Getting Britain Working Again
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(4 weeks ago)
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Adam Thompson
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, I am going to talk momentarily about one of the businesses in my constituency. When I discuss this topic, I particularly think of Cluny Lace in Ilkeston—not in the automotive sector, but a brilliant high-end lace manufacturer. It was workers from Ilkeston who produced Princess Kate’s wedding dress and Queen Anne’s tablecloth. Cluny Lace is an internationally renowned producer and exporter of high-quality British goods, supplying the European high-end garment manufacturing industry, in particular.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The hon. Member mentioned small businesses and delays at the border. Is it not true that the problem of double tariffs for small businesses when importing from third countries and then into the European Union will only be solved by us rejoining the customs union?
Adam Thompson
The hon. Member raises a point that I was about to touch on. When I met Charles Mason, the managing director of Cluny Lace, he told me at length about how post-Brexit export and import difficulties have caused him immeasurable pain, because the lace that we make in Ilkeston can only be dyed in France, where they have professionals with the appropriate expertise. Moving the lace to France for that part of the process, then back to England for further processing before sale, and then often back into Europe, has become all but impossible for his company. What was once a frictionless part of Cluny’s manufacturing process and sales chain, is now a crippling quagmire of tariffs and business model-breaking roadblocks.
For businesses across Erewash, whether they are producers, suppliers or distributors, a closer trading relationship with Europe means less time navigating bureaucracy and more time growing their businesses. Businesses in Erewash have also suffered from increased energy costs. If we want lower bills for working people, we must break our dependence on volatile global gas prices. British families will not see meaningful long-term reductions in energy costs until we produce more clean, affordable energy, here at home.
In Erewash, such a transition is not theoretical; it is obviously visible on our local skyline. Sawley, in my constituency, on the banks of the River Trent, lies adjacent to the former Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish). Ratcliffe was the UK’s last coal-fired power station; it closed its doors for the final time in September 2024.
As we move forward, my task as the MP for Erewash is not simply to help the country move on from coal, but to ensure that Erewash is at the heart of what comes next, and that my constituents benefit from the new investment, the new jobs, and the cleaner, more secure energy future that this Government are delivering through this King’s Speech. That is why I am excited about the Government’s energy independence Bill, which will shield our economy from the fossil-fuel price shocks that have caused half of the UK’s recessions since the 1970s.
This Government are bringing industry back to Britain, with well-paid engineers working in clean energy, powering steel production in the east midlands and across the country. On the ground, that means that families in my constituency—and the constituencies of hon. Members across the House—will no longer wonder how events thousands of miles away affect their bills or their ability to book a holiday.
Families in Erewash voted for change in 2024. They are tired of limited opportunities and of feeling vulnerable every time the world becomes more unstable. They want more control over their lives. With this King’s Speech, we are bringing industry home, investing in British jobs, and putting control of our future back into the hands of working people.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
It is an honour and a pleasure to take part in this King’s Speech debate. I am a member of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, and I look to grow our economy and get Britain working, with a special focus on the green economy and its many opportunities and challenges.
The regulating for growth Bill promises a framework that supports innovation, yet current proposals from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero risk doing the opposite. Under the plans for the new home energy model, any technology other than a heat pump or heat battery could automatically receive an energy performance certificate rating of D. In practice, that means that innovative zero-emissions systems would be treated the same as fossil-fuel heating. That would make many new technologies commercially unviable and leave consumers without practical alternatives where heat pumps are not suitable. The plans are already affecting innovative businesses in Bath, including Luthmore, which has developed a pioneering, zero-emission alternative to the gas combi boiler. Combined with exclusion from support schemes, VAT barriers and delays in the assessment process, such policies risk pushing Britain’s clean tech innovators overseas instead of backing them at home.
I am encouraged by the announcement of an energy independence Bill in the King’s Speech. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and now the war in the middle east have laid bare the need to go much further and faster to secure our energy supply, which means getting off the rollercoaster of global prices. In the midst of an energy price crisis, cheap, home-produced energy has never been more vital. There is huge nationwide potential for growth in small-scale renewable energy generation, especially by community groups that can distribute the benefits locally. Nobody in the House will be surprised to hear me say that we Liberal Democrats are the greatest champions of community energy.
Community energy puts people at the heart of their energy future by allowing them to generate, manage and own their own local renewable energy projects. These are projects run by the community, for the community. One of many pioneering projects is Bath and West Community Energy in my constituency, which, because of surplus income from renewable energy projects, has been able to donate to more than 100 community projects across Bath in the past decade.
What really worries me, when hearing in the ESNZ Committee about proposals for community energy and the way the Government look at that, is that it is only about an ownership model, rather than a beneficiary model. Community energy should also benefit consumers of energy, not just the energy producers. I get it—it is about both. It is not one or the other, but we must focus on ensuring that the community benefits from community-generated energy.
Community energy projects also strengthen energy security by diversifying sources of energy, reducing reliance on imported fossil fuels. In 2025, community energy groups saved people almost £2 million on their fuel bills due to energy efficiency upgrades. However, community energy schemes currently generate less than 0.5% of the UK’s electricity. With the right support, that could increase by 20 times, powering more than 2 million homes and saving more than 2 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year.
However, there are two main blockers to the rapid expansion of community energy projects. The first major barrier is a shortfall in Government funding to scale up energy generation projects. While the £15 million Great British community energy fund is welcome, it has led to minimal growth. I hope that through the energy independence Bill more funding will be allocated to these projects so that their potential can be realised.
Another major barrier facing community energy projects is the prohibitive cost of accessing energy markets to sell the electricity that they generate. This is what I mean: there are now more than 600 community energy groups operating across the UK, yet not a single one is able to sell power directly to local customers. Although it is legally possible, the various regulatory burdens and obligations associated with energy licensing rules make the cost of selling power to local people impossibly high.
In the 2022-23 Session, legislation was brought forward to unlock the potential of community energy and selling directly to local people. The proposal was supported by the current Secretary of State and more than 320 MPs across the House. We have a Secretary of State for Energy who supports reform of local energy supply, but we are still waiting for the legislation to make that reform a reality.
We Liberal Democrats welcome the regulatory changes promised in the local power plan, in particular the commitments from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to establish a route to market for unlocking a smart local energy system. However, if community energy initiatives want to plan ahead with confidence, the Government must provide clear detail on how and when these reforms will be implemented. One option is to untangle completely the licensed supplier model that we currently have and to ask Ofgem to establish a local supply licence. The proportioned costs could create the ability for community schemes to sell to local customers if they wish and make a viable business model. The other option is to have current licensed suppliers offering contracts for the export of community energy to local residents.
Whichever route the Government choose, we need to see action. We must see the necessary regulatory changes in the energy independence Bill to establish a workable model for local energy supply so that community energy products can scale up, become commercially viable and play their full part in delivering a cleaner and more resilient energy system.
Kate Osborne (Jarrow and Gateshead East) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) for her brilliant opening contribution to the debate on the Gracious Speech.
I acknowledge that this Government have delivered—from renters’ rights and ending no-fault evictions to the new deal for workers, education, Great British Railways, bringing NHS waiting lists down, lifting children out of poverty, and work on violence against women and girls. All that good work deserves to be talked about and celebrated, but it must also be acknowledged that people need more. They are desperate for change following decades of neglect. Unfortunately, the measures in the King’s Speech, although they are in the main welcome, are not the bold moves that we need. We need a Government who will tackle extreme wealth inequality in the UK and deliver for communities, and we need to go back to giving people hope.
We need to ensure that our Government have received the message from the local elections last week: people are unhappy with the direction we have taken and, as it stands, we do not have the trust of our communities. It was devastating to see the two councils from my constituency, South Tyneside council and Gateshead council, which Labour have held for 50 years, fall to Reform. We let those communities down, and we need to deal with that.
We must build on the things that we have delivered, such as the new deal for workers, instead of focusing on divisive commitments such as the digital ID scheme and the removal of jury trials—two things I remain opposed to. When we move away from our Labour values, we let the country down, let our communities down and, scarily, leave a gap for the far right to move into and exploit people’s fears, desperations and legitimate need for jobs, housing and security.
Housing, security and jobs are particularly needed in the north-east. My constituency of Jarrow and Gateshead East is commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Jarrow crusade—the march for jobs—yet my residents are facing the same problems as those marchers. For decades, successive Governments have neglected the north-east, and the north-east made its feelings clear last week.
We need a Government who take action to improve our communities. The Labour party is the party of the people and the party of workers, and that is the Government we need to see now—a Government who deliver for people and who deliver change that communities can see. We need actions, not words. We need to drastically redistribute the wealth, so that it is invested in communities. We need to rebuild trust locally and nationally, with bold and ambitious policies and action.
There are some highlights in the Gracious Speech, including the Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill, the Hillsborough law, legislation to clean up the water industry, the nationalisation of steel, the £45 billion to deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail, the legislation to support small businesses and stop late payments, and the licensing for private hires—all subjects that I have spoken about many times in this place and at events in Parliament. But we need to do much more than this tinkering at the edges. We need to legislate to bring water back into public ownership. We need to stop the scandal of water company bonuses. It is an absolute disgrace that they are profiting from the pollution they are dumping into our waters.
It is also welcome to see proposals around education for all, but we must ensure that any reforms to special educational needs and disabilities do not push children into a one-size-fits-all approach. The SEND consultation ends next week, and we must listen to the views that are submitted. The consultation responses need to be read thoroughly, not filtered by AI. We must have a genuine consultation and ensure that the reforms do not harm SEND children with the most complex needs.
Around 1.7 million children are now identified as having special educational needs. I know that MPs are all being inundated with correspondence from constituents, and many of us have held our own consultation meetings. In my constituency, I have 5% more children with SEND than the national average, and the same issues have been raised in every one of my local consultations. My constituents are worried about their loss of legal rights and their children being forced into mainstream schooling.
Sense, the national disability charity, has said that while inclusive mainstream education should be strengthened, that must not come at the expense of specialist provision. Disabled children with complex needs must continue to have access to specialist settings where those are the most appropriate environments for them to thrive. I completely agree with Sense, and it is evident that many families are struggling to find adequate provision. I have held drop-ins in Parliament with people from across the political spectrum, and I want to thank Rory Bremner and Nick Ferrari for coming into Parliament to meet young people and their families and to listen to their stories.
The last Government described the SEND system as broken, and of course they did a lot of the breaking with their destruction of local government budgets, but the system has been neglected for decades. It is in desperate need of reform and investment. We can and must get this right to ensure that the most vulnerable are protected.
To that end, while I welcome the Gracious Speech, I will be bringing forward a simple amendment highlighting the difference that the right placement makes to a child with complex needs and the costs to families, life outcomes and the state when we get that placement wrong. We must ensure that those children with the most complex needs who cannot be placed into mainstream schools do not lose out with these reforms. I have written to the Secretary of State on this issue and would be happy to meet at any time to discuss it.
I have an autism diagnosis, as do some of my family. It is something those close to me are aware of, but is something I have not spoken about publicly before. I know the impact it has when you are failed in school. This matters personally and politically to me and is something I care deeply about.
I am hugely pleased to see in the Gracious Speech a commitment to bring forward a draft Bill banning abusive conversion practices. While it has appeared in many a Gracious Speech, I firmly believe that the Minister will bring forward a fully trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices as soon as possible.
Wera Hobhouse
Along with the hon. Member and other colleagues, I have been campaigning on bringing in a trans-inclusive conversion therapy Bill to ban that awful practice. Will she support me in asking for a proper timeline for when the legislation will be introduced?
Kate Osborne
Yes, setting out a timeline would be most helpful. I recognise the work of the Minister for Equalities, my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West and Mid Berkshire (Olivia Bailey), and the time she has taken to speak to me over the last few months and even this morning, and she has committed to setting out a clear timeline as soon as possible.
In every meeting I have had with the Minister on this issue, I have been impressed by her determination to finally deliver this legislation and by her understanding of the harm caused by continued delay. My one concern on the delay, which I have already raised, is that this is the only legislation in the King’s Speech where the promise is for a draft Bill rather than a Bill. We absolutely need to get this right, but we must not give people an excuse to delay and frustrate this vitally needed legislation.
Earlier this year, I was proud to deliver a report at the Council of Europe calling on member states to ban conversion practices. I will continue to work with the Minister to take both the spirit and framework details of that report into consideration as the legislation is developed. Although I am happy with that particular commitment, we need bold, new, ambitious policies that people will feel in their pockets. People need to see change in their communities. People need action, not another year of delays and U-turns. Labour needs to do what it was elected to do: govern in the interests of workers and our communities and deal with the obscene levels of wealth inequality in the UK.
Statutory Maternity and Paternity Pay
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(7 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Several hon. Members rose—
Wera Hobhouse (in the Chair)
Order. I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate. It is a very popular debate, for good reasons. I will impose an informal time limit of two minutes per speaker. I intend to call the Front Benchers at 6.58 pm, so you can make the calculations yourselves. As we get further into the debate, we will see how much time there is left at the end, to be fair to colleagues. Please keep any interventions as short as possible.
Olly Glover
That is one of many excellent Liberal Democrat measures that we have proposed. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) will tell us more about that, and I do not want to steal too much more of her thunder.
Polling for The Dad Shift and Movember has found that the financial pressure is wrecking the health of new parents and their families, with more than half of new dads reporting mental and physical health consequences. Some 61% become less present with their families, and 57% are put off having more children. Although we in the Liberal Democrats may not be able to go quite as far as is asked for in this e-petition, we nevertheless support a number of significant changes. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park will say a lot more.
Wera Hobhouse (in the Chair)
I remind Members to please stick to the informal time limit. If they do not, I will have to make it a formal time limit.
Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse. I thank Grace and my hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier).
I want to make a speech on behalf of every parent who is right now checking their bank balance, sitting in the back of a dingy soft-play centre, weeping silently. They are looking at us and wondering—screaming—“When will Parliament get it?” They will understand the irony that we are having this debate during half term. It sounds impossible when said out loud, but we in this country appear to think that when someone has a baby, they should live on less than the national minimum wage.
Of course this petition has merit—it speaks to the problems that begin at birth and lock in inequality throughout people’s lives. If someone is on universal credit, working and pregnant, we will claw back some money just to make their life even more complicated. Meanwhile, those who are entrepreneurs or self-employed have no help at all. Little wonder that Maternity Action shows that motherhood is often associated with debt—and it does not stop there. Let us be clear: this is not about taking time off, but about taking on another job with a very expensive clientele. It is estimated that it costs £406 a week to look after a newborn baby, and what if parents have another one? Do the maths, and realise why this place has to up its game.
This is not about counterproductive measures; it is about families. People attack breakfast clubs, but breakfast clubs are not about the state looking after people’s kids; they help parents who would otherwise find it impossible to hold down a job where they are expected to be in a meeting at 9 o’clock.
Affordable childcare is not yet affordable. A constituent who is just about to have a second child wrote to me to say that even with the 30 hours and the tax-free allowance his family still has to find £3,000 a month. It does not stack up, and that is before we get to the cost of the half-term clubs. Parents are trying to find an extra 200 quid this week, while still dealing with the credit card bill from the summer holidays.
Above all, the way we do maternity leave locks in inequality for mums, who get written off by the motherhood penalty and get lumbered with the childcare, and locks out dads from the role of second parent. We do not have time to talk about issues affecting single parents, children with special educational needs and disabled parents.
The review is great, but we have the evidence. We do not need to wait to do something now to help all those people screaming in the soft play centre. We could bring in statutory pay changes or an equal six-week right at 90%. We had a chance to do that in the Lords in the Employment Rights Bill, and we lost it by seven votes. There are interim measures that we could take. I hope the Minister will hear this cry of pain, because this week of all weeks, parents are begging for pay day, worried that they are letting down their kid. Above all, they are asking us in politics to help them.
Wera Hobhouse (in the Chair)
Jim Shannon will still have two minutes, and then I will impose a formal time limit of 90 seconds.
Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Ind)
Charting a path to national renewal means making decisions today, although the full benefits may not be felt for years to come. In the first few years of life, more than a million new neural connections are formed every second. During that time, more than any other, children must be nourished and supported by the scaffolding of happy, healthy lives. That means a decent, warm home, so that babies use their energy not to keep themselves warm, but to grow and develop. It means parents not being ground down by bills piling up; it means families being shielded from the impacts of poverty; and it means mothers not being rushed back to work before their bodies have even fully healed, as is too often the case.
We hear a lot about family values in this place. That has to mean taking real steps to make daily life easier and to make the sums add up at the end of the month. As a nation, we must improve maternity and paternity pay to genuinely provide all families with security and stability. We must build a country where children are nourished in their early years, parents are treated with dignity through life’s challenges and people are not sneered at for receiving support. We must build a society that offers a helping hand, nurturing rather than sanctioning—one grounded in a belief in the value of every human life, where doing all we can to give a baby the best first steps is seen not as a cost on a Treasury spreadsheet, but as the duty of a decent society and an investment in a more prosperous country for us all.
Wera Hobhouse (in the Chair)
Before I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, I thank you all for making sure that everyone got in. I hope you forgive me for being tough about it.
Beer Duty
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(10 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Mr Forster
My hon. Friend is right to promote his amazing community hub and pub in Barnstaple. I pass on my best wishes to Beer Matters for its award.
A lot of us have concerns about the EPR rules. Under the current EPR rules, glass packaging used in pubs is wrongly classified as household waste, even though it is collected and recycled via private commercial contractors. EPR is meant to fund the cost of removing packaging from household waste streams—not from businesses that already pay for their recycling. This means that brewers and pubs face duplicate charges for the same glass, despite it never entering the household.
DEFRA has acknowledged that the policy is wrong and that it was never intended to be implemented in this way. It has committed to the industry to find a solution, but no fix has yet been delivered, and it has pressed on with the scheme regardless. Reducing beer duty would mean less tax per pint in principle, but, in practice, it would bring a great benefit.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Pubs such as The Grapes free house in Bath provide so much more than just being somewhere to drink or meet. They host cultural events and all sorts of things that otherwise could not take place, and that would be a loss to our community and cultural life. Does my hon. Friend agree that the small loss in beer duty would be far exceeded by the benefits we get from having these places open and running?
Mr Forster
I agree. There is an economic argument for a small reduction in beer duty per pint, but, as she highlights, there are wider public community benefits as well. I have talked about trying to grow the economy and the fact that less tax per pint has better economic benefits. One of Labour’s key economic election promises was to grow the economy, so why are the Government ignoring calls from the industry to help deliver one of their key missions?
Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)
I draw hon. Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have also received hospitality from CAMRA, the BBPA, UKHospitality and probably the Society of Independent Brewers and Associates. I rise to speak not only as the Member of Parliament for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire, but as someone who had the honour of chairing the all-party parliamentary beer group for more than five years. During that time, I worked with colleagues across the House to ensure that our brewers, pubs and beer lovers had a Government that understood their value to communities, our economy and local culture.
Under the previous Government, real progress was made on duty. We delivered reforms that simplified beer duty, recognising the unique role that pubs and small brewers play in British life. We implemented draught relief, giving pubs a competitive edge and encouraging the sale of lower-strength beer on tap. Crucially, there was a series of freezes and cuts to beer duty year after year, scrapping Gordon Brown’s damaging beer duty escalator and meaning that, by the time of the last election, the duty paid on a pint of real ale in a pub was lower than it had been 12 years earlier.
We embraced the freedoms afforded to us post Brexit to create a more proportionate, strength-based alcohol duty system, designed to support responsible consumption and encourage the production of lower-strength drinks, while putting pubs and licensed premises on a fairer footing compared with supermarkets and off-licences.
Wera Hobhouse
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, although beer duty seems to target large brewers, it quickly trickles down and hits the much smaller venues and brewers disproportionately hard?
Mike Wood
The hon. Lady is completely right because of the margins that such brewers operate on. The concern now is that, if reports are correct and the Government are considering beer duty as a revenue raiser to fill the gap in the Chancellor’s budget, so much of the progress will be put at risk.
Since the Government took office last July, almost every decision that the Chancellor has taken seems to have gone in the wrong direction when it comes to supporting pubs, hospitality and brewing. Just months into office, the Chancellor confirmed that beer duty would rise in line with the retail prices index from February this year—a sharp and sudden shift, which wiped out so many of the gains. That really needs to be a one-off because the return of automatic uprating every year would be a real betrayal of both the brewing industry and consumers. It would mean higher prices at the local, more pressure on struggling pubs and reduced confidence for independent brewers. That would be not just bad policy but economically incoherent. While costs are high across the supply chain and the Government are piling further costs on to pubs and brewers through wage costs, the Government have decided to add further instability and more tax, rather than consolidating reforms that were already delivering value.
Under the last Government the draft relief was introduced to give pubs a much needed lifeline, cutting duty on beer from draft containers over 20 litres and reinforcing the social and economic value of the on trade. I campaigned hard for that. I was delighted when my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), as Chancellor, agreed to a differential duty for draft beer. Then the Leader of the Opposition, as Exchequer Secretary, introduced it as part of the alcohol duty review.
I know that the Minister harbours some ambitions; I hope that the subsequent elevation of predecessors who moved to support pubs through duty reform will offer him some inspiration. Reports of a potential review that could scale back the benefits of that draft beer duty rate are deeply concerning. Small producer relief, launched under the last Government and building on the success of Gordon Brown’s small breweries relief, was a significant step forward. I pay tribute to Gordon Brown for that measure, if nothing else: small breweries relief played an important part in encouraging the emergence of a thriving small brewing community, from hobbyists through to established local brewers, in every part of the country. We are seeing the long-term benefits, both economic and cultural.
Income Tax (Charge)
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
This year, in Bath alone, more than 4,000 patients waited over 12 hours in A&E. Getting seen quickly can be a matter of life and death, and with a lot of extra funding now coming forward, my constituents in Bath must see tangible change quickly. I welcome the extra investment in the NHS, but I would have liked to have heard direct mention of eating disorder services in the Budget.
Eating disorders are a national emergency. They have the highest mortality rate among mental health disorders, and there are over 1.2 million sufferers in the UK. The illness has seen an alarming rise, especially since covid, yet the current services and funding are a fraction of what is required. Between 2015 and 2019, for example, eating disorders accounted for just 1% of the UK’s mental health research funding. Charities are becoming completely overwhelmed amid NHS capacity issues. The charity SWEDA in my constituency saw a 150% increase in people seeking support in 2023 compared to pre-pandemic figures. We cannot depend on charities to plug the gap. It is unforgivable that since the urgent referral waiting time targets for child and adolescent eating disorder services were set in 2021, they have never been achieved.
At the end of 2023-24, more than 10,000 children had entered treatment for an eating disorder, but 12% of them were waiting over three months—three times the target for a routine referral. Even more alarmingly, an access and waiting times standard does not even exist for adults. Delays to eating disorder treatment can be fatal. Some sufferers are now being told that they are too ill to be treated, and the only treatment offered is palliative care. This is tragic and totally unacceptable. Eating disorders are treatable and sufferers can make a full recovery. It is shameful beyond words to give up on them. I urge the Government to take eating disorders seriously and ensure that services are meeting the needs of sufferers, and that the funding that is so desperately needed is made available.
I would like to say more about care providers, but I do not have time. I urge the Government to look at them in the round, not just to make exemptions for public service providers.
Oral Answers to Questions
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Tom Pursglove)
No assessment has been made of the adequacy of PIP for people with disabilities. PIP is intended to provide a contribution towards paying for the additional costs faced by disabled people. Individuals then have a choice and flexibility in prioritising according to their needs.
Wera Hobhouse
A report by the Work and Pensions Committee found that people experience “psychological distress” due to the health assessment required as part of the PIP application process. Many of my Bath constituents feel the process does not reflect their needs and are concerned about the lack of support—some of those issues were covered by earlier questions. The Government have promised to trial the use of specialist assessors with knowledge of specific health conditions. Can the Minister please clarify which conditions are covered and how the assessors are being trained?
Tom Pursglove
When we are able, we will set out more detail of the relevant conditions and the approach we will take in delivering on this commitment. I raised the issue in my conversations with officials this morning, because I am keen to progress this as quickly as possible. I see real benefit and value in matching assessors with specialisms to people with particular conditions. It is clear from the feedback that people believe this will make a significant difference. Along the lines I set out earlier, we want to reduce PIP journey times as much as feasibly possible, and I want to make sure that we get more decisions right first time and that we focus on quality, which is precisely what the reforms will do. We will share further detail with the House when we are able to do so.
Oral Answers to Questions
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Tom Pursglove
Regardless of the form that PIP assessments take, the structure is the same. Evidence suggests that both forms are equally effective, but I hope that I can reassure my hon. Friend by saying that if individuals want to have a face-to-face assessment, they absolutely can.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)
The Government are projected to spend £30 billion—about 1.3% of GDP—on support for renters. Approximately £100 million has been allocated for the discretionary housing payment in 2023-24 to help local authorities, if necessary, which can top up from their own funding to help the hon. Lady’s constituents.
Oral Answers to Questions
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Mel Stride
As I set out, the amount being spent on housing and housing support is almost £30 billion a year. That has grown strongly over the last decade or so and is on a trajectory to reach £50 billion by 2050. The Government are therefore putting huge support into that area. In addition to LHA, there are, as I have said, discretionary housing payments. When it comes to the homeless, we have brought forward a £2 billion package to help to resolve those issues.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The Minister for Employment (Guy Opperman)
The answer is yes. We want universal credit to provide support to claimants even where they have suffered bereavement of a child. Where a bereavement happens, we seek to ensure that the child element, disabled child element, childcare, carer element and housing element with the run-on provisions will all continue, notwithstanding the loss.
Wera Hobhouse
I am not entirely certain whether the Minister just announced a change in what the Government are doing, but may I press him on the issue affecting my constituents? The loss of these benefits places a heavy financial strain on parents who are already suffering from overwhelming grief. One of my constituents knows this. I have asked the Minister and his predecessor on several occasions for a meeting to see how to mitigate that. If he has just announced a change, I would be happy if he could explain what has now changed. Will he please meet me to explain what the changes are?
Guy Opperman
The hon. Lady may not know, but I lost twin boys and fully understand the difficulties her constituent faces in terms of bereavement. It is clearly the case that there are the run-on provisions, but I would happy to sit down with her to explain the run-on provisions and the extent to which there is ongoing support for the bereaved.
Oral Answers to Questions
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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David Rutley
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support for his constituent. Verification of identity remains a critical requirement for all DWP benefits, and we are recruiting an additional 2,000 trained specialists to identify and stop scammers. We work hard to make sure that victims of identity fraud are not penalised and that universal credit benefits staff have access to information and intelligence from other sources prior to the payment, which allows them to make a real-time risk assessment on a case. Anyone who contacts us about a notification regarding a debt for a claim that they believe they never made will have their case referred to our stolen ID team, and we will endeavour to contact them within 48 hours.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (David Rutley)
The Secretary of State is legally required to conduct an annual review of benefit rates to determine whether they have retained their value in relation to the general level of prices. We have used the same approach since April 1987 of uprating benefits based on the increase in the relevant inflation index, the consumer prices index, in the 12 months to the previous September. We will spend over £59 billion this year, 2021-22, on benefits to support disabled people and people with health conditions.
Wera Hobhouse
One of my Bath constituents, who is disabled, has been told by his energy supplier that his bill will go up by £130 in April. He is on legacy benefits; he is not eligible for a top-up. He does not know how to cope. According to the charity Scope, he is not alone: disabled people are more than twice as likely to have a cold house and more than three times as likely not to be able to afford food. Thousands of disabled people are losing trust in the system. To improve trust and transparency in the DWP, will the Minister commit to automatically providing audio recordings of assessments, unless a claimant opts out, and to providing all claimants with a copy of the assessor’s report by default?
David Rutley
We take seriously the points that the hon. Member makes. Each interaction is key. We want to make sure that people get the support that they need, and we can achieve that through vehicles such as the household support fund, but I will take away her specific point and write back to her with a full response.
Covronavirus, Disability and Access to Services
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD) [V]
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) for securing this important debate, and to the Women and Equalities Committee for their report. I fully support the Committee’s call for an independent inquiry into the causes of adverse outcomes for disabled people.
From delayed and confusing guidance over shielding to difficulties accessing food, many disabled people have felt abandoned throughout the crisis. To this day, as we have already heard, we are waiting for the live British Sign Language interpretation of the Government’s press briefings on TV. One of my constituents in Bath was born with a rare and incurable breathing problem, and is in a high-risk group. Despite registering as extremely vulnerable on the Government’s website to receive food parcels in March last year, she did not receive her parcel until mid-June. Of the Government’s guidance about ending shielding, another constituent said:
“I don’t understand anything the Prime Minister said at all. It is so confusing. Why can’t they just say this in basic language?”
One of the most obvious failures we see again and again is that services are being designed for disabled people without actually consulting them. This pandemic has hit disabled people particularly hard, and in so many ways. In employment, disabled people have been disproportionately affected by furlough, reduced hours and redundancies. Despite this, the Chancellor’s plan for jobs made only one reference to disabled people, and contained nothing to address the specific challenges facing them. Recent figures released by the Department for Work and Pensions reveal that the number of disability employment advisors has fallen by 32% during the pandemic, at a time when knowledge of the barriers faced by disabled people will be even more necessary. Everyone should have the right to secure employment. I sincerely hope that promotion of inclusive workplace practices will be a top priority in the Government’s national strategy for disabled people. We need a targeted strategy to tackle barriers to work for disabled people as we emerge from the pandemic.
Covid has also exposed how isolated some disabled people can be. Many of those with mental health difficulties in Bath have already been struggling without face-to-face care. The value of our social care sector and its workforce has never been clearer, and I pay tribute in particular to the 7.3 million unpaid carers in the UK, without whom the pressures on adult social care services would be even greater. Many are facing extreme financial hardship. The Liberal Democrats are calling for carer’s allowance to be raised by £1,000 a year—the same as the uplift in universal credit. The underfunding of social care was a problem long before covid. Now its effects will be felt even more severely. I support the Select Committee’s recommendations, which highlight that the £300 million in additional grant funding for local authority social care budgets falls far short of what is needed.
We are now 25 years on from the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Unless we truly recognise the value of the social care sector, we risk going backwards on the progress we have made towards equality for disabled people.
Oral Answers to Questions
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Mims Davies
I would be delighted to extend my thanks to the dedicated and hard-working team at the St Austell service centre and their colleagues across the rest of the DWP, who have played their part in processing a 90% national increase in UC claims since March. I agree with my hon. Friend’s point about the Opposition. Without the agile, digital universal credit system, we simply would not have been able to quickly and safely process millions of additional claims and get money and support to the people who needed it most in this health emergency.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Justin Tomlinson)
We are committed to ensuring that people with disabilities and long-term health conditions get the vital support that Access to Work provides. That includes working with more than 19,000 Disability Confident employers to enable them to promote access to work through their networks.
Wera Hobhouse
According to recent research, 42% of employers feel discouraged from hiring people with a disability because they are not confident about how to support their needs through the pandemic. Will the Government consider fast-tracking Access to Work applications for disabled people through the kickstart scheme, as recommended by the charity Leonard Cheshire?
Justin Tomlinson
I thank the hon. Member for that question. I know I am meeting the hon. Member on 14 December to discuss this in more detail. I am also meeting the new chief executive of Leonard Cheshire, so I will discuss that report in detail. I am very proud, as a Government, that we have delivered record disability employment, and last year 43,000 people benefited from Access to Work—up 20%. Through schemes such as Access to Work and Disability Confident, and our highly trained and skilful work coaches, we will continue to engage with employers of all sizes to give them the confidence to take advantage of the huge wealth of talent that is available with a diverse workforce.