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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“University maths departments need clarity about the sustainability of maths funding, in order to give the go-ahead for research and innovation programmes that will last years into the future—programmes that will underpin future technological breakthroughs of great economic importance. Marcus du Sautoy, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, has made the point that “maths underpins all science and technology”. So it makes sense, he says, “to allocate funds to mathematical research, even at a time of tight finances…It would be incredibly unwise to now abandon that pledge.” We have seen welcome progress with advanced maths education since I was doing the Minister’s job more than 20 years ago.”
“We are surely not in the position where a crystal-clear announcement, attracting lots of attention, made by a Conservative Prime Minister, turned out to be untrue. A recent written answer on this from the noble Lord Callanan in the other place suggested that there was doubt about whether the funding would be forthcoming. I hope the Minister will clarify that, and confirm that the funding already announced for hugely valuable mathematical science research will be delivered. Without that additional £176 million, doctoral studentships, fellowships and research programmes will remain unfunded.”
“Of that, £124 million has been spent on projects of national importance, including on institutes, small and large research grants, fellowships, doctoral studentships and post-doctoral awards. Some of that work is concerned with solving current challenges of the kind that I have referred to, but some rightly is to pursue intellectual inquiry of the kind that characterises pure maths, the output of which will almost certainly yield real-world applications in future, although they are not apparent at the moment. More than half the additional investment—£176 million—has not yet been allocated. The chief executive of UK Research and Innovation has stated: “We did not receive £300 million specifically labelled ‘mathematical sciences’ despite the announcement.” The announcement that she referred to was made by the then Prime Minister.”
“Protect Pure Maths is calling for the Government to demonstrate their understanding of the transformative power of maths by launching a strategy for maths to strengthen UK leadership and to equip us to compete in a global economy that is increasingly dominated by big data, complex systems and artificial intelligence. The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries also provided a briefing for the debate, and it points out that mathematics is fundamental to the work of actuaries in insurance and pensions, and in health and care. In January 2020, there was a warm welcome for the commitment by the then Prime Minister to invest £300 million of additional funding into research in the mathematical sciences.”
“Extreme value theory was not invented for those reasons, but as invariably happens with mathematical theories developed initially because they are beautiful and fascinating, that theory has turned out to have immensely important practical applications. Algebraic geometry is an important set of ideas in pure maths, some of which were in my course, and pure mathematician turned economist Elizabeth Baldwin has applied the theory of algebraic geometry to microeconomics to design an effective auction system for carbon permits. Her work has been used by the Bank of England, and more and more maths is being used in the social sciences and humanities.”
“Furthermore, understanding uncertainty is crucial to making decisions on how to deploy limited resources, from allocating hospital beds to dividing up the bandwidth available for telecommunications. The briefing for the debate provided by the Protect Pure Maths campaign, which I congratulate on its efforts, gives a couple of examples of the use of a mathematical theory called extreme value theory. Unfortunately, my maths course did not include extreme value theory, which has been used in the successful work of Professor Chris Dent and others on energy generation and storage, which has had a big impact on improving energy supply, as well as in the work referred to by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), carried out at the University of Lancaster, to build resilience against extreme flood events.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and I do agree with him: maths is a vital enabler of economic growth, and it underpins many technological advancements that contribute so much to UK economic growth. We need to value that. Deloitte estimates that the mathematical sciences add more than £200 billion a year to the UK economy, that there is a significant salary premium for advanced maths skills, which is calculated to be £8,000 a year, and that the mathematical sciences are of fundamental importance to tackling all our most pressing policy challenges. The hon. Gentleman has just given a good example of that. The maths that is most familiar to us is about certainty—a x b = c—but maths also provides the tools to quantify uncertainty, underpinning important decisions in medicine and finance, and on the environment.”
“The Government must deliver the full commitment of funding into research in the mathematical sciences pledged by the then Prime Minister in January 2020. Degree-level mathematics must not become the preserve of the well-off. As the Government repeatedly said some years ago, we also need much higher take-up of maths post 16, as we see in the most successful economies around the world. The Government must fulfil their earlier promises. I very much look forward to the Minister’s response.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her well-informed and valid comment. The big problem is the shortage of teachers. In rural schools and elsewhere, getting hold of teachers with specialist maths abilities who are able to teach the subject post 17 is a big challenge. I very much agree with her. The Government should invest more in recruiting, developing and retaining maths teachers, because the lack of teachers is the key problem with the take-up of core maths. We need subject-specific continuing professional development for all maths teachers, and we need to upskill maths teachers who do not have a maths degree. Maths is hugely valuable in enabling us to solve the big challenges that our society faces, and in building the economy.”
“It was the Government’s ambition that the great majority of students in the 16 to 18 range would study maths in some form—mostly core maths. Does that remain the Government’s ambition, and how long does the Minister think it is likely to take to achieve that ambition?”
“This commitment of £300 million—£60 million a year over five years—was given in a blaze of publicity by the then Prime Minister in January 2020. Surely the Minister is not telling us that the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip said something that was not true.”
“I thank the Minister for giving way one final time. I just want to go back to the question of the £300 million. Does he accept that the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, absolutely clearly said that the £300 million was for research in mathematical sciences? It was ringfenced in his announcement. Surely that commitment should be honoured?”
“At present, the Home Office does not know how many people it gives leave to remain with no recourse to public funds attached. For months, Ministers and officials at the Department have been saying that a new IT system is about to be introduced and will give us that information. The chair of the UK Statistics Authority, whom the Minister mentioned, told me in a letter in February that the new system would be operational some time this year, rather than last year as previously announced. When will the Department take back control and switch on its new system so that it can provide this completely basic information?”
“On those tragic events, the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) mentioned the case of Shavendra Silva. Does my hon. Friend agree that our Government should be using the powers they now have to sanction people overseas? Shavendra Silva has been sanctioned by the US. Should we not be doing the same?”
“I welcome the Secretary of State to his first Department for Work and Pensions debate. Surely he is not suggesting that the current Prime Minister was irresponsible when he said last May that the triple lock would be honoured for next April. Will he confirm that, if the triple lock is not honoured for next April, it will be almost without precedent, going back 50 years or more, for the state pension not to be uprated at least in line with inflation?”
“The annual family resources survey has started to collect data on food insecurity to get a handle on what is going on with food banks. We now have results for the first two years, 2019-20 and 2020-21; the Secretary of State and I had an exchange about them at Work and Pensions questions recently. Food insecurity among universal credit claimants fell from 43% in 2019-20 to 27% in 2020-21, reflecting the £20 universal credit uplift introduced in March 2020, just between those two financial years. Now that that has been taken away, food insecurity will have shot up again. We will have to raise the level of universal credit to address the current mass dependence on charitable food banks.”
“That contract should not be breached as a result of the Government making catastrophic errors in their management of the economy in September. The considerations with working-age benefits are different. They have also been sharply reduced in real terms this year, but over the years they have frequently not been uprated in line with inflation. As a cumulative result, according to the Library, they are now at their lowest level in real terms in the 40 years since 1982-83. Trussell Trust food banks gave out 2.1 million emergency food parcels in 2021-22; they gave out 60,000 in 2010-11. They have reported that demand in August and September this year was 46% higher than last year. Why is the economy failing so many people? How many more are the Government willing to push into destitution?”
“To depart from that approach now, on the scale that has apparently been considered recently, would be absolutely without precedent in 50 years. In November 1980, inflation was at 16.5%; the state pension was uprated by 16.5%. In April 1991, inflation was at 10.9%; the state pension was uprated by 10.9%. It is clear why there has been that commitment all the way through: because people who have given a lifetime of work and have retired from working have already made their contribution, so there is nothing that they can do to make up the difference if the value of their state pension falls. I think we all recognise that there is an obligation on the state—a social contract—to maintain the value of the state pension.”
“We now know that pensions and benefits will be uprated by 10.1%, which was the rate of inflation in September. On pensions, as we have been reminded, there is also a Conservative manifesto commitment. As I said in my intervention on the Secretary of State, if the promise on pensions is not kept next April and pensions are instead uprated by less than the rate of inflation, it will be almost without precedent. Since 1977, there has been a statutory obligation, defined in a variety of ways, to uprate in line with inflation. It has been honoured every year since then except 1986, when the rate of inflation was 1.1% and the decision was made to uprate the state pension by 1%—0.1 percentage points less. Apart from that, there has been uprating by at least the rate of inflation every single year.”
“Unfortunately, what happened in September has created the very difficult situation that the Secretary of State rightly described. It is important to remember that there has already been a big real-terms fall this year in the value not only of the state pension, but of working-age benefits, which were increased by 3.1% in April when inflation was at nearly 10%. That was justified at the time on the basis that that is how the usual uprating formula works: pensions and benefits are uprated in April by the rate of inflation in the previous September. The then Chancellor acknowledged that the effects would need to be addressed next April, so he gave an assurance in May that the same formula would be applied again for next April’s uprating.”
“I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster). I thank him for the help he gave me when he was a Minister, and I agree with what he says about pension credit. I think the key is probably for local government to work more closely with central Government, because local councils have the pensioner income data to work out whether pensioners are entitled to pension credit. If we could improve co-operation, judgments could be made much more automatically. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) that this debate is happening only because of the catastrophic Government blunders in September. Before then, there was no issue; there was a very clear commitment from the then Chancellor, who is now Prime Minister, that the triple lock would be honoured.”
“If it is not uprated next April, whatever level of uprating is decided on, thousands more families will crash into the cap for the first time and many will have to start going to a food bank to keep themselves alive. It is time to recognise that mass food bank dependence is not inevitable. We can turn back from this. We can do much better than this. In the decisions announced next week, we must—at the very least—not make things worse.”
“It is a great shame on us all that so many people are dependent on charitable food banks, and the numbers are still rising. We certainly must not fail to uprate social security, universal credit and pensions in line with inflation in April, because otherwise there will be yet another big surge in demand. That is why it is so important for the Prime Minister to honour the promise that he made as Chancellor. There is one more uprating we need that cannot be ignored. The benefit cap was introduced in 2012. At the time, it was based on the level of median earnings. It has never been uprated. It has changed only once: in 2016, it was reduced. Its value has lost any connection with the earnings level to which it was supposed to be linked when it was introduced.”
“I congratulate the Secretary of State on his appointment and warmly welcome him. We already have a date in the diary for him to come before the Committee and we look forward to that. Current large-scale food bank dependence is shameful. It was up by 46% in August and September on a year previously, according to the Trussell Trust, and it is reported in the press today that hospitals are seeing a big rise in malnutrition cases. The family resources survey also says that food insecurity among universal credit claimants fell from 43% to 27% after the £20 a week uplift was introduced. Does not all that show how crucial it is that the Prime Minister keeps the promise he made as Chancellor to uprate benefits next April by 10.1%?”
“My hon. Friend touched on the point that one of the new Prime Minister’s very first decisions was to sack the permanent secretary to the Treasury. Can my hon. Friend shed any light on why that decision was made? Was it, as appears very likely, because he was set to warn the new Chancellor about the consequences of the policies that he wanted to announce?”
“If it is not, at a time when inflation is over 10%, thousands more people will crash into the cap next April and be forced to depend on food banks, heaping yet another economic failure on the catastrophic blunders, as the hon. Member for Hazel Grove rightly pointed out, of the past few weeks.”
“Yesterday, representatives from Muscular Dystrophy UK came to Parliament to spell out the hardship from rising prices facing the people they support, because, for example, those people depend on machinery—ventilators—that have to be permanently switched on and powered. On Monday, the Chancellor spoke of compassionate conservatism. If that is not just a vacuous slogan, those people’s needs must be recognised in the benefit uprating decision that could be announced on Monday week. The benefit cap was introduced 10 years ago and was supposed to reflect median earnings. It was changed once in 2016, when it was cut, and it has never been increased. This time, surely, it must be.”
“The current Chancellor must now decide whether to keep that promise to the poorest families in the country during a cost of living crisis. The Minister, in his opening remarks, referred to protecting the vulnerable. I really hope that he meant that, because those families have so often had a kicking from this Government over the past 12 years. If that happens again, dependence on food banks will get yet another large boost as thousands more people have to turn to them to survive—on top of the 700,000 households who did so in 2019-20. The food banks themselves are struggling now because donors cannot afford to give as much. Mass food bank dependence is a potent symptom of the economic failure of the past 12 years.”
“Last April social security benefits were raised by 3.1%, even though inflation was nearly 10%. That was justified on the basis that the regular formula for uprating benefits uses the figure for inflation from the previous September. That formula has, on several occasions, been disapplied since 2010, but never in the interests of the poorest families in the country—only ever to their disadvantage. This year, the formula was applied, piling on yet another real-terms cut in benefits, reducing them to the lowest real-terms level for more than 30 years. The then Chancellor and the then Prime Minister implicitly recognised that unfairness and promised to use the same formula next April, delivering, we have learned today, a 10.1% rise.”
“For many people, including those in employment, the economy does not work. More and more are turning to food banks to survive. Some 61,000 food parcels were distributed by the Trussell Trust’s food banks in 2010-11, whereas the number was 2.5 million in 2020-21—a fortyfold increase in a decade. In the leadership election campaign in the summer, the Prime Minister acknowledged her party’s failure on economic growth, and she was absolutely right to do so. The new Chancellor told us on Monday that the record on growth had been very good. That is one of many things that he and the Prime Minister seem to disagree about, but on this one, I am definitely with the Prime Minister. As my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) often points out, we are a high-tax economy because we have been a low-growth economy.”
“I am very pleased to follow the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), and I pay tribute to him for the frankness of the personal remarks with which he opened his speech. I must say that the whole speech contained a great deal of good sense, which I hope his hon. Friends on his Front Bench will have heard and paid attention to. Christians on the Left organises a church service each year on the Sunday morning when the Labour party conference begins, and the preacher this year was the Archbishop of York. In the very fine address that he gave on that occasion, he said: “Increasingly, the safety net in our nation is a foodbank, where more and more people have to go to get what our economy itself fails to provide.” He is absolutely right: something fundamental has gone wrong in our economy.”
“Does the Chancellor recognise that there was a very heavy blow to the lowest-income households in the country in April when social security benefits were uprated by 3.1% and inflation was nearly 10%? It was justified at the time on the basis that that was what the regular uprating formula had delivered, and that the same formula would be used next April. That assurance was given by both the then Chancellor and the then Prime Minister. Will the Chancellor recognise, when he reflects on his announcements in a couple of weeks’ time, that that is a matter of compassion, yes, but also of fairness?”
“Will the Chancellor give the important assurance that his predecessor gave—that social security benefits will be fully uprated in the usual way, in line with this month’s inflation figure?”
“I congratulate the Secretary of State and will miss her visits to the Work and Pensions Committee. I welcome her recommitment to the four-hour A&E waiting time target—I think she is right about the importance of that. She mentioned in her statement the forthcoming NHS workforce plan. When does she expect to be able to publish it?”
“The rancour between the objectors and the airport was, I think, permanently eased. The day after the opening ceremony for London 2012, which was a Saturday, when we might have thought that after the night before the then 86-year-old monarch would have been entitled to a day off, the Queen returned to London City airport to mark its 25th anniversary. Other memorable visits included, in her Golden Jubilee tour, a visit to Green Street, the most successful Asian shopping street in the country—we claim—where she was greeted by enthusiastic women in colourful saris waving Union Jacks, creating wonderful photographs in the Daily Mail the next day. We always remember the Queen opening what we now call Newham University Hospital in December 1983. Her reign was seven decades: those treasured memories will last for many decades more.”
“The airport management, rightly wanting to avoid unnecessary ill feeling, invited half a dozen demonstrators inside and gave them a chance to meet the Queen and set out their case. When it came to their turn, the residents explained their fears about aircraft noise. The Queen listened carefully to what they had to say and replied, “I know exactly what you mean. You should hear the noise at Windsor castle of the jets coming in to land at Heathrow.” The Prime Minister said yesterday that Her late Majesty had a unique ability to transcend difference and heal division. That is what she did on that occasion. Her off-the-cuff response transformed the situation. Arriving as disgruntled outsiders, the residents had been transformed into insiders who had shared a moment of recognition and warmth with their Head of State.”
“Like other Members, my main memories of Her late Majesty the Queen are of visits to my constituency. In 1987, I was chair of Newham Council’s planning committee, and I negotiated with Mowlem the terms of its planning permission for London City airport. I attended the opening by Her Majesty in November 1987. It was pointed out that the terminal at the airport was on the site where her grandfather opened the King George V dock in 1921, 66 years before. The airport was controversial locally. It turned out that most local residents, still smarting from the economic damage of the docks’ closure 10 years earlier, welcomed the jobs it was bringing, but some were very unhappy, understandably, about living with the noise of the planes. On the day of the airport opening, there was a small demonstration.”
“May I be the first to congratulate the right hon. Lady on her appointment and say on behalf of the Work and Pensions Committee how much we are looking forward to working with her and her colleagues in the months ahead? The Select Committee had previously suggested getting rid of the time period altogether and referring simply to people having a terminal illness, and that approach has now been taken in Scotland. Did the Department consider that in looking at this change, and, if so, what was the reason for rejecting it?”
“The policy on intelligence sharing with overseas intelligence agencies is covered by a document called “The Principles”. At the moment there is a loophole in that, which allows Ministers to authorise tip-offs leading to torture, contrary to UK and international law. Will the Minister ensure that that loophole is removed, so that it is absolutely clear that Ministers must not authorise tip-offs leading to torture?”
“Democracy does not work if Ministers routinely say things that they know to be untrue. Why did they not see through him before?”
“754.] That was even though he had made clear to me on 30 March that he knew that to be untrue. At the Liaison Committee two weeks ago, the Chair of the Justice Committee asked: “How important is the truth to you, Prime Minister?” The Prime Minister replied, “Very important, Bob.” But it clearly isn’t important, and the record still has not been corrected for any of the 11 instances of the false claim that the Prime Minister knows he has made. Other examples of a lack of truthfulness have been much more consequential. After negotiating customs checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Prime Minister went to the Democratic Unionist party conference and announced that there would be no such checks. That was obviously untrue, and the DUP has paid a very heavy political price for taking him at his word.”
“On 30 March, I asked the Prime Minister at the Liaison Committee whether he accepted that his tenfold statements had been wrong. He replied: “I think I have repeatedly—and I think I took steps to correct the record earlier.” Well, he had not corrected the record, and he still has not. In his answer at the Liaison Committee it was clear that he understood what has actually happened since the pandemic, and that about half a million people—mainly older people—have given up on work, substantially reducing the number in work overall. However, four weeks after that discussion on 27 April, the Prime Minister said: “Let me give them the figures: 500,000 more people in paid employment now than there were before the pandemic began”. —[ Official Report , 27 April 2022; Vol. 712, c.”
“I want to focus on one example of a specific problem with this Government that I think makes it impossible to have confidence in them. Between November last year and the end of March this year, the Prime Minister claimed 10 times at Prime Minister’s questions that more people were in work than before the pandemic. That was untrue. The figures show that total employment is still 366,000 lower than just before the pandemic. The Prime Minister made that untrue claim twice on 24 November 2021, three times on 5 January 2022, again the following week and then again the following week. He claimed it again on 2 February and on 23 February. On 24 February, the exasperated chair of the UK Statistics Authority wrote to the Prime Minister to point out that the claim was not true. The Prime Minister claimed it again on 27 March.”
“When David Cameron was Prime Minister, he visited Sri Lanka in 2013. After that, the UK, with Sri Lanka, jointly moved a resolution at the United Nations Human Rights Council setting out a mechanism for resolving the legacy of the issues that we have heard about. Sri Lanka has largely ignored its obligations under that resolution since then, and it has not even paid lip service to them in the past three years. Will it be a requirement of the medium-term support that will be needed for Sri Lanka that it comes back into compliance with its obligations under the decisions of the UNHRC?”
“The Government’s response last November to the Select Committee’s report on the disability employment gap promised key improvements to Access to Work to make it easier for people to use. Can the Minister give us an update on progress with that? Specifically, the trial of Access to Work passports started last November, so that people can take their support from one job to another. Can the Minister tell us whether that will be extended to everybody on the scheme and when we can expect that to happen?”
“It is a great relief that we will no longer have a Prime Minister who keeps on saying things that subsequently turn out to be untrue. Will the Minister reassure us that the change will take place in hours, not months, and does he recognise that effective democracy depends on Ministers telling the truth?”
“The Chancellor’s package means relief from the benefit cap for tens of thousands of families this year, but next year the cap will be back and presumably there will not be any further additional payments from the Chancellor. The level of the cap must be raised before next April because if it is not, the consequences will be dire. I am very grateful for this opportunity to debate the very important estimates that the Government have provided for us. They make such a big impact on millions of our fellow citizens, and it is vital that such decisions about them are the right ones.”
“Since then, it has been reduced, and of course median full-time earnings are very different now from what they were in 2013 anyway. The level of the cap now bears no relation at all to any particular earnings level. I warmly welcome that the cap will not apply to the additional payments announced by the Chancellor. That is an important precedent, recognising that families at the benefit cap will be hard hit too. However, with inflation at over 10%, it is imperative that the cap is reviewed ahead of next April’s uprating. It needs at least to reflect average household incomes, as it initially did—it needs to bear some relation to them, surely—and take account of increasing rent, energy and food costs. I urge the Minister to be open with the public and to publish the outcome of that review.”
“The last published review of the benefit cap was in 2014, which was eight years ago. The cap was lowered in 2016. The Secretary of State, when we asked her about this last week, could not tell us when it was last reviewed. If it has been reviewed within the last five years, the review certainly has not been published, despite promises to the Select Committee that it would be—and of course it should be. The Government should be open about their thinking in this area. When the benefit cap was introduced in 2013—my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), who is on the Front Bench, and I were in the Committee that debated this before it took effect—the income threshold was set at median full-time earnings, which at that time was £26,000 a year.”
“Given the uprating expected next April, based on the rate of inflation expected in September, the Child Poverty Action Group has estimated that “an additional 35,000 households will become capped overnight, resulting in a total of around 150,000 households capped in April 2023”. The North East Child Poverty Commission also contacted the Select Committee, and it told us: “The benefit cap impacts a relatively small number of households in the North East (fewer than 5,000)…almost all…are families with children…but they are being prevented by the cap from receiving all the support they have been assessed as needing. We urge the Government to lift the benefit cap.” The Government have a statutory duty to review the level of the benefit cap every five years. Until March this year, the obligation was to review it in every Parliament.”