COP28
Debate between Thérèse Coffey and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster(1 year ago)
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Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
It is a pleasure to contribute to this debate. COP28 will be vital, recognising the global stocktake that will be happening, and I commend the Government on the progress they have made, while also recognising, not just in this country but around the world, the necessity of a just transition.
I pay tribute to the Prime Minister, who in his speech a couple of months ago recognised that we have already been doing so well on aspects of the carbon budget. He also recognised some of the impacts that were about to unfold, particularly in rural communities like mine in Suffolk Coastal, including a transition away from oil boilers—something that we all want. He is allowing more time for that to happen, rather than the sudden impact that such measures could have had on many people in my constituency and across the country. His speech was also about aspects of housing and the energy performance certificate. Undoubtedly, in many rural parts of the country, trying to achieve EPC standard C is difficult, because there is pretty old housing—not just from 20 or 30 years ago, but considerably older. Trying to make that change meant that a lot of buildings were at risk of being removed from the private rental sector, which would not be good in terms of housing people in our rural communities.
I also commend the Prime Minister on saying, in a key part of his speech at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh last year, that there is no solution to climate change without protecting and restoring nature. That is 100% right. Again, the United Kingdom should be proud of how it has put nature, and nature-based solutions, at the heart of ensuring that we achieve net zero around the world.
In her 1988 speech, my political heroine Margaret Thatcher highlighted the risk to the world of climate change. She was pivotal in ensuring that the Montreal protocol, and its subsequent amendments, was an innovative way—indeed, the most successful agreement ever reached —to try to tackle climate change. The Kigali amendment to the Montreal protocol was ratified by this Parliament in 2017, and I was pleased to be the DEFRA Minister who led that ratification. The critical outcome of that is to try to prevent 0.5°C of warming, which will help. Indeed, that is the single biggest contribution that will be made towards keeping the goal of 1.5° alive.
This is about how we tackle the issue in a variety of ways, in particular how we use hydrofluorocarbons—in the past it was chlorofluorocarbons—and thinking about the global warming power of the different chemicals we use. In my constituency, GAH Transport has been in operation for 30 years. It is a small business, but it is really making an impact with the amount of research and innovation that it is undertaking to try to use more of the sorts of chemical that reduce global warming potential. That will be an important part of the innovation we need not just in this country but around the world. I am delighted that the UK Government are funding, through international climate finance and other aspects of official development assistance, important progress in India and Rwanda. That is important progress in the cooling challenges that those countries face, not only when heating or cooling homes, but also—particularly in Rwanda, working with other African nations nearby—when thinking about the impact on agriculture, and how we can try to reduce food waste. We are supporting that important innovation to ensure that we keep the goal of 1.5° alive.
I have one request for the Minister. The United Arab Emirates, which is taking up the COP28 presidency, has not ratified the Kigali amendment, and I encourage him to raise that with the COP28 President and Ministers for that country to see whether they can do that. We need leadership across the world. The amendment is already in effect because a sufficient number of countries have signed, but it would show further leadership from the UAE to undertake that important ratification.
I admit that I am a bit of a veteran of COPs. I went to COP23 in Bonn in 2017, and to COP24 in Katowice. We had the magnificent COP26 in Glasgow, with our own president, my right hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Sir Alok Sharma). In many ways that was a game changer for nature, and it was strengthened last year at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh. Going back to Bonn, nature was really the Cinderella of it all. The oceans—we were already seeing the change, and the impact of climate change; we were starting to see acidification. Although the seas are still alkaline, they are getting more acidic, and it is important to recognise that power and how nature has helped us.
Oceans have effectively been absorbing so much carbon that the impacts—what that is doing to nature—are now starting to become clear. The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) mentioned the bleaching of coral reefs and the potential loss of those reefs, and it is important that nature goes hand in hand with climate strategy. I am delighted that the UK Government have made that a key part of what we do.
On other aspects of nature, the Minister and I have attended a variety of international meetings. Most recently we were together in India for the G20, and I was with the former Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my right hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), in Japan at the G7. It has been an important part of that journey that we work globally with partners. To some extent, that has been the secret of what made the Montreal protocol work so well. Funding was given to try to help countries around the world with that innovation and transition. Some of those things are not straightforward. For example, right beneath us we have the tube system, and the way that some of these chemicals or gases were used in the past has been a key part of some of our own infrastructure. We need to change away from that, in particular by not using sulphur hexafluoride any more, or by reducing it and phasing it down as far as we can. It is important that we share our understanding and technology, and that is why what I said about India and Rwanda is an important part of making that happen.
Thinking a little more broadly, I will briefly touch on my time at the Department for Work and Pensions. I do so because I know that a lot of these measures will need financing. We made an important decision to make reporting to the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures mandatory when it comes to pensions. If we think about the trillions of pounds of assets that are in global business and being invested, it makes sense for businesses to think ahead about the impact of climate change, and for investors to do so as well. That does not mean that things will happen overnight. Businesses must be conscious of what the impact of climate change will be, and frankly they need to start financing to try to mitigate that impact or adapt towards it. As a slight aside, I welcome the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, and I hope I can persuade the Secretary of State for the Department for Work and Pensions to adopt that in future as well.
In order to ensure that we achieve net zero by 2050, we do have to think of the planet—of course we do—and we have to think of people. A lot of this is quite an uncomfortable transition and a change to a way of life, and we must make it as straightforward as possible. I also know that we can be prosperous as a consequence of these changes, whether that is through green jobs in the UK, or ensuring that instead of spending lots of money on having to adapt, mitigate or deal with crises in different parts of the world, we build such measures into our systematic way of growing globally in terms of our prosperity. That is why it is so important that the £11.5 billion of international climate finance is still a key part of the Government’s strategy.
My constituency contains a nuclear power station, Sizewell B. It was home to Sizewell A, which is now being decommissioned, and planning consent has been given for Sizewell C. It really matters for our energy supply that we have a mix. There is also a lot of offshore wind in the southern North sea. The impact on the onshore infrastructure required to bring that into our network is a source of much concern in Suffolk, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister is well aware of that. I will not dwell on that—I intend to bring it up another time—but to take the national and global position, we need to work out how we will make that transition fair, thinking of the impact on communities and on nature. I know that my right hon. Friend is wise about those matters.
The shadow Minister referred to the greenhouse gases inventory. I agree that we should look to bring saltmarsh, woodlands and so on into the inventory. I am delighted that DEFRA’s chief scientific adviser, Dr Gideon Henderson, is undertaking that work. I wish him well and hope he will be able to work at pace. I will shortly talk about mangroves—my favourite, they are magic and it would not be a speech from me if I did not talk about them—and we have to recognise that saltmarsh is our equivalent of mangroves. In my time previously in DEFRA and in the past year, I tried but did not quite get there—I really need the Marine Management Organisation to work much more collaboratively with Natural England and the Environment Agency to make it more straightforward to plant saltmarsh. There have been too many complications with licensing in different ways, and it is very frustrating. Like mangroves, saltmarsh is multipurpose. It can sequester carbon, it can be a good flood defence, and it is a brilliant habitat for many of the migratory wading birds that come to our shores. I am very keen that we make good progress on making that happen.
On emissions, I want to thank Robert Caudwell who did a report for DEFRA on lowland peat and the impact of farming and agriculture. I wrote the foreword to the Government’s response earlier this year and welcomed the investment towards tackling the emissions, because it is a significant amount. It is of course important that we have food security, but we also need to tackle emissions from agriculture in a measured way. Wider work on the restoration of peatlands has been a passion of mine for several years.
My right hon. Friend mentioned deforestation, which was one of the key elements of COP26 in the leaders’ pledge, various declarations and the coalition of ambitions. I am known for wanting to make sure we turn ambitions into action, and I know that the House will share that thought. I was, therefore, delighted that we were able to contribute to the Amazon Fund, which will help Brazil in particular. That was announced by the Prime Minister earlier this year. Progress is being made on getting the forest risk commodities legislation ready, and I hope it will be laid before the House before too long. It is important that as we make these changes we do our best to reduce deforestation and our demands through supply chains, and I commend the companies that have already made those changes. There is more to do, and I hope more will be done very shortly.
Nature-based solutions can be symbiotic and provide much more value for money in achieving what we want to achieve. It has not always been the case that actions taken to reduce carbon have been beneficial to the environment. That is not a criticism. The dash for diesel had other impacts, especially with particulate matter 2.5. People did not know at the time, but we should recognise now that the dash for diesel had an impact on other aspects of the environment and it is important that we consider both as we make further changes.
I have a particular passion for mangroves. I tried to brand them “blue forests” to make them a bit more accessible around the world, but they are magical. They are magic because, bang for buck, they are better at carbon sequestration than the Amazon forests. They have been in place for a long time, but they are also under threat, because they make brilliant wood for building homes and boats. I commend countries such as Mozambique that have put in national protections. We should think about how much of the Commonwealth has mangroves, because at the moment they do not get rewarded for the protections they have put in place.
Communities do understand; it is not just about carbon. What is magic about mangroves is that they provide a brilliant place to develop aquaculture. The fishing industries locally can be sustainable because of the opportunities for the growth of fish stock and protection from other predators, just by the nature of the mangroves. They also have an impact on coastal erosion and protection. Haiti in the Caribbean suffered a devastating hurricane some years ago, but, while the areas with mangroves were still damaged, they were the quickest to recover. That is why I am on a mission, and will continue to be so as long as I have breath, to champion mangroves whether in this House or as I regularly did in ministerial meetings around the world.
The magic of mangroves needs to be recognised more, and that is why I was pleased that for COP28 the UAE made a commitment to plant more mangroves. My right hon. Friend the Minister and I went different ways after the G20 in Chennai, and I had the privilege of visiting the second largest mangrove forest in the world at Pichavaram, and it was exceptionally special. I love that the community also recognises how special the forest is and how important it is to protect it. I am conscious that other parts of the world have had a slash and burn approach in the past to generate other aspects of the economy, but now Governments and communities have recognised the importance of stopping deforestation, as my right hon. Friend mentioned.
On the history of climate change, I give credit to the Labour Government who introduced the Climate Act 2008, and we took a generally cross-party approach to it. David Cameron introduced “vote blue, go green” and was really behind the change. The Act legislated for an 80% reduction by 2050, and it was actually my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), when she was Prime Minister, who made the change to a 100% reduction by law. Those legal targets matter. We should also recognise that it was Boris Johnson who really made a difference at COP26. He brought nature and the world together to make sure that we would keep up the momentum.
There is no doubt in my mind that covid was a bit of a body-check to progress on many environmental matters, but it is important that we keep accelerating, and I wish my right hon. Friend the Minister well at COP28. I know that several Ministers are going, including Lord Benyon from DEFRA and my successor as the Secretary of State. It matters that we are there. We need to bring others with us, but they will not come with us if we just attack what they do.
Just last week, I was in Beijing where I met Minister Huang, the president of the Committee on Biological Diversity that led to the immense global biodiversity framework agreed last December in Montreal. We have to work with China and with other countries—I think in particular of Minister Yadav in India. I was able to explain what I thought was the Prime Minister’s just transition, but we certainly cannot reduce our ambition; we have to work with other countries, and challenge them but bring them along, because it matters that everybody makes their commitment.
It does not matter if the United Kingdom or any other country is the first to reach net zero—what matters is when the last country hits net zero. We need to ensure that as many countries as possible achieve that by 2050, if not before, and I wish my right hon. Friend the Minister well in the negotiations. I know there is ambition in our thinking about some of the different approaches that need to be taken. I hope that he will also be key to the Commonwealth playing its part. At the UN General Assembly, I was delighted to chair the first meeting of Commonwealth Ministers for environment and climate, and there was certainly ambition there. Let us turn that into action. I have great confidence in my right hon. Friend making that happen.
Health and Social Care Update
Debate between Thérèse Coffey and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster(2 years, 2 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Thérèse Coffey)
I am pleased today to set out to Parliament our plan for patients. As the Prime Minister said on the doorstep of Downing Street, she had three clear priorities: growing the economy; tackling energy security and support for households and businesses; and the NHS, with patients being able to get a GP appointment.
Patients are my top priority and I will be their champion, focusing on the issues that most affect them or their loved ones. Most of the time, patients have a great experience, but we must not paper over the problems that we face. We expect backlogs to rise before they fall as more patients come forward for diagnosis and treatment after the pandemic, and the data shows, sadly, that there is too much variation in the access and care that people receive across the country.
The scale of the challenge necessitates a national endeavour. As we work together to tackle these immense challenges, I will be proactive, not prescriptive, in our approach as we apply a relentless focus on measures that affect most people’s experience of the NHS and social care.
Today, we are taking the first step in this important journey by publishing “Our Plan for Patients”, which I will lay in the Libraries of both Houses. It sets out a range of measures to help the NHS and social care perform at their best for patients. The plan will inform patients and empower them to live healthier lives; place an intensive focus on primary care, the gateway to the NHS for most people; use prevention to strengthen resilience and the health of the nation; and improve performance and productivity.
To succeed, we will need a true national endeavour, supported by our making it easier for clinical professionals to return to help the NHS, as well as drawing on the energy and enthusiasm of the million people who volunteered to help during the pandemic by opening up opportunities for them to help in different ways. That could be by becoming a community first responder, or by, for example, strengthening good neighbour schemes across the country. We will also explore the creation of an ambulance auxiliary service.
The plan sets out our work on the ABCD of priorities that affect most people’s experience of the NHS and social care. First, on ambulances, I want to reduce waiting times for patients and apply a laser-like focus on handover delays, so that ambulances get back on the road and to patients, where they are needed most.
Our analysis shows that 45% of the delays are occurring in just 15 hospital trusts. That is why the local NHS will be doing intensive work with those trusts to create more capacity in hospitals—the equivalent of 7,000 more beds—by this winter through a combination of freeing up beds, with a focus on discharge, and people staying at home and being monitored remotely through the sort of technology that played such an important role during the pandemic. In addition, when patients call 999, the speed of answering is critical, so we will increase the number of call handlers for both 999 and 111 calls.
Next is the backlog, where the waiting list for planned care currently stands at about 7 million, exacerbated by the pandemic. This summer, we announced that we have virtually eliminated waits of over two years, and we remain on track to reach the next milestones in our plan. To boost capacity, we are accelerating our plans to roll out community diagnostic centres as well as new hospitals, and we will maximise the use of the independent sector to provide even more treatment for patients.
As well as capacity, we are also getting more people on the frontline, making it easier for people to work in and help the NHS. We know that people are leaving the workforce for a variety of reasons. We have listened, and we are responding and addressing a number of those reasons. For instance, pension rules can currently be a disincentive for clinicians who want to stay in the profession or to return from retirement and help our national endeavour. We will correct pension rules relating to inflation; we will expect NHS trusts to offer pension recycling; and we will extend until 2024 measures that will allow people to stay or return to the NHS.
I can announce today that we will extend the operation of the emergency registers for health professionals for two more years. That is, of course, on top of commitments to boost the health and care workforce, such as our manifesto pledge to recruit 50,000 more nurses by 2024. That will sit alongside the design and delivery of our forthcoming workforce plan.
C is for social care. At the moment, one of the key challenges is discharging patients from hospital into more appropriate care settings to free up beds and help improve ambulance response times. To tackle that, I can announce today that we are launching a £500 million adult social care discharge fund for this winter. The local NHS will be working with councils with targeted plans on specific care packages to support people being either in their own home or in the wider community. That £500 million acts as the down-payment in the rebalancing of funding across health and social care as we develop our longer-term plans.
I know that there is a shortage of carers across the country. We will continue to work with the Department for Work and Pensions on a national recruitment campaign. In addition, since last winter, we have opened up international recruitment routes for carers. We will support the sector with £15 million this year to help to employ more care workers from abroad. We are also accelerating the roll-out of technologies such as digitised social care records, which can save care workers about 20 minutes a shift, freeing up time for carers to care.
Finally, D is for doctors and dentists. I am determined to address one of the most frustrating problems faced by many patients: getting an appointment to see their doctor, or getting to see a dentist at all.
Starting with doctors, we are taking five steps to help make that happen: first, setting the expectation that everyone who needs a GP appointment can get one within two weeks; secondly, opening up time for more than 1 million extra appointments, so that patients with urgent needs can be seen on the same day; thirdly, making it easier to book an appointment; fourthly, publishing performance by practice to help to inform patients; and fifthly, requiring the local NHS to hold practices to account, providing support to those practices with the most acute access challenges to improve performance.
Clearly, clinicians are best placed to prioritise according to the clinical need of their patients. In July, 44% of appointments were same-day appointments, but too few practices were consistently offering appointments within a fortnight.
To help free up appointments, we will ease pressures on GP practices by expanding the role of community pharmacies. I am pleased to announce that we have agreed a deal for an expanded offer over the next 18 months. Pharmacists will be able to prescribe certain medications rather than requiring a GP prescription. As well as other measures involving community pharmacists, we estimate that that will free up 2 million appointments. We are also changing funding rules to give freedoms to GPs to boost the number of staff to support their practice. We estimate that that measure could free up 1 million GP appointments.
For patients, we will make it easier for them to contact their practice, both on the phone—we are making an extra 31,000 phone lines available this winter, followed by further deployment of cloud-based telephony—and online, particularly through the NHS app. As I set out, we will also correct pension rules so that our most experienced GPs can stay in practice. By extending the emergency register, we are creating opportunities for people other than GPs to undertake tasks such as vaccinations.
On dentists, there are too many dental deserts. That is why we are setting out an ambition that everyone seeking NHS dental care can receive it when they need it. We have already started changing the dental contract to incentivise dentists to do more NHS work and take on more difficult cases. I pay tribute to my predecessors in this role for their success in beginning to tackle this long-standing issue.
We will also streamline routes into NHS dentistry for those trained overseas so that they can start treating patients more quickly. We will make it a contractual requirement for dentists to publish online whether they are taking on new NHS patients.
These measures, across a number of important areas, are the start, not the end, of our ambitions for health and care. They will help us to manage the pressure that health and care will face this winter and next, and they will improve these vital services for the long term. My priorities are patients’ priorities, and I will endeavour, through a powerful partnership with the NHS and local authorities, to level up care and match the expectations that the public rightly have. Whether you live in a city or a town, in the countryside or on the coast, this Government will be on your side when you need care the most. I commend this statement to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Dr Coffey
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his warm welcome to my ministerial team and me. It has been just two weeks—[Hon. Members: “Twelve years!”] Forgive me. Well, in those12 years there have been more doctors and nurses working in the NHS than ever before. We have record funding going into the NHS. The money that the Government spend through the Department of Health and Social Care is about 40% of our day-to-day spending. That is the reality of the Conservative party investing in the long-term health of our nation.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned a variety of things. I can absolutely say that there will be no changes to the target of a four-hour wait in A&E. I believe that it matters. I will give the House a recent personal experience. In July, I went to A&E myself; I waited for nearly nine hours to see a doctor, and I still did not get any treatment. I was asked to go back the next day, so I went to a different hospital just three miles away and was seen and treated appropriately. That is the sort of variation we are seeing across the NHS, and it is the reason for my approach.
Only last week we started getting some data from NHS Digital about what is happening practice by practice, so we can start to understand it and start to use experts in the local NHS to prioritise helping those patients who are not getting the service that they should rightly expect, while giving freedom to those other GPs who are doing a fantastic job of supporting patients in their practice. That is why I do not intend to be prescriptive, but I am determined on behalf of patients to drive up the performance of those who need help to do things better.
On ambulances, I am very conscious of the issue. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we have been in power for 12 years, and I am conscious that I have been working for a decade on improving things for my constituents as well. With a particular focus on ambulances, I think it would be helpful for the House to learn about our recent analysis showing that 45% of the handover delays are concentrated in a part of the country. Even so, I appreciate that that is not good enough.
I also understand that although similar numbers of ambulance calls are being made, there are many more category 1 and 2 calls and our fantastic paramedics are treating more people at home without needing to take them to hospital. Nevertheless, that brings me the challenge of how we can do more to help ambulances get back on the road so that they can treat patients. As with many other emergency services, we also need to consider the potential extension of volunteers through auxiliary services or community first responders. In London alone there are about 120 community first responders, but I think I have more than that in my constituency of Suffolk Coastal. It is about recognising that for the million people who volunteered to help, we can find a way for them to help us during these particularly challenging times, as well as working with the NHS to tackle the fundamental issues.
On access to GPs, I am conscious that Labour introduced the 48-hour target when it was in power. We were told by the NHS and by doctors that of course they met it—I expect that was part of their contracts—but that it did not necessarily mean better outcomes for patients at their practice; indeed, they got into a routine of not booking appointments more regularly. It is important that we address that.
I am very conscious that the plan for patients has only just been published. I deliberately tried to ensure that we held back important aspects of it, such as the £500 million adult discharge fund, for the House’s interest rather than speaking about them before coming here today.
I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I am very happy to continue to work in partnership with the NHS. Keeping the focus on patients is critical, as is building on the existing NHS winter plan, developing the workforce, and all the plans and strategies that need to be carefully considered as we set about the long-term improvements that I think he will enjoy and will want me to champion on behalf of patients.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, Jeremy Hunt.
Dr Coffey
I thank my right hon. Friend. I remember supporting him from the Back Benches in his passion for the NHS, and I am absolutely committed to continuing that.
I think my predecessors may have committed themselves to publishing aspects of, or conclusions from, the workforce plan, but I assure my right hon. Friend that now that I have spent time focusing on the priorities, work on the plan is already ongoing and I hope to make progress on further elements today, working alongside my new ministerial team, so that we can maximise that progress.
One of the key things that I want to do is make it more straightforward for people—wherever they are in the world, as long as they are of sufficient quality—to be able to come and practise in England. I was astonished to learn that we cannot even allow people who are accredited in Scotland to come here straight away and practise as dentists. We will be laying regulations on the day we return from the recess, which will enable the General Dental Council, for example, to accelerate this aspect of streamlining so we can ensure that when high-quality doctors and dentists are accredited, anywhere in the world, we can take that into account and enable them to help patients in this country more rapidly.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I call the Scottish National party spokesman, Martyn Day.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
Let me start by welcoming the Secretary of State to her new role and thanking her for advance sight of her statement.
There is no doubt that the NHS, in all four nations, is facing an incredibly difficult winter, with possible rises in covid infections alongside winter illnesses and increases in slips and falls, all of it while recovering from the dire effects of the pandemic and, now, an energy crisis. An inflation-busting uplift is vital to getting our health systems back into good shape, enabling them to get through this winter and support those in need. It has been estimated that the cost of living crisis will add £3.7 billion a year to the cost of social care alone, with far higher rises across the NHS generally. How does the Secretary of State justify her Government’s prioritising of bankers and tax cuts for the rich at a time when investment in public services is more essential than ever, and will she support the SNP’s call for an NHS uplift greater than inflation?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
It may be helpful if I explain that I am trying to call people first in this statement who perhaps did not get in during the last statement.
Social Security (Additional Payments) Bill
Debate between Thérèse Coffey and Baroness Winterton of DoncasterWednesday 22nd June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Dr Coffey
My hon. Friend is right to point out the additional measures. I do not know exactly how many people in his constituency will be affected, but I rely on his excellent local knowledge as a great constituency MP. Absolutely—I am setting out additional measures to those that he has outlined.
The Bill will deliver one-off additional payments responding to the challenges faced by people in every part of our country over the coming months. I thank the usual channels and the House more broadly for agreeing that it can make its necessary progress today. Its provisions are intentionally straightforward and will enable a straightforward approach for claimants, with no complicated forms, no bureaucracy and nobody having to make an additional claim, as payments will automatically go into people’s bank accounts.
The actions in the Bill will boost the budgets of millions of stretched families in every part of the United Kingdom, helping them through the cost of living challenge. I commend it to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the shadow Secretary of State, Jonathan Ashworth.
Pensions Update
Debate between Thérèse Coffey and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Dr Coffey
It would probably not be wise for me to go down that route, because we are still trying to estimate the likely uplifts in the different metrics. We will not actually use the figures until later in the year, but because of how the machinery of benefit upratings works, we need to be in a position to trigger it in November. Given my hon. Friend’s position on the Work and Pensions Committee, he may wish to ask that question a little later once we have some more detailed analysis in that regard, if that is okay.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the Chair of the Select Committee.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Is it still the Secretary of State’s view that it is important that the level of the basic state pension keeps track with earnings over time, as the coalition pension reforms assumed? If so, will it not require some further adjustment after these two exceptional years? Given that pensioner poverty was starting to increase before the pandemic, after a long period in which, as she said, that did not happen, what will her Department do to increase the currently very low take-up of pension credit?
Supporting Disadvantaged Families
Debate between Thérèse Coffey and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster(4 years ago)
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Dr Coffey
It is nice to see my hon. Friend back in the House after her maternity leave. She speaks with appropriate compassion and she recognises some of the local organisations in her area. I encourage her to work with them and her council to help to ensure that the £170 million funding can be effectively distributed, so that the most disadvantaged children and families are truly helped. We want to make sure that that activity continues to support similar children through the holiday activity fund.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
In order to allow the safe exit of hon. Members participating in this item of business and the safe arrival of those participating in the next, I am suspending the House for a few minutes.