Draft Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2025
Draft Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2025
Stephen Timms Excerpts(1 week, 2 days ago)
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The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2025.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider the draft Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2025.
Sir Stephen Timms
I am delighted to be serving under your chairmanship for the first time this afternoon, Sir Jeremy. This debate, which happens every year, gives us a good opportunity to consider not only the uprating instruments, but the wider topic of dust-related diseases that are covered by these schemes, and to consider the impact that the diseases have on sufferers and their families.
The instruments increase the value of one-off lump sum payments made under two no-fault compensation schemes administered by the Department for Work and Pensions. The two schemes are the one under the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979, which I shall refer to as the 1979 Act scheme, and the 2008 diffuse mesothelioma scheme—under the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008—which I shall refer to as the 2008 Act scheme. There is no statutory requirement to increase these rates in line with prices each year. I am following the long-established approach of previous Governments; the instruments increase the value of the awards by 1.7%, in line with the consumer price index of last September. The new rates will apply to those who first become entitled to a payment from 1 April this year. The increase will, as previously, be in line with the proposed increases to industrial injuries disablement benefit, alongside uprating for all the main working-age benefits in the coming year.
Let me say a bit about the background to the two schemes. The 1979 Act scheme provides a single lump-sum compensation payment to eligible people with the diseases covered by the scheme, including pneumoconiosis, a disease associated particularly with coal mining, and diffuse mesothelioma, caused by exposure to asbestos fibres. The schemes cover people who are unable to claim damages from an employer—for example, because the employer has gone out of business—and who have not brought any action against another party for damages.
To be eligible for a lump-sum award, a claimant must be awarded industrial injuries disablement benefit for a disease covered by the 1979 Act scheme, or would be awarded IIDB but for their low percentage disablement. To have payment of IIDB, someone must have been assessed as having at least 14% disablement, but someone with less than that can still be eligible for one of these payments.
The 2008 Act scheme was introduced to provide compensation to people diagnosed with diffuse mesothelioma who are unable to claim compensation under the 1979 Act. That could be because they were self-employed at the time, or because their exposure to asbestos was not at work. The 2008 Act scheme therefore filled in a bit of a gap in the former provision. It provides no-fault support to sufferers of diffuse mesothelioma quickly, at a point when their need is typically quite pressing.
To recognise the terrible suffering that these diseases can bring to whole families, claims can be made to either scheme by a dependant, if the person with a disease dies before being able to make a claim. They are both very important schemes. Between April 2023 and March 2024—the latest financial year for which data is available—there were 1,620 awards under the 1979 Act scheme and 320 under the 2008 Act scheme, so there were nearly 2,000 between them both. Expenditure on lump sum awards under both schemes totalled £30 million in 2023-24.
Timely financial support through these schemes, following a diagnosis, is very important. We also need to ensure that fewer people succumb to these awful diseases in the future. The Health and Safety Executive, which reports to my Department, has a very important role in enabling employers to act to prevent and reduce the most common causes of work-related ill health. Exposure to asbestos remains the largest single cause of work-related deaths in the UK, in the order of about 5,000 a year. The Work and Pensions Committee published an important report on the Health and Safety Executive’s approach to asbestos management three years ago, and the Department is currently having another look at its recommendations.
Following the asbestos awareness campaigns of previous decades, HSE makes a wide range of information available on its website. In January last year, HSE launched a communications campaign on the duty to manage, which was called “Asbestos—Your Duty”, to raise awareness and understanding of the legal obligation to share information on asbestos in any workplace to those who might disturb it.
There is particular concern about the presence of asbestos in schools—there is a lot of asbestos in many schools across the country—and there has been a growing number of retired schoolteachers among those succumbing to mesothelioma, which is a serious concern. The Department for Education expects all local authorities, governing bodies and academy trusts to have robust plans in place to manage asbestos in school buildings effectively, in line with their legal duties, drawing on appropriate professional advice. The Department is also increasing investment in the next financial year to improve the condition of school buildings, lifting the total investment to £2.1 billion. That is on top of the continuing school rebuilding programme, which is replacing or refurbishing buildings in the poorest condition at over 500 schools.
I am confident that everyone will join me in recognising the continuing importance of the compensation offered by these two schemes. I am required to confirm, and gladly do so, that these provisions are compatible with the European convention on human rights. I commend the increases to the payment rates under these two schemes, and I ask the Committee’s approval to implement them.
Sir Stephen Timms
I am grateful for the support across the Committee for the regulations. Let me have a go at answering the questions that the shadow Minister raised. I do not think we have a better estimate for the numbers in the coming year than the ones I gave for the previous year.
It is likely that the numbers over time will decrease. It is 26 years since the use of asbestos in new buildings was banned in the UK. It was quite a tough fight to deliver that in 1999. The Canadian Government strongly resisted because Canada was largely where the asbestos was coming from. It is interesting that we banned it in the UK, and then it was banned right across the west very quickly after that. So there is perhaps a downward trend, but it is not entirely clear. The figure I cited of 5,000 fatalities a year from asbestos-related diseases has been at that level for quite a long time, but the expectation is that it will fall. The pneumoconiosis figures are probably flatter. It may be that we have fuller information on that, and if we have, I would be pleased to drop the shadow Minister a line and copy that to the other Committee members.
I have done a quick calculation, and I think the average payment amount comes to £15,000—as there are roughly 2,000 people and £30 million in total. I would expect that kind of figure to be maintained. As for the long-term cost of the scheme, in line with what I was saying, I expect that it will generally decline. If we look at the numbers each year, they have tended to drift downwards, and the expectation is that that will continue.
The shadow Minister asked what we are doing about prevention. I am very concerned about this issue, and asbestos, in particular, is something that we need to take seriously. There is a lot of asbestos still in schools and hospitals, so it is not only retired teachers that we are seeing in the fatality statistics nowadays, but retired medics and nurses. The Work and Pensions Committee, in its report three years ago, recommended that a deadline should be set for the Government to ensure the removal of all asbestos from UK workplaces, and suggested a target of 40 years to do that. We have an enormous amount of asbestos in the UK; I think we have more per head than any other country. That recommendation has not been adopted, but as I mentioned in my opening remarks, I am talking to the Health and Safety Executive at the moment about what more might be done in this area. I hope we will be able to say something about that very soon.
I welcome the support for and interest across the House in these schemes. They are very important, and as the shadow Minister pointed out, the regulations will ensure that the payments maintain their value. Of course, other help is available to people with these diseases, such as the industrial injuries disablement benefit, which I mentioned, universal credit and the new-style employment and support allowance.
The Department for Health and Social Care is taking these matters very seriously. NHS England has 13 respiratory clinical networks across the country, and the NHS will invest in more and better rehabilitation services for patients with respiratory diseases in its long-term plan. Research is very important; the National Institute for Health and Care Research, through the Leicester Biomedical Research Centre, has a long-standing programme of research to develop treatments for mesothelioma. That includes looking at personalised treatment pathways to identify which patients are likely to get the greatest benefit from differing types of drug therapies.
I will drop the shadow Minister and members of the Committee a line with the additional data that she asked for. I commend the amendments to the schemes to the Committee, and hope that it will approve of their implementation.
Question put and agreed to.
DRAFT PNEUMOCONIOSIS ETC. (WORKERS’ COMPENSATION) (PAYMENT OF CLAIMS) (AMENDMENT) REGULATIONS 2025
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the draft Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) (Payment Of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2025.—(Sir Stephen Timms.)
Social Security Benefits
Stephen Timms Excerpts(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
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The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
I beg to move,
That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2025, which was laid before this House on 15 January, be approved.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following motion:
That the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2025, which was laid before this House on 16 January, be approved.
Sir Stephen Timms
In my view, the instruments are compatible with the European convention on human rights.
The draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2025 will increase relevant state pension rates by 4.1%, in line with the growth in average earnings in the year to May to July 2024. It will increase most other benefit rates by 1.7%, in line with the rise in the consumer prices index in the year to September 2024. The Government’s commitment to the triple lock means that the basic and full rate of the new state pension will be uprated by whichever is highest out of the growth in earnings, the growth in prices, or 2.5%. That will mean 4.1% for 2025-26. From April this year, the basic state pension will increase from £169.50 per week to £176.45, and the full rate of the new state pension will increase from £221.20 to £230.25.
We are fully committed to maintaining the pension triple lock. There is some confusion about the position of the Conservative party, and I hope that the shadow Minister will clarify the position when he speaks.
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
On clarification, can the Minister clarify for how much longer the state pension will be taxed? The Conservative Government stood for election on a commitment to the triple lock plus. We lost the election, but we were going to take out that fiscal drag. Can the Minister explain how long that tax will stay in place?
Sir Stephen Timms
My understanding, from what the Leader of the Opposition has said, is that the Conservative party is no longer committed to the triple lock, let alone the triple lock plus. I can tell the hon. Member that we do not have any plans to do what he suggests.
Sir Stephen Timms
I simply point out to the hon. Gentleman that his party appears to no longer be committed to the triple lock. We look forward to clarification on that point from the shadow Minister.
Other components of state pension awards, such as those previously built up under earnings-related state pension schemes, including the additional state pension, will increase by 1.7% in line with prices. The Government are committed to supporting pensioners on the lowest incomes, so the safety net provided by the pension credit standard minimum guarantee will increase by 4.1%. For single pensioners, that means an increase from £218.15 to £227.10 per week; for couples, the increase is from £332.95 to £346.60 per week. We want everybody entitled to that support to receive it, which is why we launched the national pension credit campaign. We received around 150,000 pension credit applications in the 16 weeks after the winter fuel payment announcement.
Dr Evans
I am very grateful. We do indeed want more people to take up pension credit. However, one of the biggest problems is the processing time. The response to a written question that I tabled before Christmas showed that there was a 75% success rate in getting that done within 50 days, which means that that did not happen for one in four. I later re-tabled the same question, and it turned out that the standard had got worse. What work are the Government doing to make sure that applications are processed within 50 days? Especially when it is cold and people have had their winter fuel payment taken away, it is important that those who need that support get it as soon as they can.
Sir Stephen Timms
The hon. Gentleman is quite right; it is important that applications are processed speedily, and I am pleased with the number of applications. I can confirm—I think he knows this—that everybody who applied before 21 December will receive, if they are successful, their winter fuel payment. We have also moved extra staff on to pension credit processing. However, the hon. Gentleman is quite right to raise that point.
Universal credit and the legacy means-tested benefits that it replaces provide support for people of working age. We have committed in our manifesto to reviewing universal credit, so that it makes work pay and tackles poverty, and we will set out shortly how we plan to fulfil that commitment. For those below state pension age, the order increases the personal and standard allowances of working-age benefits, including universal credit, by 1.7%, in line with the increase in prices in the year to September 2024. In the Budget last November, the Chancellor announced that the maximum repayment deduction from universal credit payments will be reduced from April, from 25% of the universal credit standard allowance to 15%—the fair repayment rate—and 1.2 million households are expected to benefit from that change by an average of £420 per year.
In addition, the order increases statutory payments by 1.7%. That includes statutory maternity pay, statutory paternity pay, statutory shared parental pay and statutory sick pay. Benefits for those who have additional costs as a result of disability or health impairments will also increase by 1.7%. That includes disability living allowance, attendance allowance and personal independence payment. The order will also increase carer’s allowance by 1.7%. The Chancellor announced in the Budget that, from April, the weekly carer’s allowance earnings threshold will be pegged to the level of 16 hours’ work at the national living wage. That means that, from April, unpaid carers will be able to earn up to £196 per week net earnings and still receive carer’s allowance, compared with £151 now. I am pleased to say that that move has been very widely welcomed, and we expect it to bring an additional 60,000 unpaid carers into eligibility for the benefit, and, crucially, to reduce the likelihood that carers who manage to combine some work with their caring responsibilities will inadvertently fall foul of the earnings limit, because, in future, that threshold will keep up with changes in the national living wage.
On disability and carer’s benefits, we will continue to ensure that carers, and people who face additional costs because of disability or health impairment, get the support that they need, and we will set out proposals for reform of health and disability benefits in a Green Paper in the spring.
John Milne (Horsham) (LD)
In my constituency of Horsham, food bank usage increased by 25% last year, and it has increased by 700% over six years. In the light of that evidence of the pressures, will the Government consider putting a minimum level on universal credit?
Sir Stephen Timms
I have seen representations along those lines. It is not something that we are considering at the moment, but we are, as I have mentioned, committed to reviewing universal credit, and we will do so over the course of this year. I imagine that we will be looking at a very wide variety of representations, and the hon. Gentleman and others will be very welcome to make submissions to us along those lines. Lastly, let me say a word about the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2025.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
Before the Minister gets on to the pension issue, may I just say that the order requires the Secretary of State to examine the effects of benefit uprating and the effects of the existing payment of benefits? What studies has he done on the effect of the two-child benefit cap? Secondly, last week we passed a welfare spending cap—a cap that, obviously, could be breached in the future. Will the Government revisit the whole idea of the welfare cap, with a view to abolishing it, so that we ensure that the motive force in deciding on benefits is the level of need, rather than an arbitrary figure decided by the Treasury?
Sir Stephen Timms
On the two-child limit, as the right hon. Member knows, we very quickly set up after the general election the child poverty taskforce, which is looking in a very ambitious way at the whole range of levers that the Government have at their disposal for tackling the problem of child poverty. We would very much like to repeat the success of the last Labour Government in reducing child poverty so dramatically in when in office. I say that with particularly strong feeling, having taken the Child Poverty Act 2010 through the House towards the end of that Government’s term. Under consideration certainly will be social security changes—we will look at what changes might be appropriate. We are not able to say whether the two-child limit will be removed, but all those things will be considered carefully during production of the report, which the taskforce will bring forward.
We are not looking, I do not think, at changing the arrangements around the overall welfare cap. Of course, there is always some confusion between the individual benefit cap and the overall welfare cap. As the right hon. Member said, there was a debate last week on the overall cap. There is certainly scope for debate about that and, indeed, the benefit cap as well, but we are not proposing any changes to those arrangements in the short term.
The draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order sets out the yearly amount by which the GMP part of an individual’s contracted-out occupational pension earned between April 1988 and April 1997 must be increased if it is in payment. The increases paid by occupational pension schemes help to provide a measure of inflation protection to people who are in receipt of GMPs earned between those two years. Legislation requires that GMPs earned between those two dates must be increased by the percentage increase in the general level of prices, as measured the previous September, capped at 3%. This year, it means that the order will increase the relevant part of the GMP by the September 2024 consumer prices index figure, which is 1.7%.
The draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order, if Parliament approves it this afternoon, commits the Government to increased expenditure of £6.9 billion in 2025-26. The changes will mainly come into effect from 7 April and will apply for the tax year 2025-26. The order maintains the triple lock, benefiting pensioners who are in receipt of the basic and new state pensions; raises the level of the safety net in pension credit beyond the increase in prices; increases the rate of benefits for people in the labour market; and increases the rate of carer’s benefits and support to help with additional costs arising from disability or health impairment.
The draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order requires formerly contracted-out occupational pension schemes to pay an increase of 1.7% on GMPs in payment earned between April 1988 and April 1997, providing people with a measure of protection against inflation, paid for by their scheme. I commend to the House the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2025 and the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2025.
Danny Kruger
Clearly, there are questions about the long-term sustainability of our pensions system and our national insurance fund, but I think the shadow Chancellor was talking about the very long term, rather than the immediate situation that we are in. There is no intention, on the Conservative Benches anyway, to review the triple lock at this stage.
Sir Stephen Timms
To clarify the position further, what happened was that the leader of the hon. Gentleman’s party was asked on LBC whether she would look at the triple lock, and her reply was,
“we’re going to look at means testing. Means testing is something which we don’t do properly here.”
What did she mean by that?
Danny Kruger
My right hon. Friend replied, “No”, to the interviewer. We are not looking at means-testing the triple lock. She was talking more generally about the challenge of means-testing in our social security system, which is a legitimate question for us all to consider, as I shall go on to discuss.
I did not want to get too partisan in this debate, but—[Interruption.] Here we go! No, I won’t, genuinely, because the challenge of our welfare system is a shared problem that we face across the House. I will note in passing that our party’s record on welfare is a good one. We introduced universal credit, rationalising the spaghetti web of benefits that we inherited from the right hon. Gentleman when he was last in office. We made work pay and helped people off welfare and into work, and we succeeded in that, with 4 million more people in employment in 2024 than in 2010.
Let me point out that we had another mess to sort out in the public finances. When we took office, the Government were running a deficit of 9% and the Treasury was spending way more than it was earning. By the time the pandemic struck, the deficit was down to less than 1%. We were living within our means and were able to afford the generous uplifts made to benefits and pensions in the last Parliament, as well as the huge package of support that we provided during the pandemic.
I want to be fair and admit that, as the Minister suggested, the welfare system is not working properly at the moment. Too many people are being consigned to a life of inactivity and dependency, especially via the categories of sickness benefit. It is bad for those people, their communities and the country as a whole, including the taxpayer, who spends £65 billion a year on incapacity and disability benefits, rising to £100 billion a year unless reforms are made by the end of this Parliament.
So what is going on? Those terrible figures reflect the fact that we have bad rates of physical ill health, including obesity and, as is strongly evidenced in the statistics, bad backs because we simply do not move around enough in the day. The figures also reflect a rise in mental ill health, which we see in alarming rates in schools and among young people. We have to do more on those issues through all sorts of interventions that lie more with the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care than with the Department for Work and Pensions. However, as the Lords Economic Affairs Committee reported last week, the rise in welfare claims cannot be attributed to worsening health or longer NHS waiting lists; the problem is growing far faster than that.
Perhaps the problem is low wages that do not attract people into employment, and that is certainly a reality. Low wages have driven demand for the immigration that we have seen get so out of control in recent years. Profound changes are under way in the world of work, away from secure employment towards a more precarious jobs market. Labour is destroying jobs, taxing employment and discouraging new hires with its new Employment Rights Bill. However, the fact is that wages have risen sharply above inflation in recent years, which is why pensions are going up by earnings this year. Employers are offering good wages but are not filling vacancies.
The issue is not health, although we have problems in health; the issue is not work, although we have big problems there—the issue is welfare. People are not being incentivised to take jobs because the offer from the welfare system is better. When I say welfare, I do not mean unemployment support. Thanks to universal credit and the last Government’s reforms, we saw record numbers of people move off unemployment benefit and into work. That is because we offered support to people to find work and imposed strict conditions that meant people had to actively look for a job. If they did not, they lost the benefit. That worked for a lot of people, but we found—here is the issue—that for a lot of other people, the incentives made them go the other way, further away from work into the sickness category, because that is where the good money is. In some cases, the money is double what they can get on unemployment benefit, and sometimes £3,000 more than the minimum wage. People almost certainly get it because the approval rates are high at over 90% for the limited capacity for work category.
This is big and unconditional money. There is no expectation to do anything about the health conditions that mean someone is signed off sick. There is no expectation of being reassessed any time soon or, indeed, ever. That is the challenge, and I hope the Government will rise to it in the same way that we rose to the crisis in unemployment benefit in the last decade.
Sir Stephen Timms
With the leave of the House, I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate. There have been some helpful contributions on important issues. I am grateful for the support expressed for the measures in the orders, and for the kind things said about me, which I will enjoy while they last. Let me thank in particular the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger), for drawing attention to the contributions of others who spoke in such debates in the past. He named Paul Maynard, David Linden and Nigel Mills, and he was absolutely right to do so.
I am particularly grateful to Nigel Mills for his help in the work of the Work and Pensions Committee, and I am delighted that the Committee is now in the good hands of my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). She made an important contribution to the work of the Committee in the last Parliament, and had an important and positive influence over the whole direction of the Committee. She highlighted, as she often does, the position of vulnerable benefit claimants and how they are looked after. I look forward to giving evidence to her in the Committee next week as work resumes on an inquiry of the Committee from the last Parliament.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), who called for a taper in carer’s allowance. As he will have heard, the Chancellor announced in the Budget in November that we would look at the case for a taper. I hope to be able to update the House on that reasonably soon.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Dan Tomlinson) for what he said. He was right to draw attention to the high level of support among young people for the triple lock policy, which matters right across the age range.
The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) was right to call for certainty about pensions. People need to know what the position will be when they reach retirement age. The last Labour Government reduced the number of pensioners below the poverty line by a million. Sadly, as we have been reminded in this debate, it has gone up again over the last few years. We want to get back on the better track that we were on before. That was picked up in the remarks of the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam).
Seamus Logan
Does the Minister agree that two measures that the Government could take that would make a serious impact on the levels of poverty would be to restore the winter fuel payment and abolish the two-child cap?
Sir Stephen Timms
I have already spoken in the debate about the two-child cap, and we will be coming forward with the report and strategy proposed by the child poverty taskforce. On pensioner poverty, I think that substantial measures will be needed, and we will come forward with those in due course.
Dr Luke Evans
I am grateful to the Minister for taking another intervention. He talked about planning for the future and people understanding what is going on with their pensions. We have the WASPI example where that was not seen to be the case. The new Government are making changes to inheritance tax and where pensions fall, but much of the public do not realise that that will have big implications for them as their pensions will be subject to tax and inheritance tax. Would he consider a campaign to let people know that that change is coming in the next year or so?
Sir Stephen Timms
I am not quite sure what change the hon. Gentleman is referring to, but I certainly agree that people need to be confident about what the arrangements will be in the future so that they can plan accordingly. That is the one of the reasons why the pensions triple lock is important, as it gives people confidence about how things will be in the future.
We are: increasing the basic state pension and the new state pension in line with earnings growth by 4.1%, meeting our commitment to the triple lock; increasing the pension credit standard minimum guarantee in line with earnings growth by 4.1%; increasing benefits to meet additional disability needs and carers’ benefits in line with prices; and increasing working-age benefits in line with prices as well, at 1.7%. This year, GMPs accrued between 1988 and 1997 must by law be increased by 1.7%, which is the increase in the consumer prices index in the year up to September 2024. The GMP is important in giving people assurance about a level below which their scheme pension cannot fall. I commend both orders to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2025, which was laid before this House on 15 January, be approved.
Pensions
Resolved,
That the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2025, which was laid before this House on 16 January, be approved.—(Martin McCluskey.)
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Timms Excerpts(2 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
We are fully committed to helping vulnerable people into work. It is good for them, it provides firms with great workers, it reduces the benefits bill, and it boosts economic growth. Connect to Work, which will be rolled out this year, will greatly improve support.
Max Wilkinson
One of my constituents is a highly educated, high-earning civil servant who has serious care needs as a result of a bad accident about 30 years ago. His needs have been assessed as health-related, which means that the NHS pays the £81,000 cost of his care. If they were reassessed as social care needs, he would be forced to exhaust his savings. Each year his disability is reassessed, and during that reassessment his ability to work is unfairly treated with suspicion. The Government say that they want to help disabled people into work, which is a good thing. My constituent is working already, but fears that a huge disincentive will appear on the horizon if his status changes. Do Ministers understand his concerns?
Sir Stephen Timms
Yes, I definitely do understand his concerns. Our view is that disabled people should have the same chance to work—the same opportunities—that everyone else takes for granted, and we want to work with disabled people to reform the system to ensure that that is what they get. In the spring, we will publish a Green Paper on reforms to the health conditions and disability benefits system.
Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)
My constituency faces high levels of economic vulnerability: 4.4% of my constituents are not in education, employment or training, and, worse, one in 10 are either NEET or unaccounted for. What action is the Minister taking to ensure that they are helped into both employment and skills development?
Sir Stephen Timms
I think my hon. Friend will greatly welcome the youth guarantee announced in the “Get Britain Working” White Paper. We want to ensure that every single young person gets the same chance. We have seen a dreadful increase in the number of NEET young people over the past few years, and we are getting to grips with that and tackling it.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
We will champion disabled people and those with long-term health conditions. Our “Get Britain Working” plan will support many more who were failed by the last Government to enter and stay in work. We will devolve power to local areas for a joined-up work, health and skills offer.
Katrina Murray
I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests; prior to my election, I represented disabled members on the national executive of Unison. There are many barriers that prevent disabled people and those with long-term health conditions from not only entering but staying in the workplace, from a strict and punitive approach to attendance and sickness to a failure even to consider adaptations that make work possible. It is clear that employers have to be supported to make high-quality work accessible to disabled people. What work is my right hon. Friend therefore doing to engage employers in making work a positive and constructive experience for disabled people?
Sir Stephen Timms
I commend my hon. Friend for her previous work. She raises a very important point. We have launched the “Keep Britain Working” review, which is being led by Sir Charlie Mayfield, the ex-chair of the John Lewis Partnership. It will look at exactly the point that my hon. Friend raises: how to make workplaces and the wider labour market more inclusive, because we know, and employers know, that that is good for businesses and good for disabled people.
Alex Ballinger
As we all know, the last Government were far too quick to write off people who wanted to work but who had health conditions or were suffering with disabilities. Many people in Halesowen tell me that they want to work, and with the right help and support, they can. This will also bring huge physical and mental health benefits. How will the Government reset our relationship with people with disabilities, who for far too long have not been given the support that they need, but have instead been demonised by the Conservative party?
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The manifesto on which he and I fought the election committed us to putting the views and voices of disabled people at the heart of what we do. In the “Get Britain Working” White Paper, we announced the establishment of a disability employment panel to enable us to work with disabled people, ensure that we provide the necessary support and give them the chances that my hon. Friend rightly calls for.
Adam Thompson
In 2019, my close friend and constituent Jim was at his desk, working as a web developer, when out of the blue he felt a sudden pain. Jim was having a spinal stroke. He has never since been able to walk. The pain medication that Jim must take to manage his condition limits his ability to work, but sometimes he has unpredictable bursts of productivity. However, Jim’s benefit arrangements mean that the work that he could occasionally be able to do might result in sanctions to his benefits. What steps will the Minister take to ensure that Jim can get back into work?
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend’s important point, which to some extent has already been raised, shows how the health and disability benefits system needs to be reformed. Disabled people should have the same right to work and the same opportunities and chances as everybody else. Many disabled people like Jim want the chance to work, but they face barriers, including in the benefits system, that make it very difficult for them to do so. We are determined to change the system to get over those barriers.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I am sure that the Minister appreciates the important role of learning disability nurses in maximising the potential of people with learning disabilities. Will he therefore have a word with his Treasury colleagues about the differential effect of the rise in national insurance contributions? Learning disability nurses who work directly for the NHS are exempt; those who work for agencies contracted by the NHS are not exempt. That is an anomaly, and I would be grateful if the Minister considered talking to his colleagues about it.
Sir Stephen Timms
I am sure that the right hon. Member will raise that concern with the appropriate colleagues of mine. He is absolutely right to draw attention to the value of the work of learning disability nurses, whoever their employer is. We are determined that they should have better support to enable people with learning disabilities who want to work to do so.
Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)
The experience of my constituent Julie from Heaviley highlights the unfairness of the employment and support allowance application process for those with progressive conditions such as multiple sclerosis. She was assessed by a physiotherapist who lacked any expertise in neurological disorders; she thereby received inaccurate reports that denied her vital financial support. What steps are Ministers taking to ensure fair and timely support for those with progressive conditions that do not necessarily fit neatly into a box, as other disabilities or conditions may?
Sir Stephen Timms
We want to improve the assessment process, and there will be proposals in the Green Paper on how to do that. If the hon. Lady would like to drop me a line about this particular case, I will be happy to have a look and comment further.
Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)
For 23 years, my constituent Timothy has attended Eastbourne’s Linden Court day centre for people with learning disabilities. Timothy’s mum, who is his sole carer, has spoken about how damaging it would be if Conservative-run East Sussex county council decided later this month to close the centre. Will the Minister join me in urging the county council to ditch this short-sighted cut, which would leave many Eastbournians and their families without the local provision they deserve?
Sir Stephen Timms
I very much hope that people in Eastbourne will continue to get the support that, by the sound of it, has done a very good job for a very long time. I obviously do not know the details of this case, but it is important that we not only maintain but improve support for disabled people.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I welcome the “Keep Britain Working” review but, according to last year’s DWP accounts, £4.2 billion of benefits were underpaid to claimants, and the claimants most affected were disabled people. What will the Government do to ensure that disabled people who may not be able to work get the money to which they are entitled?
Sir Stephen Timms
It is very important that disabled people get the money to which they are entitled. There will always be people who are not working, and we need to make sure there is good support for them. As I said a moment ago, we will set out our proposals on improving the assessment process in the upcoming Green Paper, but we are also very interested in hearing about the Select Committee’s proposals.
Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)
People living with disabilities in rural areas such as Glastonbury and Somerton face many barriers to finding work, including lack of opportunities, poor transport and high childcare costs. How will the Minister support individuals living in rural areas to overcome the barriers to employment and help them to improve their overall quality of life?
Sir Stephen Timms
We will be doing a lot to support disabled people into work and to remove the barriers that are too often in their way, as the hon. Lady rightly says. I have already referred to the disability employment panel we are setting up. We want to work alongside disabled people to make sure that we get this right and remove the barriers. The Connect to Work programme, which is being rolled out over this year, will do a lot to help. However, if there are particular problems in the hon. Lady’s area that she would like to draw to my attention, I will be very interested to hear about them.
Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)
The media report that people in No. 10 are tearing their hair out in frustration at the DWP taking so long to come up with welfare reforms. We have already been waiting seven months, and now we are told it will be March before there is a Green Paper, and presumably there will be no actual legislation until the end of the year at the earliest—they will be totally bald in No. 10 by then! Given the constant rise in the welfare bill, what is the financial cost so far of Labour’s inactivity?
Sir Stephen Timms
The inactivity bequeathed to us by the previous Government had a huge cost. The shadow Minister may not have noticed that, the week before last, a judicial review was lost on the previous Government’s handling of the work capability assessment changes. The judge found that the consultation was, frankly, dishonest—it did not tell people what the changes entailed—and was too rushed. People did not have a chance to give their views.
We will do this exercise properly. This spring, in the Green Paper, we will set out the full details of what we propose, and there will be a very full consultation so that everyone has a chance to have their say.
Danny Kruger
The answer to my question is £1.8 billion. That is the cost of Labour’s economic inactivity and its failure to reform welfare since the election. The sum is the same as the saving from cutting the winter fuel payment plus the income from taxing family farms. In opposition, Labour opposed imposing conditions on people claiming incapacity benefits. Does the Minister still rule that out, or will the Green Paper face reality and require people to take action, where they can, to address the health needs that mean they are signed off work?
Sir Stephen Timms
The Green Paper will face reality square on. It will set out a very full set of clear policies, it will be frank about what they entail and we will listen to people’s views in response. The money that the hon. Gentleman refers to as having been forgone, will probably have been forgone as a result of the judicial review the week before last, which was because of the previous Government’s failures in consultation.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
The hon. Member will know that we introduced the biggest ever increase in the earnings threshold for carer’s allowance for those who are able to combine some work with caring. We are determined that carers should get the support they need—there is a premium in universal credit as well, for example—but of course, we will keep all these matters under review.
Ashley Dalton (West Lancashire) (Lab)
Sir Stephen Timms
I commend the resilience of my hon. Friend. Before Christmas, I spoke at a report launch with the charity Working with Cancer, which focuses on exactly the issue she has raised. She is right: employers have a key role in supporting people with cancer to continue to thrive in work, and the “Keep Britain Working” review will engage with people with lived experience as well as employers.
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)
It is now nine years since the Scotland Act 2016 transferred a swathe of welfare powers to the Scottish Government. Are Ministers in a position to give a finite date by which the Scottish Government will actually have taken on all those powers and responsibilities? That is still not the case.
Ian Lavery (Blyth and Ashington) (Lab)
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend is right that there has been a particularly big increase in mental health problems among young people. Given what the last Government did, I can well understand people being worried. We will continue to support people with mental health problems in the health and disability benefits system. The proposals for reform we will bring forward in the spring will make sure the system is fit for purpose and fair to the taxpayer, and they will deliver the support in work that people such as my hon. Friend’s constituents need.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
The Child Poverty Action Group has reported that 4.3 million children in the UK are living in poverty. In a classroom of 30, that is nine children living in poverty. Given that the Government have ruled out scrapping the two-child benefit cap, will the Minister commit to publishing measurable targets for reducing child poverty during this Parliament?
Mr Joshua Reynolds (Maidenhead) (LD)
Jamie from my constituency is a full-time carer, but he is also in full-time education and is therefore not entitled to carer’s allowance. Will the Government confirm that they will extend carer’s allowance to those in full-time education?
Sir Stephen Timms
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I recently met a very impressive group of young people who have managed to navigate their way through education while also having very heavy caring responsibilities. We are working closely with the Department for Education, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Carers Trust and the Learning and Work Institute to make sure that we are providing the support young carers need.
Chris McDonald (Stockton North) (Lab)
Sir Stephen Timms
Yes, I do agree with my hon. Friend, and I am grateful to him for highlighting that case. We have asked the Department for Health and Social Care to review its decision in that case—I hope with a positive outcome.
Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)
The Minister will have heard several references to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report this afternoon. The report demonstrates not only that extreme poverty is rising, but that the only part of these islands where child poverty will fall in the next four years is Scotland. Is it not time that the Westminster Government took a leaf out of the Scottish Government’s book?
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Hundreds of farmers and other small business owners in Westmorland who earn less than the minimum wage are not eligible for universal credit because of the failure of that system to take account of variability of income. Will the Minister look to put that right so that we can support the people who support us?
Sir Stephen Timms
We are committed in our manifesto to a review of universal credit and I expect to set out shortly the details of how that review will go forward. I will be very happy to look at the particular case the hon. Gentleman raises in the course of the review.
Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)
We all know that the best route out of poverty is through well-paid work, but for families in my constituency, where a third of children grow up in poverty, low-paid and insecure jobs are a massive barrier. What will the Department do to help more families back into work and to alleviate poverty for children growing up in Southampton Itchen?
Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
Marie Curie research has found that 15% of the three quarters of a million end-of-life carers are living below the poverty line, rising to 22% a year after bereavement. Given these statistics, will the Minister consider extending the time that carers can claim carer’s allowance from two months to six months after bereavement?
Sir Stephen Timms
We keep these matters under review. I have not looked at that particular proposal before, but if the hon. Gentleman would like to drop me a line I will certainly give it a careful look.
Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme Levy 2024-25
Stephen Timms Excerpts(3 weeks, 1 day ago)
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The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
The Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme (Levy) Regulations 2014 require active employers’ liability insurers to pay an annual levy, based on their relative market share, for the purpose of meeting the costs of the diffuse mesothelioma payment scheme. This is in line with the insurance industry’s commitment to fund a scheme of last resort for persons diagnosed with diffuse mesothelioma who have been unable to trace their employer or their employer’s insurer.
Today I can announce that the total amount of the levy to be charged for 2024-25, the 11th year of the DMPS, is £28.6 million. The amount will be payable by active insurers by the end of March 2025.
Individual active insurers will be notified in writing of their share of the levy, together with how the amount was calculated and the payment arrangements. Insurers should be aware that it is a legal requirement to pay the levy within the set timescales.
I am pleased that the DMPS has seen 10 successful years of operation, assisting many hundreds of people who have been diagnosed with diffuse mesothelioma. The ninth annual report for the scheme, along with the annual statistics, was published on 27 November 2024 and is available on the gov.uk website. I hope that members of both Houses will welcome this announcement and give the DMPS their continued support.
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Children and Young People with Cancer
Stephen Timms Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
Like everybody else, I am delighted to find you in the Chair this afternoon, Mrs Lewell-Buck
I welcome this debate, as well as the speech that the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) made and the consistent attention he has paid to this issue since he was elected last year. I also welcome what all the others who have spoken in this debate have said. There is a lot that I would like to say in response, but unfortunately I have only four or five minutes in which to say it. I will have to cut my remarks rather short, so I might need to write to the hon. Gentleman with some of my responses, rather than putting them on the record now. However, I am glad that he has drawn attention to the fact that the Secretary of State has said he is reinstating that taskforce in our 10-year plan for the NHS, within which he has made it clear that he wants a separate cancer plan. It will be very helpful for the children and young people cancer taskforce to focus on identifying ways to include outcomes for this particular group of patients.
The debate has focused on the contribution of the social security system in supporting families of children and young people with cancer through the disability living allowance for children aged under 16 and the personal independence payment for those who are 16 or above. Those benefits are available if a child or young person’s condition or illness is long term and gives rise to care, daily living or mobility needs. The benefits contribute to the extra costs arising as a result of a disability or health condition. I will not claim that the support meets all the costs, as that would be incorrect, but they are a contribution—that is intention behind them.
The assessment for those benefits is based on the needs of the individual rather than on the condition, and many with cancer are eligible. The highest level of benefits can mean an extra £9,500 a year tax-free—the order of magnitude that the hon. Gentleman refers to. The benefit is usually paid to the parent of the child, and so can help with overall family finances, as they see fit. We are currently supporting about 3,000 children under 16 and 2,000 young people between 16 and 24 with cancer, with an average award of around £155 per week.
Clive Jones
I apologise for leaving the Minister with only a few minutes. I have no idea what he is going to say, but I would like him to make some comment about Hugh’s law, and whether or not he supports it, because it would make a huge difference to every single family.
Sir Stephen Timms
I am not able to announce a big change this afternoon along the lines that the hon. Gentleman has suggested, but I do want to comment—and would have done, if I had had a little longer—on the qualifying period. I have met the campaigners with their MP, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff). They make a compelling and vivid case about their own experience, as well as the financial and emotional difficulties that they suffered as a result.
The qualifying period is there to distinguish between a short-term and long-term condition. It is not about fraud, as the hon. Member for Wokingham suggested might be the case; it is there to make that distinction, and it is quite an important part of the eligibility process for benefits. I am not able to announce a big change in that. Of course, we will keep these things under review. I have met the campaigners, and we will certainly listen to representations that come forward—
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).
British Sign Language Report 2023-24
Stephen Timms Excerpts(2 months ago)
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The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
This Government are committed to removing barriers and increasing opportunities for deaf and disabled people. The British Sign Language Act 2022 provides us with the ability to do this by creating a greater recognition and understanding of BSL, and also by requiring the Government to report on what each Department listed in the Act has done to promote or facilitate the use of British Sign Language in its communications with the public.
The publication of the first BSL report in 2023 provided a snapshot of the activity that had already been delivered by Government Departments in the first year since the Act gained Royal Assent, while also highlighting the areas of Government communication that needed further improvement.
The second BSL report, covering the period from 1 May 2023 to 30 April 2024, has been published. A copy of the second report will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses and published on gov.uk.
This second report summarises the progress Government Departments have made, and highlights where we have further to go. It shows that there has been an increase in the use of BSL compared to the first report—the overall number of BSL communications produced by Government Departments has more than doubled, from 76 in the first reporting period to 176 during the second reporting period. This represents encouraging progress but also shows that there are still improvements to be made.
This Government want to ensure disabled people’s views and voices are at the heart of all we do and ensuring that Government communications are made accessible to deaf and disabled people is essential in supporting us to achieve this goal.
This Government are committed to going further. We will be working with the BSL advisory board, deaf people and their representative organisations, and with Ministers across Government to continue to make tangible improvements for the deaf community.
We will publish a report every year for the next five years, going further than the frequency required by the Act. The next report will be published in July 2025.
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Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Timms Excerpts(2 months 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(2 months, 1 week 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 months, 2 weeks 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(3 months 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.