Work Programme

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I congratulate the Minister on her elevation. The question is, can the Work programme work for all user groups? That is the nub of this debate. I share the broad views of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) and his passion for the programme. The Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), knows very well that I am absolutely passionate about the Work programme. One of the key things that got me back into politics was the whole issue of dignity of work and the challenge for the long-term unemployed, so I feel very strongly about the Work programme and I think that in many ways, despite its bumpy start, it is beginning to deliver and is making a significant difference for a lot of people.

The challenge—this is the nub of our report; this is what it focuses on—is whether the Work programme works for all user groups. My view is that, as currently configured, it does not, and I urge the Minister, in her concluding remarks, to deal with the specific issues that have been mentioned. The Department has already had an opportunity to respond to a number of the key recommendations, but I do not feel that it has responded properly.

In the first report, we clearly supported the principle of the programme, but we flagged up two key concerns. The first was whether the differential pricing would be sufficient to incentivise, and the second was whether the Work programme supply chains would be suitably managed to ensure adequate specialist services. The Work and Pensions Committee recognises, as we all do in this area, that for many people who either are a long way away from the job sector or have very specific impairments and disabilities, the best way to help them into work is for them to receive support from those very specialist and often quite small groups that really understand the issue. One of the concerns about the configuration of the Work programme was that we were not confident that the supply chain, when it came down to it, would include all those specialist groups. The Committee made a commitment to return to the Work programme a year later to see whether our concerns in those two specific areas had held water or had been dealt with.

Let us consider differential pricing. I am slightly frustrated about this, because before I came into politics, a lot of the work that I did with Governments of both colours—Labour and Tory in the old days—was in this area. The whole issue of creaming and parking, as the hon. Member for Aberdeen South knows, is old hat. It has been around a long time, so I was very hopeful that differential pricing would crack it, and that this time we would head towards the sunny uplands. Unfortunately, that has not happened, or not to the extent that I would have liked. I need the Government to address that. I need the DWP to be quite fierce about it with the Work programme providers.

I shall give a local example. In Eastbourne, my constituency, the first tranche of those who unfortunately are called two-year returners are coming through the sausage machine. I have had a meeting with a number of the local training providers. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy, I work incredibly closely with my local training providers, the chamber of commerce, Jobcentre Plus—you name it—and I am discovering that a fair number of those individuals have had very little support indeed. I am talking about a couple of face-to-face meetings in two years, and then follow-up phone calls. They have been parked. The reason why I am so hopping mad about it is that under the Work programme, those individuals each had a £600 attachment fee. I want to go to the local Work programme providers—my subcontractors, as it were—and, on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions, claim back £550 per person so that I can feed it into other training operators and get those people jobs. There are issues with differential pricing.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy talked about benefit versus impairment. I agree strongly—it was one of the recommendations in the report—that how benefit is assessed needs revisiting. I am not urging the Government to revisit the attachment fee at present; however, I do not believe that Eastbourne is any different from any other part of the country, other than that it is the sunniest town in the UK, and for some early people there, the attachment fee has not been used properly. I am disappointed that in some instances, the primes clearly used specialist providers on the list to help them get contracts, but did not use them properly after that. The DWP must look closely at that.

I do not want to tar all providers with the same brush. Like everything else in life, there are good ones, middling ones and bad ones. One thing that I liked about the business model for the Work programme is that the DWP and the Secretary of State always said to us that as time went on, the better Work programme providers would be rewarded and the worse ones penalised. I want to see that happen, and I want the Department to be absolutely vigorous. I am quite prepared to have competition in this challenging and difficult area, but I want it to be genuinely robust, so that better Work programme providers are rewarded and worse ones are not.

The other challenge that we face is helping people with disabilities back into work. I am disappointed—every Government has failed on this issue—but I share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy that we will get better at it. I feel strongly about it. It is difficult. If someone has been out of work for 10 years with a mental health problem and is in the Work programme, it is hard for them. Anyone who says that it is not is in denial. I appreciate the challenge, but I am disappointed that 90% of people with a disability do not succeed in getting a job through the Work programme, and only 6% of those on ESA get a job. I know the issue well, and I know how challenging it is, so I will not jump up and down on the Government, but I demand that we do it differently. All of us—the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, the Opposition and Government Members—know that it has been a crime. It is a waste of human capacity and ability. I urge the Minister, in her response, to take on board the fact that more needs to be done on disability and helping disabled people into work.

Our report made numerous specific recommendations, as the Chair of the Select Committee mentioned. I will focus on two, to keep it simple for the Minister when she responds—the two that the Government did not address. The first was on the accuracy of the work capability assessment. To quote the report, the Committee

“heard some quite shocking examples of participants referred to the Work Programme who had clearly been incorrectly declared fit for work following a WCA. We recommend that DWP work with providers to agree a process by which participants whom providers believe are clearly unfit for work can be referred back to Jobcentre Plus.”

However, we also recognised that a system was needed so that providers could not game the system by saying, “These people are too difficult; send them back to Jobcentre Plus.”

We saw that the situation would get worse, and it has. The coalition Government have done a lot of work around the Harrington report, so it is better than it was a few years ago, but the number of people coming down the pipe is huge compared with a few years ago, so I do not believe that that is good enough. I never had the automatic loathing of Atos that a lot of my constituents and the media have, because I know that we are talking about a difficult task—and, frankly, Atos was appointed by the previous Government. I had hoped that after the Harrington report, Atos would improve and fewer clearly unsuitable people would be passed. The situation is not good enough. I have come to the point where I do not think that Atos is meeting its contract to a level with which the Government should be satisfied. I urge the Minister to take a serious look at that provider. I am seeing too many personal cases.

I have been involved with disability for many years, and if someone with a disability says, “I have a disability; I can’t work,” I have no problem telling them, “Yes, you can. Have you tried it?”. I am quite firm about it, but I get extremely angry when I see what has happened in my constituency over the past 18 months to some people who are clearly not fit for work. I even send one of my casework officers to tribunals more often than not. The Government must address that seriously.

The other recommendation to which the Department did not respond involved provision for unsuccessful participants. I have already mentioned the people coming down the pipe after two years—two-year returners. As the Chair of the Committee will know, we identified them as a concern. I remember personally addressing the Secretary of State about it a year or so ago, and asking for confirmation that a proper system would be in place to manage the people who had not got a job after two years and to keep them going in the direction of travel to get a job, rather than just emphasising their sense of failure. I was given an absolute commitment that the JCP would have a set of programmes ready, but it does not. Things are patchy.

Again, I acknowledge the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy. Certain JCPs are working well—to be honest, mine are; I get on extremely well with the middle managers there, who work extremely hard—but there is no systemised process, which means that there can be a rubbish service in one constituency because there is no systemised instruction from on high, and a good one nearby because an MP or councillor is enthusiastic about it, or the JCP has a good manager. We must get service provision up to speed right now. I had 31 cases three weeks ago and 12 the week before that, and I have 26 coming down next week. They are beginning to come out of the pipe.

I have met a lot of people who have been on the Work programme and did not succeed in getting a job. Hon. Members will be unsurprised to learn that their emotions vary from enormous rage to a sense of deep shame, depression and so on. I understand that. If I were them, I would be feeling all those things. This is a crucial challenge, to which I urge the Minister to respond in a way that makes me confident that the Government will do some serious thinking about how they can make a difference in helping those people into work.

I will share something that I am doing in Eastbourne, because it might help. Forgive me, but I am liberal: I do not buy and never have bought the concept of the workshy poor. It is dim and ignorant, and it shows no understanding of what things are like. That does not mean that I believe everyone out there is perfect—it does not work like that—but I know that if I had not worked for three or four years, my self-worth would be extremely low. I would almost certainly be taking some nonsense that the doctor had given me for depression, and I would be anxious and nervous about getting a job. The last thing that I would want to be told is that I was workshy vermin and that the only thing that would work was for me to be forced to get a job.

If the Government told me that I had to employ those people, as a good orange booker and someone who has employed dozens of people over the years, my first thought would be to tell them, in words of few syllables, to get stuffed. That is not how things work; this is a free country. I would say, “I am an employer and I am not going to take on these people who have not worked for five years.” To help those folk to get a job, we need to make a difference. We need to step up to the plate as a country, a nation and a Government.

I will tell the Minister what I am doing in Eastbourne. Straight after the election, I launched “100 apprenticeships in 100 days”. I had it all organised because I hoped I was going to win, so I was the first new MP to get going, and the programme has been a huge success. We got 181 apprenticeships in 100 days. The latest figures show that there are 2,500-plus Eastbourne apprentices, and that unemployment is down to 3.9%. I am pounding the town and I have everyone on board in a big tent—I even have Tories in the tent—all working to transform the economy of the town and get people jobs.

Over the past few months, I have begun to meet the people who did not get a job in the past two years, and they are a challenging group. I would be the same if I had not worked for years. I am going into town and saying, “I want 100 work experiences in 100 days”, because the only way that those people will have a prayer of getting a job is with work experience. There will be people who used to be employers. An employer will not employ someone who has not worked for five or seven years—they are not a charity—but if that person has work experience and has done 100 hours’ work experience, that will give them discipline and perhaps tick a few boxes for an employer.

The scheme will work, as long as the MP and the whole town go to employers and say, “Do it for Eastbourne. Do it, not because they’re losers, but because they are our friends and neighbours. They are our family, for God’s sake. Let’s do it because we are all in it together”—excuse me for misquoting the Prime Minister. In fact, I am certain that it will work. I start in a couple of weeks and I look forward to coming back to the DWP and saying, “Listen, this is a way we can make it happen. Please, for the love of God, don’t either say you are going do something and not do it, or demonise this group.” Yes, I know that there will be people who game the system, but the majority are people who feel, for one reason or another, that they are failures. What is happening is just not good enough and I have had it up to here.

I have addressed a few issues to which I would like the Minister to respond. In this very partisan place—I am not very keen on partisanship, but that is probably because I am from a business background—the Work and Pensions Committee was pretty united over this issue. Even when we disagreed, we understood and supported the basic premise of the Work programme, but we want to make it better. We want to make it work, not only for the group of people who, after losing their job, are turned around quickly, but for the challenging group of people who have been stuck for a long time, and for the tens of thousands of people with disabilities, who have tremendous resources and skills to give to the country, which we need. If we do not give the right level of support, we will have failed, despite successes at getting those at the top end into work.

Finally, this debate is important, and not only in this place. The topic exercises the views, personalities and thoughts of literally millions of people. The Select Committee produced a good report. I look forward to the Minister’s response on some of the areas where I think the Government can do better.

Pensions and Social Security

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is right that placing the housing element in a single benefit—the pension credit—rather than it being a separate claim through a local authority will reduce administrative costs and increase take-up as well.

On disability benefits, this year the coalition will ensure that those who face additional costs because of their disability and who have perhaps less opportunity to increase their income through paid employment will see their benefits increased by the full value of CPI. Therefore, disability living allowance, attendance allowance, carers allowance and the main rate of incapacity benefit will all rise by the statutory minimum of 2.2% from April 2013, as will the employment and support allowance support group component and those disability-related premiums paid with pension credit and with working-age benefits.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

Will the Minister make it absolutely clear for the record that, despite some noise in the media, disability benefits are all going up by the higher rate?

[Steve Webb]

Yes. My hon. Friend is right. The specific benefits for the extra costs of disability are all rising by the full 2.2%.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms]

I think the hon. Gentleman is asking me a question about the administration of the Labour party on which, I am afraid, I am unable to assist him.

It is worth reflecting on the history of the triple lock. In its first year, it was announced but not actually implemented. If it had been implemented, it would have produced, from the Government’s point of view, an embarrassingly small pension increase. The Minister, sensibly, chose to override it and instead apply a larger increase that in that year was in line with RPI. At its first outing, therefore, it failed. In its second year—last year—it was actually implemented, and delivered an increase in line with CPI, along with working-age benefits. This year it is being applied again, and for the first time it is delivering something better than CPI uprating—a point made by the Minister.

The increase in CPI, as measured last September, was 2.2%, and the uprating amount in line with the triple lock is 2.5%. So that is it: in comparison with the CPI uprating, which until recently was the Government’s policy for working-age benefits, the triple lock has delivered a higher pension by a paltry 0.3%. Of course, if it had been applied in the first year, it would have been less than the CPI uprating. The triple lock has delivered a higher pension of 0.3% over three years—a rather derisory achievement. It is clear that the triple lock has been something of a damp squib. Of course, if it was something other than a damp squib, the Chancellor would have vetoed it long ago.

[Stephen Lloyd]

I have a lot of respect for the right hon. Gentleman’s honesty generally, and in particular in this area. Will he therefore agree with me that it is unfortunate that the Government in which he served as a Minister did not have a triple lock, otherwise pensioners all those years ago would not have received an uprate of only 75p?

[Stephen Timms]

Had the previous uprating RPI mechanism been in place, there would have been a larger pension increase this year and last year than has been delivered. I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s comments about my honesty, so let me pay a tribute to him. As a man who is also frank, he will recognise that the last Government did an enormous amount, particularly through the introduction of pension credits, to reduce the extent of pensioner poverty. In the past, pensioners were always more likely to be poor than the population as a whole, but that ceased to be the case under the policies of the last Government. Indeed, pensioner poverty was halved, as my hon. Friends have said.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is right. There was dramatic progress on reducing child poverty but, as I shall explain in a moment, all that ground will sadly be lost under the current Government’s policies. Those policies are hitting the disabled because, as the Minister said, although disability living allowance is being raised in line with the consumer prices index, employment and support allowance is not. On Second Reading of the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill the Secretary of State said that he was protecting people in the ESA support group. In fact he is not and, as the Minister confirmed, their benefit will be uprated by less than inflation—I know the hon. Member for Eastbourne has taken a close interest in that matter. Those people will see their income rise by less than inflation; they will have a real-terms cut.

As we have discussed, child poverty will rocket. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, where the Minister once had the task of compiling the statistics on child poverty, was already predicting on the basis of Government policies an increase in child poverty of 400,000 by 2015 and 800,000 by 2020.

[Stephen Lloyd]

I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s generosity in giving way. He mentioned the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Does he agree with its director, Paul Johnson, who said that

“the 1% uprating of welfare would start to put benefits back in line with earnings after welfare has grown twice as much as wages in recent years.”?

[Stephen Timms]

It would be particularly interesting to see a revised child poverty forecast from the Institute of Fiscal Studies, which I expect to appear before the Budget. We now know—as I say, these figures had to be dragged out of reluctant Ministers—that this order plus the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill will increase the number of children growing up below the poverty line by 200,000, including 100,000 in working families.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and we are talking about a large group of people. Indeed, the hon. Member for Eastbourne and I were on the radio together when somebody rang in whose total income was £71 a week. She was going to get an increase of 70p a week as a result of this order and she asked, “How am I supposed to manage?” To their credit, the hon. Gentleman and his friend from the Conservative party, the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), could not give her an answer.

[Stephen Lloyd]

I recollect that radio programme. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will accept that the point was that surviving on £70 a week is a challenge for anyone in any circumstances, with or without a benefit uprate.

[Stephen Timms]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but what was clear from that contributor was the despair at the prospect of a rise of only 70p a week. At a time when inflation is running at more than 2% and is likely to increase, according to the Bank of England inflation report published today, that is a very alarming prospect indeed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms]

I will give the hon. Gentleman the answer I gave a few moments ago. We think there would have been a reasonable case for the Government to make a temporary change to the uprating methodology, from RPI—the previous methodology—to CPI, but unfortunately they did not do that. They came up with a proposal for a permanent change to the methodology, using CPI only, but now they are not even sticking to that and have reduced the figure further to 1%.

What if inflation rises sharply in the next few years? The Governor-designate of the Bank of England has suggested that there should be greater flexibility in the inflation target used by the Monetary Policy Committee. If inflation rises sharply, the consequences for working families—for strivers, struggling to get by at the moment and lumbered with a 1% rise hard-wired into law for next year and the following two years—do not bear thinking about. The Bank of England inflation report published today places a probability of 39% on inflation being over 3% before the end of this year. The fan chart shows possible figures of 5%. What would the consequences be for people who will see a 1% rise in their incomes for the next three years if inflation rose in that way?

Why are the Government doing this? Why have the siren voices won this year? It is because the Government’s economic policy has failed. Let us look at the three years covered by this order and the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill. Compare the spending on unemployment benefits over those three years, which was predicted in the Budget last year, with the spending predicted in the autumn statement, just a few months later. The forecast spending on unemployment benefits over those three years went up, just between the Budget and the autumn statement, by the same amount that this order and the Bill will save over those three years. That is what is happening—the Government are clawing back the increase in unemployment benefits resulting from the failure of their policies from those who receive those benefits.

[Stephen Lloyd]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about the failure of the Government’s economic policies. Does he accept two absolute facts—that this is the worst economic recession since the great depression, and that since the general election the coalition Government have generated 1 million extra private sector jobs?

[Stephen Timms]

The hon. Gentleman is undoubtedly right that this is a very serious financial crisis, although I do not remember Government Members making that point before the election. I ask him to justify to the House why, on the very day that these measures will take effect, millionaires will all get a tax cut averaging more than £2,000 a week.

[Stephen Lloyd]

Under the coalition Government, people on higher incomes will pay more tax than they did during the entire 13 years—except for 30 days—of the Labour Government, during one of the strongest and most powerful booms we had had for 40 years. Can the right hon. Gentleman defend that record?

[Stephen Timms]

What would the hon. Gentleman say to the woman we spoke to on the radio, who will get a 70p per week rise as a result of this order? How would he defend to her the fact that the Government whom he supports will give a tax cut of £2,000 a week to everybody who earns more than £1 million a year? For me, that is completely indefensible, although he may have a defence—

[Stephen Lloyd]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the IFS and other bodies have said that under the coalition’s tax policies the wealthier will actually pay more tax than they did before?

[Stephen Timms]

It is the people at the bottom who are being clobbered by this measure, and that is clear from the analysis. The hon. Gentleman has not defended the tax cut—I do not blame him as I do not think it can be defended that millionaires should get this enormous tax cut on the very day that people such as the woman on the phone to us on Radio 5 Live will get a 70p per week rise.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

As the Minister knows, concern has been expressed recently following the conversion from disability living allowance to the personal independence payment. It relates to mobility-impaired people and the change from 50 metres to 20 metres. Will she confirm that she has listened carefully to the points raised about converting the guidelines to ensure that the words “reliably, safely, repeatedly and in a timely manner” will appear in the regulation, so that the people who are anxious about this can be reassured?

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend is correct to suggest that we have been in discussions about this. At the moment, the words “reliably, safely, repeatedly and in a timely manner” are in the contracts and in the guidance, and we are looking to see whether they can be put into the regulation, but that will happen only if that achieves what it is intended to achieve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I remind the hon. Lady that it was this Government who changed the rules: under her Government, it would have been wholly acceptable, I suspect. The new system is in its national pathfinder and will, I hope, be rolled out before Christmas. We already have checks in place: more than 6,000 jobs, 60 attempted employer accounts and 27 bogus employers have been blocked so far, and we act swiftly if complaints are raised. I remind her that, on average, more than 5 million daily job searchers are working on this system. It will be a massive improvement and will benefit jobseekers, so the hon. Lady should not carp about the odd difficulty that arises. We get rid of the bogus jobs.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I congratulate the Government on extending Access to Work to disabled people on work experience and on removing the need for small companies who employ fewer than 49 people to pay for Access to Work. Will the Minister look seriously at extending Access to Work to disabled people on the Work programme because of the additional cost of their disabilities?

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend has a great track record of championing the rights of people with disabilities. I will look carefully at the proposals he has made and work with the Minister responsible for disabled people to get the best possible outcome for people with disabilities. It is important to help them get into work.

Working-Age Disabled People

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. It is also a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, of which I am a member.

Some of my colleagues already know that, unfortunately, and in true DLA style, my hearing aid conked out a few days ago, so I do not have it with me. I am rather deaf, so if the folk on my right want to intervene, they should wave furiously. If I miss that, Mr Amess, please let me know. I apologise, but that is the reality of disability.

Introducing a new disability benefit in place of one that has been around for a number of years is fraught with complexity, anxiety, and often inaccurate media reporting. Consequently, I intend to drill down to a number of the specific features and concerns that the Select Committee has with the new personal independence payment benefit, and the current response from the Department for Work and Pensions. This is a complex issue. The hon. Lady mentioned a number of areas where we have concern. I have flagged some of them up before, and I am going to be precise.

I hope that all of us in the Chamber agree, to a varying extent, that disability living allowance is a benefit based on unclear criteria, is not well understood and has no proper system of reviewing awards. The Committee recognised that. For example, the 2004-05 national benefit review found that approximately £630 million of DLA per year was overpaid as a result of unreported changes in circumstances, while £190 million was underpaid—vital support not reaching the people for whom it was intended.

The concept behind the introduction of PIPs is to ensure that the state, rightly, can continue to support those individuals experiencing the greatest barriers to living an independent life while ensuring that the benefit continues to remain affordable and sustainable. It is also worth noting that the new PIP assessment has been developed in conjunction with a group of independent health, social care and disability experts, and the DWP believes that it will be fairer, more objective and consistent. The theory is that there will be a more responsive and individualised process for ensuring that claimants continue to receive the right support. In taking evidence, the Committee found that the complex DLA claim forms can make it difficult for people to make a claim. Therefore, I and the Committee broadly support the Government’s intention to address those issues.

In addition, we found that there is no proper system for reviewing DLA awards; for instance, 24% of working-age DLA claimants have either had no change in, or no review of, their award for more than a decade, which underlines the Government’s point.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

The problem I have with the 24% figure is that it mixes up two things. We have to acknowledge that. It seems to refer to people who have never been reviewed and to people who have had no change, which is not the same as not being reviewed. It could well be that they have been reviewed, but have had no change in their circumstances. The 24% figure is often put across as if people are not assessed. My experience with constituents is that a lot of working-age recipients of DLA are being assessed, because they come to me with their problems.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Lloyd]

That is a moot point, because I know some people, even in my constituency, who have not been reviewed for many, many years, and who, in normal and sensible circumstances, would be going through a review process. The DWP has come up with the statistic and I think it is reasonably robust, but I take the hon. Lady’s criticism. Perhaps the Minister will clarify the matter.

Media coverage is one of the most challenging issues. The Department says that it recognises the need to work together and to do more to challenge and change negative attitudes towards disabled people. That is why, according to the Department, it is in the process of developing a new cross-Government disability strategy to give renewed impetus to the Government’s commitment to disability equality. Frankly, I do not think it is doing a very good job. I am disappointed with some of the media coverage in the past year or so, and, on occasion, with some of the responses, or even some of the stories that have been set running by either Ministers or the DWP.

The Committee recommended that the Government take on as a priority the fact that public opinion towards disabled people and disability benefits can be and is influenced by the media. We felt that the Government should take more stringent steps to ensure that their own contribution to media stories is accurate and contextualised by actively encouraging robust reporting of their own statistics on benefits.

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

Does the hon. Gentleman agree—I think this emerged from the Select Committee report—that no Government and no political party can control the byline in a newspaper? I suspect that one of the challenges we have is that while we clearly need accuracy, we need to be mindful that we cannot control what the media write.

[Stephen Lloyd]

I agree to a great extent. The way that some of the media, particularly some of the tabloids, have been reporting the issue has been disgraceful. I have said that more times than anyone can possibly imagine. However, the DWP and the Government have an enormous responsibility when they are introducing such a seismic change to a benefit. Some of the time, the Government and Ministers have been good and positive, pushing strongly and actively the social model and what they are trying to achieve; at other times, they have been guilty of pandering to people who are more focused on what I might term the tabloid agenda.

The Government have an enormous responsibility, and I would like them to be aggressive. If one of the papers—I do not even need to mention them; we all know the ones I am talking about—comes out with a particularly inaccurate story, I would like to see the Minister and the Secretary of State dealing with it aggressively on the airwaves.

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

Bylines in newspapers may not be the responsibility of the Government, but it is certainly the responsibility of the Government and the DWP to point out the fact that DLA is an in-work as well as an out-of-work benefit, which they markedly fail to do. They should also highlight the fact that more than 35% of families who claim housing benefit are in work, and that the reason they qualify for housing benefit is because their pay is so very low.

[Stephen Lloyd]

I agree entirely. A lot of people do not understand that the DLA was introduced to help to support disabled people in leading independent lives. I do not know the exact figures, but I know that an enormous percentage of people on DLA are in work. That is a very important point.

I retain doubts about whether that Select Committee recommendation has been followed, either by Ministers in their speeches or by the DWP, and urge that it be made a priority for the Government. However, I strongly support the steps taken by the coalition Government to involve disabled people in the process for devising and implementing PIP, which have proved effective. The DWP has continued to engage extensively with organisations that represent disabled people since May 2011, through its implementation development group, which has more than 50 members and represents a broad range of national and local disability organisations. Engagement at such a level should ensure that the operational design, implementation and ongoing operation of PIPs considers the informed perspectives of disabled people and their representative organisations.

As a consequence of advice and lobbying from me and other Select Committee members, the Department dropped its original proposals to end payment of the DLA mobility component for care home residents, after the Low review, and to extend the three-month qualifying period under DLA to six months under PIP.

I urge the DWP to continue to listen, consult and take on board advice from disabled people and their representative organisations, particularly about the descriptors in PIPs, which I shall come to later. For the record, the disability pressure groups and charities also have a responsibility to be factual in their advice, lobbying and media coverage, as much as the Government do. The victims of misreporting on both sides are disabled people themselves. That simply is not right.

I welcome the Government’s decision to support a three-month qualifying period for PIP, rather than extend it to six months as they originally intended. However, I support the Select Committee’s view that there is evidence of significant financial hardship caused during the current three-month DLA qualifying period, particularly for those with sudden-onset conditions. I ask the coalition Government seriously to consider the Select Committee’s recommendation to implement a facility for early eligibility, which could operate in the same way as that for terminal illnesses.

I welcome the changes made to the first draft of the PIP assessment criteria, which demonstrate that the Government have listened to concerns expressed by disabled people and their representatives. I have had a number of discussions with Lord Freud and his office, drilling down on how some descriptors written into the initial draft were inadequate. I look forward to the final draft, as does the Select Committee.

The DWP deserves credit for the way it has involved disability groups and disabled people in the co-production approach it has adopted to the development of the PIP criteria. However, thus far, mobility descriptors still concentrate too heavily on the ability to move a fixed distance and do not include barriers to accessing public transport, or the difficulties of some locations for individuals where routes to shops, public transport and so on are particularly challenging.

The PIP assessment criteria also tend towards the medical model of disability. This is an incredibly important point. I value the fact that the DWP understands, or appears to understand, the social model of disability and that it is about providing support for disabled people so that they may lead independent lives. However, within the PIP criteria, we seem to be slipping back to the medical model. I urge the Minister to watch that closely. For instance, those criteria do not properly take on board the barriers to being independently mobile that a blind person may have face. Yes, they may be able get to the shops or their workplace via a route they know, but the descriptors do not take into account the challenges that a blind person might face if they were travelling to a destination they did not know, which is not uncommon for all of us on a weekly basis. If I had a visual impairment and was using a route that I do not know, I would face a series of different challenges. The descriptors need to show understanding of that and to take it into account.

I was encouraged by the language used by the Minister’s predecessor, who described the PIP assessment as a conversation between claimant and assessor. It is vital that the PIP assessment does not take the same mechanistic approach, based on an inflexible computer system, as originally adopted for the work capability assessment by the previous Government. In time, though, I would like there to be a checking system or review system—call it what we will—that allowed PIP recipients to be reviewed without having to go through the stresses of face-to-face assessment. I suggest that a letter of support from a consultant or other expert in the field—someone with knowledge of their disability—should suffice once the face-to-face assessments have been completed.

I understand why the coalition Government are going through the process of face-to-face assessment—some people have not been reviewed for many years—but it is important that the DWP take on board the profound worry and stress that many disabled people and their families are going through because of the proposed changes. If the Government do not take this on board, they will be perceived as uncaring and their stated desire—our stated desire—to support the social model of disability and to provide additional support for those who need it while being properly careful with the public purse will turn to nothing. I for one will become not a supporter of the Government’s objectives, but a highly vocal opponent. I really do not want this to happen.

My many years in the field of disability lead me to recognise that the system is not good enough. An annual overpayment of more than £600 million and an underpayment of almost £200 million show that it is heavily flawed, but I request that the Government do all they can to ensure that we replace DLA with something better and fairer, and that works. PIP could be that, but it is not yet. I believe it can be and profoundly hope that it will be, by the time it is rolled out in the pilot scheme in April 2013. The coalition Government must get this right, because people’s financial security, their level of comfort and their daily lives heavily depend on it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

Unfortunately, I have to go to a meeting between 3 and 4 pm, so I apologise to all colleagues in the Chamber and in particular to the Front Benchers if I miss any part of the wind-ups. It is nice to get an opportunity to comment, but as someone who hopes to join the Select Committee officially in the next few weeks, once the bureaucracy can be sorted out, I leave the detailed commentary to those who have helped to prepare such a detailed report and can comment with more expertise. I will confine myself to a few general observations and to a couple of things that I have taken from a brief glance at the report and the Government response.

One of the striking things is the consensus on the need to reform DLA. Clearly there are diverging views on how that might be done, but the consensus is interesting to see. I think it is generally agreed that DLA is a confusing benefit. I understand that fraud levels are low, so I agree with those comments, and I shall come back to the points about media coverage and so on. The DWP’s own figures estimate, however, that there is more than £600 million of overpayment and, more significantly, nearly £200 million of underpayment. Any benefit involving that level of misallocation of resource clearly needs to be looked at carefully to see how it can be reformed.

Once I knew I was likely to be joining the Select Committee and, in particular, to be contributing to this debate—although I have tried to speak in other debates on disability-related benefits—I made a particular point of talking to disabled people. I also have a disabled staff member, and over the last few days I have talked to carers of disabled people and looked at the case load that comes to my constituency surgery to try to get an insight into people’s lives and how they can be supported.

I took from the Committee’s report the concern about a big bang approach, and I note that the Government have said that the reforms will be phased in, although the Chairman of the Select Committee raised some concern about the phasing-in looking fairly big bang-ish, and I am sure the Minister will comment on that. However, it is sensible that some of the reforms have been characterised by not being big bang changes. The previous Government introduced some big bang reforms, and I understand from what former Ministers have said that they spent several years afterwards dealing with the consequences. I am sure that the Select Committee’s work is invaluable in trying to advise on how some of the reforms can be introduced without causing people unnecessary problems.

I also took from the Committee’s report—this goes partly to the point about coverage—concern about interaction with disabled people and the groups that represent them. The Government have responded positively to that. The snappily named personal independence payment implementation stakeholder forum is now holding a dialogue, and I am sure that the Minister will comment on its work and how it is informing the Government as they proceed.

I was interested to see that the Government have responded to some of the Committee’s recommendations, but other issues have been raised today to which they must also respond. I am firmly in the camp of my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) as someone who very much wants the reforms to work, but I will use the knowledge that I have gained on the ground in my constituency and feed it back into areas where we may need to do something differently, because there is a slight danger. To put that into context:

“Our goal is to make responsibility the cornerstone of our welfare state.”

That could have been said by the Secretary of State, but it was in the Labour party’s manifesto at the last general election.

There is enormous consensus on the cornerstone of responsibility. I am not being partisan, but there is sometimes a danger that throwing up a series of practical concerns about implementation may add up to a cumulative whole that, if followed to its logical conclusion, might present an overwhelming case for not pressing ahead. I believe that there is an overwhelming case for pressing ahead and working through some of the implementation challenges, because there is a huge danger in not doing so. It may sometimes appear that throwing up such problems amounts to saying, “Let’s just put this in the ‘too difficult’ tray and come back to it in a few years.” That has been happening for decades, and it does a great disservice to the welfare state.

I want to pick up something that my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne said about the dialogue on welfare reform, and particularly that involving disability. I completely agree with the comments about some of the tabloid coverage, and I am sure that Ministers have taken on board the need for all of us to be responsible, but there is a flipside, and those charged with representing disabled people—the activist groups, charities and pressure groups—also have a responsibility not to alarm people unduly. I will give a practical example.

I recently went to the annual general meeting of an organisation that provides support and advice to people with disabled children. A lady from a welfare advisory group gave a 25-minute presentation, during which she presented, almost without exception, the possible downsides of the reforms without knowing anything about the personal circumstances of the people in the room, many of whom I knew pretty well because they were constituents and people I had dealt with. Some of them had much to gain from some of the reforms she was talking about, but her starting point was how things could get worse.

Two things struck me about the lady’s talk. In 25 minutes, she did not at any point mention work. She made an assumption that none of the people she was addressing were in work or would progress towards work. That was dispiriting. It is important that those on both sides of the argument do not exaggerate for effect, and the Chairman of the Select Committee made the point about some people’s vulnerability.

I take issue with the suggestion that all disabled people are among the most vulnerable people in our society. I do not believe that. An obvious and clichéd example is that many of the Paralympians we admired during the summer—they were clearly not vulnerable. They had a disability, and we wanted to help them to get over that disability and make the most of what are already fulfilling lives. My friend who works for me has a disability and needs help to fulfil his working life, but he is not intrinsically vulnerable. I take slight issue with that suggestion.

There are two recent reports—“The Tipping Point”, and “Holes in the Safety Net” which Baroness Grey-Thompson introduced last week.

[Stephen Lloyd]

My hon. Friend reminds me that I was at a meeting only last week when the partner of a blind person said that because his wife was blind and could not work they needed support. That was frustrating because, although I am sure he loves his wife, he was making the assumption that a blind person could not work. I know blind people who are earning more than £100,000 a year. We need to change public perception.

[Jane Ellison]

I could not agree more. It is central to these important reforms that we ask people what they can do, instead of what they cannot do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jane Ellison]

I do not disagree with the hon. Lady, and I have not used the word “oppositionist”. What I am trying to convey is that by constantly focusing on the things that might go wrong or sometimes do, we are not always talking about the things that have gone wrong; sometimes, we project forward and consider things that could go wrong, and that in itself can become a reason to doubt the point of the reform. That is the point I am making. We need to try to show some balance.

Finally, I believe in the welfare state. It is an enormously important, civilising aspect of our modern society. A problem we have at the moment is that there is not a general buy-in from the general public. We have talked about the media and some of the red-top coverage, and so on. This is a critical juncture for the welfare state. If we care about it and believe that it is vital to everything that we are as a country, that should make us more determined to press on with reforming the parts of it that clearly are not working.

[Stephen Lloyd]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. Does she agree that the welfare state, which I, too, passionately support, should be about a hand-up and not a handout? There are many tens of thousands of people with disabilities and disabled people already in work, and many more who would do outstandingly in jobs if they were given the right support to do those jobs and not seen by society as victims, which they are not.

[Jane Ellison]

I absolutely agree, and that is why it is so important to rebuild the general confidence across our nation in our welfare state. Reform cannot be put off any longer, and although there might be difficulties and practical hurdles, we have to work through them. So long as people do not see the welfare state and disability support through the prism that my hon. Friend described, but instead have an unhelpful, negative, tabloid view of it, we will continue to lose the trust and the buy-in. That point is absolutely fundamental, and I hope that as part of the Work and Pensions Committee I can play a thoughtful and responsible role in holding the Government to account. I support the broad thrust of the Government’s reforms, because the future of the welfare state and the respect in which it is held are at stake if we do not press on and get this right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore]

I hope that employers would not form that view, but there are dangers.

If the Government wanted to reform, the way to start would have been to discuss seriously the issues around DLA, not to start from an assumption that it was somehow old-fashioned, not working and that people did not understand it, so we had to throw the whole thing in the air and start all over again. That leaves aside how the reform was couched in terms of financial savings.

If the Government wanted to make a change, it would have been helpful to have the discussion and carry out the research. If we think back to when the White Paper came out in late 2010, an extraordinarily short time was given for people’s responses. It was a generalised paper, and the extensive response to it was responded to in a very simplified fashion. That did not help. If we had sat down with a lot of the groups in the first place, we might have come out with a better ending.

Obviously, as a Select Committee, we look at the details. The hon. Member for Battersea was correct to say that we have to be careful that we do not end up seeing the trees and not the wood, but details are part of the job of a Select Committee. One thing that we all say, and we all feel strongly about, is that we must get the assessments right first time, which is precisely what appears not to have happened with the WCA.

We know that the cost of appeals is met by the DWP, not the provider.

[Stephen Lloyd]

I completely concur with the hon. Lady about the statistics on the WCA and the level of successful appeals. Does she agree that the changes to the WCA that the coalition Government have brought in, with Professor Harrington’s reports, will mean that the first assessment is wrong for fewer people and that the new WCA is more effective and productive?

[Sheila Gilmore]

Unfortunately, the statistics do not yet show a huge change. The latest statistics show a small reduction in the number of successful appeals, but the number is still very high. Statistics always lag back a few months, so it may be that further improvements are still to come, which would be good. It is particularly important that we get this benefit reform right.

Many people, including those in the disability field and Opposition Members, have asked whether there is any penalty of any sort on the assessor for not doing the job as they should. We are constantly told that we cannot have the information because it is all commercially sensitive. I can understand that perhaps being the case during the tendering process, but I am not clear why it is deemed to be quite so commercially sensitive once the contract is awarded. We still do not know. Public money is going to these organisations, so it is important that we have confidence that this time there is a system in place.

The Select Committee’s recommendation was:

“DWP contracts with private companies for the delivery of the PIP assessment”

should

“directly link the payment of public funds to the production of reliable assessment reports that are ‘right first time’.”

Now that the contracts have been awarded, I hope that the Minister can tell us whether that has been done and whether it will be monitored and reported on. Obviously, if the assessments are much better, there will not be many penalties, but we need to know now whether that link has been made. It would give people more confidence in the process.

The Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), briefly mentioned contracting. The PIP assessments have been let on a regional basis. In Scotland and the north of England, Atos won the contract, but it appears to be subcontracting to NHS Lanarkshire to carry out the assessments.

If Atos is not doing the work, what is it getting out of the contract? How much of the contract price goes to Atos and how much to Salus? Salus is the not-for-profit arm of NHS Lanarkshire; it does other forms of occupational health work, which is why it was selected. It is not unreasonable to ask those questions. Such arrangements are becoming all too typical in this new world of outsourcing to large, all-purpose, public service, private companies.

We saw it in the Work programme. At the apex are the big boys such as G4S, A4e and Serco. Sometimes they do the work themselves; sometimes they subcontract; sometimes the subcontractors subcontract. At the bottom of the heap some of the sub-subcontractors see little of the payments. That is a major problem.

What are some of those big companies being paid to do? Are they being paid just to put the contract together? Are they just creaming something off the top? They are certainly not shouldering the risk for their subcontractors, because when those get into trouble—with the Work programme, at least—they are not bailed out by the prime contractor. The main contractors do not carry a financial risk of that kind.

We need to know what is happening with the process. The question arises whether it might not have been easier to contract the work in the first place directly to the NHS. If we talk about these things a lot, it is because people naturally think there may be a connection. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) pointed out that in statements that have been made in the past the connection with WCA was made overtly. It is not only we who make it.

The question of targets has been controversial. Atos has said there are no targets in relation to WCA. The Government have vehemently denied that there are targets. However, it now seems clear from people who have worked as health care professionals in this field for Atos—and this came out of the television documentaries in the summer as well—that there are expectations about normal and correct outcomes of assessments. Health care professionals whose performance deviates from those expectations are audited so that their performance can improve towards them. We must ask ourselves at what point an expectation becomes a target, or when there is very little difference between the two.

If there are such expectations, what cognisance will there be of regional variations in ill health—and even variations within regions? Partly because of industrial history, certain forms of ill health are more prevalent in some areas and they are likely to have a greater number of people with certain conditions than others. If there are to be targets or expectations, whatever we may call them, such things must be taken into account. However, since we do not know the guidance, we do not know whether they are taken into account. I hope that they are.

If the Government want people to be more confident about the changes, they must be more open and transparent about them. In the absence of such openness and transparency people reach conclusions, rightly or wrongly, which tend, in modern parlance, to go viral around the disability community. People then get very frightened.

Another aspect of the matter that has, I suppose, come out of the WCA experience, is to do with what kind of assessment is being carried out and the attempt to restrict complex conditions to a simple set of descriptors. The aim from the outset seems to have been, certainly with WCA, to create a system that could perform large numbers of assessments and achieve reliable and replicable results. People have often complained about a tick-box approach, and that seems to me to be a direct result of that attempt.

It is not just bad practice by Atos; sometimes, critics concentrate too hard on Atos and not enough on the underlying system. I think that what happens is inherent in the adoption of what is effectively a computerised test approach. I am sure it was sold to the Government as the IT answer to carrying out assessments. I think that we all know that IT magic miracle cures are often oversold by those who sell them. Before the Minister says so, I know that it was the previous Government who introduced the WCA and the form of test in question. The fact that they turned out to have inherent difficulties should not mean that we should not criticise them and consider whether we were perhaps naive to think an IT solution could deliver all that was needed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

Thank you, Mr Sheridan.

I have been corrected, so perhaps the right hon. Member for Stirling could wave to me a few minutes before the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) speaks.

When hon. Members spoke about the whole DLA reform and consultation, I do not think they necessarily knew the full length of the consultation that has been embarked on. The consultation has been very thorough and has taken place over a long period. The Government code of practice on consultation recommends a minimum of a 12-week consultation, but I will put into context how we set about this consultation.

When there was a debate on whether we should change DLA to PIP, there was a consultation with disability groups, health groups and social care groups. That consultation was long before any change came into being and lasted for 10-and-a-half weeks. After that, there was a 10-week consultation on the reforms to which more than 5,500 people responded. There was then a 16-week informal consultation on the initial drafts of the assessment, followed by a further 15-week formal consultation on the second draft of the assessment, after which there was a 14-week consultation. In total there have been 55 weeks of consultation, which is a year-plus. By anybody’s reckoning that is a considerable amount of consultation. The consultation has been a real listening exercise, because there is no point in having it if we do not amend and change things as we see fit. As the Bill progressed and became the Act, key things were altered. Again, we are listening, and when we do finally table all the assessments, I believe the consultation will be reflected in them, too. Questions have been asked about when that will happen; it will be later on in the year, but it will be as soon as possible. There are many things to balance: we have to fit a specific timetable, which, as the hon. Member for Aberdeen South said, begins in April, but it would be incorrect to put something in play if we had not listened to everyone for as long as we possibly can.

I will pick up some of my notes, because the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) asked whether there are targets for the length of assessment. No, there are no targets for how long an assessment should take or for how many assessments should be completed in a week or a day. She is right: there are challenges, and it will be tough, but this is written into the contract. I met the two key providers yesterday to discuss how they have to engage with people and how the system has to be humane. They have to listen and be caring and all of those things, because—she is right—we need rigour and confidence in the system.

On the monitoring of quality and consistency across the PIP providers, guidance has been very strict, and training will be strict, too. They will be closely monitored for quality, auditing and the work of the health professionals. We are seeking feedback from claimants. They will be monitored again in two years, as well as this being ongoing. Should we see any discrepancies in appeals and reassessments where there seem to be issues, that will be monitored, too.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh East asked about other types of targets. There are no targets or expectations for assessor performance in the work capability assessment, and there will not be any in PIP. Yes, performance is monitored and assessors are audited. Where abnormal results occur, we will look into them, but everything has to be of the highest possible quality.

The hon. Lady talked about the initial start-up in Bootle and how it would roll out across the country. The Department will test the effectiveness of the IT system, and the assessment and referral and claiming process. The Department will also be able to validate assumptions about the timings of the process: the initial telephone call, the claim form, the completion and the assessment duration. All of that will be tested in the original bit, which goes from April to June.

The hon. Lady asked many more questions, but I wonder whether I should move on to another question, which I think all hon. Members asked, about how disabled people are portrayed in the media. The right hon. Member for Stirling correctly pointed out that the superheroes of the Paralympics make up a tiny percentage of people with disabilities. Just as I will never be an Olympian, most people with disabilities will never be a Paralympian. However, the Paralympics shone a light on an area that we hope to capitalise on and open up disabled people to mainstream media. To that end, as somebody who worked in the media for 14 years, I hope that I can bring some insight and knowledge. I have asked straight away for—I would like to say a media summit, but that might make it sound even more highfaluting than it actually is—for a media round table. When one considers that there are 11 million people with disabilities in the UK and what percentage of the population that represents, it seems only right that such organisations as the BBC or ITV would look at that as a significant audience they should be reflecting, not just occasionally but daily, in all their programmes, whether they are dramas, news or current affairs.

It may be that we have to be even more careful about the language we use. If we know that the issue will be polarised and put into headlines and TV captions—we know that that will happen—then we need to be more careful about how we talk. I have never mentioned the word “scroungers”. I am mentioning it now because other hon. Members have mentioned it, and maybe we should all stop using it.

[Stephen Lloyd]

I thank the Minister for giving way. She is covering a lot in a very short time, and I forgot to congratulate her on her new post. As I asked in my speech, will she commit, when the Government get it wrong, to going out on behalf of disabled people and very aggressively putting it right in the media?

[Esther McVey]

I agree that we should all do that, and that is what I am aiming to do. I have, in fact, been interviewed myself and felt that the interviewer was using the wrong language. I picked up on that, because I thought it was inappropriate. Whether that was to catch me out or whatever, I felt it was inappropriate.

I am aware of the time, so I would like to answer some of the questions raised by the right hon. Member for Stirling. Many hon. Members brought up the figure of the 20% cut. The right hon. Lady said that the impression sticks, so let me try to unstick it. Where did the 20% figure come from? I have to say, and I say this hand on heart, that when I walked into the Department and took on this daunting position—a huge task, with huge shoes to fill—I said, “I want to know how those numbers came about, because I do not honestly believe I can stand up in front of people unless I know the integrity of what I am saying.” If it is not right, I will change my words accordingly. As the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) said, if this is not what he thinks it will be, he will be a vocal opponent of it.

I have the figures. I have the numbers of what the spend would be, and this is what it was about. I asked all the medics who were setting the assessment, “Where did the numbers come from?” They said, in all honesty, they were given the task of looking at what a benefit would be for 2013—looking at the disabilities now as we perceive them. We are not looking at DLA of the 1990s—that was very much skewed towards people with physical disabilities. This had to take in everything: sensory, mental conditions, learning difficulties, and how that would be done and how it is best placed to fit. They said that they came back with this assessment, this is how it was structured, and these were the results.

The actual sums that were paid out were £12.5 billion in 2010-11, and by 2014-15 the expected, real-terms spending will be £13.2 billion. The 20% cut that people talk about was the cut in the expected rise in the benefits, because they had risen exponentially by 40% in 10 years and everybody felt that that was unaffordable. Therefore, if we wanted to give the benefits people wanted, if we wanted to look after those who were most in need of support, but equally those with great needs as well as the greatest need, this is what had to be done to be sustainable. Those were the figures and those were the facts I was given. I believe them, and that is why I am standing here today.

Let me see if I can come on to any more questions. The hon. Member for Aberdeen South asked rather a lot. I reaffirm my commitment to working with people on disability benefits. Wherever possible, we will be working with everybody. As I am running out of time and the hon. Lady will be speaking in a moment, I will come to a conclusion and send her my response.

In conclusion, the London 2012 Paralympic games truly captivated the hearts of the nation, and undoubtedly helped to shift attitudes towards and perceptions of disabled people. We now have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to capitalise on that. The Government want to build on that success and I am adamant that I will do so.

I have just remembered that the right hon. Member for Stirling asked a question about Atos. I am not fully aware of the answer, but it is of concern. I will address it, and my team will look at it straight away.

We have to ensure that those who face the greatest barriers get the support they need. By replacing DLA with PIP, we are safeguarding that support for the future. Not only are we doing that, but we are modifying a benefit to ensure it keeps pace with the needs of disabled people today.

I hope my comments have reassured hon. Members. I know that they wanted more reassurance, but I do not have the time. Our proposals have been developed following extensive collaboration and consultation with disabled people and, when viewed as part of a wide package of support available, are intended to enable those disabled people who face the greatest barriers to lead full, active and independent lives.

Universal Credit and Welfare Reform

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I have given way quite a bit. If the hon. Lady will give me a little leeway I will give way again later, but I want to make some progress.

A single payment, withdrawn at a clear and consistent rate when people move into work, will make work pay at each and every hour and remove the stumbling block in the current system whereby, as I said earlier, some people lose out dramatically. They lose 96p in every pound that they earn, which cannot be an incentive to go to work. Nobody here would take work at that rate, and trying to get the deduction rate down has to be a good reason for our reform.

The Opposition say that they are concerned about work incentives under universal credit. I reassure them that, as I said earlier, the flat 65% withdrawal rate will mean reduced marginal deduction rates for 1.2 million households. What is more, 80% of those gainers are in the bottom 40% of the income distribution. Why am I, as a Conservative, having to stand here and tell the Opposition that that is positive? Surely they should have ensured that it happened during all the years when they were in power.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

The Opposition have mentioned the Work and Pensions Committee a few times. I am a member of that Committee, and although the Opposition are absolutely right to say that there were some concerns about universal credit, the Secretary of State might be interested to know that the Committee universally supported the concept of universal credit to make work pay.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I thank my hon. Friend for those comments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

It is a privilege to speak in this debate and to follow the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), whose speeches on this matter I have read for many years.

The issue of benefit dependency was one of the triggers that drew me back into politics 10 or 11 years ago. That is why, once I was elected, I became a member of the Work and Pensions Committee. I have been very involved in its work ever since, along with the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg).

We must remind ourselves of the figures that have been talked about. There are more than 2 million children in the UK living in households in which nobody is in work. That figure is from 2005 or 2006, when the economy was booming. I imagine that the figure is much higher today, because of the recession that we have been in since 2008. The Secretary of State reminded us that there are more children in workless households in the UK than across the rest of the EU, which is a shocking statistic. Such figures are the reason many Members from all parties feel so strongly about this subject. Although there are anxieties about universal credit, which I will touch on in a minute, we all in our hearts hope and pray that it works.

Over a period of 30 or 40 years, not because of a conspiracy or through malice, but through society trying to do the right thing, a chronic situation has developed in which for many of our neighbours, colleagues and constituents, it simply does not make rational sense to work. I spoke to a young woman on Saturday at my surgery. She had come to see me about a different issue, but we got on to this matter because she knows that I feel strongly about it. She pointed out that she was losing five or six quid a week by working. It would make financial sense for her to go on to benefits. Luckily, she is the sort of person who would see that as the road to perdition, so she is sticking to her job, hoping that she will earn more money in a year or two. I thought to myself, “This is absolutely insane. How have we got here?” We all know that it has been down to a series of actions over 30 or 40 years, but we are where we are, so how do we change things?

I am anxious that someone with such a reputation on the subject as the right hon. Member for Birkenhead feels so negative about universal credit. That makes me nervous, because he has a lot more experience in this area than I have. None the less, let us see what we have got. We have got the biggest shake-up of the system in 40 years. That is not necessarily a good thing—a number of colleagues have talked about the history of public sector IT programmes, and I do not even want to go there—but it is a substantial change.

I defer to the right hon. Gentleman somewhat—forgive me for mentioning him again, but it is a privilege to speak straight after him—in agreeing with him that the opinion has become ingrained in many of our citizens over a number of generations that there has to be some sort of means-testing process to get people into a position in which they are prepared to work. That is linked to the Work programme. For all its challenges, of which there are many, it recognises that we have to offer training providers enough money that it is worth their while to get people into work and sustain them there.

I mention that because before I was elected I was a trustee of the Royal National Institute for Deaf People and was involved in a number of disability charities. For many years, training providers used to do what they called creaming and parking. They would take people who were job-ready from the jobcentre, turn them around very quickly, get them a job and take the money from whichever Government were in power, either Labour or Conservative. The premium for those providers was so little that they put people who were a long way from the job market in a corner and did not bother with them. That situation built up over a period of time. As we know, the Work programme is modelled in such a way that training providers stand to gain a considerable amount of money if they get long-term benefit recipients into work. I am keen on that. I want the directors of training providers and the people who work for them to end up as wealthy men and women, because I know that if that happens, we will finally break the desperate cycle that has gone on for 30 or 40 years and third-generation benefit dependants will be getting jobs. Universal credit is crucial to that.

Will universal credit work? That is the $64,000 question. The Secretary of State is confident about the IT and confident that the programme is on budget and on time. Like a lot of Members, I hope and pray that he is right, because I do not want to wait another few years for the Labour party to come up with a plan, perhaps one put together by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead. It lost that opportunity 12 or 13 years ago. Frankly, I think that is a shame, but that is by the by. I am not confident that his ideas will ever come through into Opposition policy, so universal credit has to work. I urge the Secretary of State and the Department to listen to some of our procedural concerns about monthly payments, council tax benefit and which primary earner will get a household’s money, but otherwise I support universal credit wholeheartedly and look forward to its implementation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Absolutely—I accept that we have to deal with those issues. We are seeking to move to monthly payments. When payments moved from being weekly to fortnightly, everyone said it would cause major problems, but very little happened. We are putting in place requirements so that people may receive their money on a two-weekly basis if they are unable to cope. We recognise that when we introduce this process, people will have to transition into it so that they are not left with a period without any money. All that is under consideration. We are trialling the programmes to ensure that we get this right. I give the hon. Lady my assurance that we will not move on this unless we are certain we can make it work.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I am a strong advocate of universal credit, as the Secretary of State knows, but I retain a couple of concerns. The plan for a single person within the family to receive all the universal credit could be detrimental to women in particular. Will he confirm that there will be enough flexibility to ensure that women do not lose out?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

That issue has been raised, so we have discussed it with a number of people and will allow for it. People will be able to nominate who should receive the payment. If there is a problem, in certain circumstances we will agree that an individual should receive the money. There is huge flexibility over where the payment should go and we are consulting on that at the moment. We will make any changes we need to make.

Atos Healthcare

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Chris Grayling]

It is really important to emphasise that the reassessment of people on incapacity benefit is not a financial exercise and that there are no financial targets attached to it. It is about finding the right number of people who can make a return to work. It is not an exact science—it never was and never could be—but it is all about trying to help people back into the workplace if they can possibly return to it. That was the previous Government’s motivation when they established the work capability assessment. When we took office, we put in place the changes that they themselves had put in the pipeline through the internal review of the work capability assessment.

When we took office, I fully accepted that the process needed to be improved. That was why we brought in Malcolm Harrington and it is why I am absolutely clear that we have implemented his recommendations. I have regularly met and talked to Malcolm Harrington, and at no point has he said to me that the process is not fit for purpose. At no point has our independent adviser, whom I believe has the confidence of most people in the charitable sector who are involved in this work, said to me that this system has to stop or is unfit for purpose. He has made suggestions about improvements, and we have followed his advice in that regard. Our objective is to do the right thing, but of course this is not an exact science. We will never create a system that is perfect, which is why people have a right to appeal.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

Following the substantial improvements that the Government have made, does my right hon. Friend the Minister agree that the number of people who have been moved into the support set of the ESA has increased by 20%?

Specialist Disability Employment

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for coming in for today’s statement and for being able to participate in the statement process, because he more than anybody knows the very real dilemma that was faced under the previous Administration with Remploy, and I pay tribute to the work that he did to try to give Remploy an opportunity to get back on its feet. He will know that there are more than 12,000 disabled people in his constituency, and the Neath furniture factory will continue through the summer process, which I am sure he welcomes. I hope that he would want to ensure that more of those 12,000 people receive the sort of support that I know he feels can work.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

Will the Minister, for absolute clarity, confirm two things: first, that every single penny spent will go to help disabled people into mainstream employment; and, secondly, that it will be in addition to any money provided by the Work programme also to help disabled people into employment?

[Maria Miller]

I am pleased to confirm to my hon. Friend that we have a £320 million protected budget; that as we move forward, I want to see all that money supporting people into mainstream employment—into all the same jobs that any of us would want to take up outside this place; and that this money is in addition to any finances that are available for the Work programme.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I congratulate Opposition Front Benchers: this is one area in which they have made a major contribution to the debate. It was the Labour party that began the argument about the regionalisation of benefits. It was entirely sensible for the Prime Minister to take up that challenge, and we should have a proper national debate about whether this is the right approach for the future.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I welcome what the Minister has said about training. Does he agree, irrespective of certain quite loud noises off that have been heard recently, that the coalition is making the fundamental changes that will ensure that work always pays in future? That is a policy that I heartily endorse.

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The universal credit, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is pioneering and which will be launched next year, will make a huge difference. As for the skills agenda, one of the coalition’s other achievements is the big expansion of apprenticeships. That is making a real difference to the prospects of unemployed people, particularly young unemployed people, giving them a chance to build up skills that can lead to a lasting career.