Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mims Davies]

I thank my hon. Friend for such warm, generous feedback. That work happens up and down the land in our jobcentres and I hear similar good news stories every day. I invite those on the Opposition Front Bench to actually step into a jobcentre, see what is really going on, meet the kickstarters and see what this has meant to their lives. In fact, at BAE, not far from my hon. Friend’s constituency, one young man has moved into an apprenticeship and is now inspiring people through our youth hubs to do exactly the same by talking about his work journey.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

8. What steps she is taking to build trust in her Department among disabled people.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chloe Smith)]

As we said in our Green Paper, and as I discussed with the right hon. Gentleman last week, we recognise the need to improve disabled people’s experience of our services. In response to feedback, we have already committed to changes for the special rules on terminal illness. In the British Sign Language Bill and its supporting work, we also show that we are listening to disabled people with an advisory board of BSL users.

[Stephen Timms]

DWP’s social security advisory committee highlighted just over a year ago the serious problem that disabled people do not trust the Department. Burying the NatCen report, in breach of the cross-Government social research protocol, has made matters worse. The failure to consult properly on the national disability strategy has also now been found to be in breach of the law. As a first step, should the Minister not accept the social security advisory committee’s recommendation to establish a protocol for engagement to do the job properly with disabled people?

[Chloe Smith]

I do want to engage more with disabled people and continue all the work that is going on to listen to disabled people and disabled people’s organisations. That is a priority across a number of areas of work for all the Ministers on the Front Bench. I take issue with the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the NatCen research and the use of the protocol. As has been the habit of successive Governments, including the one that he served in, protecting a private space for policy development has always been a relevant factor and is a permissible technique for ensuring that we can bring research out at the right time, as we undertook to do in this case.