Social Security

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

It is hard to believe that more than four months have passed since we considered the Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill last autumn, and I welcome the annual process used to ensure that social security benefits and pensions are uprated. However, like others who have spoken in the debate, I must put on record my disappointment at the decisions taken. We are just weeks away from the new financial year, and it might seem hard to believe for some Members, but for millions of people across the country, that represents a terrifying reality.

There is still total uncertainty about what will happen to the universal credit uplift of £20 a week. Under the statutory instrument, the Government plan to take away £1,000 a year from the least well-off families in Britain. This is not scaremongering. The uplift may have been for one year, but people’s situations are arguably more precarious than they were a year ago, so this is quite simply the wrong thing to do. It is the wrong thing to do morally, and it is the wrong thing to do economically, because this money will not be stored away; it will be spent and reinvested back into the economy.

The support that the uplift represents is vital, yet the Government have spurned opportunity after opportunity to make it permanent or to at least extend it. They could have done it during the Secretary of State’s publication of uprating totals back in November, and they could have done it when the latest national lockdown was announced at the beginning of the year, but they did not. Then the Government abstained on the Opposition day motion in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, which puts us in a bizarre situation where Parliament has approved a motion calling for the uplift to be made permanent, yet the Government plan to do nothing about it. The idea of non-binding motions may be familiar to those of us who occupy this place, but in terms of communicating the will of the House to our constituents, I find that an abdication of responsibility from those on the Government Benches. During all that time, millions of families have had to live with the uncertainty of not knowing what their income will be come April. The Government need to provide support, but they also need to provide certainty.

I welcome the report published last week by the all-party parliamentary group on poverty, chaired by the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), calling for the uplift to be made permanent. As the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) said, support for that exists across the House. That is what the Government have to do. Otherwise, they will be letting people down at exactly the time when our safety net is meant to support them.

The report also calls for an uplift in legacy benefits, which I wholeheartedly echo and which has been recommended by the Work and Pensions Committee, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and many others. I do not think we in this place have given enough attention to the issue of people in receipt of legacy benefits. Many of my constituents who receive these benefits were very disappointed to see that they had been excluded from any uplift. It is not right. If we accept that universal credit claimants should receive an uplift, there is no reason why that should not have been extended. Instead, the only uplifts offered for legacy benefits are the inflationary ones detailed in the statutory instrument today. That means, for example, that someone who receives ESA and is in a work-related activity group will receive 35p per week extra, and someone who receives carer’s allowance will see a 30p per week increase. Many of my constituents regard these increases, at a time of such hardship for many of them, to be derisory. I urge the Government to consider uplifting legacy benefits. It is a question of fairness. The Minister, in his opening remarks, suggested that Opposition scaremongering is responsible for those on legacy benefits being deterred from making UC claims, but surely at such an uncertain time it is understandable that people choose to stick with what they know and what they have.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that people are also exposed to loan sharks and others who know how vulnerable people are at this time and prey on them?

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention and agree absolutely: when people are desperate, they turn to whatever options are available to them and that stores up more difficulties for the future.

I turn now to the uplifting of pensions. It is right that the Government have taken steps, such as in the Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Act 2020, to ensure that the commitment to the triple lock is maintained. As I said during the passage of that Act, not only does the triple lock provide an important means to ensure that pensioners are properly supported in retirement, but it is a matter of intergenerational fairness. Small increases year on year now ensure that the generation who are currently just entering the workplace will also receive that support when it is time for them to retire.

This is a timely opportunity to discuss pensions, for important research was published today by the charity Independent Age—this was referred to by the Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms)—detailing that older people miss out on £88 million a year from the warm home discount because they do not claim pension credit. Some 650,000 pensioners who are eligible for pension credit do not claim it. I hope the Minister in his winding-up speech will address what the Department for Work and Pensions is doing to promote engagement and increase uptake of this important benefit.

The final area I want to refer to where there is an inherent sense of unfairness is the frozen pensions of overseas pensioners in certain countries. I have recently met people affected by this issue. They have found it hard to survive on a frozen pension and this is especially the case during the coronavirus pandemic. There is a moral case to expand the pensions uplift to overseas pensioners during the pandemic.

I welcome the recent report of the all-party group on frozen British pensions, which is chaired by the right hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), who spoke earlier in the debate. The report tells of a British citizen, a 96-year-old veteran called Anne Puckridge, who served in all three branches of the armed forces. She moved to Canada in 2001 so that she could be close to her family. Despite all that, and despite her national insurance contributions, she finds herself receiving a state pension of £72.50 a week. Of course, because of the 15-year rule, she is denied proper representation in this place, and I look forward to the Government bringing forward legislation, as they committed to do in their manifesto, to scrap the 15-year rule. She is in a strange and arbitrary situation where, had she moved a bit further south, over the border, into the United States, she would be eligible for a fully uprated state pension, because we have an agreement with the US. Does the Minister see the unfairness in that?

The all-party group has found that the Canadian Government are willing to engage on this issue and have made a formal request to the UK Government about the potential for reciprocal arrangements. I hope the Minister will be in a position to update us on what discussions he and the Pensions Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), have had about this. I hope the Minister will address three key questions on this issue. When do the UK Government plan to respond to the Canadian Government? What is the process moving forward on coming to an agreement? What is that response likely to be? I urge them to reach an agreement. It would clearly be transformative for very many. I look forward to hearing from the Minister on this issue during his winding-up speech.