Welfare Reform
Vikki Slade Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Liz Kendall
Yes. Members have rightly said that PIP is not a benefit related to work, but a contribution to the extra costs of living with a disability. Actually, 17% of people on PIP are in work. I want to expand opportunities for disabled people who can work to get into work, because the disability employment gap, which actually fell under the last Government, has flatlined. We want to sort that out, because we believe that disabled people should have the same rights and chances to work, if they can, as everybody else.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
Can the Secretary of State offer some reassurance to Sue from Wareham about her 45-year-old son, who is permanently disabled through childhood illness? She told me that he has great abilities and works part-time with support, but every time there is a change of circumstance, he has to prove his permanent disability again. The Secretary of State has confirmed that there will be changes to reassessments by DWP, but will that also apply across other Departments, including the Department for Transport, for matters including bus passes and blue badges? Those reassessments cause huge mental health issues.
Liz Kendall
The hon. Lady raises an important point. I will look at that and write to her to make sure we address it properly.
Oral Answers to Questions
Vikki Slade Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Alison McGovern
The hon. Member makes an important point. We had a manifesto commitment to try to tackle the backlog. We have put more staff in place to deal with that backlog, but we have more to do, because it is important that disabled people are able to take up jobs that are offered to them. We need to make sure that that is a scheme that works.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Torsten Bell)
This Government have been running the biggest ever pension credit take-up campaign. In the latest stage, we are now writing to all pensioners who make a new housing benefit claim and who appear to be entitled to pension credit, directly targeting them and encouraging them to apply.
Vikki Slade
The rate of take-up for pension credit has traditionally been between 60% and 65%. If that rate were uplifted, it could take 400,000 people out of income poverty. In Dorset, the number of over-65s has increased by about 20% over the past decade. People say that their biggest concern is the paperwork they have to complete. The applications contain up to 225 questions purely for pension credit, and many pensioners would easily be able to claim for things like the carer addition through a slight tweak in the paperwork. What is the Department doing to simplify and combine those applications to make life easier for pensioners?
Torsten Bell
We are already doing a lot to simplify the process; it now takes 16 minutes on average to complete an online form, and 90% of people apply online or over the phone. However, the hon. Lady is completely right to highlight the fact that we must do more, including by simplifying the form. We continue to keep that under review, and I am always interested in ideas about how we can go further.
Alison McGovern
As my hon. Friend mentions, there are important opportunities in Slough that the young people growing up there need to be able to take advantage of. That is why we launched our youth guarantee as part of our plan to get Britain working. It will be there for 18 to 21-year-olds. Again, I encourage my hon. Friend to work with his local jobcentre in Slough as we improve the support available for young people.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Andrew Western)
As the hon. Lady may know, the Department recently consulted on a range of proposals for future improvements to the child maintenance service, such as how we can protect people from financial abuse and better support victims of domestic abuse. I am obviously not familiar with the specifics of the case she references, but I would be more than happy to follow up if she writes to me about it.
Women’s State Pension Age Communication: PHSO Report
Vikki Slade Excerpts(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Liz Kendall
I am sure that there could be a vote in the Scottish Parliament if the SNP Government decided to do that.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
I am shocked and staggered that the Secretary of State has made this decision in the week before Christmas—“Bah humbug,” springs to mind. She has talked several times about making sure people get due notice in the future. Does the Secretary of State have plans to increase the pension age further?
Liz Kendall
No. What I am saying is that we have to be able to give people sufficient notice in future. That was at the heart of the problem with the former Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition’s decision to accelerate the increase in the state pension age, which caused so much anger among many people. We campaigned against that, including in the 2019 election in which we proposed compensation, but we lost that election, and the courts have since ruled that that decision was legal. That is why the ombudsman’s report is not about that decision, but about how changes were communicated. We will learn all the lessons from that maladministration to make sure it does not happen in future.
Income Tax (Charge)
Vikki Slade Excerpts(6 months ago)
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Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
There is no doubt that the Conservative Government left our public services in tatters and the NHS on life support. This Government were left with no choice but to make tough decisions. I understand that, having led a council that had been Conservative-run. Important decisions about employee pay were delayed, there were vanity projects and money wasted, and reserves were slashed so badly that the council was on the verge of bankruptcy. However, to govern is to choose, and I am shocked by the short-sightedness of some of the decisions made in last week’s Budget.
It is true that the average worker will not see a tax rise on their payslip, but their employer will now be calculating whether there will be any pay rises at all next year or whether to issue some of their workers with their P45. Shops, pubs and cafés facing increases in national insurance and the national minimum wage are already struggling as households deal with cost of living pressures and from their own rising prices for energy and for stock, and they were promised full reform of business rates. Instead, their costs will skyrocket as their 75% business rate relief is slashed to 40%. Granted, the relief has been made permanent, but where is the commercial landowner levy or the charge on the internet giants? Surely taxing the wealthiest would be fairer, rather than hitting small businesses with a tax that takes no account of profits or purpose?
I said it last week, and I will say it again now: rental auctions and compulsory purchase changes may in theory get the markets moving, but if businesses in high streets such as Wareham in my constituency of Mid Dorset and North Poole cannot afford to trade, the high street cannot redefine its purpose.
I, like my colleagues, have been contacted by businesses, public sector organisations and charities sharing their calculations of the impact of the national insurance changes. Corfe Mullen dental practice recently recruited a graduate dentist specifically to serve the child NHS population, boosting capacity in my area. The increase in NI for staff has wiped out half her annual salary. If we are to stop dentists leaving the NHS, we need exemptions for them now. Julia’s House children’s hospice has calculated that its NI increase is £242,000 a year. Shockingly, Tops nursery, which has several early years settings in my constituency, has calculated an increase of half a million pounds, without any additional increase in childcare funding.
The Lib Dems have called for taxes on energy giants and the big banks. We agree that those with the broadest shoulders should pay more, but this Budget has mistaken whose shoulders are broad, so I ask the Government for urgent consideration of two things: first, rethinking the national insurance change to exempt organisations allied to the NHS and education, such as GPs, hospices and nurseries, and instead to get the extra money from big banks and share buybacks; and secondly, to postpone the reduction of retail, hospitality and leisure relief until full business rate reform is ready to keep our high streets alive.
Oral Answers to Questions
Vikki Slade Excerpts(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Liz Kendall
My hon. Friend has raised these issues with me before, and I will absolutely meet children, families and child poverty organisations from her constituency. We aim to visit every region and every devolved nation as part of that strategy, and I look forward to meeting her and her constituents then.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
Liz Kendall
The hon. Lady raises an extremely important question, which I have discussed with a hospice and other organisations such as Marie Curie and Sue Ryder in my own constituency. I want to look at how the system can be made to work as quickly and swiftly as possible, particularly for people at this very difficult time in life, and I would be happy for the Social Security Minister and my office to contact her directly to get more information.