Out-of-school Education Settings

Debate between Stephen Timms and Robert Flello

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Timms]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I very much agree with the way he has expressed that danger, which we are heading into at the moment. If the Government are determined to make some changes in this area, I wonder whether there might be a less problematic way of doing so than the one proposed in the recent consultation. As was mentioned earlier, there is not a good fit between the task proposed and the institution—Ofsted—proposed to undertake it. I am an admirer of Ofsted and, in particular, of its current chief inspector. I admired him when, years ago, he was a headteacher in the borough that I represent in the House of Commons. However, inspecting and holding to account publicly funded schools is a very different task from monitoring occasional problems in wholly voluntary settings. As one commentator has observed, the measure would, in effect, make Ofsted the state regulator of religion. It is quite surprising to see this idea from a Conservative Government. Ministers have rightly called for religious freedom overseas. We need to be vigilant that we do not undermine it at home.

There are pragmatic considerations as well. Sensitivity and tact are not the hallmarks of Ofsted. Its job, on our behalf, includes a lot of heavy lifting. The task that the Government envisage here is a very different kind of task. I cannot see that it would be right to ask Ofsted to undertake it. Instead, what if the task of inspection— if it must be done—were given to one of a number of inspecting bodies, which could perhaps be set up for the purpose? Each setting could then choose the body by which it was inspected. They might be set up by the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical Alliance or the Muslim Council of Britain. The bodies would be rigorously supervised and audited by Ofsted, but it would be their staff who did the inspecting, rather than Government inspectors.

Of course, there would need to be a limit on the number of bodies, and there would be a case on the ground of openness for an inspector from a different body to accompany an inspecting team on its visits. Sunday schools or after-school Koranic classes do not object to outside visitors. The problem is with the idea that they are answerable to Government officials for the religious instruction that they deliver.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend’s suggestion sounds interesting, but does it not fly in the face of what this Government have said for many a year, which is that they do not want to see state bodies and apparatus put in place? Whether they used the original proposals or my right hon. Friend’s interesting ideas, all of it suggests further layers of bureaucracy, which they keep saying that they do not want.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was attempting to propose a different way of doing things that might get around at least some of the serious difficulties in the Government’s proposals.

In conclusion, several of us received this morning an email from a man who writes:

“I’m a British born Muslim living in East London. I have a beard and pray five times a day and I can no longer walk down my street without being looked at strangely as a threat.”

In addressing the problem—a real problem, albeit one affecting only a tiny number of people—there is a danger of accidentally severely undermining the values that we are setting out to protect.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Stephen Timms and Robert Flello

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

We have had a good debate. The Bill contains one good idea and presents us with two serious problems. The good idea is the merger of out-of-work benefits with in-work benefits, such as the tax credits that we introduced, which make it much more worthwhile to be in a job. The creation of the universal credit has been widely welcomed across the Chamber in this debate, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), as well as by the Chair of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, and by the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott), my hon. Friends the Members for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) and for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire), among others. It is a welcome change, and it is right that we should congratulate the Secretary of State, who has focused intently on this matter since the Conservative party sacked him as its leader. He went off and set up the Centre for Social Justice, which did the spadework, and he now brings the reform to the House.

That was the good idea, but unfortunately the bouquets end there, because the Bill is a mess. It was rumoured on good authority a few weeks ago that it would be delayed another month so that key decisions could be made—and now that we have the Bill, we can see why: fundamental points are missing. How will child care be supported? That is key to the Bill’s purpose of ensuring that people are better off in work. If the Government get this decision wrong, the Bill will fail. The Secretary of State told us that he would take further advice from relevant groups. However, the relevant groups have given him plenty of advice already; the trouble is that he has not taken it. The previous Government’s success on child care meant that the proportion of lone parents in work increased from 45% to 57%.

The decision on support for child care is crucial. The Secretary of State has told us that he wants to spread the same amount of money across many more people. People will therefore have to find not 3% of the cost of child care out of their own pocket—which is common at the moment—but perhaps 30%. That is a tenfold rise. It is therefore not surprising that lone parent organisations are reporting calls from their members saying that they will not be able to afford to carry on working.

At a time when benefits are being merged into a universal credit, the Government have, bizarrely, decided to do the opposite with council tax benefit and devolve it entirely to local councils. That appears to be the messy outcome of a dispute between the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, which unfortunately this Secretary of State has lost. Local authorities will apparently be free to design council tax benefit as they wish, except that it will have to cost 10% less than before. Again, that could completely scupper the advantages that the universal credit is supposed to deliver. Will the Department for Work and Pensions be able to step in if that happens? We simply do not know.

The Secretary of State was not able to tell us earlier who will receive free school meals in future. That is a crucial piece of information. How can we debate the new system without knowing that?

My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) made some telling points about the position of self-employed people. We have no idea how the self-employed will be handled under the new system. Employers will notify the DWP of the salary of people in pay-as-you-earn every month so that their universal credit can be calculated—that is, if the Government can get the IT to work. The Secretary of State knows that I am sceptical about his timetable for that. Self-employed people are not in PAYE, so how will their universal credit be worked out? We have no idea, and the Bill does not tell us.

Who will be entitled to free prescriptions? Who will be entitled to mortgage interest support? Which working families will be exempt from the benefit cap? How will unearned income such as child maintenance and widow’s benefit be treated? Will disability living allowance continue to be available indefinitely to children? My hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) made a powerful speech about that.

Those are enormous gaps in the Bill on crucial details, not minor matters. The whole purpose of reform, and the point that has been repeated over and over again in the debate, is that everybody wants a system that ensures that people are better off in work. Achieving that goal stands or falls by whether those questions are given the right answers, and at the moment we simply do not know.

The lack of answers is a serious problem with this unfinished Bill, but unfortunately it is not the worst problem. The things that we do not know are only the half of it: the things that we do know turn out to be even worse. Why on earth are Ministers launching an attack on saving? People who receive £80 or £100 a week in tax credits to supplement their earnings will in future receive absolutely nothing at all if they have £16,000 in the bank. They could lose perhaps £5,000 a year as a punishment for having £16,000 in savings. If they get rid of their savings, they will get their credits back. What is that about?

The Secretary of State told us earlier that child care support would be included in the universal credit. That would mean that those people, for the crime of having £16,000 in the bank, would lose all their child care support as well. Why are people on modest earnings to be punished for saving for a deposit to buy a home, or for the massively increased charges for higher education? The Secretary of State told us that 100,000 families would lose everything as a result. He said that he saw no problem with that, but he should go and talk to his colleagues in the Centre for Social Justice, who have made the point that the savings limit for out-of-work benefits is

“an unfair penalty to those who have saved”.

Instead of easing that limit, as the CSJ proposed, the Bill extends it to people in work.

The Secretary of State is wrong to say that the welfare system is only for the most vulnerable. My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) made a telling point about that. It is there for everybody when they need it; that is why we have national insurance. My right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Malcolm Wicks) was right to emphasise that responsibility should be expected from the rich as well as the poor.

Contributory employment and support allowance is to be time-limited to a year. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) made a telling intervention about that, and my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) also spoke about it. The data suggest that probably less than 20% of those in the work-related activity group returned to work within a year. There is no way that someone on oral chemotherapy or with a serious mental health problem can be expected to return to work in a year, so that is clearly wrong.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that there is already a problem with contribution-based ESA, because people are not passported through to other benefits as somebody on income-related ESA might be? There are already difficulties for people in the circumstances that he describes.

[Stephen Timms]

There certainly are problems. The Government have made much of marginal deduction rates and the impact on work incentives, but it turns out from the small print of the Bill that the changes will increase the marginal deduction rates of many more people than will have them decreased. Again, the Secretary of State’s own think-tank has pointed out the problem with the high taper rate that the Government have chosen.

My hon. Friends the Members for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) and for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) pointed out that in the tax credits system, benefit in respect of children can be paid to their mother. Sometimes, if all the money went to the father, the children would never see it. The Bill completely ignores that issue.

A lot has been said about disability living allowance, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) spelled out powerfully the dangers of what is being done. It is being scrapped and replaced with the personal independence payment—whatever that might eventually turn out to be. A lot of disabled people are frightened, and the Bill to abolish DLA was published before the consultation even finished. We should reform DLA not abolish it, and it is wrong for the Bill to proceed in that way.

As I said earlier, the Bill presents us with one good idea—the universal credit—and two very big problems. The first is all the things that the Bill does not tell us—the large gaps of great significance that have been left in it—and the second is all the things that it does tell us. It needs radical improvement before it reaches the statute book, so I commend the amendment to the House.

Finance Bill

Debate between Stephen Timms and Robert Flello

Thursday 15th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms]

I appreciate that the arrangements will broadly have the effect of maintaining the tax treatment that applied to similar expenses paid under the previous arrangements. Tax treatment of MPs’ expenses used to be dealt with by specific legislation or long-standing extra-statutory concessions. As hon. Members will know, a long-term project has been undertaken following the judgment in the Wilkinson case of 2006 to place all the statutory concessions on a proper legislative basis. Can the Minister confirm that the previous concession, which I think is numbered A.54—Members of Parliament: accommodation, allowances and expenses—has, with this legislation, been withdrawn, and whether any of the other extra-statutory concessions outstanding are affected by the Bill?

[Robert Flello]

My right hon. Friend said that schedule 4 was broadly neutral in terms of income tax. Has he noted paragraph 1(4) on loans for deposits payable on rented accommodation—perhaps our constituency offices or flats that we need in London because of the ridiculous IPSA rules on staying in hotels? It is common practice for landlords to charge a deposit on flats, something that we have to pay only because we are here representing our constituents. Has my right hon. Friend noticed that there is a tax implication for us in that?

[Stephen Timms]

I confess that when I read the legislation that point did not strike me, but it has been raised and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for putting it on the record.