Oral Answers to Questions

Teresa Pearce Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

We do not agree with those claims, and the authors themselves caution that no conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect.

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

22. What assessment he has made of the potential effect of changes to housing benefit announced in the spending review and autumn statement 2015 on people under 35.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People (Justin Tomlinson)]

To introduce fairness, we will cap housing benefit at the appropriate local housing allowance rate for the area from April 2018 when a new tenancy is taken out or a tenancy is renewed after April 2016. That means that the housing benefit of single claimants under 35 who take on a new tenancy or renew a tenancy will be restricted to the local housing allowance shared accommodation rate.

[Teresa Pearce]

Research shows that it is fairly unusual for people under 35 without children to be given social housing, but the exception to that is care leavers. Can the Minister let the House know whether there will be any safeguards or exemptions for vulnerable care leavers?

[Justin Tomlinson]

To clarify, this will be a flow measure so there will be no cash losers among those already in the system. We will be looking at the protections in place, recognising those in the private sector which include protection for care leavers.

Housing Costs (Reformed Welfare System)

Teresa Pearce Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate in this debate. It was very well opened by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), who is a dedicated and inspirational Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee. I want to put on the record my thanks to her for the way in which she has chaired the Committee and for all the things I have learned from her. She is the epitome of the iron fist in a velvet glove, and she manages to be both reasonable and radical at the same time.

I am speaking in this debate because I am a member of the Select Committee, and the Chair has already gone through some of the recommendations in our report. Given the importance of the report, it is disappointing that, a year on, we are still waiting for the Government response. I hope that the Minister will address that matter.

It is indisputable that we are the middle of a housing crisis. House building is down, homelessness and rough sleeping are rising, and houses are unaffordable for many people. The lack of social housing means that those with legitimate claims and in desperate need are deemed ineligible or not in priority need as local authorities try to implement housing strategies to manage demand with a only very few houses to allocate.

The private rented sector has filled the vacuum caused by the lack of affordable and social housing. As a result, the private rented sector in London has grown by 75% in the past 10 years. In my constituency, it is now common for families to live in private rented accommodation, although they previously either owned their own home or lived in social housing. Yet the ever-growing private rented sector is still failing to meet the demands of renters. It is easy to reduce discussions about housing costs to an evaluation of numbers and statistics, but the truth is that covering housing costs is crucial to securing a stable home life and a stable society. Affordable housing costs give families certainty and freedom from the fear of eviction, and help to foster communities.

Costs are spiralling out of control. The cost of renting has soared while wages have dropped. The lack of regulation in the private rented sector and the limited supply of housing in comparison with demand mean that private landlords are currently free to set their own prices. The cost of renting privately has increased consistently since 2009, and rents reportedly increased in London in 2012-13 by nearly 8%.

It is not surprising that so many people, both in and out of work, require help with paying their housing costs and have to resort to housing benefit. The number of in-work housing benefit claimants rose from 439,000 at the end of 2008 to more than 1 million in May 2014. The latest statistics also show that there were just under 4.9 million housing benefit claimants at the end of November 2014—increased from 4.2 million in November 2008—of whom 67% were in the social rented sector, but the rest were in the private rented sector.

The Committee’s report illustrated that the cost of housing benefit is rising, while the most vulnerable are failed when they rent privately. Over the past year, as a constituency MP, I have seen a spike in the number of people contacting my office who have been told that they are ineligible for social housing, but cannot secure private rented accommodation. That is due to a combination of factors, but one that has made things very difficult for people is the change in local housing allowance. Constituents tell me that when they go to the local authority, they are just given a list of private letting agents. The problem is that nearly all those on the list say that they do not take any tenants on benefits. Constituents are spending time and resources searching for suitable properties only to be told that they cannot be helped. That means that a large section of the private rented sector is unavailable to claimants, and that they are often forced to take poor, substandard property that fails to meet their needs.

[John Hemming]

We have found in the west midlands that private landlords are often willing to take people on housing benefit if they have a 6 Towns type of account that reserves the funds. There is a solution in the system as it stands. Perhaps that needs to be investigated. Obviously, 6 Towns does not operate across the country, but perhaps there are solutions that can be found within the current policy.

[Teresa Pearce]

It is true that solutions can be found. Sadly, no one seems to have found them yet in my part of south-east London.

The Work and Pensions Committee looked at the problems that are faced by people on housing benefit. They are discriminated against when looking for private rented accommodation. For families, that makes trying to find a roof over their heads an uphill struggle. Given that tenancies typically last for six to 12 months, private renters often have to move just as they have settled in. Children who live in such places have their life chances restricted and their education disrupted, and are often not registered with a doctor. That cannot be acceptable.

Private landlords may be reluctant to rent accommodation or provide temporary accommodation to claimants for a number of reasons. It might not just be general discrimination, but might be due to constraints that are imposed by mortgage lenders, who say that they are not allowed to provide longer tenancies, or due to fears that local authorities will fail to allocate housing benefit in a timely manner. Giving private renters the option of allowing the housing benefit component of their universal credit payment to go directly to their landlord might allay those fears and enable private renters to control their finances more easily. The Government must work with private sector landlords to address their concerns about universal credit and offer greater support to those who rent property to housing benefit claimants. That work must start now.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I grateful to my colleague on the Work and Pensions Committee for giving way. I met my key local social housing provider on Friday. It said that there was a 15% gap in rent collection between those on universal credit and those not on universal credit. That is manageable over a year or so, but over the longer term it will create huge problems. I wonder whether my hon. Friend wants to comment on that point.

[Teresa Pearce]

That is a valid point. It is something that we all encounter locally when we talk to housing providers. It needs to be addressed, so I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention.

Another problem for private renters is that the change to local housing allowance is further restricting their access to the widest selection of available properties. Local housing allowance rates match only the 30th per- centile of homes within a broad rental market area. The Government reduced that from the 50th percentile. I believe that that needs to be re-evaluated urgently, especially in London. Rents have risen, but the local housing allowance was frozen in 2012-13 and uprated by 1% in 2014. There has been a reduction in the number of homes that can be rented out at that rate.

An analysis by Crisis shows that across Britain, one in 10 local housing allowance rates for 2015-16 is 5% or more lower than the estimated 30th percentile of local rents. Those include 77 rates that have already benefited from an additional increase due to the targeted affordability fund. As was outlined in the Select Committee’s report, analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that rent levels did not decline as a result of the cap. In fact, the most recent rental figures show a 1.8% rise across the stock in England and a rise of 2.4% in London. That is well above the recent 1% cap and means that additional properties will fall out of the reach of those on benefit.

Private renters should not have to choose between having a roof over their heads and eating, but increasingly that is becoming a daily choice for many people in my constituency. The Government should consider increasing LHA rates by more than 1% annually in more pressured areas. Although the Committee welcomed the introduction of the targeted affordability fund as a means of increasing LHA levels in areas of higher rents, some areas may see rents rising by more than the maximum of 4% a year. The Government should amend the targeted affordability fund so that it can be paid at higher levels in areas where rent increases are greater than 4%. It should also use available rents rather than stock rents as a measure for the rental increase.

Rents are currently unaffordable across the private sector. In 2012, the Money Advice Trust stated that rent arrears were the fastest growing debt problem it had encountered and that the number of calls it received on the issue had risen by 37% on the previous year. At the end of 2014, the National Landlords Association reported that almost a third of private landlords had seen arrears that year. There were a record number of evictions of renters across the social and private sector in 2014 as a result of a combination of factors, including the bedroom tax, benefit sanctions, increased numbers renting with the reduced LHA rate, and rising private sector rents.

Recent figures from Crisis have also shown that the No. 1 leading cause of homelessness now is eviction from a private tenancy. The figures highlight not just the lack of affordability for renters when having to manage competing living costs, but how unsustainable rising rents will be for the private rented sector without Government intervention.

The Government must continue to monitor homelessness levels and take action to mitigate the impact on households and local authorities. The Department for Communities and Local Government reported that rough sleeping increased by 14% in autumn 2014. I am regularly contacted by constituents who tell me that they cannot be housed by their local council because they are not in priority need and that they have no option but to live in overcrowded accommodation with family members or to couch-surf, which is code for sleeping on the floor of a friend’s house. If they can be housed, they have been told that their only option is temporary accommodation. In my local area of Bexley, people are often temporarily accommodated in Manchester and Bolton, which means having to uproot their children from school and leave their support networks behind.

It always worries me greatly that, while a number of landlords are reputable, a number of others are not. There are private landlords in my constituency who line their pockets while renters struggle to pay their rent. I wrote to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Treasury in November to ask about the Let Property campaign, which was launched in September 2013 to target the residential property letting market. Specifically, I wanted to know whether it had been successful in closing the tax gap on let properties, but the responses I received were not encouraging. They said it was too early to tell, but one of the figures they did give me was an estimate that the tax gap on letting income was just over £500 million. It is absolutely disgraceful that public money is going to landlords who do not then pay their way or their tax. We need to address that urgently.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Before the hon. Lady addresses any further points. She may have been able to count, but she has now spoken for 12 minutes. I trusted her to speak for 10 minutes, so I trust that she is going to wind up very soon.

[Teresa Pearce]

I will finish by saying that I think this is a most urgent issue. I do not usually quote from Conservative manifestos, but the 1951 Conservative manifesto said:

“Housing is the first of the social services. It is also one of the keys to increased productivity. Work, family life, health and education are all undermined by overcrowded homes.”

That was true then, and it is true now.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. I am sorry that I missed the first couple of minutes of the speech by the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), because she speaks very sensibly on this issue and many Government Members listen to what she has to say about it. I will pick up on a couple of points she made.

The hon. Lady has spoken in the past about the amount that we spend on housing benefit. It was a matter of concern to us all that the housing benefit budget seemed to be getting out of control in the run-up to the last general election. In fact, the housing benefit bill was forecast to rise over the current Parliament from £21 billion to more than £26 billion. This Government’s reforms have only pegged back that increase by about £2 billion a year, which, given the potential growth in the budget, is not very much at all.

The hon. Lady spoke about how the spare room subsidy has been working in practice. Like the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), my constituency surgeries were visited by many people when the policy was first mooted, perhaps because they were scared by stories that were being circulated at the time about how it would affect them. There was a general lack of knowledge about discretionary housing payments and who can receive them for. I am pleased that we were able to help every person who came through the door of my constituency surgery advice centre seeking help in that area, and all received discretionary housing payments.

Interestingly, Daventry and District Housing, which serves a huge area of my constituency, saw the policy change coming down the line. It is a good housing association in many ways because it talks to its tenants on a regular basis and gets to know them, and it therefore made sure that they were ready for the change. Most tenants in Daventry and District Housing accommodation knew that the change was coming, and knew that discretionary housing payments were available and how to access them.

I sit on the Public Accounts Committee, which discusses these matters—I will mention the report that the hon. Member for Aberdeen South spoke about in moment—and it is fairly obvious that different parts of the country, different housing associations, and different councils have acted in completely different ways over this change. They have probably acted in their best local interests, which is fine, but it has led to different outcomes in various parts of the country that all have remarkably significant and different pressures on them.

In one of my first years on the Committee, its Chair, the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), took us to see a primary school and surrounding housing estate in her constituency. We had been talking about health and housing inequalities, and the trip was to see how primary education was working. I acknowledge that the pressures on housing in Erith and Thamesmead, or in Barking and Dagenham, are completely different from those in my constituency, and that is why local experts and housing associations in that area know their tenants well.

The interesting background to this debate concerns an area of spending that was constantly growing and needed to be brought under control—however we paint the picture, the Government’s moneybags were not particularly full when they came to office in May 2010, and although they are a bit better now, there are still tough decisions to be made. Such decisions must be based on fairness—I know that some Opposition Members do not consider this measure to be fair at all—and we must consider how we change a policy that is already enacted for those in the private rental housing sector but not for those in the public rental sector.

At this point I should say that I rent out a house. My private property in Lincoln is noted in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and I rent it to a private sector tenant who to my knowledge is not on any type of benefit. There is a proper debate to be had about this issue, which was started in no uncertain terms by the previous Government.

This Government brought forward their proposals with the safety net of discretionary housing payments. I do not want to disagree with the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) because she will know her local area much better than I will, but perhaps I misheard her. She was talking about warrants for evictions, and perhaps she meant from the private rental sector.

[Teresa Pearce]

indicated assent.

Personal Independence Payments

Teresa Pearce Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to have this debate under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I am pleased to see other Members here today to discuss such an important issue. I will try to keep the length of my speech to a minimum since I have several questions that I would like the Minister to respond to. I will start by reflecting on what a personal independence payment is and what it is meant to do.

The Welfare Reform Act 2012 legislated for the introduction of personal independence payments to replace disability living allowance. PIP is a benefit for people with long-term health conditions or impairments, whether physical, sensory, mental, cognitive, intellectual, or any combination of those. It is intended to provide support for the disabled people with the greatest needs who face the greatest challenges to remaining independent and participating fully in society.

The PIP assessment measures the impact of a person’s health condition or impairment on their ability to participate, rather than focusing solely on the health condition or the impairment itself. PIP is paid as a contribution to the extra costs that disabled people may face to help them lead full, active and independent lives. To put it more simply, it is support for people who would trade anything to have the privileges that we too often take for granted: our work choices, our life choices and our independent living. So PIP is potentially a vital mechanism to help some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged members of our society, yet like so much of the benefit revolution, PIP’s implementation has been beset by problems and has caused additional hardship, anxiety and uncertainty to our vulnerable and disadvantaged friends.

There are key dates in the history of the implementation of PIP. From 8 April 2013, the Department for Work and Pensions started to replace disability living allowance for people aged 16 to 64 with PIP. On 8 April 2013, PIP was introduced, in a controlled start, for new claims from people living in a limited geographical area in the north-west and part of the north-east of England. On 10 June 2013, PIP was introduced for new claims for the remaining parts of Great Britain. From 28 October 2013, the DWP started to invite DLA claimants living in certain areas to claim PIP.

So how is it all going? Appearing before the Select Committee on Work and Pensions on 10 September 2014, the Minister for Disabled People said:

“It is fair to say that, yes, in terms of the delays to the assessment process it is not in good shape...I absolutely accept there is a problem; it is literally my top priority and I have been spending a lot of time working on it since I was appointed on 15 July”.

I and my fellow members of the Work and Pensions Committee were pleased to hear that the Minister had made it his top priority.

How many disabled people are being affected? Last December, the DWP published a third set of official PIP statistics. They showed that between April 2013 and October 2014 some 669,200 claims for PIP had been submitted, but only 382,000 decisions had been made. That leaves 287,200 disabled people stuck in a backlog. However, on 15 December in the other place, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth seemed to be in denial about that figure. He said:

“My Lords, I dispute those figures. The backlog stands at 107,000 at the moment, and 65,000 claims are being processed every month.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 January 2015; Vol. 758, c. 894.]

Will the Minister clarify those figures and explain why there are two different numbers? Whatever the number is, there is still a long way to go.

The figures are simply dry statistics. They do not tell us about the real-life consequences of delay. For the individual, they translate to anxiety and hardship at a time when they are at their most vulnerable and ill-equipped to cope. I have personally spoken to many constituents who have been waiting for six months—in some cases, a year—for a home assessment. They have often taken every possible step to ensure that information is submitted on time, yet they are kept in the dark about their claims. They do not know who to call. When they get through to someone, they are not given a time scale. They replace the receiver feeling as ill-informed as they were at the start, and that is unacceptable.

As MPs, we all have our postbags. I was contacted in October 2014 by the mother of a young disabled woman living in my constituency. She works part time as she cares for her daughter. Her daughter had been waiting for a home assessment since August 2013. She told me that they had been threatened with eviction because money was so tight. She was upset, desperate and scared. She said that her daughter had received no update on her application since she had called in September 2013 to check that the claim had been received.

I contacted Atos and was told that a call had been made to my constituent in May 2014 to arrange a home assessment, but the adviser was told that the constituent did not live at that address. As a result, the daughter’s case had been withdrawn and closed without her knowledge. It transpired that the Atos adviser had called the wrong number. Atos blamed the DWP, but it was the PIP office that had made a mistake when typing the number into the system. It got the wrong number and closed the case.

Such things do not happen only in my constituency. I have heard from Malcolm, who lives in Southwark and is 55. He applied for PIP in March 2014 when he was diagnosed with cancer, and he has still not had an assessment. The delays have affected his ability even to travel to and from hospital for appointments.

Bernadette lives in Wales. Her son is 15 and has autism, and he was receiving DLA. In November 2014, she had a letter from the DWP about transferring to PIP in April 2015. A home visit was set for 16 December. The son stayed off school for the day, but no assessor turned up. The visit was rearranged for 19 December. Another school day was missed and again no assessor arrived. A home visit finally happened on 23 December. Bernadette was assessed as being able to handle finances for PIP, but no date was set for the PIP assessment. She was told it would be any time within the next 12 to 18 months. Despite there having been no assessment, the January DLA payment was stopped. She was knocked out of the system, yet no PIP assessment date had been set. The family were thrown into financial difficulties and are now even worse off, because they face bank charges for being overdrawn.

It is not only MPs who are raising such issues. In December 2014, Macmillan Cancer Support stated that the system for PIP is

“riddled with delays...it remains an absolute disgrace that thousands of people with cancer have been forced to wait six months or more...to find out whether they were even eligible...A recent survey of Macmillan...advisers reveals shocking statistics: nearly a third...know of someone who has died while waiting for their benefits, almost one in two...have come across patients who cannot afford to feed themselves properly, and around three in five...say delays have left people unable to heat their homes....No one should have to face these situations simply because they have been diagnosed with cancer.”

Parkinson’s UK conducted a survey that showed that the people it supports have been waiting, on average, longer than six months for a PIP assessment. More than half report an average wait of nine months or more. According to the London-wide anti-poverty charity the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, commonly known as Z2K, such lengthy delays have a severe impact on its clients in a number of ways. It says that almost all its PIP clients rely on state benefits as their only source of income. Because PIP is paid in arrears, claimants who do not have other sources of income experience severe impoverishment as a result of delays. Many have turned to food banks. That has a knock-on effect, because PIP often acts as a gateway to other benefits and entitlements.

Against that backdrop has come Paul Gray’s independent review of PIP assessment. In the foreword to his review, Paul Gray recognised the limitations on what he could review. He stated:

“The timing for Independent Reviews of the Personal Independence Payment...assessment...was laid down in the 2012 Welfare Reform Act. In accepting the Secretary of State’s invitation to conduct this first Review I was conscious that, with implementation being less advanced than originally planned, this is too soon to draw definitive conclusions on many aspects. The evidence is simply not yet available to do so reliably or robustly.”

That in itself is an indictment of the all-too-familiar lack of implementation. It is a good idea to review what is in legislation, but if the thing being reviewed has not been implemented properly, there is nothing to review. Paul Gray continued:

“Equally it was clear that the primary focus of early comment and attention on PIP has been the unfortunate reality of long delays and backlogs in the assessment process. These have had a major impact on many claimants for PIP so far. It is essential for remedial action to be completed and to avoid similar issues recurring in the future. I have taken it as given this will be done.”

The findings and recommendations of the review include short, medium and long-term measures and fall into three main themes: the nature of the claimant journey; the way in which further evidence is collected; and the overall effectiveness of the PIP assessment. I am interested in what the Minister has to say about the review and its recommendations and what his Department intends to do in response.

Turning to the claimant journey, there can be few MPs who have not encountered numbers of constituents who have found the claiming and reassessment process extremely stressful. Impacts can range from a lowering of self-esteem and dignity to an increase in anxiety and a worsening of mental state. It is disappointing that the review did not thoroughly address the effect of interventions, which involve reassessing people for PIP before their award has even expired. Given the significant struggles that people face to be awarded PIP in the first place, it is of some concern that some recipients are already being reassessed in such a way. Interventions place unnecessary pressure on claimants and assessment providers, who already struggle to meet demand. Interventions also suggest that the DWP does not trust the initial decision delivered by its own assessment process.

The first independent review of PIP has recognised some of the serious flaws and failures of the new system and provides the DWP with the opportunity to address those systemic failures as a matter of urgency. Integral to implementing the recommendations of the report, however, will be dealing with the backlog to ensure that all claimants are provided with the best possible service. For many people, PIP delays are causing their conditions to worsen and having an impact on the quality of their lives. That cannot continue, so where areas for improvements in the claimant journey are identified, it is vital for the DWP to respond positively.

I have nine questions for the Minister about the review recommendations. First, the review suggested that the DWP should make better use of digital technology, and that a website allowing claimants to track the progress of their claims would improve communication. Does the DWP have plans to introduce a tracking system that can be accessed by claimants?

The review stated that the

“potential for sharing information already held by the Department and across the wider public sector should be explored”

to improve the evidence-gathering process. What are the DWP’s plans to improve the additional evidence-gathering process, and what is the time scale?

Will the Minister confirm the policy intent behind interventions, and how will the Department ensure that they are not simply a repeat of the reassessment process before a claimant’s award has ended? What assessment has the DWP made of the impact of interventions on the existing backlog of PIP claims? The report stated that the Department should:

“Ensure the consistent application of existing guidance for health professionals on reliability and fluctuating conditions.”

How and when will the DWP reinforce guidance on assessing fluctuation to ensure that all assessors are adequately addressing that issue? Furthermore, how will the DWP measure assessor performance in addressing that issue?

I understand that the Government plan to publish data on clearance and waiting times from March 2015. Has the DWP set a precise date for the publication of those data? In light of the review, will the Minister confirm whether the DWP intends to proceed with the main reassessment programme in October 2015, and whether the backlog of claims will have been cleared by then? Finally, when will the DWP publish its response to the independent review?

I hope that the Minster can answer those questions, and I look forward to revisiting some of the debate a week today when he appears before the Select Committee on Work and Pensions to look at this issue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Teresa Pearce Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

I am afraid none of those are true. I see that the hon. Gentleman gathered much information together, but let us see what happens; as I said, we have got to get this right. We have to get the housing right. We have got to have more smaller buildings. He wrote to me as he did not understand about conversions and I had to lay it out clearly in the letter; the National Housing Federation agreed with me. Despite not knowing the facts, he did produce a press release for the papers. We are getting conversions right, sorting out the problem and helping as many people as possible.

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

17. What assessment he has made of the effect of the under-occupancy penalty on carers.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)]

Live-in carers are provided for as part of the assessment of household need. An additional room for non-resident overnight carers is allowed in certain circumstances. Discretionary housing payment funding has been increased to £180 million for 2013-14 to help support vulnerable claimants to adjust to the reforms.

[Teresa Pearce]

Many children grow up with separated parents, but I think we would all agree that joint parenting is in the best interests of the child. One of my constituents is a devoted father whose small son lives with him 50% of the time, but he now has to lose his son’s bedroom because the benefits system will accept only one parent as the “main carer”. Will the Minister re-examine that rule and consider an exemption?

[Esther McVey]

The hon. Lady is right to bring this matter to the House, and such situations are always difficult, but the room would be allocated to whoever was the main carer of the child. In this instance, that is the mother and that is who we would be looking to. We would not be supporting two sets of rooms in two separate houses, as we are trying to get this housing policy right.

Universal Credit

Teresa Pearce Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

In the private sector, programmes allow up to 30% or 40% for write-downs and reworks, which is well within the amount we have written down. I believe that this programme will roll out more efficiently than almost any other programme in the private sector.

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

In yesterday’s Work and Pensions Committee, the DWP finance director general stated that £303 million has so far been spent on developing IT. We have heard that £40 million has been written off as it could not be capitalised because it had no use, and that £97 million was capitalised and written down. That leaves a further £107 million of IT expenditure that was not capitalised as it has no useful software. Will the Secretary of State confirm that of the £303 million spent, only £97 million has resulted in useable software?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The hon. Lady, of course, misrepresents the position. [Interruption.] The money that we were talking about yesterday, the write-offs, is for technology that will not be used, and the write-down is equipment we will be using over the next 12 months. The other value she mentioned is for equipment that will be written down over a period of years, once we start to use it. We cannot write it down until it is actually in use.

Oral Answers to Questions

Teresa Pearce Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the fact that there are more women in work than ever before. That is testament to the flexibility of the labour market, which allows more women to work, either part time or full time.

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

T9. Given the inability of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to write to all parents affected by the recent child benefit changes, I have serious concerns about the real-time information that will need to be delivered if universal credit is going to work and succeed. In September, the Minister for Welfare Reform, Lord Freud, said that 99.8% of the data sent by employers had been matched, yet a parliamentary answer from the Exchequer Secretary on 17 December revealed data from the same month showing that only 71% had been matched. Which Minister has got it right?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The hon. Lady is confusing two answers. The answer that she received from the Treasury—from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs—was to do with checking against the references of the accredited companies. That was a process that was looking for 80%, and it was achieving just over 75%. What my hon. Friend the Minister was saying was that the number of companies being brought on to the pilot was exactly in line with the number that is there. I can promise the hon. Lady that, if she really wants me to, I will give her a written answer to that question as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Teresa Pearce Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

That is a lot of learnings, but I will do my level best to help my hon. Friend. I shall tell him what we know so far. Some of these are early figures, but interestingly, after all the scaremongering about how people would be unable to cope, which, as we know from the local housing allowance, is not the case, the centre at Sheffield Hallam university has found so far that only 2%—less than people thought—of claimants moved because of eviction or a landlord refusing housing to housing benefit tenants, and few claimants gave financial reasons for actually moving. So we are making some good discoveries. We are on the right track and heading in the right direction.

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

24. What discussions his Department has had with Baroness Grey-Thompson following the publication of her report on the effect on disabled people of the introduction of universal credit.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)]

Since Baroness Grey-Thompson’s report was released, I have attended meetings with her twice where the contents of her report have been discussed.

[Teresa Pearce]

“Holes in the Safety Net”, the report just mentioned, indicated that about 450,000 disabled people lose out under the universal credit rules. This number was also raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, in a recent Westminster Hall debate that the Minister attended. Will she listen to these two highly respected women and amend her plans?

[Esther McVey]

We have been listening very much. We found some of the reports to be highly selective and quite skewed. They did not take into consideration how much extra support was going to people with disabilities, but we are listening, there is transitional protection and we will be releasing the assessment criteria later in the year.

Working-Age Disabled People

Teresa Pearce Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Jane Ellison]

I completely agree, but that is not a reason not to press ahead with important reforms.

To return to my previous point, it is sometime possible to give the impression that when a series of practical concerns amass to so great a number—many have been brought up today—that is a reason not to proceed. That is exactly why we have made the mistake of leaving things in the “too difficult” tray in the past.

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way; she is being very generous. On the problems that are being experienced, is it not the job of Government, the Opposition and all of us here to use our experience to ensure that when contracts are drawn up, they are the best contracts possible? It is not fair to say that it is oppositionism; it is experience. The hon. Lady said that there have been amendments to the Atos contract, and she is right, but this time we would like there to be no need for further amendments. The contract should be right in the first place. What we are saying is, “Let’s look at what could go wrong and what has gone wrong, and let’s get it right this time.”

[Jane Ellison]

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

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore]

I would not suggest that exaggerated comments have not been made. In answering or writing to constituents, I certainly find myself at times being careful to say, “I think this is wrong” or “I think this should not be done”, while not panicking people, so I tell them that it is not happening tomorrow, that there is time and that they should seek advice. It is important that people are not unnecessarily concerned.

The atmosphere in which the debate is ongoing is not helping. It is easy to blame the media, but there is still a tendency on the part of Ministers, whether they intend to or not, to juxtapose benefit claimants with hard-working people. Only the other week, the Prime Minister spoke about people heading out to work in the early hours of the morning, seeing their neighbour’s curtains closed and feeling rightly angry.

That neighbour with the curtains closed might be a night-shift worker or someone with an illness, which might not be visible. It is clear that those with mental health difficulties or less obvious conditions are those who people see and think, “What are they doing on benefit? How is that happening?” It does not help to compare and contrast continually in that way. It engenders some of the responses that we get.

The Government have to be careful about how they present their statistics. There have been improvements of late, in that not quite such provocative statements have been made in response to statistics, but it is not all about media spinning. There is a tendency with the statistics—this week, for example, on the outcome of ESA assessments—to emphasise how many people are found fit for work, with an undertone of, “which means that they were previously scroungers or not entitled to the benefit.” We have not had the migration statistics on ESA, so they were new claimants; they are claiming for the first time.

Let us have a comparator. Let us see what happened previously with incapacity benefit, for example, when people claimed for the first time. I hope that we are careful not to fall into the same trap when the PIP statistics come out. Some 50% of those who try to claim DLA are refused, so if 50% of those who try to claim PIP are also refused, I hope that it will not be hinted at or suggested that that in some way proves that people were getting a benefit that they should not have had. Remember what a baseline is and look at it that way.

[Teresa Pearce]

Does my hon. Friend agree that a possible unintended consequence of such media reports and skewed statistics is that employers who have read those reports may be more prejudiced against people with disabilities, who already face prejudice, who want a job, and against those who have been on benefit and want a job? It makes it more difficult to get those people back to work.

[Sheila Gilmore]

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

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

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

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

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

Oral Answers to Questions

Teresa Pearce Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Let me repeat that the incapacity benefit reassessment process, which is just coming up to one year old, is running on time. We have some delays in the claims process for new claimants of employment and support allowance, which is resulting in people having to wait an average of five days longer to be assessed than was previously the case. That is too long. They are having to wait five days longer as a result of the changes implemented following Professor Harrington’s review, but we have a programme in place to enable us to catch up by the summer.

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

8. What estimate he has made of the cost to a typical small business of introducing real-time reporting of PAYE information.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

Real-time reporting of PAYE information aims to reduce administrative burdens for all employers, and builds on processes that are already in place. The current burden of PAYE falls disproportionately on small employers. We are building on existing processes, and the annual saving to all businesses is estimated at £300 million per year from 2014-15. The smallest employers—those employing nine people or fewer—will be given free software upgrades by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

[Teresa Pearce]

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. A recent HMRC consultation showed that 75% of people thought that the Government’s time scale for implementing real-time PAYE information was unachievable. All employers will have to move to the new system by October 2013 if universal credit is to succeed, yet some small businesses are still unaware of the time scale, and many are not computerised. What additional assistance will the Government provide to help such businesses to ensure that they meet the timetable?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

HMRC, which is now responsible for this measure, meets me and others in the Department regularly. We have embedded some DWP employees in the HMRC programme; they are locked together. They are, as I understand it, on time, and they are having constant discussions with large and small employers about the issues and the problems, and assessing what needs to be done to make this happen and to make all the changes. We must remember that all those firms collect those data anyway; the only question is how they report it back within the monthly cycle. We are on top of that but, obviously, we want to keep our eye on the matter.

Living Standards

Teresa Pearce Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

I spent this morning talking about living standards with mothers in my constituency, who are losing a day’s pay today to stand with other public sector workers fighting for a decent pension. They told me that they had not taken strike action lightly or easily, and had never been on strike before. Many of them are low paid; they are all women. They told me that under the Government’s proposals for public sector pensions, when they retired they would receive only just enough to keep them above the threshold for means-tested benefits.

The Government like to encourage the myth that pensions in the public sector are gold-plated; they are anything but. The average pension in local government is £3,800 a year, and for women it is even lower—£2,800 a year. More than half of all women pensioners who have worked in the national health service receive a pension of less than £3,500 a year. Nobody in society benefits when pensioners are in poverty, and if people are reliant on state benefits in retirement, that costs the taxpayer more in the long run.

Although in my lifetime we have seen progress in terms of a fairer deal for women, it is undeniable that the women now reaching pension age are still at a disadvantage because of the decades for which women’s pay was lower. The Government talk the talk about a fairer deal for women, but I do not believe that they walk the walk. Many of us who campaigned alongside thousands of women born in 1954 will remember that the coalition had to be dragged kicking and screaming to make concessions to those women.

Under this Government the pay gap between rich and poor has been widening, and last week the Office for National Statistics figures showed that for the worst-paid jobs, the jobs traditionally held by women—the hairdressers, the dinner ladies and the waiters—pay has fallen sharply in real terms.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Will not those very women that my hon. Friend is talking about—the dinner ladies and the classroom assistants—be further hit by two years of a pay freeze, followed by years to come in which they will get wage increases of just 1%, if their jobs stay in the public sector and are not privatised?

[Teresa Pearce]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. There is wage stagnation at the bottom of the income ladder. People are seeing their pay frozen at the same time as they face higher food, fuel and energy costs. There is a quiet crisis going on behind the front doors of the homes in my constituency, where families are struggling week in, week out to make ends meet. Their financial affairs can be thrown into total crisis by even the smallest unexpected bill.

Today, therefore, I want to talk about how the Government have decided what side they are on. They have driven on with that course, no matter what. It has to be said that we in this House are the privileged few, and surely the moral duty of those with privilege is to defend those who have little or no power. But that is not what I have witnessed since I came here in May 2010. What I have seen is a systematic, focused political attack by the Government on the poor, the weak and the voiceless.

In the May 2010 emergency Budget child benefit was frozen, housing benefit was capped, the health in pregnancy grant was abolished, and Sure Start grant was restricted to the first child. The Library said that 72% of those cuts fell on women. In October 2010 the same thing happened: more cuts—cuts to local government, cuts to Departments whose work affects women, and nearly half a million jobs cut from the public sector. When it comes to cuts, it seems to me that it is “women and children first”.

That leads me on to yesterday’s announcement. In June 2010 the Chancellor announced plans to increase child tax credits above inflation as a measure to prevent rises in child poverty. The spending review in October reaffirmed that pledge. Yesterday the autumn statement said that that decision would be reversed. The Daily Telegraph said today that the Treasury admitted that the cuts in tax credit would “theoretically” push 100,000 children into poverty. Let me tell the House that the child poverty in my constituency is not theoretical. It is heartbreakingly, grindingly real. So why do the coalition Government think that it is fair, or morally right, to hit hardest those who have the least?

It is not just me who thinks this way. The Children’s Society has said that it is “deeply concerned” that the Chancellor

“has decided to compound the hardship felt by low-income families.”

It added:

“Children in low-income families need to be protected from rising living costs. Instead, the Chancellor has condemned thousands of low-income families to a winter of discontent, with many more to come.”

The Working Families charity has said that

“today’s measure will lead to higher levels of in-work poverty, or to more parents being priced out of work.”

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Is the hon. Lady really saying that child poverty has only existed in her constituency for the past 18 months, and that it did not exist in the 13 years when her party was in power?

[Teresa Pearce]

What I am saying is that child poverty in my constituency will increase as a result of this Government’s plans.

Inequality is often most obvious in the context of housing. Every week my postbag is full of letters from families who are living in overcrowded, shoddy, private-rented flats, and whose dream of a decent home seems to drift further away every month. I would welcome any initiative that helps to remedy that, but, sadly, I do not think that the measures announced by the Government, such as underwriting mortgages for families to buy new-build homes, will help families in Erith and Thamesmead.

The indemnity scheme involves taking a lot of risk on to the public-sector balance sheet. That is bad for taxpayers and could be worse for those who take up the scheme. The scheme applies only to new build, and it is widely acknowledged that new build is often marketed at a premium above market value of about 2% or 3%, so a 95% mortgage will, in effect, be close to a 100% mortgage, and if house prices fall buyers will face negative equity and the taxpayer will have to cover any losses. A better way to help families and first-time buyers is through extending stamp duty relief.

Time and again, therefore, the Government show whose side they are on: they cut corporation tax while increasing VAT; they cut housing benefit rather than tackle the unscrupulous landlords who are profiteering from housing benefit while their tenants live in substandard properties. As for the Chancellor, it is clear that not one of his post-election assertions has turned out to be correct: inflation is up; growth has stalled; the eurozone has crashed; the structural deficit is bigger than previously thought; and unemployment continues to rise month on month as the private sector fails to take up the public sector slack, although the Chancellor was certain that it would do so. It appears, too, that everybody else is to blame. The Chancellor has blamed the royal wedding, the weather, civil servants, Brussels, employment tribunals, trade unions, banks, bank holidays, people living longer, energy prices and, of course, the Opposition. We have a Chancellor who wants the power but not the responsibility, and I fully expect him to say at the next Budget, “It’s not my fault—”

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Time is up. I call Guto Bebb.