Sir Stephen Timms
MP for East Ham · Labour · United Kingdom
“I agree with the hon. Gentleman. If he would like to send me details of that particular case, I will happily look into it. On the subject of people with hearing impairments, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities and I will be meeting the British Sign Language Advisory Board this afternoon.”
“Better outcomes require early identification and support for girls and young women with special educational needs, including dyslexia. That is the aim of the SEND reforms and the development of national inclusion standards.”
“Autistic people and people with ADHD have been struggling to get the right support at the right time. Recommendations from Professor Karen Guldberg’s neurodivergence task and finish group directly informed the SEND reforms that were published earlier this year.”
“The Equality Act 2010 places a duty on public bodies to make reasonable adjustments, so that disabled people are not put at a disadvantage by accessibility challenges.”
“The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. This benefit is there to contribute to the additional costs of disability. Too often, what has happened—my hon.”
“I think we can take the hon. Member’s question as a tacit recognition that in 14 years the previous Government should have done something to fix these problems. The steering group is clear that the provision of cash to meet the additional costs of disability is vital.”
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“I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is asking specifically about carer’s allowance or about other benefits, but if benefits have been overpaid, the Department has an obligation to recover the money. What is important is that overpayments are identified sooner and that people are notified when there is a problem, so that we do not get the very large sums that have accrued in overpayments in the past.”
“We want a more inclusive society with less discrimination, and our election manifesto committed us to putting the views and voices of disabled people at the heart of all we do. As a first step, we are legislating to deliver equal pay for disabled people, with disability pay gap monitoring for larger employers.”
“I am delighted to congratulate Joseph, and I welcome my hon. Friend’s drawing his achievements to our attention. I spent an inspiring few days at the Paralympics in Paris not long ago. It was partly inspiring because we came second behind only China—ahead of the USA, and ahead of all the other European countries as well. My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of this issue. We are going to work with disabled people and their organisations to make sport more accessible and to remove the barriers that are too often in place.”
“Yes, we will. Accessibility is at the heart of the Government’s passenger-focused approach, and with a unified rail network, we will be able to meet accessibility needs more reliably and consistently and plan how best to improve accessibility across the entire network.”
“We are committed to supporting vulnerable customers into work. At jobcentres, for example, we can identify the support needed and signpost people to courses or organisations to help them overcome barriers. We will be saying more about our proposals in the forthcoming employment White Paper.”
“I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s positive report of the work in her local jobcentre. She highlights a major challenge behind a significant proportion of increased inactivity over the past few years. We will set out our response in the “Getting Britain Working” White Paper, but we are already providing tailored support in partnership with NHS talking therapies and individual placement and support in primary care. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that there is a good deal more to be done.”
“The hon. Gentleman draws my attention to a concerning development. My view is that we need more support for people with learning disabilities to get into work, not less. If he sends me the details of the concerns he has raised, I will be happy to look into them further.”
“I thank the hon. Lady for her welcome. I am looking forward to a meeting with Sir Robert later on this month, and we will be talking exactly about that matter.”
“We will be saying more and we will provide an update in the forthcoming “Getting Britain Working” White Paper. If the hon. Lady would like to drop me a line about the Special Olympics, I would be happy to look into that as well.”
“Provider guidance, which is published on gov.uk, makes clear that contractors on all our employment programmes must reimburse customers’ reasonable travel costs.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Performance is reviewed regularly and there are customer satisfaction surveys, but unlike the previous Government, this Government want to publish performance data so that everybody can see what is going on.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I am not familiar with the arrangements in Northern Ireland, but certainly in the rest of the UK it is very clear that contractors ideally need to pay up-front, buy tickets and give them to the jobseeker before they embark on their journey, or, if not, reimburse them very quickly on production of a receipt.”
“The work of unpaid carers is vital and often heroic, and we are determined to give them the support that they need. We are currently looking at options for tackling the problem of overpayments, including the possible introduction of a text message alert service.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I agree that we need to support carers properly. We want to get to the bottom of what has gone wrong with these overpayments and why so many people have been caught out. We have been piloting the introduction of a text message service, as I have mentioned, which has involved texting 3,500 claimants to alert them when His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs informs the DWP that they have breached the current earnings limit. We are currently looking at the results, and if they are positive, that will be the first step towards addressing the overpayments problem. We will need to do more, but it will be a good first step.”
“My hon. Friend has written to me about this matter, and I welcome her commitment to making progress. In an excellent piece of work, the former Work and Pensions Committee made a number of recommendations on the earnings rules, and once the new Committee is in place, we shall respond to the former Committee’s proposals.”
“I very much hope that we can, because the hon. Gentleman is right: there is a good deal of anxiety about these overpayment problems. We hope that the alert service will at least inform people when they run into a problem so that they do not then develop a large overpayment, which has happened all too often in the past, but we also need to look at the other arrangements relating to carer’s allowance in order to provide the reassurance for which the hon. Gentleman has rightly called.”
“I am not familiar with the report to which the hon. Member refers, but we committed in our manifesto to reviewing universal credit, nearly 15 years after it was first launched. The cliff edge issue and others will be among those that we will want to look at in the course of that review.”
“My hon. Friend asks an extremely good question. The policy of the previous Government was to publish all such commissioned research reports within 12 weeks of receiving them. That policy was complied with until 2018, when Ministers stopped complying with it, so we have had to publish all these reports today. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s announcement is a vital first step in rebuilding the trust in the Department that was so shattered by the culture of secrecy, obfuscation and cover-up by Conservative Ministers.”
“Disabled people’s confidence in the Department is at a terribly low ebb. We were originally told that these negotiations would be concluded within a few months, but in fact, as the Minister has told us, they dragged on for three years, and they failed. The commission has told me that now that negotiations have ended, there are no restrictions on what the Department can say about what was happening during those negotiations. At the very least, we need some explanation from the Department of why it has not been possible to reach an agreement. Can the Minister give us that explanation now?”
“The ombudsman opened an investigation of all this in 2018, six years ago. After receiving more than 600 cases, it stopped accepting new ones and selected six sample cases to investigate, one or two of which have been referred to today. The investigation was split into stages. The first report, published in July 2021, found maladministration in the way in which the DWP had communicated the changes to affected women. A further report, published in March this year, concluded that this had meant that “some women had lost opportunities to make informed decisions about their finances”, which had “diminished their sense of personal autonomy and financial control” and “caused unnecessary stress and anxiety” and “unnecessary confusion”.”
“I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the opportunity for this debate, and I thank the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) for opening it. I should make it clear at the outset that I was the Minister for Pensions between December 1998 and July 1999, and again between May 2005 and May 2006, which is part of the period covered by the ombudsman’s report. I draw the House’s attention to the evidence that my Committee, the Work and Pensions Committee, took on 7 May on the ombudsman’s report—we are grateful to all who gave evidence to us that morning—and to the letter that I sent to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions yesterday on behalf of the Committee, setting out our suggestions for a way forward. Those documents have been tagged for this debate.”
“We do not know why nothing was done—well, I certainly do not—because the ombudsman has not told us, but it cannot be credibly argued that this was not maladministration. When a Department discovers information and then does nothing, there is clearly a problem.”
“Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) made a useful point in this regard—I think that citizens have a responsibility to keep themselves informed, by listening to the radio or reading the papers, of changes in the law that will affect them. However, the ombudsman has established and made clear in the report that the Department found out, at around the second time I was Pensions Minister, that only 40% of women had known about the forthcoming pension age change. Forty per cent. is a large number, but 60% —the proportion who did not know about it—is even larger. The Department found that out as a result of research done in 2003-04, but did nothing about it until 2009. That is the maladministration that the ombudsman has identified.”
“The right hon. Gentleman has echoed a number of the points that the ombudsman has drawn to our attention, but I think we should be clear about the fact that a great many people did know about this change. The passage of the legislation was widely reported at the time, nearly 30 years ago, and I vividly recall that in the first of my two stints as Pensions Minister, I spent a fair chunk of most days signing replies to MPs who had written on behalf of constituents who were unhappy about the impending change, or were calling on the then fairly new Government to reverse it. The replies that I signed were robust, and made it clear that the decision would not be reversed. The decision was quite well known, and—the right hon.”
“As we have heard, the ombudsman estimated that this would involve a sum of between £3.5 billion and £10.5 billion. We need to find a resolution to this issue, and to find it quite quickly, because it has dragged on for a very long time. Angela Madden, the chair of the WASPI campaign, told the Work and Pensions Committee last week that a woman from the affected cohort dies every 13 minutes, which is a powerful point to make.”
“The interim ombudsman, Rebecca Hilsenrath, told the Committee last week that her office had been “given repeatedly to understand that the Department did not accept our findings.” Perhaps, when he winds up the debate, the Minister can tell us whether the Department now recognises that there was maladministration in this case. In laying its report before Parliament in March, the ombudsman asked us in the House to “identify an appropriate mechanism” for providing a remedy. It set out its thinking, namely that the DWP should first acknowledge the maladministration and apologise; secondly, pay financial compensation to the six sample complainants at level 4 of the severity of injustice scale; and, thirdly, identify a remedy for others who had suffered injustice because of the maladministration.”
“I agree, and I will come to that point when I talk about the Select Committee’s discussions last week. It is worth adding that the problems caused by that maladministration were exacerbated by the decision in 2011 to increase the state pension age not to 65, as provided by legislation in 1995, but to 66, with very little notice given of that change. The ombudsman said that had it reported directly to the DWP, it would have recommended that the Department apologise for the maladministration and take steps to put things right. As we all now know, the ombudsman did not report directly to the Department because of concern that no remedy would be forthcoming.”
“Jane Cowley, the WASPI campaign manager, told the Work and Pensions Committee that given the need for action “within weeks rather than years”, the scheme should be based on three principles: speed, simplicity and sensitivity. The evidence that has been gathered points to a rules-based approach to working out the compensation that should be paid.”
“I agree. The Government have said that they will respond without “undue delay”, and that they are considering the report in detail. Can the Minister tell the House this afternoon whether the Government will bring forward proposals for remedy, as the Work and Pensions Committee believes that they should, before the summer recess? We should set a clear timetable. We need a scheme that is easy to administer. The ombudsman said that, in principle, redress should reflect the impact on each individual, but it recognised that the need to avoid delay, and the large numbers involved, “may indicate the need for a more standardised approach”.”
“For example, Angela Madden, the chair of the WASPI campaign, suggested to us that somebody whose divorce settlement was less than it would have been because it was based on the expectation that she would receive her state pension at the age of 60, might well be entitled to a larger amount because of that particular development.”
“Beyond that, it was suggested to the Work and Pensions Committee that there should be some flexibility for individuals to make the case, after the standard payment has been calculated, that they experienced direct financial loss as a result of the maladministration, and that they should therefore be entitled to a higher level of compensation. Flexibility would be needed, because although the ombudsman did not see direct financial loss in the six sample complaints that it looked at, it did not exclude the possibility that there could be in other cases.”
“I would hope quite quickly, and I will explain why. The payments involved would be adjusted within a range, based on the ombudsman’s severity of injustice scale. It would depend on two variables: first, the extent of the change to the individual’s state pension age—how much it increased by—and, secondly, the notice that the individual received. The less notice someone had of the change, and the bigger the change to their state pension age, the higher the payment they would receive. An arrangement like that would not be perfect, but it would be quite quick and relatively inexpensive to administer compared with a more bespoke system, because it would involve applying known data to a formula to work out the amount that was due. I ask the Minister whether he accepts that, in principle, a rules-based system would be the best way forward.”
“Then the partnership is that Parliament, as our supervisor, will do something about that.” That goes to the point made by the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) earlier. Mr Banister continued: “I think what would damage the standing of the ombudsman is if Parliament declined to do that.” It is important for all of us that we see this through. We have asked the ombudsman to undertake this role, and it has done the job that we asked it to do. We now need to play our part in ensuring that this matter is resolved. Time is not on our side, and the Government have been aware of this issue for a while.”
“It will need a money resolution that only the Government can bring forward, so it is not realistic to say that Parliament can resolve this issue; it must have the Government’s full-hearted involvement. There will be different views on the findings of the ombudsman’s report. However, as the interim ombudsman told the Work and Pensions Committee last week, she is appointed by Parliament to carry out these investigations and is accountable to it through the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. I will read out what Karl Banister from the ombudsman’s staff told the Work and Pensions committee last week. He said: “We want everyone to comply with our recommendations, but it is implicit in the scheme that because we don’t have enforcement powers, it may be, sometimes, that an organisation thinks it doesn’t want to.”
“I agree that we need to get on and resolve this issue after a very long period. The ombudsman suggested a remedy based on level 4 of its severity of injustice scale, given the finding that individuals had experienced indirect financial loss. We on the Work and Pensions Committee did not seek to question that view, and I do not intend to do so this afternoon. Regardless of the level of remedy or the means by which remedy is delivered, it will need parliamentary time, financial resources, and the data and technical systems that are available only to the Department for Work and Pensions. Even if a Back Bencher brings forward a private Member’s Bill, as the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) has done, it cannot become law without Government support.”
“I agree that we need to get a move on. That is why the Government should commit to bringing forward some proposals before the summer recess, so that we all know where we are heading. The Government have all the information they need. It is a difficult and costly matter, but I hope they will be able to bring forward proposals in time for the House’s summer recess.”
“I agree with what the hon. and learned Lady is saying. Does she acknowledge the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) in opening this debate—that people taking one of the routes she has just suggested would need to apply for biometric deferral, and every single application since 7 October has been refused? Is she baffled by that, as I am, and will she ask the Minister to explain why?”
“One helpful change would be to extend access to employment support to economically inactive people in St Austell and Newquay who are not claiming benefits and do not have access to that support. Will the Minister consider that as a step towards increasing the prospects of filling the current job vacancies?”
“Let us use this lever much more widely to tackle the scourge of child poverty.”
“I also pay tribute to Juniper, the council-owned company that provides the meals and is very well-known to my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who works with it each year at a free school meals event. Last year the Mayor of London provided funding to help all London boroughs follow suit, and I very much applaud that decision. It is a very popular policy and no doubt one of the reasons for his welcome re-election last week. Now that he has been re-elected, provision across London is thankfully secure for the next four years. Richard Parker and Kim McGuinness, the new Mayors in the West Midlands and the North East, have committed to moving in that direction too. Free school meals help alleviate poverty and improve children’s health and educational attainment.”
“Member for Twickenham referred to the 2009 pilot in the London Borough of Newham. I am pleased to be one of the Members of Parliament who represent that borough, and I am glad to see my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) in her place today. The assessment of the pilot showed that it led to improvements in classroom behaviour, concentration and attainment. Parents also reported that their children were more willing to eat healthily at home. I am pleased to say that Newham has continued to provide free school meals to all primary school pupils ever since, defying waves of Government austerity in the last 15 years. I want to pay tribute to the impressive commitment of my colleagues on Newham Council to maintaining that very important provision.”
“The Government estimate that, once other social security income is considered, the threshold equates to a total household income for those families of around £18,000 to £24,000, but that is below what the Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that a single person needs for a minimum acceptable living standard, let alone a couple with children. We have heard about the cost-benefit analysis produced by PwC on extending free school meals to all those who claim universal credit. The analysis took account of research from Sweden to the Department for Education, and from the Association for Young People’s Health to Ofsted, showing that free school meals reduce obesity and absenteeism, improve academic attainment and raise lifetime earnings. Those are all advantages that we need to capture. The hon.”
“Those figures make it absolutely clear that child poverty in the UK is much too high. We are limiting our future potential by keeping it at this high level. The most immediate benefit of free school meals is tackling the scourge of child poverty. As we have heard, according to the Child Poverty Action Group, a third of school-age children in poverty are missing out on free school meals at the moment. Free school meals are provided to children with parents in receipt of a number of benefits, most importantly universal credit, but only if their household income is less than £7,400 a year. That threshold has not been uprated in six years. I would be grateful if the Minister would comment on that, because it ought to be uprated annually, along with other benefits.”
“I, too, am very pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) on securing this very welcome debate. In 2022-23, 30% of children were in poverty after housing costs. That is 4.3 million children, the highest number since 1998-99, reversing all the progress that had been made in the years following that time. The Government’s family resources survey found that one 10th of all households and 15% of households with children were food insecure; that is the Government’s own data. The Food Foundation has been mentioned by both previous speakers. Using a different methodology, taken from the USA’s food security survey model, it found that 17% of all households and 23.4% of households with children were either moderately or severely food insecure in June 2023.”
“Given recent improvements in scheme funding levels, we also called for DWP to look at “ways to ensure that scheme members’ reasonable expectations for benefit enhancement are met, particularly where there has been a history of discretionary increases.” Perhaps the Minister, when he winds up, would comment on whether he will look at the reasonable expectations for benefit enhancements for scheme members with a lot of pre-1997 service, and whether they can be met. The Hewlett-Packard Pension Association is calling for a code of ethical practice to be drawn up between the Pensions Regulator and DWP, particularly on pre-1997 pensions, and for their former employer and its pension trustees to work out a policy for sustainable future discretionary increases.”
“There was no general requirement to uprate pensions in payment before 1997, and our witness told us that Hewlett-Packard pensioners had received only three discretionary increases to pre-1997 benefits, amounting to 5% in total, since 2002, which is just over 20 years. In our report we called for the Pensions Regulator to find out how many schemes had discretionary increases on pre-1997 benefits in their rules and how that discretion has been exercised in recent years.”
“Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) pointed out, have in recent years not received the discretionary increases that they used to. We looked at that issue in the Select Committee report on defined benefit pension schemes, which we published on 26 March. We took oral evidence from the BP Pensioner Group, and we also heard from the HP Pension Association—the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland also mentioned that company. The association represents people who previously worked for the computer company Digital, which Hewlett-Packard acquired. Much of those people’s working lives was before 1997.”
“The gender pension gap remains much too big. Pension saving among self-employed people, to whom auto-enrolment does not apply, has plummeted. The Chancellor is rightly looking at how he can boost investment in the UK economy from pension funds, but UK pension funds, for understandable reasons, some of which the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland touched on, have largely withdrawn from investments in companies, as regulation has pushed them to reduce the risks that they face. We must not force those defined benefit funds that are still open and investing to close prematurely. The right hon. Gentleman highlighted this afternoon, as he has previously—he mentioned his debate in Westminster Hall—that members of some defined benefit pension schemes, such as those of BP and Shell, and I think ExxonMobil, as the right hon.”
“I welcome the debate, and congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing it at a time when a lot is happening in pensions policy. I will take advantage of its broad scope to comment on wider issues, as well as picking up on the points that he made. I agree with a great deal of what he said. Auto-enrolment, which was devised by a Labour Government, legislated for under the coalition, and implemented under subsequent Conservative Governments, has been a huge success in increasing the number of employees saving for a pension, but a lot of challenges remain. Above all, the amounts that people are saving under auto-enrolment are not enough for an adequate retirement income, and if we do not increase pension saving soon, we will have a crisis of inadequate pension incomes before very long.”
“Can the Minister tell us when he expects the new funding code to be published, whether he will report back to the Committee before then on how the concerns of open schemes have been addressed, and whether he is open to considering a separate chapter in the funding code, setting out how the code will apply to open schemes? Let me take a few minutes to talk about what is happening on the defined contribution side of the picture.”