in general relate to income. I will briefly take each in turn.
It is hard to believe that until the last general election, anyone earning up to £60,000 a year could still qualify for tax credits. That was nonsensical and crazy. At the time, £60,000 was nearly two and a half times the average salary, but the Government of the day still chose to issue those privileged people with welfare payments.
Sheila Gilmore
The Bill is not about restructuring the tax credit system but about placing a limit on an uprate. Much restructuring has already happened: has not £14 billion already been taken out of the tax credit system? The hon. Gentleman should address the issue of uprating.
Alun Cairns
I wish that the hon. Lady would at least allow me to create a context and develop an argument, and that she would focus on the real issue and allow me to develop arguments on that. To me, someone who earns £60,000 a year is quite privileged and should not be receiving those payments. Nevertheless, that was the position inherited by the Government.
Welfare Reform (Disabled People and Carers)
Sheila Gilmore Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) on securing the debate.
I am going to pre-empt the Minister, because I expect her to say in reply to the debate, as she keeps saying, “You”—not meaning any of us personally, but the Opposition—“did not have a cumulative impact assessment when you were in power.” However, I cannot think of a time when so many things have been happening simultaneously. The roll-out of incapacity benefit to ESA is still going on. We will have the change from disability living allowance to personal independence payment. We have housing benefit changes and universal credit. The reason we want a cumulative impact assessment is that what is happening is unprecedented. We need to know what will happen to people like my constituent who is 59 and has lived in her home for 30 years; she has severe back and hip problems and has just received a letter telling her she will lose housing benefit in April unless she can find somewhere to move to. Currently her grandchildren stay over for part of the week, which helps her family out. If she cannot do that any more, it will have an impact on their living and working arrangements. A ripple effect happens.
I have not yet dared tell my constituent that almost certainly she will in due course lose severe disability premium, which she currently gets because she is in receipt of income support and has no carer in the household. That, doubtless, is still to come, but I do not want to make her too fearful. The things that she does know about are happening already. They are not a myth being created by us or the disability movement.
When people become ill they experience a fantastic loss of income anyway, and an increase in costs. The Government appear to be oblivious to that. If a couple have been working—one full-time and one part-time—and the one who worked full-time suffers a stroke and must give up work, they go down to half an income and ESA. At the end of a year, if the person in question ends up in the ESA work-related activity group, their income falls again: the ESA will be lost because it is contributory; they will not qualify for the non-contributory version—even though they have worked and paid in all their lives they will not get that—so their income will go down to that of a part-time employee. Again, there are ripple effects and cumulative effects on people at a time when they are incurring greater costs. Someone who is at home more than they were when they went to work will have increased fuel and transport costs to meet. The person who is ill and has a disability may always have been the driver for the household, so there will be taxi and increased public transport costs. People in that position already have a substantial reduction in income.
I am glad that the Minister realised that the initial plans for rolling out DLA into PIP were totally unrealistic, and that the time scale has been extended, but there will still be clear losers. Our accounts are not scare stories. The information comes from the Government’s figures: 170,000 people, on reassessment, will lose DLA altogether before October 2015. That is a lot of people. That, apparently, is reality in the Government’s terms. I ask the Minister please to agree to a cumulative impact assessment.
Oral Answers to Questions
Sheila Gilmore Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Hoban
We have taken a range of actions to improve the performance of Work programme providers. We are working with them to establish best practice, particularly in areas such as helping people on employment and support allowance into work. The Department has also written to a number of providers advising them that we want to see a step change in their performance and asking them to produce performance improvement plans, which we will monitor carefully. Programme providers know that they could lose their contract if their performance does not improve.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
For the last year, the Secretary of State and all his Ministers have said they could not give us any information about what was happening with the Work programme because the data was unverified. Now we are getting a stream of unverified data, but does that mean we can now see inside the black box? May we have clear information about what services are given to people when they are referred?
Mr Hoban
The hon. Lady will be aware that the minimum service standards for each provider are published. Last month, we saw data produced on off-benefit flows and on the number of people getting six months’ work. The trade association ERSA—Employment Related Services Association—produced details on the number of job starts. I think that a huge amount of data has been published, and I am surprised that the hon. Lady is complaining about it.