Oral Answers to Questions

Will Quince Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

11. What steps she is taking to increase employment opportunities for care leavers.

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

18. What steps she is taking to increase employment opportunities for care leavers.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Justin Tomlinson)]

Building on recent announcements, I have just held two roundtables with care leavers and care leaver charities. The next step is to meet employers to explore how we can further improve job opportunities for care leavers.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has championed this area for a number of years, particularly during his time under the former Mayor of London as his youth ambassador. We recognise that the key is to build a personalised and positive relationship between the work coach and the care leaver. We have been working very closely with the Children’s Society and Barnardo’s to improve both the guidance and the training for all our frontline work coaches.

[Will Quince]

Care leavers are one of the groups at highest risk of homelessness. What support does the Department offer to help care leavers and vulnerable claimants to secure housing?

[Justin Tomlinson]

Last Thursday, my hon. Friend held a powerful debate in Westminster Hall covering some of this area. The Government take the issue very seriously. We are providing additional funding for 47 local authorities that have the highest numbers of care leavers at risk of rough sleeping. That funding will allow them to appoint specialist personnel advisers to provide additional support to small caseloads of those at risk. I am also keen to look at opportunities to open up the jobcentres to care leavers six months before their 18th birthday in order to look at all the different opportunities and support available to them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Amber Rudd]

I share the hon. Lady’s indignation. We have apologised to Mr Smith and his ESA payment has been repaid and reinstated in full. I will take a personal interest in ensuring that, where errors were made, they are corrected.

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

Under our benefits system, serious or terminally ill students have to abandon their courses to claim benefits. It is wrong for us to be telling students to give up on the hope of getting better and to abandon their courses just to claim benefits. We have to put this right.

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my hon. Friend for his campaign. I share his view that we need to take action. We are developing policy and I will make sure that he is the first to know what action we do take.

Support for Care Leavers

Will Quince Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

Thank you, Mrs Gillan, for calling me to speak; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) on securing this important debate.

This debate is ultimately about improving life chances, and the stats on care leavers are concerning. They are five times more likely to have been excluded from school and five times more likely to be convicted of a criminal offence or subject to a final warning or reprimand, and, as my hon. Friend mentioned earlier, only about 6% of care leavers end up going to university. However, the most troubling statistic for me is that care leavers are at considerably higher risk of homelessness, which is an issue that I care passionately about and that is the perspective from which I want to contribute to the debate.

I serve as the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ending homelessness, alongside the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle). In July we produced a report that examined homelessness among three specific cohorts: victims of domestic violence, prison leavers and care leavers. Everyone in this Chamber would agree that care leavers, given that often they will have grown up in challenging circumstances, should have all aspects of their wellbeing taken care of, and yet their housing needs are sometimes overlooked, as my hon. Friend mentioned earlier. When our APPG held its inquiry, we were told that a third of care leavers become homeless in the first two years after leaving care.

[Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and I apologise for not being here earlier; I was at a suicide prevention conference in Belfast. I very much share his concerns. In Norfolk, when children being cared for by foster carers reach the age of 18, in many cases the carers’ payments go down significantly. Does he agree that we need to avoid creating perverse incentives that might end up with children having to leave home and therefore being at risk of homelessness?

[Will Quince]

Broadly, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman, and I am pleased that the Minister has heard that point. I hope she will take it on board.

We also found that 25% of homeless people have been in care at some point in their lives. The Government’s care leavers’ charter states:

“We promise…To find you a home”.

We have to make sure that the benefits system supports that aim.

The APPG’s report recommends that care leavers should be exempt from the shared accommodation rate up to the age of 25. To provide some background, in 2012 the Government extended the shared accommodation rate to everyone under 35. The rate is the maximum amount that an individual can claim in housing benefit for a private rented property, and it is based on the cost of a room in a shared property rather than the cost of self-contained accommodation.

The rationale for that change, which incidentally I agree with, was to

“ensure that Housing Benefit rules reflect the housing expectations of people of a similar age”,

meaning a similar cohort who are not on benefits. Yet it is often the case that care leavers have had a really challenging upbringing; they might have suffered traumas that other people of their age might never experience.

We already recognise that we should have different expectations of care leavers compared with those we have of their peers. We currently exempt care leavers from the shared accommodation rate up to the age of 22. Nevertheless, most young people have the option of staying at home if they are unable to move out, but that choice is not available to care leavers. Furthermore, in our evidence sessions we heard from care leavers who said that they would feel unsafe in a shared home.

Exempting care leavers from the shared accommodation rate up to the age of 25 would give them the space and security of their own home, which would make a tremendous difference to their transition into adulthood. That suggestion has actually been recognised by the Government. The 2016 “Keep on Caring” strategy stated that the Government would be

“reviewing the case to extend the exemption to the Shared Accommodation Rate…for care leavers to age 25”.

Obviously, such an extension would have a financial cost, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar pointed out earlier. Currently, we do not know the number of care leavers who are affected by the move to the shared accommodation rate. I found that out—or, rather, tried to find it out and failed—when I submitted a written parliamentary question. However, the Children’s Society estimates that the potential case load is about 3,300. With an average difference between the shared accommodation rate and the one-bedroom rate of about £1,600, the cost of exempting care leavers would be about £5.3 million. Given the potential difference that change could make to the lives of care leavers, that is not an unreasonable figure.

The state has a responsibility for care leavers, young adults who are often among the most vulnerable in our society. We need to ensure that their housing needs are looked after just as well as their other needs. By exempting them from the shared accommodation rate, we can give them safe and secure accommodation, and help them in that all-important transition to adulthood.

I know that the Minister is as passionate as I am about improving the life chances of care leavers and ensuring that we address and minimise the risk of homelessness. I hope that the Government will take that recommendation on board and look at it. I will send the Minister a copy of the APPG’s very good report and hope that the Government will also look at its other recommendations.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

We move to the winding-up speeches. I call Mr Alex Cunningham.

Personal Independence Payments

Will Quince Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

On this issue, yes. As I have already pointed out, nobody is losing any benefit originally awarded to them by the DWP. That is the fact that most needs to be conveyed to those receiving the benefit.

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

I read the media reports on this change with some alarm, until I read into the detail of the regulations. To that end, will the Secretary of State confirm my understanding that far more people with mental health issues will be eligible for PIP than were ever eligible for the old DLA?

[Damian Green]

Yes, my hon. Friend makes a correct point, and one that I have made several times in the past few minutes. PIP is a better benefit than DLA for several reasons, perhaps the most important being that it is more available to those with mental health conditions. It always has been. The rules we are putting in place will make sure that it continues to be.

Oral Answers to Questions

Will Quince Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend is right: nearly 2 million more people take home a pay packet that is increasing, up 2.8% on the year, and for the last nine consecutive months, the increase in pay has outstripped inflation. Even better, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has announced a huge rise in take-home pay through the national living wage, and we should all welcome that.

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

This month, we are rolling out our Fit for Work programme to all employers across England and Wales, and to GPs. Employers will now be able to refer thousands of workers facing long-term sickness to specialist support, providing occupational health advice and helping them to avoid long absence. The Fit for Work service is the first line of defence when anyone falls sick, and alongside GPs it will help employers to avoid people falling on to sickness benefits and losing their link with the world of work.

[Will Quince]

Will my right hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to the work of social enterprises, such as GO4 Enterprises in Colchester, which do brilliant work in helping young people, ex-offenders and those with mental health difficulties to get back into lasting work?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Absolutely. I recognise the huge and vital contribution made by firms such as GO4 Enterprises, delivering huge change in Essex. My Department is instrumental in growing social investment via the £30 million innovation fund I set up, and we will continue to chase and improve those targets.