Disability Benefits Assessments

Debate between Vicky Foxcroft and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) on securing this important debate and thank her for all her work in this area. She powerfully put forward why the assessment system is not working and the devastating impact that has on disabled people.

Many Members have outlined serious constituent concerns. That includes those so powerfully put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), and I hope the Minister will look into the cases he raised. There are numerous concerns about the health and disability Green Paper, including, as many Members said, about the lack of proper consultation and co-production with disabled people. Having spoken to disabled people across the country, a running theme has been the tokenism with which the consultation has been undertaken. They asked me, “Why is the DWP so reluctant to engage with those who have been through the assessment process?”

As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) outlined, it is deeply concerning that the Department has not taken onboard the recommendations of the independent Social Security Advisory Committee about the way it involves disabled people in the design and evaluation of policies that affect them. The committee recommended co-production with disabled people. The Green Paper’s consultation has, sadly, fallen short of that. Worse still, the DWP has not undertaken any proactive engagement with disabled people and their organisations—the experts by experience who have been through this process and would enhance this paper.

My hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) talked eloquently about how she had had a roundtable with the former Minister, and powerfully said how that had stayed with her and why co-production is absolutely key to building the trust of disabled people. What possible justification does the Minister have for not doing that? The Government need to learn from last week’s court judgment, which ruled that the national disabilities strategy consultation was unlawful. As many Members have said, a defence of “not set out to consult” fails to build trust with disabled people. The DWP must ensure that future engagement is far more robust and must urgently publish a plan for consulting with disabled people on the White Paper. It should allocate enough Government time for debate, ensuring that robust discourse can take place.

The next area that many Members mentioned is the adequacy of the benefits system. Even before the pandemic, disabled people were struggling to survive. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) said, the number of disabled people living in poverty has risen by over a million since 2010. According to new analysis from the New Economics Foundation, single parents, pensioners and families with one or more disabled people are more likely to be the hardest hit by the rise in energy bills.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) said, people are worried that this Green Paper could be the start of a cost-cutting exercise. The Government must show that it is not. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) articulated the problems and unfairness when people were moved from DLA to PIP. The House of Commons Library statistics show that, of the 1.5 million disabled people who were previously in receipt of DLA and who were reassessed for PIP, nearly half have seen their entitlement reduced or disallowed completely. While the Government might attempt to claim that that is positive, the high levels of mandatory reconsiderations and appeals tell another story.

We have a system that all too often places disabled people in extreme financial hardship. We know that the DWP has data on this. The Prime Minister committed to releasing the NatCen research it commissioned on the adequacy of benefits. What is the delay? Or is this something else he forgot? I welcome the fact that the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, will see that research. I really hope it can be published, but as he rightly said, it is disappointing that the Government must always be pushed into doing these things.

The other area Members focused on was employment. There is no mention of the kind of work that disabled people have. Are these good or sustainable jobs? Do people get good incomes, or are they on unstable, zero-hours contracts with poverty wages? Sadly, evidence has shown that disabled people tend to be in lower-paid and unstable work, yet there is no acknowledgment of that in the Green Paper. Why does it put forward only a consultation on disability employment and pay gap reporting? The Minister could do that tomorrow. Will she? Perhaps she can give an answer in her response.

The Green Paper talks a lot about sickness management, but there is nothing on improving statutory sick pay. We need to support people who need short periods off work for sickness, so that they can return stronger and without fear of financial hardship.

[Jim Shannon]

I mentioned in my contribution the responsibility of employers towards employees. Does the hon. Lady feel that there is a role for an administrator to play to ensure that employers look after their employees the way they should be looked after?

[Vicky Foxcroft]

Absolutely. I completely agree with the hon. Member and I think that is really important. I was just coming on to that point.

Will the guidelines the Government are going to produce be fit for purpose? Surely the Minister should recognise now that co-producing these with disabled people and disabled people’s organisations is the best way of ensuring that they work and deliver a more diverse workplace where the talents of disabled people are fully realised.

Disabled people have said that they often struggle to access their rights in the workplace and that employers do not always follow guidance. It is hard for disabled people to challenge that, and the legal process is expensive, especially for those who are not in trade unions. Where is the support for disabled people to ensure that they can access tribunals to hold their employers to account? I ask the Minister: why not provide additional support to disabled people’s organisations and charities and to trades unions, which offer vital support?

To conclude, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea once again for securing this vital debate, and other Members for taking part. I thank the many disabled people’s organisations, charities and trade unions that work tirelessly to support disabled people. As all Opposition Members have said, co-production is key. The Minister should start listening to disabled people, who are experts by experience.

School Exclusions and Youth Violence

Debate between Vicky Foxcroft and Jim Shannon

Monday 28th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to bring this extremely important debate to the House. As I hope that the Minister and other hon. Members are aware, I am chair of the cross-party Youth Violence Commission. I established the commission in 2016 as a response to an alarming increase in deaths among young people in my constituency, in London and across the country. We published our initial policy recommendations in July 2018.

I have called many times in the House for the development of a public health policy to tackle violence, and I was pleased that the Government and the Mayor of London committed to that approach at the end of last year. The commission is now working hard to ensure that those words turn into action, and I am pleased that the Mayor of London has established a violence reduction unit similar to that adopted in Scotland to develop this approach. I am still waiting to see what the Government are doing. As part of its ongoing work, the commission is starting to flesh out some of its individual policy recommendations. I would like to use the debate to focus on recommendation No. 4 from our report, which is about boosting support in schools. More specifically, I will be examining the relationship between exclusions and violence, and the role of pupil referral units and alternative provision.

This is in no way intended to be an anti-PRU debate. During my time with the commission, I have seen some brilliantly run PRUs that achieve great outcomes for many of their students. However, I believe that we need a radical re-think of how funding is organised so that we can prevent the need for PRUs in the first place.

I hope that the Minister has had time to read the commission’s report for himself, as the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) clearly had when she responded to my Adjournment debate on the role of youth services in tackling violence. I was pleased to see in today’s press that she continues to stand up for vulnerable young people by criticising her Government’s delay in introducing a law to make it illegal for sports coaches to have sexual relations with 16 and 17-year-olds in their care.

The number of pupils being permanently excluded from schools is on the rise. Between 2012-13 and 2016-17, the number increased by 67%. Referrals to children’s services when gangs are identified as a factor at assessment rose by 26% between 2015-16 and 2016-17. During the same period, hospital admissions for under-18s who had been assaulted with a sharp object rose by 20%.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady has brought an important issue to the House for consideration. The stats show that 72% of parents think that when their child is excluded from school they are at risk from youth violence. This suggests that there is real concern among parents about the problems that follow exclusion from school. Does the hon. Lady agree that that concern must be addressed to ensure that there is life and a place to go after exclusion?

Youth Violence

Debate between Vicky Foxcroft and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way; I sought her approval earlier to make an intervention. In my constituency, we have a Church-based, faith-based community organisation that has the support of Government bodies and the police. It is called Street Pastors, and it has significantly reduced antisocial misbehaviour and violence in my constituency. May I gently suggest to her that that might be another method of addressing the issue of youth violence and antisocial behaviour? I am more than happy to commend that organisation to her.

[Vicky Foxcroft]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is absolutely right. Faith groups play an instrumental role in reducing youth violence. I am thinking of my own organisations, and of a local pastor called Ben Lindsay and the wonderful work that he does in Lewisham. He also gives me wonderful advice on engaging with the faith community. I absolutely agree with everything the hon. Gentleman has said.

Funding challenges have made the sector super-competitive. Local charities with similar aims have little incentive to collaborate because they are all bidding for the same pots of money. Large organisations with professional bid writers are much more likely to get funding than small charities, even if those charities are doing good work on the ground. On top of this, funding is too often allocated for short periods, and core funding is especially difficult to come by. So we are left with an environment that discourages collaboration and reinforces inconsistency.

Now, imagine we have a teenager. He has grown up in a household where he witnesses domestic violence regularly. His mother self-medicates and his father is largely absent, but when he is around he is violent. At school, he is disruptive and as he gets older he is bounced between different services. No one sticks around for particularly long and the services do not communicate with one another or share data. External involvement in this young person’s life is disjointed and inconsistent, reinforcing his belief that no one really cares about what happens to him. A young person like this is crying out for just one adult who cares, and who will stick around in their life for as long as it takes to make a difference. Research from Public Health Wales backs this up, showing that access to a trusted adult in childhood could significantly reduce the negative consequences associated with ACEs—adverse childhood experiences.