Oral Answers to Questions

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right: this issue is urgent. That was why in the Budget the Chancellor announced the fair repayment rate, which stops families having to deal with so much debt through the universal credit system, saving families over £400 a year, but we know we have to go further. That is why, as I mentioned, Ministers are working hard to bring forward our child poverty strategy.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

I know the Government are working hard on developing their child poverty strategy, but what discussions is the Minister having with the Welsh Government to ensure that combined efforts deliver the best for our children, wherever they live?

[Alison McGovern]

I regularly meet representatives of the Welsh Government because while we strongly believe in devolution, we know that a partnership between Governments is the best way to protect our children from the terrible consequences of the poverty that the Conservatives left them in.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

20. What steps she is taking to increase uptake of pension credit in winter 2024-25.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, His Majesty's Treasury (Emma Reynolds)]

We have launched the next phase of our pension credit campaign on radio, TV and print media, and the Government have written to 120,000 pensioners on housing benefit who may be eligible but are not currently claiming pension credit. After less than five months in government, we are bringing forward the merger of housing benefit and pension credit, which the Conservatives announced 13 years ago but failed to deliver.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Reynolds]

In addition to merging housing benefit and pension credit, which will help some of the people whom the hon. Gentleman has in mind, the Secretary of State and I have asked the Department to look at what can be done to make the application form simpler. The Department will report back to us by the end of the month, and we will update the House in due course.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

I welcome the Government’s campaign to get people to sign up for pension credit, and I urge every pensioner in Gower to sign up and attend my pension credit event on 22 November. Does the Minister agree that we should highlight the fact that pensioners who go over the threshold could still be eligible because they receive another benefit, such as attendance allowance, or because higher housing costs are taken into account when applying?

[Emma Reynolds]

Yes, indeed. Assessing somebody for pension credit is a complex procedure, so we urge all those on low incomes to check whether they are eligible. We have seen an increase in the number of people applying online with the help of local authorities, Members of Parliament and charities, and we urge everybody who thinks that they might have an eligible family member to encourage their loved ones to apply.

Women’s State Pension Age: Ombudsman Report

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

This issue is very close to my heart, and I thank the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) and the Backbench Business Committee for the opportunity to speak about it in the Chamber. However, some Members are not working with good will and consensus and based on the cross-party work that has been done—in particular, that of the APPG led by my hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) and her co-chair, the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), whom I thank for their work.

I have been acutely aware of the 1950s women’s state pension injustice for a long time. I have family and friends, as well as thousands of constituents, who have been impacted by it. Since I was elected in 2017, I have written to and met numerous women in Gower born in the 1950s who have shared their experiences and told me of the profound impact this issue has had on their lives. I led an Adjournment debate on the matter back in 2019, and have worked to represent women affected throughout my time as an MP, by supporting their complaints to the ombudsman and speaking at every opportunity.

The then Conservative Chancellor’s decision to accelerate increases in the state pension age in the Pensions Act 2011 produced considerable hardship for many women, as it meant that a lot of them received little notice of an increase in their state pension age. The Government failed to communicate the changes effectively: some women were given only one year’s notice, while others got up to five years’ notice, but many received none at all. That put those women in a serious position. Women who had already made plans based on previous pension statements had to scramble on and continue to work to make ends meet. Women’s income in retirement is already significantly affected by unequal and low pay at work, pregnancy discrimination, discrimination against part-time workers and a lack of affordable childcare and carer support.

Recently, my constituent Carrie Williams came to visit my surgery. She was in the first cohort of women affected. Initial leaflets on changes stated that the increase to 65 would happen in 2020. She then received a letter in 2013 informing her that the changes would be in force from 2018, and would gradually increase from then, meaning that she would have to wait not until she was 65, but until her 66th birthday—an extra year—before being able to receive her state pension. Following a period of poor health, the knowledge that she would not be getting her pension for several years more made her increasingly stressed and—combined with other issues that she had with the DWP at the time, which were affecting her income—led to her again falling ill and having a seizure. Correspondence of the various changes was littered with suggestions that Carrie pay for a financial advisor, which as a single mother in poor health she could not afford to do. She did not have spare cash just lying around to set up a new savings pots, an ISA or anything else that was suggested as an apparent solution to her problem. I am glad to share that Carrie is now in good health, but unfortunately for her, as for many of the women affected, that was not the end of it. Not only did she unexpectedly have to wait until 66 to access her state pension, but the amount that she receives from it has drastically reduced year on year due to fiscal drag. I would not have believed it had Carrie not brought me about six or seven years-worth of evidence. This Conservative Government’s recklessness with our economy is squeezing everyone’s finances—I have seen it with my own eyes—and exacerbating the hardships that the WASPI women have already endured.

This has been a long and frustrating process for the women affected. Several groups represent them. The Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign is probably the best known, but there is also the Pension Justice for Swansea Women campaign, which includes women from my constituency and others in the local area.

A lot was hinging on the ombudsman’s report. It took some time, but we now have it. It is a serious report that requires serious consideration, and the Government must not use it to continue kicking the can down the road, as they have done over the past 14 years. The report found the DWP guilty of maladministration. The Secretary of State said in March that he would provide a further update to the House on the matter, but is yet to do so. He should update Parliament, or tell us when he will finally do so.

Although there are strong feelings and a variety of asks, the overarching issue is that an injustice must be addressed. Lessons must be learned to ensure that this never reoccurs, and that everyone has the right to properly plan for their retirement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

Let me take the second of my hon. Friend’s points first. As I have outlined, there is always human intervention when it is appropriate. None the less, he is quite right to raise the issue of fraud and error. We have seen a reduction in the Department over the past year of some 10% across the benefit system, and much of that has been driven by machine learning and data analytics.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

3. What steps his Department is taking to reduce the number of children experiencing destitution.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

4. What steps his Department is taking to reduce the number of children experiencing destitution.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)]

Child poverty and its reduction is absolutely core to the mission of my Department, which is why we have focused on cost of living payments, why we have put up benefits across the board by 10.1% and why the Chancellor announced £3.5 billion in the spring statement to support our back to work programmes to raise people out of poverty.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

One of the crowning achievements of the previous Labour Government was to lift 1 million children out of poverty. How does the Secretary of State think that that compares with the Conservatives’ record given that new figures show that children are experiencing destitution, and that that has actually tripled since 2017?

[Mel Stride]

I think that our record is extremely clear. Since 2010, we have 1.7 million fewer people in absolute poverty, 400,000 fewer children in absolute poverty, and 200,000 fewer pensioners in absolute poverty. Under Labour’s watch, we had 1 million people parked on long-term sickness benefits for more than 10 years.

State Pension Triple Lock

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

Like so many of my colleagues, I have been overwhelmed by the number of constituents who have been in touch with me over the past few weeks. They are terrified about the consequences of the triple lock being scrapped—terrified because of what they are reading in the newspapers. One article in The Times today says that the Bank will raise interest rates again. Another article tells us that food price inflation will cost shoppers another £682 a year. Such headlines should be taken very seriously.

The cost of living crisis and soaring inflation are pushing food and energy prices to unprecedented highs. The decision to suspend the triple lock last year cost someone on the full new state pension £487 a year, and someone on the full basic state pension £373 a year. With inflation set to exceed 8% this year, pensioners are already facing a significant real-terms fall in income. We do not need a crystal ball to see where this is headed: the most vulnerable pensioners look to be plunged further into poverty.

The Cabinet seem to have wiped their memories of their involvement in the previous Government, and indeed in the Governments of the past 12 years, but let me remind them of the fact that it is not only the disastrous mini-Budget of a few weeks ago that has brought us here, but pensioner poverty, which has been rising for a decade.

[Anthony Browne]

The hon. Member said that it was terrifying that we may not have the triple lock. I agree that it is terrifying not implementing a Conservative policy. She said that she wanted to remind the Government of what has happened. Let me remind the Labour party, which has been criticising Government policy, that we have systematically, over the past 12 years, had a far more generous state policy scheme than we had under 13 years of the last Labour Government, when we only had inflation or 2.5%, and we never had the triple lock.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

The hon. Member’s intervention misses the point by quite a margin, because pensioner poverty has been on the rise regardless.

The promise of this society is that we support everyone not just to survive, but to thrive. The Government seem to believe that pensions are some sort of nice extra, but that is not the case. The UK’s state pension, which is one of the least generous in the developed world, is seen as something for which pensioners should be grateful. No, they should not be grateful, because they have paid into it.

The audacity of the Government is clear. In the midst of a cost of living crisis, the like of which we have not seen for decades, they turn around to people who have paid their taxes and earned a decent retirement and tell them that, instead of the state supporting them in their retirement, they will plunge them into poverty. Breaking the 2019 Tory manifesto commitment to the triple lock for the second year in a row will leave more than 18,000 pensioners in Gower, on average, £905 worse off. Those are the statistics for my constituents.

When my constituents write to me asking how they will pay their bills this winter, how they will put food on the table, and why they are paying the price for Tory economic incompetence, what would the Minister tell them and what would she have me tell them?

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

I am not the first Member of the House to recognise that this motion is not a serious request of the Government, because we have the autumn statement in just nine days’ time. It is blatantly a political stunt to gain headlines.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

I was going to make reference in my speech to Conservative Members saying that this debate was a stunt. It is not a stunt; it is a political lever. This is an Opposition day—this is what we do in this place. I ask the hon. Gentleman please to correct the record.

[Jerome Mayhew]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s intervention; it brings to mind a number of the interventions and speeches from Labour Members talking about pensioners’ fears as they consider the outcome of the triple lock decision. Surely this debate, called by Labour, does not reduce fear but increases it, and that in itself is wholly irresponsible. It is scaremongering.

I am surprised that Labour wants to draw attention to pensions policy, because the Government’s activities over the last dozen years put Labour to shame. Let us look at pensions more widely, because pensioners get income from multiple sources. We have the state pension, but there are also private and company pensions, individual personal savings and other state benefits in addition to the pension.

I will focus first on auto-enrolment. Under Labour, members of the public increasingly just could not afford to save for their retirement—either that, or Gordon Brown’s famous tax raid on pension pots simply made it not worthwhile to save for a pension. If we look at the data, during the 2000s private sector pension membership declined. In the year 2000, 47% of people had private pensions, but by 2012 that had fallen to 32%—a decline of 47%. By changing from an opt-in to an opt-out system, auto-enrolment, brought in by the Conservative-led Government, transformed pension saving in this country. In my view, it was perhaps the single most important intervention of Government policy over the past decade.

The figures speak for themselves: now, 75% of employees are regularly saving and benefiting from tax-free employer contributions. I used to be an employer before coming to this place, and I employed hundreds of very young people—typically 18 to 25-year-olds. We had a company pension scheme and, as a responsible employer, I tried to persuade them to start pensions, but the take-up was very low. The impact of the change to auto-enrolment was amazing, and that has been backed up by our company contributions. It is a wholly beneficial thing and it has reversed the roles.

The other point worth making is that this is Conservative values in action. Not for us the state’s putting its arms around people and being wholly responsible for individuals’ futures; we want to see people’s being helped to take responsibility for their own futures, with the state there to help the most vulnerable, and that is exactly what the Government have done in this case.

It has also been mentioned multiple times that the state pension was not a Labour idea; it was instigated by the Conservative-led Government. The right hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) is no longer in his place, but I sometimes wonder what conversations in the Treasury were like in 1999, when he was part of Gordon Brown’s inner circle. Presumably, the debate was, “Do we raise the pension by 75p or 50p, or shall we push the boat out and increase it by £1?” It is rich for the Labour party to start lecturing the Conservative Government, whose policy the triple lock actually is, given its own lamentable record on pensions. Labour has nothing to teach us here.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

8. What assessment she has made of the impact of removing the £20 uplift to the standard allowance of universal credit on household budgets.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

14. What assessment she has made of the impact of removing the £20 uplift to the standard allowance of universal credit on household budgets.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

21. What assessment she has made of the impact of removing the £20 uplift to the standard allowance of universal credit on household budgets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Coffey]

I respect that people undertake care, and I am conscious that they often choose to do it in partnership with their local authority. We want to make sure that people take advantage of the increase in the national minimum wage, which will be coming in from April 2022, and of the changes that make it worthwhile for people to work extra hours and progress in work, which will be a big focus of what we do in 2022 and beyond.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

Although the recent changes to the taper rate and the work allowance are welcome, they simply do not go far enough. The Resolution Foundation’s analysis found that huge increases in the cost of living will wipe out any gains. Even with these changes, three quarters of families on UC will still be worse off than if they had kept the £20 uplift to the standard allowance. Does the Secretary of State now see that the countless organisations, and even former Tory Work and Pensions Ministers, who argued for the uplift to be made permanent were actually right?

[Dr Coffey]

I am conscious of what the hon. Lady says, and I am sure she welcomes the £25 million of the £0.5 billion spent on the household support fund over this winter. I am also conscious that we want to make sure people will be better off working than not—that was the big change and the big announcement in the Budget. I am conscious that, right now, right across the country there are more people seeking work than ever before. More people are on payrolls than ever before and companies across the country are looking for workers, so we will be doing our best to help people who have not been working to get into work. We will also be responding to in-work progression early in the new year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

I am really pleased that my right hon. Friend has raised that point, and I agree on the centrality of assistive and accessible technology. That is why our national disability strategy contained a commitment to invest up to £1 million in 2021-22 to develop a new centre for assistive and accessible tech, reporting on progress by next year. I look forward to working with her to do that.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

The Minister will know that many disabled people work and receive their personal independence payments, but when someone is given a telephone appointment, they are told that they can only arrange the appointment once. That is hardly fair; if it is scheduled when they are working and the assessments can take up to an hour, that is not possible. What are the Government doing to make it easier for people to be in work and have that access?

[Chloe Smith]

The hon. Lady raises a good point, which I will be happy to take away and look into. In general terms, I can say that we made commitments in our Green Paper published in July to improve the assessment process overall, across both the work capability assessment and the PIP assessment. She will also know that we have been using telephone methods through the pandemic and are looking to see what will continue to be the best methods. I look forward to discussing that further with her, and I will take away the point she raises and look into it further.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mims Davies]

DWP has worked closely with Adecco Working Ventures to help support young people via kickstart. As a gateway-plus, it plays an important role in allowing sole traders and other small employers to access the scheme. Employers in gateways can promote involvement, including advertising any approved roles, once they have a grant agreement in place. However, referrals of young people to kickstart jobs must be made by work coaches to ensure that candidates are eligible and suitable, but I am happy to look at the case.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

My constituent Deb Barrow runs a recruitment agency, and she focuses on employing local young people. Unfortunately, the system of kickstart has let her and the local young people of Gower down. It takes, from the point that she gets the job given to her, nearly four to five months for that person to be recruited. That job has by then gone.

[Mims Davies]

I am sorry to hear about the hon. Lady’s challenges in Gower. We have got 69,000 young people into work, and it is not as simple as getting any young person into any job. We have to work with local people to get the right roles and the right opportunities, so that we get the right outcomes, and I am delighted that her local employer is taking part.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We can typically turn around those applying under the special rules for terminal illness process within six days, ensuring that those who are most in need of support get it as quickly and as swiftly as possible.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that it is inappropriate for terminally ill people who do not qualify for universal credit under the special rules for terminal illness to have to go to their jobcentre to discuss their career when they may not have very long left to live?

[Justin Tomlinson]

As part of this review we are looking at consistency across DWP work, as well as working with the NHS and hospices to try to have a more consistent and sympathetic approach. Where claimants do struggle to get to jobcentres, there are always opportunities for home visits.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank my hon. Friend, who has been a real champion in this really important area of work. The Government are fully committed to protecting people with disabilities in the workplace and elsewhere. We welcome the fact that over 1 million employees are now protected by the voluntary employers charter, and this is a real step forward. There is more work to be done, and I welcome the fact that MPs are working together cross-party on this vital issue.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

T8. Anne Puckridge, a brave 94-year-old world war two veteran who served in three armed forces, moved to Canada in 2001 and now receives £72.50 a week, instead of £125.95 a week, of the state pension she is owed. She is not alone: 510,000 British pensioners are in the same situation due to the policy that awards an increase only to some overseas pensioners. The pensions Minister has responded on this topic, but will he agree to meet me to discuss Anne’s case and those of the many others struggling as victims of frozen pensions?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)]

The hon. Lady knows that the policy pursued by this Government is the same policy that was pursued during the 13 years of the Labour Government and all other Governments since the second world war. It is a consistent approach that is absolutely endorsed by the present Government, and I am afraid there are no plans to change the policy at present.