Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Timms Excerpts(2 days, 8 hours ago)
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Antonia Bance (Tipton and Wednesbury) (Lab)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
We are committed to reviewing universal credit to ensure that it is doing the job that we need it to. We have started by announcing the fair repayment rate in the Budget, and we will keep Parliament updated.
Antonia Bance
Twenty-seven per cent of working-age people in Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley rely on universal credit. I welcome the fair repayment rate announced in the Budget, but a major reason for benefit debt is the design flaw in universal credit, which means that claimants must wait five weeks for their first payment. Will the Minister confirm that the five-week wait will be considered in the review of universal credit?
Sir Stephen Timms
I can assure my hon. Friend that advances of up to 100% of potential universal credit entitlements are available urgently during the first assessment period of a claim, but she is right to raise concerns about the five-week wait. I commend to her the excellent report on this subject published by the Work and Pensions Committee in the last Parliament. The point she has raised is definitely one that we need to consider.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
Some of the farmers who work so hard to put food on our tables find it difficult to put food on the table themselves, and need additional Government support. That used to happen via tax credits, but the transition to universal credit has been hugely challenging for farmers, given the seasonal nature of their work. Will the Minister meet me to hear some of their concerns, so that we can incorporate those concerns into the Government’s review?
Sir Stephen Timms
We are watching very carefully the progress of migration from tax credits to universal credit, which will be complete in the early part of next year, but I would be very happy to meet the hon. Lady and discuss some of the difficulties she is seeing.
David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)
Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
No assessment along the lines that the hon. Gentleman asks about has been made. Benefit rates are reviewed each year, increasing by 6.7% last April and by 1.7% from next April, in line with inflation.
Bobby Dean
I thank the Minister for his answer, but I would like to focus on the age differential in the rates. He will be aware that people under 25 receive a different rate of universal credit. The Government announced that they will try to abolish the age differential for the national living wage. If it could also be abolished for universal credit, that would be really good for young care leavers. Will the Minister look at potentially phasing out the age differential in universal credit?
Sir Stephen Timms
The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting suggestion. That is not something I am considering at the moment, but as he will have heard me say earlier, we will be reviewing universal credit over the course of the next year or so. We certainly want to support young care leavers—he will know of the recent announcement that we made about changes to carer’s allowance—and we are keeping all those matters under review.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
Jack Rankin (Windsor) (Con)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
We want to reform the system to do a much better job in helping people to enter and stay in work. We will publish a Green Paper next spring and we will be discussing our proposals with disabled people.
Jack Rankin
To protect those in need and to deliver for taxpayers, we need to take tough decisions. Reforming health and disability benefits will require Ministers to make difficult choices, but so far the plans rely on reducing NHS waiting lists, which the Office for Budget Responsibility has said will have hardly any effect on economic activity. Are Ministers willing to make unpopular decisions to solve this issue and, if so, when?
Sir Stephen Timms
I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we will make the right decisions, and they will be set out in our Green Paper in the spring. There is a need to reform the health and disability benefits system—there is no question about that—and we want to talk to disabled people themselves about the details, in order to make sure that we get it right.
Liam Conlon (Beckenham and Penge) (Lab)
Tom Rutland (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Lab)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
Yes, I can confirm that. We place a very high value on the contribution of family carers. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, the Budget announcement on the carer’s allowance earning threshold will help avert inadvertent overpayments, and will make an additional 60,000 carers eligible for carer’s allowance. We are determined to do everything we can.
Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)
A report by the National Audit Office last week highlighted how cliff edges in the care allowance system have resulted in 136,000 people owing £250 million. In the light of that, will the Minister ensure that we stop this injustice and stop the demands until a fairer system is introduced?
Sir Stephen Timms
I welcome the NAO report, which I asked for last May, when I was Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee. We are determined to address the problem of carer’s allowance overpayments. The cliff edge could be dealt with through the introduction of a taper instead of the current arrangements, as the Chancellor mentioned in her Budget speech in the autumn. If we do that, it will not happen quickly, because it will be quite a major project, but it is something that we are looking at closely.
Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)
Mr Richard Quigley (Isle of Wight West) (Lab)
Young people in supported housing, including in my constituency, effectively pay a marginal rate of tax of 55% on their universal credit when they start work, meaning that earnings of just £133 a week see their housing benefit tapered to nil. That means that work does not pay. Will the Minister look at the economic benefits of reducing that taper and increasing the applicable amount, ensuring that work does pay and improving housing security?
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend raises a very important point. There is a problem in the interaction between the universal credit taper rate and the housing benefit taper for people in supported and temporary accommodation. We are, at the moment, looking at options for how to tackle that quite serious work disincentive problem.
Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)
Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)
In Epsom and Ewell, local charities such as the Sunnybank Trust are seeing a lack of employment opportunities for people with learning disabilities. In fact, only 6.9% of people with learning disabilities are currently in paid work. What measures is the DWP taking to support employers to help individuals with learning disabilities to get into work?
Sir Stephen Timms
The hon. Member raises a very important point. She will probably be aware of the Buckland review, published before the election, which looks specifically at employment support for people with autism. The Minister for Employment and I met Sir Robert Buckland recently, and we are looking at how we can take forward the ideas he proposed in his report.
Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)
My inspirational constituent, Bells Lewers, has terminal bowel cancer. When she was first undergoing treatment, she was initially turned down for personal independence payment, despite the significant impact on her ability to work and carry out basic daily activities. Has the Minister considered incorporating clinical diagnosis alongside function in eligibility assessments, and will he meet Bells to discuss the assessment process?
Sir Stephen Timms
We do keep the asylum process under review, but I would be happy to look at the details of this particular case and perhaps meet the hon. Lady and her constituent, if that would be helpful.
Sally Jameson (Doncaster Central) (Lab/Co-op)
An astonishing £35 billion has been lost to benefit fraud and errors since the pandemic. Will the Minister outline the plans and the timeline for recouping that money?
Disability History Month
Stephen Timms Excerpts(6 days, 8 hours ago)
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The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) on initiating this debate and on her speech. We have been reminded that Disability History Month was inaugurated by an early-day motion in this House in 2010, of which our former colleague, Dame Anne Begg, herself a wheelchair user, was the lead signatory. This is an opportunity for us to reflect on the progress made and the challenges we still face, and listen to the voices rightly calling for a more inclusive society. We want to celebrate the achievements of disabled people throughout history. We recognise the barriers that they have overcome, including those that persist.
I agree with the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) that the examples of those with a disability who have served in this House, past and present, are inspiring. I did not know that he had a period at university without sight. I am familiar with some of his university activities, but not with that one, so it was very interesting to hear that.
Understanding history helps us to learn and grow as a society. In this month, in honouring the pioneers of disability rights and listening to the experiences of disabled people, we commit to working together for a more inclusive future. I will set out the Government’s actions for delivering access and inclusion to all disabled people through our missions and our plans for a decade of national renewal.
My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock highlighted the stubborn disability employment gap, which, as she said, has been stuck at 30 percentage points across the country for the past 30 years. I was pleased to hear that in West Bromwich it is slightly less, but it is still much too high, so we need to make progress on it. We want to provide better support to enable disabled people who are able and want to work to move into and progress in employment.
I am grateful for what hon. Members have said about our “Get Britain Working” White Paper, published a couple of weeks ago, which announced some important reforms. We are changing the outcomes against which we measure success. We are focusing not just on getting somebody into a job, but on achieving higher engagement with everyone, on the employment being sustained and on whether it leads to pay progression.
We will overhaul jobcentres and deliver a new youth guarantee to ensure that nobody is left on the scrapheap when they are young. We want local Get Britain Working plans to be drawn up in every area in England, bringing together jobcentres, colleges, skills providers, the NHS, employers and local charities to tackle economic inactivity. Importantly, the White Paper announced a disability employment panel, with which we will work to ensure the voices of disabled people are at the heart of the reforms we introduce.
I was very interested to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock about WorkFit, which she has mentioned to me previously. I am keen to find out more about it. It was also good to hear from the right hon. Member for New Forest East about the Minstead Trust and Hanger Farm. We need such models to address the chronically low rate of employment among people with learning disabilities.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes) rightly spoke about public transport and access to work. I have spoken to a number of disabled people about the barriers to employment, and public transport accessibility is right at the top of many of their lists. I am pleased that the Bus Services Bill will include measures to improve the accessibility of bus and coach stops and introduce powers to create statutory guidance on inclusive design. I am also pleased that the Department for Transport is working closely with disability advocacy groups, including the Department’s own Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, but we certainly need to make a lot of progress in that area.
We fully recognise that some people, through ill health or disability, are not working. We are determined to ensure that they also have the support that they need. We know that many of those who are out of work through ill health or disability would love to be in a job, but at the moment, they face insuperable barriers that prevent them from working. Those barriers include features of the benefits system.
At the moment, the standard rate in the benefits system is at its lowest level, in real terms, in 40 years, which makes it hard for people who receive it to support their families. If they can convince my Department that they are too sick to work, they receive additional cash but no help at all to return to work. That means that the benefits system is driving people with health problems into inactivity.
We are committed to reforming the system so that health and disability benefits support disabled people into work and to live independently. Alongside “Get Britain Working”, we will be setting out reform proposals in the spring in a Green Paper, to be followed by a full 12-week consultation. That is because we want to think about it properly and take account of everybody’s views so we can get it right.
In introducing the debate, as well as mentioning the disability employment gap, my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock also rightly mentioned the disability pay gap, and we are working on that as well. We are developing the equality (race and disability) Bill to deliver our manifesto commitment on disability pay gap reporting for larger employers, and to place on the statute book the full right to equal pay for disabled people. That work needs to be informed by the views of disabled people and of the employers that will implement the new requirements. We will launch a public consultation early in the new year, when we will want to hear from disabled people, their representative organisations and employers to help to shape the legislation.
Since July, I have been meeting regularly with a range of disability groups and organisations, and I have thoroughly enjoyed doing so. In the past week, I have met the Disabled People’s Organisations Forum England, which is made up of more than 40 organisations led by disabled people. I have also met the Disability Charities Consortium, comprising nine of the largest disability charities. The first of those meetings was online; the second one was face to face. Also online, I have met our regional stakeholder network, which is made up of representatives from nine networks across the UK of members of the public who are committed to using their own experience to improve the lives of other disabled people locally. I also work with the Government’s disability and access ambassadors, who are senior business leaders from 12 sectors, from advertising to universities. They provide personal leadership to help deliver good-quality services for disabled people, and to encourage improvements to accessibility.
Hearing impairment has been a significant feature in the debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson) on the event she hosted in the Attlee Suite. Was that yesterday?
Sir Stephen Timms
It was a very good event. I made some rather poor efforts to address the group in British Sign Language—my first attempt. I know that she will be pleased—I am sure the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths) will be as well—to know that we are committed to supporting the British Sign Language advisory board, which was set up in the wake of Rosie Cooper’s British Sign Language Act 2022. It is the UK Government’s first dual-language board focusing on key issues that affect deaf people. We are committed to promoting and supporting British Sign Language and we will shortly be publishing the 2023-24 British Sign Language annual report.
I am pleased to join my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North in congratulating the Royal School for the Deaf Derby on the accolades that it has received from Ofsted, and I very much agree with the important points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) about the importance of what is being provided to ensure that people’s hearing is well looked after and supported.
I need to work closely with ministerial colleagues and with other Departments right across Government to ensure that disabled people get the support they need to overcome the daily barriers that they face. The commitment that I am setting out today on behalf of the Government needs to be a whole of Government endeavour, so I was very pleased about and grateful for what Members said in the debate about my announcement last week of a lead Minister for disability in every Department to represent the interests of disabled people and to champion disability inclusion and accessibility in their Department. I will chair regular meetings with the members of that group and encourage them to engage directly with disabled people and their representative organisations as they work on their departmental priorities. I am looking forward to the group’s first meeting next week, and I can give my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock the assurance that she is looking for about our shared aims and what that group will be working towards.
Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)
It is fantastic to hear about all that the Government are doing on disability. My right hon. Friend the Minister will know that many disabled people rely on family and friends to provide care and support to enable them to have a full life—to participate in work, school and other things that they enjoy—so will he reassure me and others that, in taking a cross-departmental approach to disability, he will be considering the important role of family carers?
Sir Stephen Timms
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her point and can certainly give her the assurance that she seeks. As she knows, in the Budget we made an important improvement to the arrangements for carer’s allowance through the commitment that the earnings threshold for carer’s allowance will be increased to 16 hours a week at the national living wage rate. That will be a permanent link with the national living wage and, we hope, will overcome the problem that a lot of carers have run into over the last few years, whereby they get a bit of a pay rise that tips them above the threshold and therefore inadvertently receive an overpayment of carer’s allowance. We hope that the change will help, and we know that the increase itself will bring about 60,000 more family carers into eligibility for carer’s allowance.
As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in the Budget, we will also be looking at the possibility of a new taper arrangement for carer’s allowance, in order to move away from the current cliff edge, which has always been there. That will require quite substantial IT development; it will not be ready overnight, but I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) will agree that it is quite a promising idea to improve support for unpaid carers in the future.
My focus is primarily on domestic disability policy, but I also oversee UK implementation of the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities and represent domestic disability-related policy on international platforms, so in October I attended the first ever G7 disability inclusion summit, which was hosted by the Italian presidency and held just outside Assisi, where I and my G7 counterparts and Ministers from several other countries all signed up to the Solfagnano charter. That sets out a collective agreement to advance work in eight key areas, among which is:
“Inclusion as a priority issue in the political agenda of all countries”.
It is a useful document, focusing specifically on disability inclusion all the way through. We have also worked to extend the UN convention to a number of UK overseas territories. We recently extended the treaty to Bermuda—the first British overseas territory to which it has been extended. I can confirm that we are committed to protecting and promoting the rights of disabled people around the world as well as in the UK.
A great perk of my job was to attend the Paralympic games in Paris in August. The hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) was right to draw attention to the huge improvement that was the London 2012 Paralympic games, which took the Paralympics movement to a new level. I visited the athletes’ village in August, and it was most interesting to see how it had been laid out to be accessible to everybody. There were ramps everywhere and electrical devices at the bottom of every slope that people could clip on to their wheelchair to help them up it. It is worth making the point that in those games, we came second in the medals table, ahead of the United States and all the other European countries and behind only China. The games attracted unprecedented support and audiences, with the venues full of enthusiastic —and, I must say, highly partisan—French audiences. It was good to hear everybody highlighting the importance of UK leadership in not just starting the games at Stoke Mandeville, but hosting the groundbreaking 2012 games. The unique contribution of Channel 4 in 2012, and ever since, has clearly been deeply appreciated around the world in the Paralympics movement.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich was absolutely right to draw attention to the importance of disabled people being able to be physically active. There is a problem in the benefits system, because too often people fear that being physically active could lead to them losing their benefits. We need to address that challenge of reforming the system in our Green Paper, when it is published in the spring.
Disability History Month reminds us that progress is a shared endeavour. Working together across Government, across the House and with the wider community, we can build a society in which everyone can participate fully and equally. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) rightly raised the question of the extent to which I am working with Ministers in Northern Ireland, in Scotland and in Wales. I met Minister Lyons from Northern Ireland when he came to London, and the Minister for Transformation, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western), also met him on his recent visit to Northern Ireland. The hon. Member for Strangford is right to underline the importance of us working together across the United Kingdom on these priorities.
Let us honour the courage and contributions of disabled people, past and present, by reaffirming our commitment to not just a month of reflection, but a permanent springboard for lasting change and a more inclusive future.
International Day of Persons with Disabilities
Stephen Timms Excerpts(2 weeks, 1 day ago)
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The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) on securing this timely debate, continuing her long-standing record, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, as a champion for disabled people in Parliament. I am looking forward to engaging with her regularly as Chair of the Committee, including on the safeguarding work that she rightly highlighted. I agree with her: my Department needs to drive disability inclusion across the whole of Government, remove barriers, and deliver access and inclusion to disabled people across all areas of everyday life.
Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
On Saturday I was fortunate to meet nine-year-old Alfred. Alfred has cerebral palsy, and his parents fight endlessly to get him the support he needs and is entitled to. He is determined to walk one day, and he recently took his first steps. People can follow his progress on his Team Alfred Facebook page. Will the Minister meet me, Alfred, and his parents to hear of their struggles and of how the system needs to change to make things fair for Alfred and others like him?
Sir Stephen Timms
I am pleased that my hon. Friend has met her constituent, and of course I would be glad to meet her, her constituent and his parents.
Let me set out some of the steps that we are taking towards our goal. First, we are working hard to provide better support for disabled people who want to work. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth rightly referred to the “Get Britain Working” White Paper, published last week, through which we are determined to tackle that stubbornly large disability employment gap that my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes and Mid Fife referred to.
We will overhaul jobcentres. We want work, health and skills plans for every area, bringing together jobcentres, colleges, the NHS, local charities and others in each area to equip disabled people for the opportunities there. We will set up a disability employment panel so that we can consult properly with disabled people and their organisations as we firm up our plans for better employment support. As my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth said, the refrain is, “Nothing about us without us.”
The White Paper also announced an independent review, headed by Sir Charlie Mayfield, who used to run John Lewis, on how the Government and businesses can provide better support at work for people with disabilities and health impairments. I confirm to my hon. Friend that we fully recognise that some people, through ill health or disability, will not be working, and we will ensure that they have the support that they need, recognising the extra costs that she has highlighted.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
I congratulate my friend, the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), on securing this important debate. Keith, a constituent of mine, is a member of My Life My Choice, a self-advocacy group in Oxfordshire. Its job is to bring the voices of disabled people to MPs and into Parliament, so that they are part of the debate. He wanted me to advocate on his behalf for high-quality adult social care. That allowed him to play the fullest part he could in our community. The Minister would be welcome to come to Oxfordshire to meet him. It would mean the world to the group. What does he have to say to Keith about adult social care?
Sir Stephen Timms
The hon. Member’s constituent raises an important point. Indeed, I was pressed on that point earlier today by Peter White in an interview that will be broadcast tonight. Our ambition is for a national care service. That is what we are working for, with a long-term plan that sits alongside our long-term plan for the NHS. Her constituent is absolutely right to press us to deliver on that goal.
We fully recognise that we need to adequately support people through the benefits system, but we know that many of those who are out of work through ill health or disability would, as my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth said, love to be in a job. At the moment, they face insuperable barriers that prevent that, including at times the benefits system. It is tough to bring up a family on universal credit. If someone can persuade my Department that they are too sick to work, they will receive some extra cash, but then no help at all to return to work. The system should not work in that way, and that is what we are determined to change.
Steve Darling
The Minister talked about barriers; one significant barrier that people with disabilities face is discrimination. Some people who have protected characteristics have the full force of the law behind them when they are discriminated against, but my concern is that people with disabilities do not necessarily have that and have to go through the civil court system. Does he believe that is right?
Sir Stephen Timms
I am glad to be able to tell the hon. Gentleman, who raises an important point, that in the race and disability equality Bill, which my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth referred to, we will deliver on our manifesto commitment to disability pay gap reporting for large employers. We will also place the full right to equal pay for disabled people explicitly on the statute book. That will be an important step forward in addressing the concern that the hon. Gentleman expresses. That right is implicit in the Equality Act 2010 already, but we will put it explicitly on the statute book.
Earlier today, I visited Google’s impressive accessibility discovery centre at King’s Cross to look at the latest advances in assistive tech. In our forthcoming Green Paper, I want us to look at what more we can do to support access to assistive technology, which can increasingly support disabled people in work.
Our manifesto committed us to championing the rights of disabled people, working with them. I have started to meet regularly with a range of disability groups, including: the Disabled People’s Organisations Forum England, which is made up of members from more than 40 organisations led by disabled people; the Disability Charities Consortium, which includes nine of the biggest national disability charities; and our regional stakeholder network—nine networks across the country of members of the public who are willing to use their lived experience to improve the lives of other disabled people in their area. I also meet the Government’s disability and access ambassadors, senior business leaders who encourage improvements to the accessibility and quality of services for disabled people across 20 sectors, from advertising to universities.
We support the British Sign Language Advisory Board, which was set up in the aftermath of Rosie Cooper’s British Sign Language Act 2022. We will shortly publish the 2023-24 annual British Sign Language report, which I think is the second such report since the Act was passed, describing what Departments are doing to promote and facilitate the use of British Sign Language in their public communications.
Earlier this year, the equality hub in the Cabinet Office was replaced with the Office for Equality and Opportunity, which will deliver our commitment to breaking down barriers, boosting opportunity and putting equality at the heart of all the Government’s missions. I want to work with other Departments across Government, so that disabled people get the support that they need to overcome the daily barriers that they face. Floating bus stops are an important issue that we need to reflect on and work on across Government.
I am pleased to announce today the appointment of new lead Ministers for disability in each Government Department. They will represent the interests of disabled people and champion disability inclusion and accessibility in their Department. I will chair regular meetings with them and encourage them to engage directly with disabled people and their representative organisations as they take forward their departmental priorities. I look forward to this new group of lead Ministers for disability together driving real improvements across Government for disabled people.
My focus as Minister for Social Security and Disability is primarily on domestic disability policy, but I make the point that I am also responsible for UK implementation of the UN convention, which my hon. Friend referred to—the convention was extended to Bermuda to a few weeks ago—underlining the Government’s commitment to protecting and promoting disabled people’s rights across the UK and around the world.
A great privilege of my job was to attend the Paralympic games in Paris in August, which was a fantastic event. Earlier today, I attended the launch of the strategy of the Activity Alliance, which brings together disability sports organisations around the country. In its new strategy, it highlights the benefits for society of disabled people being able to be more physically active. One of the things that they want to talk to me about is removing the barriers in the benefit system that sometimes make that extremely difficult.
I very much congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth on bringing forward the debate. I am delighted that we have had good attendance in the House this evening. I look forward to working with her and other Members to ensure that disabled people have the power, the rights and the opportunities that everyone else does.
Question put and agreed to.
Blind and Partially Sighted People: Employment Support
Stephen Timms Excerpts(4 weeks ago)
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The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I too congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) on securing this important and illuminating debate, and on the way she introduced it. She has a very deep commitment to this issue, as I know from her long-term work on the all-party parliamentary group. I commend her for that, and I also commend RNIB and the Thomas Pocklington Trust, which support that group by providing the secretariat.
It was welcome to hear hon. Members share their personal experiences. The hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) was absolutely right to remind us of the continuing problem of discrimination in work. It has not gone away and still needs to be addressed. It was great to hear about Julie’s experience of skiing—my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) made his point very powerfully. I visited the Paralympics in Paris for a couple for a couple of days in the summer, and it was inspiring to see the accomplishments of people who are disabled and how much potential they have to contribute. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to do more to realise that potential in our economy and our society.
We all know about RNIB, and I am also familiar with the work of the Thomas Pocklington Trust thanks to my former constituent Helen Mitchell, who is one of its trustees. She arranged for me to pay a very useful and informative visit to its headquarters last year. I pay tribute to it for its work.
As the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) said, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions set out, in a speech in Barnsley in July, our plans to reform the Department for Work and Pensions: rather than being the Department for welfare, it will be the Department for work. Our ambition is an 80% rate of employment, which would be the highest we have ever achieved in the UK. The hon. Member for East Wiltshire is absolutely right to remind us that the current rate of economic activity is still less than it was before the pandemic, so we still have a good deal of ground to make up.
To achieve that ambition, we have to do much better at supporting disabled people, including blind and partially sighted people, into work. We will not achieve our ambition without that. We want people with visual impairments, who, as we have been reminded, have great skills and talents to offer, to have equal chances to enter and thrive in the labour market. We cannot continue with the 40% visual impairment employment gap, which my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea mentioned, and is spelled out in the APPG report. We will collaborate with visually impaired people and organisations advocating for them to work out how we can meet their needs and support them better.
We do not want people with visual impairments to have to give up work, as is too often the case. The hon. Member for Torbay helpfully told us about the experiences of people he was at college with in the 1980s. We want people to be able to stay in work and not have to give it up. If they lose their job, they should be able to get back into work. Having gone into work, they should be able to progress and do well.
As announced in the King’s Speech in July, in the Equality (Race and Disability) Bill we will fulfil our manifesto commitment to tackle the disability pay gap, which my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea highlighted and which other Members also referred to. Additionally, our “Get Britain Working” White Paper, which will indeed be published soon, will announce crucial reforms to employment support. We will change the way that we measure success. For example, we will focus not simply on getting people into a job, but on ensuring that they can stay in work and can progress to higher earnings in the future. We want to support people in the longer term.
We will also overhaul jobcentres. My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme made an interesting point about the importance of assistive technology in jobcentres. We will introduce a new youth guarantee, so that in future nobody will be left on the scrapheap when they are young.
My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea was absolutely right to point out that to achieve all that, we need healthy and inclusive workplaces. There are many employers who excel at creating inclusive workplaces in relation to health and disability, and it was very good to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme about his wife’s positive experiences with her employers. However, the APPG’s report points out that many other employers recognise the value of providing an inclusive workplace and would like to provide one, but they need support to do so; at the moment, they do not feel in a position to do so.
Consequently, we are considering what more we can do to help, because preventing people from leaving the workforce and enabling more people to return to work after absences is a good thing. It is definitely good for the individuals concerned; it is good for their mental health and their sense of fulfilment, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes and Mid Fife (Richard Baker), and the hon. Members for Torbay and for East Wiltshire, reminded us. However, it is also good for businesses and wider society.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes and Mid Fife referred to the work of Lord Shinkwin for the Institute for Directors. I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of that work and I look forward to meeting Lord Shinkwin and discussing some of these issues with him in the near future.
The Disability Confident scheme, which has been referred to in the debate, is a very important resource that we already have. It featured in Lord Shinkwin’s report, my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes and Mid Fife mentioned it, and the hon. Member for Torbay dedicated a good part of his speech to it. That scheme provides a strong platform, with more than 19,000 employers participating in it. It promotes good, inclusive employment and recruitment practices. It supports employers to deliver them and to become able to attract, recruit, retain and develop disabled people.
My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea was absolutely right to underline the importance of accessible recruitment processes in making sure that people are not barred from applying for jobs in the first place. In the Disability Confident scheme, there are many committed employers who are enthusiastic about making recruitment processes accessible and who are determined to do well in that regard. However, I agree with my hon. Friend and with the hon. Member for Torbay that the Disability Confident scheme can do more. I have had some encouraging recent conversations about that, for example, with the Business Disability Forum. Working with both employers and disabled people, we will examine how we can make the Disability Confident scheme more robust and how it can achieve more of its potential. I am convinced that potential is there, but we must realise more of it in future.
We also support employers with a digital information service and in increasing access to occupational health services, which the previous Government rightly recognised was important.
Jim Shannon
In my contribution, I outlined some of the things that we are doing in Northern Ireland. Obviously, that was to help the Minister with ideas that could be used here on the mainland. The Minister has outlined a number of things that are happening here. Does he intend to contact the relevant body in the Northern Ireland Assembly to ensure that we can work better together, share ideas, do things better and make life better for the people we are here for?
Sir Stephen Timms
I certainly welcome opportunities to do that. We need to learn from all the devolved Governments in the UK. There are interesting things happening in Scotland, for example, on social security, and in Northern Ireland, so I am grateful to the hon. Member for drawing my attention to a number of those. I am keen to pursue that further.
Disabled people and those with health conditions are a diverse group. The right work and health support in the right place at the right time is key. The contribution of Jobcentre Plus work coaches and disability employment advisers, who play an important role in jobcentres, is vital to this topic. I pay tribute to the dedication of those who are working on this at Jobcentre Plus. We will join up health and employment support around the individual. That will be through, for example, employment advisers in NHS talking therapies—seeing the NHS increasingly embrace the importance of supporting people into work—and individual placement and support in primary care.
My hon. Friends the Members for Battersea and for Glenrothes and Mid Fife, and the hon. Members for Torbay, for Strangford and for East Wiltshire, all spoke about Access to Work, rightly reflecting its crucial importance. The scheme provides grants for workplace adjustments beyond what is provided by the employer. Let us be clear that Access to Work does not replace an employer’s duty under the Equality Act to make reasonable adjustments, as the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) pointed out in his intervention. There are clear statutory obligations here that need to be delivered. Access to Work, however, can provide funding for support workers, specialist aids and equipment, personalised support and workplace assessments, travel to or in work, and mental health support.
The hon. Member for Torbay referred to it as one of the best kept secrets, but demand for Access to Work has been growing fast. The hon. Member for East Wiltshire rightly reported that nearly 68,000 people had Access to Work support approved in the last financial year, an increase of almost a third on the previous year. It is now growing rapidly. As he said, it supported 3,850 people who reported their primary medical condition as difficulty in seeing. That is about 8% of the people who are supported by the scheme. Customers with difficulty seeing as their primary medical condition received a bigger proportion—13% or £33 million—of the total expenditure. Access to Work is making an important contribution.
We are committed to reducing the waiting times for Access to Work. Delivery of the support has been streamlined. We have more staff processing the claims. Customers starting a job within four weeks are prioritised to ensure that they get help in time. Since April, as the hon. Member for East Wiltshire pointed out, all the core parts of the scheme are now online. However, I agree that more needs to be done. I welcome the engagement of all Members who have taken part in the debate and their continuing pressure to ensure that Access to Work delivers on its potential.
As has been highlighted, the APPG report rightly referred to the importance of technology in enabling visually impaired people to be in work. The report specifically mentioned text-to-speech software. Last week I visited Sense College Loughborough, a facility originally developed by RNIB. A visually impaired student there showed me the ZoomText application—which I was not aware of previously—using it to magnify the text he was looking at on a screen, and to manage a document over two screens. He commended its helpfulness to me.
My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme is absolutely right to point out just how big a game changer AI can be. We must realise that opportunity.
Access to Work can help provide assistive tech, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea pointed out in her intervention, suppliers such as Apple and Microsoft are increasingly bundling assistive tech with their standard products, partly because, as she said, it helps all users and makes the products easier to use for everybody. The technology is coming on in leaps and bounds. It is moving very fast, and we need to make sure that people have access to it. I am looking at what the Government can do in this area to make the technology better known, because a lot of people who have it on their devices do not know that it is there; to make assistive technology more readily available, where it is not bundled in with the standard product; and, maybe on occasion, to commission research to tackle a specific accessibility problem. We are thinking about this, and I welcome ideas and suggestions from Members about what more we can do.
My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme and others are absolutely right to point out how much more we need to do to support blind and partially sighted people into employment to enable them both to achieve their aspirations and to make their full contribution to our society and economy. That is in their interest and in all our interest. I am encouraged by what the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire, said about this. I hope that, when hon. Members read the “Get Britain Working” White Paper, as they will soon be able to do, they will agree that we are taking the right steps towards reaching that goal.
Completing the Implementation of Universal Credit
Stephen Timms Excerpts(1 month ago)
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The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
This Government are committed to getting Britain working. Completing the implementation of universal credit will support this mission. Universal credit provides greater support and incentives to get people into work and increase the hours they work than the benefits it replaces.
Move to UC statistics published today show that, by the end of September, the Department had, since 2022, notified 943,343 households of the need to make the transition to UC. The latest published complaints data show that as of March 2024 with over 500,000 households asked to move to UC, DWP had only 35 complaints about the process, with 10 upheld. Plans have now been agreed to notify the remaining households receiving income-related employment and support allowance (ESA), building on the insight that DWP has gathered through the summer. This insight, and the learnings from scaling the move to universal credit for all legacy benefit customers, will be published by the end of 2024.
DWP is investing up to a further £15 million in Help to Claim to support employment and support allowance customers moving to universal credit. This means that free confidential and impartial support will continue to be available to help people make a new universal credit claim and manage their claim, up to receiving their first correct payment.
DWP will steadily increase the number of migration notices being sent to people receiving ESA over the next months and are aiming to issue 63,000 migration notices each month from February, sending the final notices in early December 2025 and fully moving people to universal credit and closing legacy benefits by the end of March 2026.
As DWP moves into this final phase for Move to UC, it will make the transition from delivering “Move to UC” in a programme-led approach to a “business as usual” operation. I am therefore announcing today the intention to formally close the Move to UC programme by the end of March 2025, as the work of the programme will be complete by then.
My Department will continue to work closely with stakeholders throughout this transition and under the new operating model. It will also publish all the remaining UC programme board papers in April 2025 when the programme closes. This has been a major undertaking for DWP. As the Department heads towards such a significant milestone, I would like to thank officials who have delivered this transformational reform, and I would also like to thank all MPs and external stakeholders who have shared their insight and expertise to make this process work for those we are supporting and realise this transformation fully.
[HCWS205]
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Timms Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
The application process for personal independence payment is being kept under review. An online process is being trialled and we are looking at further potential improvements.
Ian Roome
One of my constituents in receipt of PIP is sight-impaired, deaf-blind registered and cannot use a phone or fill out forms. Can the Minister tell me why PIP reassessments are being scheduled for people with incurable disabilities and terminal illnesses?
Sir Stephen Timms
The hon. Gentleman raises a very fair point. It is, of course, important that we keep the awards under review, because sometimes they go up as well as down and we want to ensure that the support being provided is appropriate for the claimant. We also need to ensure that the process is accessible—I agree with him about that. Help can be provided to manage the assessment process. If he would like to send me more details about his constituent, I would be glad to see what we can do to help.
Mr Speaker
Before the Minister replies, may I ask Members to look at the Chair, as third party, when they are asking or answering questions? I am being cut out. Those are not my rules but those of the House on how we should address each other, so if anybody has a problem, please have a word with the Clerks.
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend raises a very important point. Indeed, she and I worked on an excellent Select Committee report on health assessments for benefits, which provides some very important and valuable recommendations to the Department. We will continue to look at this issue. I am not familiar with the case that she refers to, but I will dig out the details. Clearly, it is vital that the process should be accessible to people with sight impairments or any other impairments. I completely agree with her.
Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab)
Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
The Department has adopted an iterative approach, updating the universal credit system to reflect user needs as they develop. The new Government are committed to reviewing universal credit to make sure that it is doing the job we need it to.
Mike Martin
One of my constituents spent six hours fully awake during an operation that went wrong, as doctors battled to save her life. Obviously, this affected her mental health, and she was deemed unfit for work by her GP and by a clinical psychologist. She then went through a half-hour telephone assessment for her universal credit health check, which deemed her fit to work, so she does not get universal credit and it was not backdated to the operation. Does the Minister think that that sounds right? If not, will he review the case?
Sir Stephen Timms
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing my attention to that. What he has described sounds very odd indeed, and I will be happy to look at the details if he will let me see them. We are absolutely committed to making sure that universal credit does the job that we need it to, including for people in the situation that his constituent has found herself in.
Graeme Downie (Dunfermline and Dollar) (Lab)
Last week, I was made aware of a constituent who is a carer for his wife, who experienced a stroke in 2016. The constituent is a veteran who lives with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and was awarded carer’s allowance in 2017. Late last year, the DWP began demanding the return of more than £51,000 in alleged universal credit overpayments, and this April, under the previous Government, the DWP began taking it from his state pension without warning. Will the Minister meet me to discuss this case in more detail so that I can help my constituent?
Sir Stephen Timms
As my hon. Friend will know, there have been some very troubling cases of carer’s allowance overpayment. I am not sure whether carer’s allowance is part of the overpayment he describes, but I will be very happy to meet him to discuss what has gone wrong in this case.
Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
The last Labour Government dramatically reduced child poverty, and we want to repeat their success. The child poverty taskforce is exploring how to harness all available levers, including social security reform, and it will publish its strategy next spring.
Munira Wilson
The Prime Minister has said that he wants to break down the barriers to opportunity and tackle child poverty. He has also said that
“insecurity is the enemy of opportunity.”
Given that by the time the child poverty taskforce reports next spring, a further 16,000 children will have been dragged into poverty, and given the devastating impact that poverty can have on a child’s education, their health and their vulnerability to the criminal justice system, why will the Minister not do the right thing and scrap the two-child benefit cap to lift 300,000 children out of poverty immediately?
Sir Stephen Timms
The strategy will be very clear about how we will tackle the scourge of child poverty, and the hon. Lady is absolutely right to highlight the importance of doing that. Labour voted against the two-child limit, but we will not promise change until we know how we are going to pay for it. That will be addressed in the work of the taskforce, with the results published in the spring.
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
Ben Goldsborough (South Norfolk) (Lab)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If a person is paid four-weekly, they receive 13 payments a year, so in one of the 12 monthly assessment periods each year, they are paid twice. That means that they probably get no universal credit that month, which completely messes up budgeting. I would be delighted to meet USDAW, and perhaps my hon. Friend, to discuss what we can do through our review of universal credit.
Paul Davies (Colne Valley) (Lab)
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight that research from Carers UK. The Budget increased the earnings threshold, so people will be able to earn £10,000 a year from work and still claim carer’s allowance, and an extra 60,000 carers will become entitled to the allowance. It is a very big step forward.
Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)
Sir Stephen Timms
As I mentioned earlier, we are committed to reviewing universal credit. The way it works means that in each assessment period—each month—there is a new calculation based on the income that the person has received, as reported by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. However, I would be very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to talk about how the system needs to be improved further.
Torsten Bell (Swansea West) (Lab)
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The threshold will increase on 7 April next year, and all current claimants will receive an annual uprating letter in the spring that will set out the new limit. As I mentioned a moment ago, 60,000 new unpaid carers will also become eligible for the allowance at that point.
Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Ind)
Given the new Government’s collective condemnation of the two-child limit over the eight years since it was introduced, which includes condemnation from many Government Members on Select Committees, will they at the very least commit to scrapping its heinous, sexist and frankly disgusting rape clause element?
Dan Aldridge (Weston-super-Mare) (Lab)
Sir Stephen Timms
I congratulate my hon. Friend on being the Labour Member for Weston-super-Mare. I have met Liz Sayce, who will carry out the review, and she is raring to go. The terms of reference and timelines have not yet been set, but they will be in the next few weeks. As soon as they are, the details will be placed in the Library.
Suella Braverman (Fareham and Waterlooville) (Con)
Kevin is a pensioner in Waterlooville who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and struggles to breathe in the cold. His personal budget puts him, on average, about £55 above the poverty line, but he is one of many thousands of people who will be hit by the Government’s cruel cut to the winter fuel allowance. Political point scoring aside, what practical advice does the Minister have for Kevin to get him through the harsh winter ahead?
Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)
Citizens Advice tells me that the DWP continues to start action on alleged overpayments more than six years after the event. That is longer than bank records are kept to prove otherwise. Does the Secretary of State think that that is fair and right?
Sir Stephen Timms
I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is asking specifically about carer’s allowance or about other benefits, but if benefits have been overpaid, the Department has an obligation to recover the money. What is important is that overpayments are identified sooner and that people are notified when there is a problem, so that we do not get the very large sums that have accrued in overpayments in the past.
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Timms Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
We are committed to supporting vulnerable customers into work. At jobcentres, for example, we can identify the support needed and signpost people to courses or organisations to help them overcome barriers. We will be saying more about our proposals in the forthcoming employment White Paper.
Dame Meg Hillier
In my local jobcentre on Mare Street in my constituency, there is an extremely good team of DWP staff who work closely with vulnerable constituents to help them overcome the hurdles to getting benefits and getting into work. However, for people with fluctuating conditions, and particularly mental health conditions, there are many barriers both for them and for prospective employers. I wonder whether the Minister could give us a taster of what might be in the White Paper in terms of support for employers in particular to encourage them to take on people with such challenges.
Sir Stephen Timms
I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s positive report of the work in her local jobcentre. She highlights a major challenge behind a significant proportion of increased inactivity over the past few years. We will set out our response in the “Getting Britain Working” White Paper, but we are already providing tailored support in partnership with NHS talking therapies and individual placement and support in primary care. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that there is a good deal more to be done.
Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)
Conservative-run East Sussex county council is threatening to close the Steps to Work programme, as well as Linden Court in Eastbourne, which supports people with learning disabilities to work towards employment. Will the Minister urge the county council to halt its plans and to consider alternatives such as selling off council buildings to raise the funds needed to provide these essential services for people with learning disabilities?
Sir Stephen Timms
The hon. Gentleman draws my attention to a concerning development. My view is that we need more support for people with learning disabilities to get into work, not less. If he sends me the details of the concerns he has raised, I will be happy to look into them further.
Mims Davies (East Grinstead and Uckfield) (Con)
The well-received and groundbreaking Buckland review of autism employment focused on the action needed to help to tackle the lack of opportunities and outdated recruitment practices that do not meet the employment needs of autistic people. How is the Minister—I welcome him to his place—going to use this review, which I seem to remember him welcoming, to tackle the lack of understanding and ongoing stereotypes to help to make real change via Access to Work and other DWP interventions?
Sir Stephen Timms
I thank the hon. Lady for her welcome. I am looking forward to a meeting with Sir Robert later on this month, and we will be talking exactly about that matter.
Mims Davies
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that answer. The disability action plan mid-year update is now somewhat overdue. Can the Minister confirm to the House when there will be a much-needed update? In helping vulnerable people to thrive in all walks of life, whether in employment or in respect of equality of opportunity, will the Minister’s Government commit, like the previous Conservative Government did, to working towards hosting the 2031 Special Olympics?
Sir Stephen Timms
We will be saying more and we will provide an update in the forthcoming “Getting Britain Working” White Paper. If the hon. Lady would like to drop me a line about the Special Olympics, I would be happy to look into that as well.
Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
Provider guidance, which is published on gov.uk, makes clear that contractors on all our employment programmes must reimburse customers’ reasonable travel costs.
Josh Newbury
I thank the Minister for that response. My constituent Connor is in a predicament: he is out of pocket for taxi fares to weekly or even twice weekly sessions with a Jobcentre Plus private contractor. Connor told me that the sessions last barely 15 minutes and are not helping him to reach his goal of becoming a mechanical engineering apprentice. Will the Minister review the value of Jobcentre Plus private contracts to both jobseekers and taxpayers?
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Performance is reviewed regularly and there are customer satisfaction surveys, but unlike the previous Government, this Government want to publish performance data so that everybody can see what is going on.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister very much for his response. I think everyone wishes for claimants to be able to get job opportunities without finding themselves in a financial mess due to having to pay out for travel costs when they should be reimbursed. This is a big issue in my constituency in Northern Ireland. Will the Minister help directly those constituents who have been accordingly disadvantaged?
Sir Stephen Timms
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I am not familiar with the arrangements in Northern Ireland, but certainly in the rest of the UK it is very clear that contractors ideally need to pay up-front, buy tickets and give them to the jobseeker before they embark on their journey, or, if not, reimburse them very quickly on production of a receipt.
Torsten Bell (Swansea West) (Lab)
Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
The work of unpaid carers is vital and often heroic, and we are determined to give them the support that they need. We are currently looking at options for tackling the problem of overpayments, including the possible introduction of a text message alert service.
Alison Hume
Carers make incredible sacrifices to care for loved ones, but they can be left deep in debt as a result of repaying the allowance after unintentionally breaching the qualifying rules. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we, as a society, have a duty of care to carers, and can he say more about the progress that the Government are making in overhauling carer’s allowance and addressing the earnings cliff edge?
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I agree that we need to support carers properly. We want to get to the bottom of what has gone wrong with these overpayments and why so many people have been caught out. We have been piloting the introduction of a text message service, as I have mentioned, which has involved texting 3,500 claimants to alert them when His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs informs the DWP that they have breached the current earnings limit. We are currently looking at the results, and if they are positive, that will be the first step towards addressing the overpayments problem. We will need to do more, but it will be a good first step.
Anna Dixon
There are nearly 1,200 recipients of carer’s allowance in Shipley. The current earnings limit leaves people vulnerable to accidentally accruing overpayments if they become ineligible for the allowance, and it also acts as a disincentive, deterring people from working as much as they would like to. Will the Government consider raising the earnings limit?
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend has written to me about this matter, and I welcome her commitment to making progress. In an excellent piece of work, the former Work and Pensions Committee made a number of recommendations on the earnings rules, and once the new Committee is in place, we shall respond to the former Committee’s proposals.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
The Minister has referred to the army of carers that we have across the country, but we also have an army of unpaid carers who are being deterred from applying for carer’s allowance because of concerns about the financial implications. Can the Government reassure those who have not yet come forward that they will be supported properly?
Sir Stephen Timms
I very much hope that we can, because the hon. Gentleman is right: there is a good deal of anxiety about these overpayment problems. We hope that the alert service will at least inform people when they run into a problem so that they do not then develop a large overpayment, which has happened all too often in the past, but we also need to look at the other arrangements relating to carer’s allowance in order to provide the reassurance for which the hon. Gentleman has rightly called.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
I am not familiar with the report to which the hon. Member refers, but we committed in our manifesto to reviewing universal credit, nearly 15 years after it was first launched. The cliff edge issue and others will be among those that we will want to look at in the course of that review.
Melanie Ward (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)
Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend asks an extremely good question. The policy of the previous Government was to publish all such commissioned research reports within 12 weeks of receiving them. That policy was complied with until 2018, when Ministers stopped complying with it, so we have had to publish all these reports today. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s announcement is a vital first step in rebuilding the trust in the Department that was so shattered by the culture of secrecy, obfuscation and cover-up by Conservative Ministers.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
In response to several hon. Members, Ministers have spoken about the complexity of the ombudsman’s report on the WASPI campaign. While appreciating that, may I ask for a statement in principle that the Government will eventually offer significant compensation to the WASPI women?
Disabled People on Benefits: EHRC Investigation
Stephen Timms Excerpts(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Mims Davies
We are rolling out our WorkWell service, and we have universal support as well. Fifteen integrated care systems will pilot WorkWell; the pilots will be locally designed to fit local needs, and will be linked to our existing work and health systems. Work will be done throughout London. I am not sure whether that will include my hon. Friend’s part of London; I am sure that we will be able to let him know.
As I mentioned, my dad became disabled and was not used to navigating the benefits system. That happens to many people. Many think that people are born with disablement, but it can be acquired as a result of accidents or incidents. The gov.uk website gives information about the benefits calculator and the Citizens Advice help to claim service, and encourages people to see a disability employment adviser.
My hon. Friend asked what more could be done. Notwithstanding the great support provided by programmes such as Access to Work, there is more that can be done, but that safety net is there to protect people when they are at their most vulnerable, whatever the reason.
Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Disabled people’s confidence in the Department is at a terribly low ebb. We were originally told that these negotiations would be concluded within a few months, but in fact, as the Minister has told us, they dragged on for three years, and they failed. The commission has told me that now that negotiations have ended, there are no restrictions on what the Department can say about what was happening during those negotiations. At the very least, we need some explanation from the Department of why it has not been possible to reach an agreement. Can the Minister give us that explanation now?
Mims Davies
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his question. As I have said, we will work constructively with the commission during its investigation in order to understand its concerns better. We are seeking further clarity on what information we can share, but until those conversations have ended, I will not be in a position to share any further information.
The Secretary of State, of course, made his comments to the Department, but the permanent secretary told the Committee that the terms of reference had been published, and we welcome that, because it will give us a clearer sense of what the commission wants to investigate. We hope that a deeper insight into that very complex machine will allay some of the concerns that the right hon. Gentleman has rightly identified, and if there have been breaches or improvements can be made, we will of course address that. The Department is constantly learning, and work is being done to strengthen guidance and training through continuous improvement activity.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned confidence. It is important that colleagues and those with disablement feel confident that we have the necessary tools to help our most vulnerable claimants, and of course we will take account of everything that the commission says.
Women’s State Pension Age: Ombudsman Report
Stephen Timms Excerpts(7 months ago)
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Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the opportunity for this debate, and I thank the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) for opening it. I should make it clear at the outset that I was the Minister for Pensions between December 1998 and July 1999, and again between May 2005 and May 2006, which is part of the period covered by the ombudsman’s report.
I draw the House’s attention to the evidence that my Committee, the Work and Pensions Committee, took on 7 May on the ombudsman’s report—we are grateful to all who gave evidence to us that morning—and to the letter that I sent to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions yesterday on behalf of the Committee, setting out our suggestions for a way forward. Those documents have been tagged for this debate.
The ombudsman opened an investigation of all this in 2018, six years ago. After receiving more than 600 cases, it stopped accepting new ones and selected six sample cases to investigate, one or two of which have been referred to today. The investigation was split into stages. The first report, published in July 2021, found maladministration in the way in which the DWP had communicated the changes to affected women. A further report, published in March this year, concluded that this had meant that
“some women had lost opportunities to make informed decisions about their finances”,
which had
“diminished their sense of personal autonomy and financial control”
and
“caused unnecessary stress and anxiety”
and
“unnecessary confusion”.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
Let me say at the outset that the right hon. Gentleman was a distinguished Minister, well respected across the House in his various Government jobs. Is communication not the nub of this? Of course the decision itself is a matter for a debate on pension entitlement, but there is the entirely separate issue of how the decision was communicated, and the injustice lies in that failure to communicate. When we change people’s circumstances with notice and they have time to deal with it, cope with it, make alternative arrangements, that is one thing; but when we do not give them adequate notice because of their age, that is quite another. Disraeli, I think, said “Justice is truth in action”, and that is the truth of the matter.
Sir Stephen Timms
The right hon. Gentleman has echoed a number of the points that the ombudsman has drawn to our attention, but I think we should be clear about the fact that a great many people did know about this change. The passage of the legislation was widely reported at the time, nearly 30 years ago, and I vividly recall that in the first of my two stints as Pensions Minister, I spent a fair chunk of most days signing replies to MPs who had written on behalf of constituents who were unhappy about the impending change, or were calling on the then fairly new Government to reverse it. The replies that I signed were robust, and made it clear that the decision would not be reversed. The decision was quite well known, and—the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) made a useful point in this regard—I think that citizens have a responsibility to keep themselves informed, by listening to the radio or reading the papers, of changes in the law that will affect them.
However, the ombudsman has established and made clear in the report that the Department found out, at around the second time I was Pensions Minister, that only 40% of women had known about the forthcoming pension age change. Forty per cent. is a large number, but 60% —the proportion who did not know about it—is even larger. The Department found that out as a result of research done in 2003-04, but did nothing about it until 2009. That is the maladministration that the ombudsman has identified. We do not know why nothing was done—well, I certainly do not—because the ombudsman has not told us, but it cannot be credibly argued that this was not maladministration. When a Department discovers information and then does nothing, there is clearly a problem.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for describing his experiences in connection with this matter. We have a clear finding of maladministration, but Government acceptance of that does not automatically follow, so we are having a debate today about whether we accept the findings when, given the timescale, we ought surely to be thinking more about how we deal with issues relating to who is eligible and who is not.
Sir Stephen Timms
I agree, and I will come to that point when I talk about the Select Committee’s discussions last week. It is worth adding that the problems caused by that maladministration were exacerbated by the decision in 2011 to increase the state pension age not to 65, as provided by legislation in 1995, but to 66, with very little notice given of that change.
The ombudsman said that had it reported directly to the DWP, it would have recommended that the Department apologise for the maladministration and take steps to put things right. As we all now know, the ombudsman did not report directly to the
Department because of concern that no remedy would be forthcoming. The interim ombudsman, Rebecca Hilsenrath, told the Committee last week that her office had been
“given repeatedly to understand that the Department did not accept our findings.”
Perhaps, when he winds up the debate, the Minister can tell us whether the Department now recognises that there was maladministration in this case.
In laying its report before Parliament in March, the ombudsman asked us in the House to “identify an appropriate mechanism” for providing a remedy. It set out its thinking, namely that the DWP should first acknowledge the maladministration and apologise; secondly, pay financial compensation to the six sample complainants at level 4 of the severity of injustice scale; and, thirdly, identify a remedy for others who had suffered injustice because of the maladministration. As we have heard, the ombudsman estimated that this would involve a sum of between £3.5 billion and £10.5 billion.
We need to find a resolution to this issue, and to find it quite quickly, because it has dragged on for a very long time. Angela Madden, the chair of the WASPI campaign, told the Work and Pensions Committee last week that a woman from the affected cohort dies every 13 minutes, which is a powerful point to make.
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
I want to ask the right hon. Member about resolution. Given the maladministration and the points made by the ombudsman, the conclusion needs to happen through political choice. That political choice is between either the Government sitting there or a Government who might replace them at some point this year. Surely the WASPI women in my constituency of West Dunbartonshire, and those in everyone’s constituencies, need political agreement—not obfuscation or an abdication responsibility, but a clear political choice.
Sir Stephen Timms
I agree. The Government have said that they will respond without “undue delay”, and that they are considering the report in detail. Can the Minister tell the House this afternoon whether the Government will bring forward proposals for remedy, as the Work and Pensions Committee believes that they should, before the summer recess? We should set a clear timetable.
We need a scheme that is easy to administer. The ombudsman said that, in principle, redress should reflect the impact on each individual, but it recognised that the need to avoid delay, and the large numbers involved,
“may indicate the need for a more standardised approach”.
Jane Cowley, the WASPI campaign manager, told the Work and Pensions Committee that given the need for action
“within weeks rather than years”,
the scheme should be based on three principles: speed, simplicity and sensitivity. The evidence that has been gathered points to a rules-based approach to working out the compensation that should be paid.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
I have read the evidence given to the right hon. Member’s Committee, which was taken in April this year. If the Government agreed that they had to accept responsibility for this issue and to go forward with it, how quickly could we start to see the highly justified compensation being paid to these women?
Sir Stephen Timms
I would hope quite quickly, and I will explain why.
The payments involved would be adjusted within a range, based on the ombudsman’s severity of injustice scale. It would depend on two variables: first, the extent of the change to the individual’s state pension age—how much it increased by—and, secondly, the notice that the individual received. The less notice someone had of the change, and the bigger the change to their state pension age, the higher the payment they would receive. An arrangement like that would not be perfect, but it would be quite quick and relatively inexpensive to administer compared with a more bespoke system, because it would involve applying known data to a formula to work out the amount that was due. I ask the Minister whether he accepts that, in principle, a rules-based system would be the best way forward.
Beyond that, it was suggested to the Work and Pensions Committee that there should be some flexibility for individuals to make the case, after the standard payment has been calculated, that they experienced direct financial loss as a result of the maladministration, and that they should therefore be entitled to a higher level of compensation. Flexibility would be needed, because although the ombudsman did not see direct financial loss in the six sample complaints that it looked at, it did not exclude the possibility that there could be in other cases. For example, Angela Madden, the chair of the WASPI campaign, suggested to us that somebody whose divorce settlement was less than it would have been because it was based on the expectation that she would receive her state pension at the age of 60, might well be entitled to a larger amount because of that particular development.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. Looking at the experience of other compensation schemes—the one that comes to my mind is the Icelandic trawlermen compensation scheme—it is clear that the longer we leave these things, and the longer the passage of time, the more difficult it gets to resolve them. Does that not underline the need for speed here?
Sir Stephen Timms
I agree that we need to get on and resolve this issue after a very long period.
The ombudsman suggested a remedy based on level 4 of its severity of injustice scale, given the finding that individuals had experienced indirect financial loss. We on the Work and Pensions Committee did not seek to question that view, and I do not intend to do so this afternoon. Regardless of the level of remedy or the means by which remedy is delivered, it will need parliamentary time, financial resources, and the data and technical systems that are available only to the Department for Work and Pensions. Even if a Back Bencher brings forward a private Member’s Bill, as the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) has done, it cannot become law without Government support. It will need a money resolution that only the Government can bring forward, so it is not realistic to say that Parliament can resolve this issue; it must have the Government’s full-hearted involvement.
There will be different views on the findings of the ombudsman’s report. However, as the interim ombudsman told the Work and Pensions Committee last week, she is appointed by Parliament to carry out these investigations and is accountable to it through the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. I will read out what Karl Banister from the ombudsman’s staff told the Work and Pensions committee last week. He said:
“We want everyone to comply with our recommendations, but it is implicit in the scheme that because we don’t have enforcement powers, it may be, sometimes, that an organisation thinks it doesn’t want to. Then the partnership is that Parliament, as our supervisor, will do something about that.”
That goes to the point made by the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) earlier. Mr Banister continued:
“I think what would damage the standing of the ombudsman is if Parliament declined to do that.”
It is important for all of us that we see this through. We have asked the ombudsman to undertake this role, and it has done the job that we asked it to do. We now need to play our part in ensuring that this matter is resolved. Time is not on our side, and the Government have been aware of this issue for a while.
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
The right hon. Member is giving an incredibly well-informed speech on this matter. I have met Angela Madden and various WASPI women in Dudley, and it is clearly a highly complicated and difficult issue to resolve, especially if it is necessary for the Government to look at appropriate and proportionate remedies, having first identified the women who have come to harm. Does the right hon. Member agree that whatever solution is come to, it is necessary to accelerate the work on this incredibly complicated issue at pace? While the clock does not stop for anybody, it certainly seems to accelerate for those of us of a greater age.
Sir Stephen Timms
I agree that we need to get a move on. That is why the Government should commit to bringing forward some proposals before the summer recess, so that we all know where we are heading.
The Government have all the information they need. It is a difficult and costly matter, but I hope they will be able to bring forward proposals in time for the House’s summer recess.
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Timms Excerpts(7 months ago)
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Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
One helpful change would be to extend access to employment support to economically inactive people in St Austell and Newquay who are not claiming benefits and do not have access to that support. Will the Minister consider that as a step towards increasing the prospects of filling the current job vacancies?
Jo Churchill
We have extended the restart scheme for another couple of years, making sure that everybody who walks through the doors of our jobcentres is met by a work coach. What we need to do is ensure that they have the time to look at that bespoke support.