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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“They included people with lifelong conditions and people with experience of the use of medical evidence, both of which are topics covered in the petitions. I will not comment in the debate on the adequacy of the benefits—the Select Committee has an inquiry under way on UK benefit levels that is focused on that—but I must say that over the summer a good deal of concern continued to be raised about the benefits we are talking about not meeting claimants’ extra costs, as they are intended to. The Government have recognised the need to transform the system, including in their White Paper. I welcome many of the reforms that have been announced—including, to pick up on a point made by the hon.”
“I am grateful for the chance to speak in the debate, to the Petitions Committee for having arranged it, and to the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for opening it. He kindly referred to my Select Committee’s report on health assessments for benefits, which was published in April, and my speech will draw on what we said in that report. We also published the Government’s response to the report in June, since when I have been in correspondence with the Minister about some of the key points that arose. The annex to our report is well worth a look. It is based on a survey of 8,500 people, who told us about their experience of using the system and going through the assessments.”
“However, the Committee wanted better use of another kind of evidence, which is evidence from family and carers. We heard that the way in which their input is received “is incredibly patchy”, as is whether their input is welcomed or not. The PIP guidance for assessors is explicit that evidence from carers and family should be considered but, anecdotally, it appears quite often that it is not. So we called on the Government to review the guidance, and I am pleased to say that, on this occasion, the Government did respond positively to our recommendation. Will the Minister update us on progress with that review and say when it will be completed?”
“However, I wonder whether the Minister recognises that the time to return forms is being reduced by delays in getting those forms out to people. We have been hearing that, typically, at least a week—seven of the 20 days—is disappearing before the claimant receives the request. As we have heard, one of the e-petitions is about considering disability benefit claims on medical advice alone. I am sure the Minister will point out—he will be right to do so—that, as the Work and Pensions Committee heard, GPs and other medical professionals may not know exactly what is needed for a functional assessment. We certainly heard repeatedly that the British Medical Association is absolutely clear that doctors do not want to take on this additional job.”
“The Association of Disabled Professionals told us that this deadline is very difficult to comply with. The deadline starts from the date on the letter, not the date the letter was received. The Association said: “it is extremely rare for a letter to reach the claimant within five to seven working days of the letter being sent.” In the pandemic, claimants had three months in which to return the forms. I think there were considerable advantages to that. Mind told us that extending the deadline could “reduce the need for Mandatory Reconsiderations or Appeals” by ensuring that the right decision was made first time around. So we recommended a compromise whereby claimants would have two months in which to return forms. Unfortunately, in its response, the Department said no.”
“The Minister will know of concerns that were raised over the summer about pre-application screening questions in the new online PIP application form, which is being developed at the moment, and of the fears being expressed that people will be wrongly put off claiming by those questions, which have not been a feature of the application process before. In winding up, will he say something about those concerns and update us on progress with the online claims system for PIP, which, in principle, is something I very much welcome. At the moment, claimants have 20 days to return ESA and universal credit forms and a month for PIP forms, and of course they have to send all the supporting evidence in at the same time. Each of those forms runs to tens of pages.”
“The hon. Member is right: these are often difficult judgments, but I would like to know what discussions the Minister has had with Ministers in Scotland about how things have worked in practice there. I would also like to know what progress the Department has made on plans for 16 to 18-year-olds in work in the severe disability group. I take the point that there are often quite fine judgments to be made, but the unanimous view of the Work and Pensions Committee was that it would be right to move to a system where applicants were not required to move on to PIP until the age of 18.”
“The Minister knows, because he has kindly given me the opportunity to tell him about it, of my concern that people may miss out on support under the new system because they will not meet the eligibility criteria, although they do under the current system. Quite how that will be resolved is not yet clear, but can the Minister provide reassurance today that claimants and groups representing them will be involved in developing the new system? There is much more I could say based on our report, but it is absolutely clear—it is already clear from this debate—that these assessments are not working well. We need significant changes to make them work better in the future, and I hope that, before too long, more of the recommendations in our report will be accepted than have been as yet.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and she has done a great deal of extremely valuable and important work on this subject, both on our Select Committee and in the Chamber. I do share her concerns and, as she knows, because it was substantially at her instigation, we are undertaking an inquiry specifically on the safeguarding of vulnerable claimants to look at these issues. I do share her concerns, and they are reflected in our report. The point about the time people have to send the forms back is important for people who are struggling, for the kind of reasons she sets out, to complete the forms within the very tight deadline that is set at the moment. Shortly before we published our report, the Department published its long-awaited health and disability White Paper.”
“On a point that was raised by me, and by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), what will happen to people who are too unwell to work but not disabled, and therefore not eligible for PIP? The Minister’s proposal seems to be that they will not get any help at all, but I cannot imagine that that is what he intends.”
“Rents have risen very sharply over the past couple of years, but the support for people claiming means-tested benefits to pay their rent, determined by local housing allowance, has not changed at all since 2020—it has been completely frozen. I wrote to the Secretary of State about this over the summer. Is the Minister able to give the House any assurance that the forthcoming benefit uprating statement will include a realistic increase in local housing allowance?”
“Defined-benefit pension funds have long been under pressure to invest in Government gilts rather than the productive economy, so I welcome the change of direction that the Minister has announced. He has indicated how much extra pension fund investment will go into high-growth companies in future. Will he indicate what share of that he expects to go into UK high-growth firms rather than overseas? He has indicated, I think, a replacement for the current charge caps on pension funds, with a wider value-for-money assessment, but can he indicate when we are likely to see the detail on what exactly he and the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), have in mind for that?”
“They make the point—which has been suggested this week in the press—that we might get a below-inflation uprating of benefits next year, making those problems even worse. I would be grateful if the Minister gave an assurance on that front, because that would be very bad news indeed.”
“The Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Trussell Trust told the Committee that “the basic rate of Universal Credit—its standard allowance (or equivalents in previous systems)—is now at its lowest level in real terms in almost 40 years (CPI-adjusted) and its lowest ever level as a proportion of average earnings.” They estimate from pretty careful research that a single adult needs £120 per week to cover essentials: food, utilities, vital household items and travel. That is excluding rent and council tax. Universal credit’s standard allowance is £85 per week for a single adult over 25. That is a shortfall of at least £35 per week, and deductions—for advance payments, for example—often pull actual support well below the headline rate. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Trussell Trust call for an essentials guarantee.”
“For all its success in the pandemic—I am unstinting in my recognition of that success—the rigidity of the digital system is a problem. Can the Minister tell us whether a fix is planned for that problem of early claims, which the Child Poverty Action Group highlighted last week? Does the level of benefits meet need in the way it is supposed to? Do benefits represent value for the taxpayer? The Committee is conducting an important inquiry into benefit levels in the UK, and will report in the first half of next year. Benefit levels are very low.”
“I warmly welcome the lifting of the cap and up-front payments for childcare announced in the Budget, and I hope that our future reports will have comparable levels of success. Those changes will support people to be in work in future. Last week, the Child Poverty Action Group published a fascinating report called “You reap what you code”, highlighting areas where the universal credit computer system does not deliver what it should. It gave the example that legislation and guidance allow some groups to submit a universal credit claim up to a month in advance, but the system does not allow that, nor is there an adequate workaround outside the digital system. As such, some care leavers and prisoners expecting release can miss out on an entitlement that they are due.”
“Repayments reduce the already low monthly awards, and repaying advances is a major driver of the explosive growth in food bank demand that we have seen. Our colleagues in the other place, those on the Lords Economic Affairs Committee—with its Conservative Chair—succinctly highlighted the consequences of the five-week wait in July last year: “the five-week wait for the first payment…drives many people into rent arrears, reliance on foodbanks and debt.” As such, I ask the Minister once again whether the Government will reconsider our recommendations, or whether we have to wait for a different Government for that fundamental flaw to be addressed. I am very pleased to say that one area in which the Government have listened to the Committee is reimbursement of childcare costs for people claiming universal credit.”
“With legacy benefits, the first payment would usually arrive a week and a half or so after applying. With universal credit, having spent hundreds of millions of pounds on what we were always assured was agile technology, the same thing now takes five weeks. That is a fundamental and unnecessary flaw; the security is absent from social security. In January 2021, the Government rejected the Select Committee’s recommendations to eliminate the wait and instead pay all first-time claimants of universal credit a starter payment equivalent to three weeks of the standard allowance, just to tide people over. The Government response pointed out that claimants can access advances, but of course, those are loans.”
“I know that the Department is setting out to address that problem, and that it has obtained resources from the Treasury to do so. Underpayments were at their highest-ever recorded rate last year, at 1.6%. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us about plans for tackling those problems. An additional reason that it is so important to get decisions right at the moment is that universal credit is a passport to cost of living support payments. There was a strong case for merging the various benefits into universal credit, and the success of the system in getting urgently needed support out effectively during the pandemic was very important and very impressive. However, there are some big problems—above all, the problem of the five-week wait between applying for the benefit and receiving the first payment.”
“Universal credit spending is forecast to be £50.8 billion this financial year, which is £8.8 billion higher than forecast in these estimates last year, reflecting the recent much-needed uprating and a higher case load. In February, 4.5 million households were receiving universal credit payments. A key argument in the business case for universal credit was the prospect of reducing fraud and error. Nearly a quarter of the £34 billion net present value gain expected over 10 years from introducing universal credit was due to come from lower fraud and error. In fact, fraud and error have been much worse than they were for legacy benefits. The Department’s statistics show that the universal credit overpayment rate decreased, but from an astronomical 14.7% in May 2021 to 12.8% last year.”
“I am very grateful to have been granted today’s debate about DWP spending. I will focus in particular on universal credit, whose roll-out started 10 years ago in 2013. The DWP is forecast to have, by some considerable margin, the highest expenditure of any Government Department, at £279.3 billion in this financial year, followed by the Department of Health and Social Care, at £201 billion. DWP spending is the largest by a considerable distance. Of course, the DWP forecast is uncertain. Almost all its funding counts as annually managed expenditure; it is hard to forecast demand-led spending. DWP’s admin spending—departmental expenditure limits—is 27% lower in real terms this year than in 2010-11.”
“It is still the biggest source of workplace-related deaths. The Sunday Times campaign headlines in particular our two recommendations, and I do hope that Ministers will now recognise the need to act. I welcome the fact that The Sunday Times will be running this campaign on a consistent basis. I again thank the Backbench Business Committee for recommending today’s debate. I would be very interested to hear from the Minister specifically how Ministers are assessing whether the different cost of living support payments meet needs and whether they are reaching the right people, and also how and when Ministers will decide whether payments along these lines will be needed next year. I look forward to the debate we are about to have.”
“We published a report on this last year, and called in particular for two things—a target to remove all workplace asbestos within 40 years together with a plan to deliver it, and a central digital register of all workplace asbestos and of its condition. The Government rejected those recommendations, although I do welcome the agreement of the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Mid Sussex, to meet a group of us, together with three industry groups and the Health and Safety Executive, to discuss further the idea for a register. That meeting will take place later this month. I very warmly welcome the launch of the campaign by The Sunday Times at the weekend drawing attention to the continuing scale of the tragedy being inflicted by asbestos even now, a quarter of a century after its use was banned.”
“An interesting suggestion in the Child Poverty Action Group report I mentioned earlier, “You reap what you code”, is that the source code for the universal credit computer system should be published. There would no doubt be some security concerns about doing that, but could not a small team—with experts from disability groups, Citizens Advice and software experts—be charged with reviewing that software and proposing improvements, perhaps in an annual report, a little bit along the lines of what the Social Security Advisory Committee does at the moment? Let me briefly say a word about a different aspect of the Committee’s work. We have been worried by the cuts to the funding of the Health and Safety Executive, and one result has been drastically fewer inspections of workplace asbestos.”
“It does not have to be like that, but changing things requires deliberate effort on the Department’s behalf. None of the recently introduced employment support initiatives had regular performance reporting on introduction. I warmly welcome the Minister’s announcement of six-monthly performance reports for the restart scheme. That is one of the signs of welcome change in the Department’s approach, but it should be the norm and part of the arrangements built in at the outset, not something that has to be dragged from the Department kicking and screaming subsequently. Greater openness could deliver a wholly different relationship between the Department and the people depending on its services, with the Department seen to be working with those it serves, rather than conspiring against them.”
“A very important aim in achieving effective spending is transparency over how the money is being spent and what is being achieved. The Department has had a very poor record in recent years, so I warmly welcome signs of a new commitment to transparency since the appointment of the new Secretary of State. Keeping things hidden, which has been the Department’s practice, has the short-term advantage for Ministers of avoiding having to answer sometimes awkward questions, but over the medium and long term, people depending on the Department form the impression that it is conspiring against them. The result is terrible mistrust, causing the Department very serious problems over time—for example, the very serious lack of confidence in the DWP among disabled people at the moment.”
“The Government rejected that proposal, essentially due to the limitations of the IT system, but as we know from the pandemic, monthly universal credit can be increased overnight. The need to meet a specific qualifying period for each payment window has led to what evidence to the Committee has described as “a cliff edge where receiving a nil UC award one month—maybe due to a sanction or a higher salary due to backpay or a bonus—caused recipients to become ineligible for the entire cost of living support payment in that qualification period.” I am looking forward to discussing cost of living support further with the Minister responsible for social mobility, youth and progression—the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies)—at the Committee tomorrow morning.”
“It is not calibrated for the number of people you are trying to feed, so it has clearly gone less far if you are a family with children than if you are a single person or a couple.” That is one of the reasons why the Trussell Trust data shows a faster rise in food bank demand among families with children than among families without. The lump sum nature of the payment is problematic. Citizens Advice, speaking for many, told the Committee that increments to universal credit would be better than one-off payments. Our colleagues on the Treasury Committee called on the Government last December to provide monthly payments over a six-month period to give more households support at the time of their greatest need and reduce the severity of the disincentives to work.”
“Another reason for higher DWP expenditure this year is the continuation of cost of living support. Expenditure is forecast to increase by just over £2 billion this year, due to higher payments—£900 in this financial year, compared with £650 last year—and higher take-up. Those payments have been crucial, but they do not fully meet need, particularly the £150 disability support payment. Last month, Maddy Rose of Mencap told the Select Committee that the payment is “clearly not commensurate” with the extra costs that those eligible incur, and we have heard other strong evidence to the Committee along those lines. Helen Barnard of the Trussell Trust told us last month that the cost of living payment “has certainly helped the families that have got it, but of course, it is a flat payment.”
“That charity describes the two-child limit as the single biggest policy driver of child poverty in the UK, and says that ending it would be the most cost-effective way of reducing child poverty, lifting a quarter of a million children out of poverty and easing the poverty of a further 850,000 children. The cost of doing so would be £1.3 billion per year. I must say that I am puzzled about the justification for the two-child limit: it presumably reflects a belief that parents should not have more than two children, but as far as I understand it, that is not the Government’s view. Indeed, Government Members are understandably starting to worry about our falling birth rate, so why do we refuse to provide support for children beyond the first two? Is it not time to just scrap that limit, which does not seem to make any sense?”
“In evidence to the Committee, the Trussell Trust, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Public Law Project all highlighted not being able to buy public transport tickets as a significant barrier to work. As far as we can tell, the Government have made no assessment at all of whether benefit levels are adequate. If I am wrong about that, I would very much welcome the Minister telling us, but there is certainly no evidence of such an assessment ever having been made. I hope the Department will look very carefully at the findings of our report when they are published in due course. One other point was highlighted in a briefing for this debate prepared by the charity Barnardo’s.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and I very much value his contribution to the work of the Select Committee. He is quite right, and I hope that we will be able to look at some of those structural issues over the course of the inquiry. If universal credit did meet basic needs, other demands—including on food banks—would decrease. When the £20 a week uplift to universal credit was introduced, there was a significant drop in food bank use; when that uplift was removed, food bank use went straight back up again. Universal credit was intended to make work pay, but how can it achieve that aim if people do not have the means to pay a bus fare, for example?”
“I am grateful to the Minister. When does he expect to make a decision on whether the cost of living payments will continue for a further year? When, this year, is that decision likely to be made?”
“I am glad the Minister has confirmed that the Department is reviewing arrangements for transparency. I am grateful to him for that and the confirmation he has given of the direction of travel and the work in progress. I am also interested to hear about the staff being recruited to tackle fraud and error. The Committee would be very interested to follow progress on that and perhaps to table some questions about how many staff there are. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to have this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to everyone who has contributed to it. Q uestion deferred until tomorrow at Seven o’clock (Standing Order No. 54) Ministry of Justice”
“I am grateful to the Minister for suggesting that we will perhaps hear about the plans for further cost of living payments in the autumn statement. I think they will be needed. My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) was absolutely right to make the point from the Opposition Front Bench that in many respects the security has been removed from social security. That is a lamentable feature of the last few years. The level of benefits is much too low and it has not been properly uprated. I want to renew my appeal. We did have a proper uprating this year, thankfully, but we need that again next year. We are talking about a historically low level of benefits. That is the major reason why food bank demand is still rising. If we do not have a full uprating next year, it will rise further.”
“This afternoon, she spoke about the scourge of disability poverty and some of the things that we need to do to tackle that. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) for combining his work on the Committee with his Front-Bench role. He makes a very valuable contribution to the work of the Committee. Let me endorse his tribute to the work of the organisation Christians Against Poverty, which is very valuable. It is doing a very impressive job all over the country. I am grateful for the interventions we have had from my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens)—it is good to see him back on this beat—and the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil).”
“Let me reiterate my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for enabling us to hold the debate, and I would like to thank everyone who has taken part in the debate as well. The hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) spoke in the debate last year as well, I am pleased to say, and I want to pick up one point she made about the gender pensions gap. I join her in welcoming the fact that the Pensions Minister has now come forward with a definition of that, so that we know what we are talking about. But I also agree with her that we need a target to reduce it, and I hope that we will see that in due course as well. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) for all her work on the Committee and her very committed work on behalf of disabled people.”
“In assessing, as the Minister has explained, the resilience of the water industry, what assessment is she making of the impact on UK pension funds if a major company such as Thames Water fails, as is being widely suggested in the press?”
“The Minister is proposing, according to the document, to spend eye-wateringly large sums—£169,000 per person—to process claims in Rwanda. He wants to spend that money to treat people with great cruelty. How can that possibly be justified?”
“Important humanitarian initiatives in Sudan have been closed down by the authorities in Darfur, including those of the UK charity Tearfund, which is referred to in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Does the Minister see any prospect of those initiatives being able to reopen in the foreseeable future?”
“The cost of living payments have made a vital contribution to millions of families in supporting people through the current crisis and I welcome the contribution they have made. However, the need for them does reflect, particularly following the removal of the £20 a week uplift from universal credit, the historically low headline level of benefits—at the moment, in real terms, the lowest for 40 years. What consideration are the Minister and his colleagues in the Department giving to consolidating those occasional one-off payments into the mainstream benefits— universal credit and the rest—so that people can budget with confidence, week by week?”
“Very little data is being published on the outcomes of the restart programme in Don Valley or anywhere. There was a one-off statistical release last December, but nothing regular at all. In the past, we have had monthly data from the Work programme, and we still have regular updates from the Work and Health programme. Does the Minister recognise the value of regular publication of outcome data for the flagship restart programme?”
“He is a clever man—he thinks quite hard about what he plans to say—but the criterion, “Is this true?” is not an important consideration for him.”
“He said that he was going to correct the record on that point, which he did not do, but he did recognise that his claim had been mistaken. Despite that, Mr Johnson subsequently carried on making the claim. He said it again the next month, on 20 April and on 27 April. In his final Question Time as Prime Minister on 20 July last year, he said, despite knowing well that it was untrue, “We have more people in paid employment than at any time in the history of this country.” —[ Official Report , 20 July 2022; Vol. 718, c. 951.] My conclusion from all of this, which I think sheds some light on the events covered by the report, is that Mr Johnson just is not interested in whether a statement is true or not.”
“The letter from the director general having had no impact, the then chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir David Norgrove, wrote to the Prime Minister on 24 February 2022: “Dear Prime Minister…it is wrong to claim that there are now more people in work than before the pandemic began: the increase in the number of people who are on payrolls is more than offset by the reduction in the number of people who are self-employed.” At the Liaison Committee in March 2022, I asked the then Prime Minister whether he accepted that correction in Sir David Norgrove’s letter. His reply was not straightforward, but the transcript of the meeting shows that Mr Johnson understood fully and clearly what had happened in the labour market—he did not misunderstand the figures—and he also accepted that employment was in fact lower than before the pandemic.”
“The former Prime Minister made the same untrue claim on 15 December 2021, then again on 5 January 2022 —when he said it three times—and then on 12 January and 19 January 2022. On 1 February 2022, the director general for regulation at the Office for Statistics Regulation wrote to the director of data science at 10 Downing Street to point out that that repeated claim was untrue. The Prime Minister repeated the claim again on 2 February, and again on 23 February 2022. I thought at first that the Prime Minister might have just misunderstood the numbers. It was true, as he claimed on a number of occasions, that the number of people on payrolls was higher than before the pandemic, but that was because a lot of self-employed people gave up self-employment during the pandemic or afterwards and became employees on payrolls instead.”
“We have been reminded in this debate that the report makes the fundamental point that: “Our democracy depends on MPs being able to trust that what Ministers tell them in the House of Commons is the truth.” On 24 November 2021, at Prime Minister’s questions, the then Prime Minister said that “now, almost a month after furlough ended, there are more people in work than there were before the pandemic began.” —[ Official Report , 24 November 2021; Vol. 704, c. 344.] That statement was untrue. The monthly employment statistics at that time showed that there were over half a million fewer people in employment than there were before the pandemic began, and total employment remained lower than before the pandemic until this month’s employment statistics.”
“I was in Parliament, and I do not believe that Ministers at that time said things that they knew to be untrue. I think it is absolutely clear, as far as I can tell—I am just spelling out the facts—that the former Prime Minister did say in this House things that he knew well to be untrue, because I had the chance to discuss them with him at the Liaison Committee and he agreed they were untrue, but he carried on saying them.”
“Maybe there is a contrary argument that great men should not have to worry about such trivial details, but the Committee is absolutely right: if that view prevailed, our democracy would be at very serious risk, as I think it is across the Atlantic at the moment. With Boris Johnson having made a pretty successful career out of not telling the truth, thank goodness that the Committee was willing to take a stand. It is absolutely right, and I hope the whole House will support the Committee this evening.”
“Yes, I do believe that those who made those points in the House at the time believed that they were true. It subsequently became clear that they were not. I defy anyone to claim the same about Boris Johnson, given the particular history that I have recounted. As we have been reminded in this debate, that approach to politics is toxic for democracy. What is the point of us standing up and asking Ministers questions day after day if they routinely give us answers they know to be untrue? We have no chance of building confidence in Parliament, in democracy and in politics if Ministers do not care whether what they say is true or not.”