Valedictory Debate
Tim Loughton Excerpts(6 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) , who had been my good friend for many years before he became my hon. Friend. We had a long-standing shared interest in his wife—[Laughter.] That is perhaps not the appropriate thing to say, given that his daughter and my goddaughter are in the Gallery, but we have been chums for a long time.
I have to admit that, unlike many other hon. colleagues, I have had no hugs in the last few days. [Hon. Members: “Ah.”] That may be because I have been in the mountain kingdom of Lesotho, far away from this place, watching the incredible events of the last few days unfurl. I was able to come back here early in time to join this last hurrah, to vote on something—goodness knows what it was—just now and to speak in this valedictory debate.
Many hon. Friends may not have been to Lesotho. The former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), spoke earlier about the importance of defending democracy. It is interesting that there is a small, close Commonwealth country friend that absolutely shows love and respect for this House. The Speaker of the Lesotho Parliament said to me that, whenever he is vexed by something about procedure or what he should do, he always turns to the House of Commons. It is at a different end of the planet and in another hemisphere, but so many people around the world look to this place. What we do here matters beyond our walls here, beyond our shores and beyond our constituencies. It is really important that we all remember that. I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, if I look slightly dishevelled and below par today, but I spent the last 20 hours on a series of planes to get back here today.
Earlier, people promised anecdotes about various trips. I am not going to give any anecdotes. I am not going to talk about going to Syria with the now hon. Member for Rochdale (George Galloway)—good grief—going to Yemen with Keith Vaz, or going to Greenland with Mr Deputy Speaker, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans), who was in the Chair just now; it is probably just as well.
Madam Deputy Speaker, in the 27 years you and I have served in this House—two life sentences, as my wife constantly reminds me—we have seen great events; some better than others. We have seen the Iraq war, the financial crash, Brexit, covid and the transition of monarchs.
Madam Deputy Speaker, you and I were elected on 1 May 1997, with 33 first-time Conservatives, I think—those of us who scraped through the battle of the 1997 election —as well as 176 first-time Labour MPs and one new Ulster Unionist party Member. Out of those numbers, today some 13 Conservatives remain, including you, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead, and various others. Only 18 of those 176 Labour MPs have survived to this day, as well as the one Ulster Unionist who is now a DUP MP, so on our side the 1997 intake was resilient, as you and I know only too well. I became an MP on 1 May, and I will cease to be an MP on 30 May next week, which happens to be my birthday. What a birthday treat that is going to be.
First, I probably owe Mr Speaker an apology. I am one of the longest-serving members of the naughty corner—or the rough trade corner, as it has been known—the source of much heckling, noise and verbal exercise, the source of that one famous quote at Prime Minister’s Question Time when the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) made the rookie mistake of leaving a question open-ended. He said that he had just been with his comrades in the European socialist group at the European Parliament, and guess what they said to him? The heckle from this corner was, “Who are you?” and various other heckles besides.
I apologise for the heckling and the noise over the years, but of course, during the tenure of the previous Speaker, we wore a badge of honour as members of the BBB club. It was a literal badge; I have tried to find it. That was—I hope this is in “Erskine May”—the “bollocked by Bercow” club, of which there was a league table in The Sunday Times, alongside a story about those of us who had been upbraided by the Speaker on the most occasions. It certainly was a badge of honour; thank goodness that things have moved on and the quality of the Chair has improved hugely over the past few years. Fuelled by jelly babies in this corner, as well as good banter and good camaraderie, I hope—I should leave a little note—that whoever occupies the naughty corner after the election, be it on the Opposition Benches or the Government Benches, upholds the best traditions that we have tried to uphold.
As you and I know, Madam Deputy Speaker, it is a privilege to be in public service. It is a privilege to be a Member of Parliament, to serve this House, to serve as a Minister—for those of us who have been given that opportunity, for however fleeting a time—and to serve on Select Committees. I have been the deputy Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee for 10 years now, and those Committees are one of the great strengths of this House. The Home Affairs Committee was described by Quentin Letts as probably the best Committee in Westminster. In response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) and her reference to dealing with Quentin Letts, I had the great advantage, because when I first arrived and he was—I think—the sketch writer on The Daily Telegraph, he and I were often mistaken for each other. In those days, certainly, we looked quite similar, so when he wrote up any references to me, they were usually prefaced by “The Adonis-like Tim Loughton, the epitome of charm and handsomeness”, or whatever. Try looking like the people who write the columns, rather than those who are written about in the columns.
But the greatest privilege, of course, is to serve one’s constituents. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead has also said, and as others have echoed, the first and last reference point of being an MP should be our constituents: their problems are our nation’s problems, and we need to understand those problems if we are to provide the solutions for all of our country. As many of us know—goodness knows it is going to be the case this time around—the seat for which one is selected is something of a lottery. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead was going to be the candidate in East Worthing and Shoreham, because the people compiling the shortlist rather preferred her to me, but then she was selected for Maidenhead and so the way was clear.
Sussex is where I was born, grew up and went to school. The constituency was where my relatives lived and where my father had gone to school. To have that sort of connection to one’s constituency is particularly special, as many hon. Members have pointed out. It has been a joy to represent the best county in the United Kingdom as its Member of Parliament for 27 years. I am grateful to my constituents, in a constituency whose boundaries have been completely unchanged, who have had the foresight to elect and re-elect me in seven elections. In 1992 I pitched my tent in the soviet republic of Sheffield, Brightside—alas, I narrowly lost on the day by 22,500 votes due to the inclement weather—but we have all been through that. So I thank my constituents first.
Like everyone who has spoken, I want to thank my staff, starting with Fiona Chadwick, who I inherited in 1997. She had worked for Terence Higgins in Worthing and other MPs in the House of Commons since the 1980s. She was part of the coven, as it was called, in the basement. She has great expertise and still works for me part time. I also thank Kari Sargeant, who has worked with me and run my office since 2015, as well as Justine, India, Ellie, Liza and others in my office. I only employ women; I know my place. They run a very efficient office.
I have employed a number of researchers over the years, many of whom have gone on to greater things. Some have become millionaires; some have become Ministers for the Cabinet Office with disgracefully larger majorities than I have in my constituency, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) will testify. I thank all my staff and the many researchers and others who have worked for me over the years. I have never actually had to sack anybody, which is quite a surprise to my hon. Friend.
As other hon. Members have done, I thank all the staff of the House who make this place tick. I will not read them all out, and I will certainly not mention the bar staff, who seem to get the biggest cheer from my colleagues when they are mentioned. The staff are the unsung heroes who make democracy work so that we can do our job.
I thank my civil servants from my time at the Department for Education. The secret of having good civil servants is to have happy hour. At 6 o’clock, the drinks cabinet in my office was always open for those members of my private office who were still around. I do not think anyone would be allowed to do that these days, but it worked really well. If I had a particularly difficult subject that I wanted a civil servant to have a meeting with me on, I invited them during happy hour and gave them a very large gin and tonic, and I always got my way. That is what good Government is actually about.
As my colleagues have done, I thank all the Conservative party officers and volunteers who do all the work behind the scenes, in all weathers, which makes it possible for us to get elected and do our job.
Most of all—I am glad that many other hon. Members have mentioned this—I thank our families. This is the most family-unfriendly job. It was a particular irony for me, having been the shadow Children’s Minister for eight years and then the Children’s Minister, that my job did not enable me to be as good a father as I would like to have been. When I was first elected in 1997, my son Hector was under three; Freya, the gobby one, to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon is godfather, was just one; and Tilly was minus six months. We give up so much, and our families give up so much more, to enable us to do our job.
Many other hon. Members, including the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who opened the debate, have said that this place has changed a lot and that it has changed for the better, and I agree. In 1997, the security briefing that we were given was five minutes with a police officer, who gave us our locker key and said, “Right, Mr Loughton, you’d better put your name on everything, ’cos crime happens in this place as well, you know.” That was the entirety of the security briefing. The only other briefing was a nice 20-minute video from Betty Boothroyd, with wonderful vistas of the river and the Palace. That was all the preparation we had. Things have moved on greatly, I am glad to say.
In those days, we had all-night sittings—the best place to sleep was under the tables in the Strangers’ dining room. Fortunately, those days have gone. When I served on my first Finance Bill Committee with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb), we had to keep the business going until 5 o’clock in the morning. He and I spent several hours reading out the Southern train timetables between Worthing and Bognor Regis, and talking about related matters, to keep the Committee going. That sort of thing was a bit silly and does not happen anymore, so things have got better.
I echo the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead, who said, “Don’t want to go back into opposition.” We were both elected in 1997. Only by 1 May last year had we been in government for longer than we had been in opposition for those 13 long years beforehand, and government is better.
I end by urging future Governments on a couple of issues on which I feel strongly. I have championed, I hope, the cause of children and young people, particularly disadvantaged children in the care system. As Children’s Minister, I worked on reforming children in care regulations and on adoption—although, I was surprised to read in the biography of the former Prime Minister, now the Foreign Secretary, that that whole piece of work on adoption was actually his idea and only started after I left office. But hey, that’s politics.
We should never forget that children and young people are 20% of the population, but 100% of our future. We lose sight of that at our peril. We have not done enough on children’s social care. It is a false economy not to do that as early as possible and not to work on prevention rather than having to fire-fight the symptoms of neglect. That is why the Best Start for Life programme, championed by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), and the first 1,001 days, which is something I have been involved in, is so important, because it is life changing if we deal with children and their parents at the beginning of their lives, not later in life. Future Governments need to remember that. The work we did on child sexual exploitation and early years is also really important.
Let me turn to one piece of unfinished business. I have here a copy of my private Member’s Bill—I always carry one around—which is now the Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Act 2019, of which I am very proud. It has enabled more than 25,000 couples to have an opposite-sex civil partnership since 2019, and has enabled people getting married to put the name of their mother on their marriage certificate—something that had not happened since 1837.
That may seem like a little thing, but it was brought home to me when I received a wonderful letter from somebody I had never met before whose daughter had just been married in Bath in the same church where he and his late wife had been married. He said that being able to put his late wife’s name on the marriage certificate made such a difference, and that it was as though she was actually there, even though she was not there physically.
The bit of unfinished business is section 4, which gives powers to coroners to investigate stillbirths. It is as vital now as it was when that became law back in 2019 for the Government to get on with it and issue the regulations. I urge the next Government to treat that as a priority.
The job has changed. The job, I think, has got harder. Three people have been murdered in my time here: Jo Cox, David Amess and the police officer Keith Palmer. Social media has made our job harder. It has divided society, and promoted hate and the cancel culture. But those of us who work here—those of us who work together across the Chamber, across Committees and across all-party groups—all share that devotion to public service and making the lives of our constituents and our nation better, regardless of party difference.
I will continue to work with friends across the political divide on other platforms outside of Parliament. After 47 years as a party activist—I joined at the age of 15 —eight elections and 12 years on the Front Bench, I hope that I have made a bit of a difference through legislation in this place and a bit of a difference for my constituents, and that I have gained a bit of respect for what I have tried to do.
Finally, there is an old adage that poses the conundrum: what is the difference between knowledge and wisdom? Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable, but wisdom is knowing not to put a tomato in a fruit salad. This place is full of knowledge, but I think we have seen today that we are losing a lot of wisdom from this Chamber. That is a great sadness, with various colleagues moving on for whatever reason, but this place is a source of wisdom. When we use that wisdom wisely and with consensus across the House, we can achieve great things, and we have. I am proud to have played a small part in that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tim Loughton Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Mel Stride
I am not sure precisely which disability payment the hon. Gentleman is referring to, but certainly the cost of living disability payment has been paid this year, in addition to the increase in the national living wage, tax cuts and national insurance tax cuts, all of which help people, particularly those on low pay. That is why, under this Government, the level of absolutely poverty has fallen by 1.7 million since 2010, with 400,000 fewer children in poverty.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
The Minister for Employment (Jo Churchill)
Flexible working can play an important role in supporting people to start, stay in and succeed in work, and for businesses to grow. I have already seen at first hand examples of good employers offering tailored roles or changed hours to support workers, particularly parents, who have caring responsibilities. Flexibility has made a difference and drives success for all.
Tim Loughton
As the Minister mentioned, the hospital industry—especially in coastal constituencies such as mine—is suffering disproportionately from high vacancy levels exacerbated by covid and the shift in working patterns. What more can the Government do to encourage smarter working and job sharing? For example, students and younger people could work some of the later and weekend hours—the less social hours—sharing with parents with family responsibilities, who could work more regular hours during the daytime.
Jo Churchill
The UK hospitality industry does a fantastic job, particularly at this time of the year when it is helping us to enjoy the festive season. I am providing help and collaboration by delivering pilot schemes across the industry. In particular, we are developing a more standardised approach to training, which includes a proposal to award a hospitality skills passport. We need to do all we can with workers to build confidence and the right skills. I am interested by my hon. Friend’s idea of helping employers to refocus where the needs are, and I shall be happy to work with him, because hospitality offers a great career and transferable skills.
Mel Stride
The record speaks for itself: this Government have been behind £104 billion-worth of support for the most vulnerable over the period 2022 to 2025; poverty in absolute terms, after housing, has fallen by 1.7 million since 2009-10, when the hon. Gentleman’s party was last in office; we have 400,000 fewer children and 200,000 fewer pensioners in absolutely poverty—under the last Labour Government, we had the fourth highest level of pensioner poverty in Europe; and we have put the national living wage up by 9.8% and cut taxes as well.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
May I add my warm welcome to my near neighbour, the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex, as the new disabilities Minister? Does she acknowledge that one feature of covid has been a big increase in the incidence of mental health issues, particularly among younger people? What is her Department doing to tailor its programmes to get those non-working parts of the population who have not been working since covid and are suffering from mental health challenges back into the workforce?
Mims Davies
I thank my hon. Friend for welcoming me to this brief. I will still be very much focused on young people and those key transitions in their lives. We have our reform relating to universal support, our fit note reform and our WorkWell partnerships, which launched on 16 November and will support 60,000 long-term sick and disabled people to start, stay and succeed in work. The youth hubs we have at the Department for Work and Pensions, which are focused on the under-25s, zero in on this issue in particular.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tim Loughton Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
I commend my hon. Friend for the extensive work that he does to promote skills and employment to his constituents. In his constituency, we of course have the full offer from Jobcentre Plus, with fairs, recruitment days and an extensive skills offering, to make sure that we keep bearing down on unemployment and economic inactivity.
Tim Loughton
Mr Speaker, you may be aware that the age profile in Adur and Worthing in my constituency is slightly higher than the national demographic, so I was particularly pleased by the Secretary of State’s expansion of the mid-life MOT—although perhaps it is slightly too late for him and me, in our seventh decade. Given the higher reliability, productivity and loyalty of older workers, what more is he doing to keep older employees in work or to tempt back those who may have taken early retirement?
Mel Stride
I have to say that I am surprised that there are so many elderly—an exemplar of the spring chicken brigade as my hon. Friend is—but he raises a very important point. There is the mid-life MOT, but we also provide returnerships—a shortened, accelerated version of apprenticeships for older workers—and of course the Chancellor announced important changes to the tax treatment of pensions to keep some older workers, particularly in the NHS and our medical services, in work.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tim Loughton Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
Mims Davies
We are absolutely determined that no region is left behind, and we have invested in and strengthened our support offer, as I have outlined. My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that on 18 November we are hosting a kickstart employer day at Clacton Jobcentre Plus, matching employers directly with those young people in need to find them suitable roles.
Tim Loughton
I thank my hon. Friend for coming along to the DWP centre in Worthing and meeting a kickstarter working for the youth hub there, and for joining me in doing a shift working tables at the Fat Greek Taverna afterwards, as a result of which we were both offered jobs—the way things are going, that might come in quite handy. What more can we do to have outreach services, to make sure that young people get into those youth hubs in the first place, where they are given all the support they need on interviews and writing CVs, and that they turn up at interviews when they are given a job prospect?
Mims Davies
I like to think it was tenacious Tim and me together working on the hospitality shift. I know my hon. Friend is passionate about youth employment, and we did enjoy that visit. He saw that youth hub just last week, which shows that vital new link in the community, bringing together local partners. That wraparound support is key for the under-25s, particularly those who are not engaged with the Government at any other level; that is where our youth employment coaches come into their own. We have to remove those barriers to work for all.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tim Loughton Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
Mims Davies
My hon. Friend will now be aware that we have signed a lease on a new jobcentre in Stockton’s Dunedin House. I am pleased to report that work is now under way on opening to support claimants, which is due by the end of this month. A total of 49 new work coaches have been recruited in my hon. Friend’s constituency to help local jobseekers, and 20 will be based in the new site, along with some of our more experienced work coaches and leadership, to ensure the sharing of best practice and helping people in Stockton to progress.
Tim Loughton [V]
May I pay tribute to Worthing jobcentre, which has been very proactive in dealing with new benefit claimants and will have a lot of extra work, alas, with people who find themselves out of a job because of the pandemic.
Work coaches offer important support to a diverse range of claimants, but self-employed claimants can really benefit from the wisdom of someone who has direct experience of setting up their own business, so what specialist support will be available to UC claimants looking to boost their incomes through self-employment in the future?
Mims Davies
DWP work coaches can refer claimants interested in moving into self-employment to our new enterprise allowance programme, and to other sources of local business advice and support as appropriate. The new enterprise allowance offers participants the important opportunity to develop that business, as my hon. Friend points out, to make that business plan and receive more than a year’s support from a business mentor to make a success of it, in Worthing and beyond.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tim Loughton Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Dr Coffey
What is different from the regime we had earlier in the year is that then the strong message was very much for people to stay at home and retail was closed, along with a number of different sectors. That is not the case anymore: we have now had to intervene in a much more limited number of sectors, often in conjunction with the local leadership. As a consequence, we will continue to review the best ways to support people through the welfare system, as well as through the plan for jobs and the measures that the Chancellor has introduced.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
Dr Coffey
One element of the kickstart scheme, a £2 billion investment in the future of our young people, is designed to help people to get on the first rung of the ladder with a proper job. It is a way for those people who have recently left school or university and are at risk of long-term unemployment to get experience and financing, which does not just have to be through private organisations and could be through local government or charitable or other sectors. It is a specific way to ensure that those people get not only a job but the extra training and wraparound support that they need to help them further on in their lives.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tim Loughton Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Justin Tomlinson)
I would be very happy to meet the hon. Lady and her colleague. We are determined to continue to improve PIP—31% of claimants now access the highest rate of support, compared to just 15% under the legacy benefits—but I would welcome any additional information.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
As we have heard, many 1950s-born women have now reached the age at which they expected to receive a pension but are not, and many are struggling. Given that the judicial review is now out of the way, will the new Secretary of State agree to meet me and my co-chair of the all-party group on state pension inequality for women, the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), to discuss the proposals in the transitional arrangement document we produced? Can she also give us an estimate of how many women are affected in this way and whether they are in work?
Department for Education
Tim Loughton Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I congratulate the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), on bringing forward this report. It is good that we have recently had more debating time on things to do with children in schools. We have another debate on schools funding on Monday, and we recently spoke about maintained nursery education and the false economy of not continuing to fund it sustainably. Yesterday, we had the announcement on sex and relationship education. All these things add to the pressures and costs on schools, and I am afraid that the budgets for schools just do not go up commensurately to make them possible. We have had an intelligent debate so far. It has concentrated almost exclusively on schools, but it is a little-known fact that children’s social care is an important part of the Department for Education, which comes within the scope of today’s debate, so I want to raise a few issues on this.
Meg Hillier
One of the challenges is that, while this is a policy responsibility for the Department for Education, the funding goes through the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and directly to local authorities. This is one of the instances in which the Government need to work together and not succumb to cost-shunting, where cuts in one area can have an impact on children’s achievement elsewhere.
Tim Loughton
The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and it is of course the local authorities that get the blame for not delivering the goods, even though we have not been giving them the money to do so in certain cases. There are also huge differentials in the way in which those local authorities use their money.
On children’s social care, I would like to hear more about sufficiency funding, which the Chair of the Education Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), mentioned, and also about a 10-year plan. Children’s most important years are the ones before they go to school—those years will shape their careers in school and beyond more than anything else—so, for goodness’ sake, if we cannot have a 10-year plan for the social care needs of our children as they grow up, what can we have one for?
I am not going to have time to talk about schools today—I shall have to reserve those comments for the debate on Monday—but I just want to make the point that all the ongoing cost pressures on schools are going to be compounded by the recent directive from the Department for Education that was sent to schools on 6 February recommending a 2% pay rise for teachers this year. That is fine, but the Department’s report stated that
“a pay increase for teachers of 2%, in line with forecast inflation, is affordable within the overall funding available to schools for 2019 to 2020, without placing further pressure on school budgets.”
I am afraid that that is just not the case. School budgets are under huge pressure, certainly in my constituency and elsewhere in West Sussex, where we have been at the bottom of the pile for funding for many years. The cumulative effect of that underfunding means that there is no fat left to cut. All the savings have been made, so even a 2% increase in teachers’ pay, if it is to be paid for by the schools, will have enormous impacts on those school budgets’ ability to provide all the other services, which I will go into in detail in the debate on Monday.
On children’s services, a report commissioned by Action for Children, the National Children’s Bureau, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Children’s Society and Barnardo’s has come out today, and it confirms what we all know about the huge shortfall in funding for children’s social care. That shortfall was also identified in the work that the all-party parliamentary group on children did in the report “Storing Up Trouble” that we produced last year. It is estimated that there will be a £3 billion funding gap by 2025. One of the alarming observations in today’s report is that spending on early intervention services for children and young people fell from £3.7 billion to £1.9 billion between 2010-11 and 2017-18. That is a 49% decrease in spending on early intervention. At the same time, local authority spending on late intervention services for children and young people has risen from £5.9 billion to £6.7 billion—a 12% increase.
This is not rocket science. If we do not spend early to prevent the problems from happening to these children, we will pay for it later. We will pay for it socially—most importantly—and also financially. It is such a false economy not to do more in those early years around perinatal mental health, around child neglect and around making children ready for school, for growing up and for society generally. Some of the biggest falls in spending have been in some of the most deprived authorities in the country, where the impact can be greater because the other support services, including family support services, are not available to help those children.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I have been in this House for eight and a half years. When I retired as deputy leader of Gateshead Council, it had an annual revenue account of £310 million, but now, eight and a half years later, it is down to £200 million despite the huge growth needs built into the system in Gateshead.
Tim Loughton
Well, I have been here for 22 years, and I have also seen a thing or two.
When I was a Minister at the Department for Education, we came up with the early intervention budget because it was the right thing to do on so many fronts. It alarms me that early intervention is seen as a luxury add-on rather than an essential part of everything that we should be doing for our children, and we should be planning for it over the long term. That is why, for all the reasons I have set out, I am pleased to see—I know that the Minister for Children supports this work—the inter-ministerial working party led by the Leader of the House trying to co-ordinate early years activities across Government.
Turning to schools, the big figures that we talk about in these reports—the big percentage increases—are meaningless until we translate them into their impact on the frontline. I have spent the past couple of years getting all the heads from all the schools in my constituency and all the chairs of governors together to ask them about the impact of funding challenges on their schools. I asked not what might happen, but what is happening now. I wrote a seven-page letter to the Secretary of State for Education with the findings from all those schools, which included impacts as a result of not replacing staff or replacing them with less expensive and therefore less qualified staff, of having to remove things from the curriculum, and of doing away with out-of-school visits. Alarmingly, counselling services have also been reduced—almost to zero in some cases—at a time when we all know the effect of mental health stresses on the younger generation. The Government have recognised that, and work is ongoing, but if people are not on hand in schools to help with the stresses and strains that lead to mental health problems, that will just store up expensive problems, both financially and socially, for children in those schools.
We have been generous and have planned for the long term in the national health service, and it is essential not to neglect early long-term planning in a preventive way for our babies, toddlers, children and young people. It is a complete false economy not to be doing that. While I appreciate the additional money that the Government have been putting in, I am afraid that the estimates that we are looking at today, when they are factored down to the impact that they will have in authorities such as mine in West Sussex, which has had severe underfunding for so many years, will have a detrimental effect on the life chances of our children. Frankly, we have to do better, or we will be picking up a much more expensive and complicated bill further down the line.
State Pension Age: Women
Tim Loughton Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Tonia Antoniazzi
The hon. Gentleman makes a very valid point. When the Women and Equalities Committee took evidence from people about the difficulties they face in finding work, we found that employers need to make sensible adjustments in order to keep older workers. Can the Government guarantee that that is being done? It is recognised that ageism remains—
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way because, otherwise, I might have been the only person not to interrupt her, and I do not want to feel like the odd one out. As the other co-chair of the all-party group and a signatory to the Bill, which shows that there is cross-party agreement on this, may I say that I agree with much of what she says? Will she just emphasise that many of us, over many years, have been trying to get changes to the way in which these formulas have been calculated, but that there is real urgency now for women who are facing very serious hardship? Certain measures could be taken to alleviate that obvious hardship without having to change the whole formula of how we address the injustice that most of us agree has befallen a small group of 1950s women.
Tonia Antoniazzi
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution and for the massive amount of work that he has been doing on the APPG with my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East. It is imperative that the Government look after those women who are hardest hit, and do so as soon as possible.
Ageism remains a significant problem and is affecting people’s ability to continue working into later life, despite long-standing laws against age discrimination. Discrimination in recruitment is a significant problem and the public sector is not leading the way in the retention of its older workers when it really, really should be. With that in mind, what actions have the Government taken to minimise ageism in the recruitment process? Let us be honest: when I think of some of the women in Swansea who have to carry on working, they will, unless they are still in their job, be left having to claim universal credit although they have worked all their lives. That can be an overwhelming and humiliating experience for many. Does the Minister think that the fuller working lives strategy is working and what aspects of the Women and Equalities report have the Government implemented?
I also wish to know what the Government have done to measure the wellbeing of this particular group of women? I think I know what the answer will be. Will the Department undertake a study to analyse employment levels among women born in the 1950s, the type of work they undertake and the levels of poverty for this group of women?
Pension Equality for Women
Tim Loughton Excerpts(7 years ago)
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Grahame Morris
Absolutely. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House can give many examples of WASPI women who have come to their surgeries, written to them and sent them e-mails. Every day I receive heartbreaking letters and e-mails from women in my constituency and further afield who have been suffering extreme hardship.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I am proud to be a co-signatory of the motion. So far the hon. Gentleman has referred only to WASPI but, as we know, there is an awful lot of interest in this whole issue, and only some of the groups involved call themselves WASPI. We are actually talking about all the women born in the 1950s who are suffering from an injustice that has been disproportionately inflicted on them as a result of changes to the pension qualification age.
Grahame Morris
I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I welcome the contribution that he has made to the campaign.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
Another day, another debate on pensions for women born in the 1950s. We have now had many more debates on this subject than Elizabeth Taylor had husbands, and much like her seventh husband, I find it difficult to know what new to bring to the bedroom, if not the debate today.
This situation is not going to go away. I am proud to be the co-chair of the all-party group, and I am pleased to have co-sponsored the debate here today. WASPI is not just those groups calling themselves WASPI; it is hundreds of thousands and millions of women who find themselves in this position. I welcome the work that the all-party group is doing and the survey that we have sent out. I hope that we will get some concrete data back, and I will certainly support the Bill when it comes to the House in April.
There are three main problems. First, no one is complaining about equalising the pension age; it is the process and mechanism of doing so that is at fault. The impact on a specific group of women—more than 3 million now—is disproportionate. It is calculated that 33% of men will retire with just the state pension to rely on, but 53% of women will do so. The issue is much more important to women.
The second problem is the arbitrary cut-off date that many women have suffered retrospectively. The pension age of a woman born on 6 May 1953 will now be November 2016—a loss of some £2,000 on what she might originally have expected. The pension age of someone born a year later on 6 May 1954 will now be January 2020, a loss of £20,000. That is a huge difference for the sake of 12 months.
Peter Aldous
My hon. Friend is making his case very well. Does he agree that, before the 2011 changes were introduced, some sort of analysis should have been done to address the problems he identifies?
Tim Loughton
That is right, because there is a cliff edge effect. I am afraid that we hear time and again from Ministers that £1 billion transition money was given in 2011, but of course half that money went to men to make up for their transition differences. Women did not benefit disproportionately from that additional money, ungenerous though it was.
The third problem is the lack of notice. Many women, even if they got the notice, were not in a position to make preparations and alter their lifestyle to enable them to survive through their 60s. Many of them have caring responsibilities. They have depleted savings. They have disabilities.
Of course, there are other disadvantages that women suffered. Women were, and still are, paid less than men. Women’s pension savings are typically 66% less than men’s. Back in the 1970s—the decade when most 1950s-born women started work—women were often ineligible to join their employer’s pension scheme, and they were often passed over for promotion in favour of male colleagues. That is the legacy that these women bring with them now. There are other disadvantages. The 2001 changes to the widow’s pension mean that those widowed prior to their state pension age no longer receive a full widow’s pension until they reach their full SPA, which has now, of course, been delayed.
We need to find a solution. The Government need to listen, get round a table and discuss this. There are many different transition arrangements we could bring in. Scaremongering that it is going to cost tens of billions of pounds is really not helpful. We can do things around bus passes and the winter fuel allowance that would have a meaningful effect for many women, but we need to help those who are in most need and who are suffering now.
It is important to reiterate that this is not a benefit; it is an entitlement. Some of these women could have paid national insurance contributions—I appreciate that that is not directly linked to a pension—for as long as 50 years by the time they retire. It is reasonable for them to expect that they would start to benefit at the time they contracted to when they started working and paying their employment dues to the Treasury. I also echo the points made by my co-chair, the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), about women overseas.
We have a duty of care to these women—a specific set of women who should not be affected in the future because we have changed the law. That duty of care needs to be honoured before more women suffer or, worse, come to the end of their lives. As my co-chair said, they are feeling cheated, disrespected and angry. Last year, the Prime Minister said she wanted a country
“built on…fairness…where everyone plays by the same rules”.
Let us start by demonstrating that and by righting this injustice now.