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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“136.] I responded to his intervention by welcoming the apparently universal agreement that taking up Pension Wise guidance should be the norm. Everyone agreed, but in October 2020, the Department published the “Stronger Nudge to pensions guidance” statement of policy intent, which said that the new nudges that would be introduced would increase take-up from one in 33 to one in nine. The most recent figures quoted by the Social Market Foundation last week suggest that take-up now stands at about one in seven. As the hon. Member for Amber Valley said, the expectations at the start were way higher than that.”
“Baroness Buscombe, when she was a Minister at the Department for Work and Pensions, said in May 2018 that “We all want people to make more informed decisions and to make it the norm to use Pension Wise before accessing their pension.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 1 May 2018; Vol. 790, c. 1995.] Let me quote back to the Minister what he said in a debate on the Pension Schemes Act 2021, that Pension Wise should become the norm. He has since distanced himself a bit from that view, but he did express it: on Third Reading, I said that I was sorry he had not followed Baroness Buscombe and expressed the view that Pension Wise should become the norm, and he intervened on me to correct me. He said: “I do—I said so.” —[ Official Report , 16 November 2020; Vol. 684, c.”
“876.] In April 2018, her successor—the current Economic Secretary—the hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen), said that before proceeding with an access or transfer application, “subject to any exceptions, schemes must ensure that individuals have either received Pension Wise guidance or have opted out.” —[ Official Report , 24 April 2018; Vol. 639, c. 831.] That commitment, which the Minister appeared to believe he was delivering four years ago, has never been delivered. The Treasury has very good reason to be concerned that people should make sound decisions in this area, but so does the Minister’s Department.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The importance of guaranteeing guidance was stressed repeatedly, not just in George Osborne’s announcement but by the Government in the couple of years afterwards. The Treasury’s public financial guidance review, published for consultation in March 2016, said: “Guidance is vital to ensure that individuals are fully aware of their options before they make a decision on what to do with their retirement savings”. The hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), who was then Economic Secretary, said in April 2016 that the Government were introducing “a requirement that, in effect, ensures that consumers with a high-value annuity receive appropriate financial advice before making the decision to sell their annuity”. —[ Official Report , 19 April 2016; Vol. 608, c.”
“14. If she will take steps to resolve the immigration status of overseas students who have been falsely accused of cheating in English language tests.”
“After 2014, over 30,000 overseas students lost their visas, accused of cheating in English language tests. It is now clear that the great majority of those students were entirely innocent. It is now over 12 months since the Home Secretary rightly told the Home Affairs Committee: “We need to find a resolution”. Why wait for the outcome of the court case? There is no need to delay. Why not now bring forward the resolution the Home Secretary has rightly promised?”
“It is estimated that 4,000 Muslim young people every year choose with a heavy heart not to enter higher education because of the Islamic ban on interest. Nine years ago, David Cameron promised a system of alternative student finance to overcome that problem. We were told there would be a decision on that in this statement today. Does the Secretary of State plan to honour the promise made by the leader of his party to Muslim young people?”
“Three years ago, the Government consulted on much-needed reforms to statutory sick pay, rightly recognising that the current system is inflexible and does not reflect modern working life. Those reforms were postponed when the pandemic hit, and day one access to statutory sick pay was introduced instead. I think the Prime Minister has just announced that day one access to statutory sick pay will be withdrawn in a month’s time. Will he now bring forward the much-needed and long-delayed reforms to statutory sick pay?”
“British Muslims make up nearly 5% of the UK population and almost 10% of students. In the borough I represent, Muslims are about a third of our population. It is extremely hurtful that the Government simply cannot be bothered to keep the promise they made nine years ago to so many people. Thousands of young Muslims miss out on university. Others struggle over the conflict between what they believe and their hopes for higher education. Our system should not be doing that to people, as the Government recognised nine years ago. New clause 13 requires the Secretary of State to at last make the long-awaited regulations. I hope the House and the Minister will support it.”
“In November 2015, a Green Paper said: “we are looking to develop the ‘Takaful’ product more fully.” A White Paper the following year said there was “a real need” to support students who felt unable to use interest-bearing loans and that: “we will introduce an alternative student finance product for the first time”— which— “will avoid the payment of interest”. That was seven years ago. In 2017, campaigners hoped the new Higher Education and Research Act 2017 would enable a takaful loan model. Ministers then said that the May 2019 Augar review would cover it. It did not, but ever since Ministers have used the forthcoming response to that report as a justification for still not doing anything. The response to the Augar review was supposed to be published at the time of the spending review, but six months later there is still no word.”
“Nine years later, there is still not even a timetable for keeping it. It looks to young Muslims as if Ministers simply cannot be bothered. A year after David Cameron’s speech, a Government consultation attracted 20,000 responses—a record at the time—on a proposed takaful system, in which students pay into the system to guarantee each other against loss. This co-operative structure is generally recognised as sharia-compliant. Repayments, debt levels and cost to the Government would be the same as for conventional student loans. But progress since then over eight years has been glacial.”
“It concluded that, every year, 4,000 Muslim students opt out of university altogether because alternative student finance is not available, 6,000 choose to self-fund, severely limiting their course choice and student experience, and four in five who took loans felt conflicted as a result, sometimes leading to mental health consequences requiring clinical intervention. It is in nobody’s interests to fail such a large group of bright young people who we need to contribute their full potential in the years ahead. As Prime Minister, David Cameron promised to change that. At the World Islamic Economic Forum in London in 2013, he said: “Never again should a Muslim in Britain feel unable to go to university because they cannot get a student loan - simply because of their religion.” The promise he made was very clear.”
“For some British Muslims, having to take an interest-bearing student loan simply meant that they could not go to university at all. Riba—interest—is prohibited in Islam as it was in Christianity until the middle ages. Some Muslim young people defer university until they have saved to pay the fees outright. Some, with a heavy heart, take out a loan and feel bad about it ever after. Others do not attend at all. That is the reality facing young British Muslims today. Last October, Muslim Census published the findings of a survey on the scale of the problem.”
“We are having an interesting debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) on the case that he set out from the Front Bench by rightly highlighting that, every couple of years, the Government say they will solve the skills problem by putting employers at the centre, and it never works, so they come back and do the same thing again. He was also right to highlight the failure of the apprenticeship levy, about which the Government were warned. I rise to speak to new clause 13 in my name. Nine years ago, the Government pledged to introduce alternative student finance, but it still has not been delivered, barring large numbers of Muslims from higher education. The problem became a serious one in 2012, when tuition fees were drastically raised and student loans became essential for pretty much everybody.”
“(Urgent Question ) : To ask the Home Secretary to make a statement about reports of failings in the test of English for international communication, or TOEIC, language tests in 2012.”
“The Home Secretary told the Home Affairs Committee a year ago that too many people had been hurt and that a resolution was needed, but there has been no progress since. Will the Minister now come forward with a straightforward mechanism, as promised by the previous Home Secretary two and half years ago, to enable innocent students to clear their names and rebuild their lives?”
“Contrary to what the Minister said, no appeal was available other than for students to go back to their home countries and then appeal, but in reality there was no provision there to make an appeal. Thousands of innocent students had their futures destroyed. This morning, the original “Panorama” team has reported that ETS knew about the cheating well before the “Panorama” programme but did nothing because it wanted to keep the revenue. The BBC has also reported that the Home Office was told in 2012 by ETS whistleblowers but, instead of cancelling the licence then, allowed ETS to carry on for another two years. Thousands of innocent students were dragged into disaster as a result. Home Office failings have wrecked the lives of thousands of innocent people.”
“In 2011, the Home Office gave a licence to the US firm ETS to operate its TOIEC English language test to establish whether overseas students could speak English well enough to study in the UK. Nearly 60,000 students took the test over three years but, as the Minister said, in 2014 “Panorama” exposed cheating at a number of TOIEC test centres and the ETS licence was withdrawn. In response, ETS promised to analyse its recordings of all the students who had taken the test. Having done that, ETS told the Home Office later in 2014 that 96.5% of the students had either definitely or probably cheated. The Home Office seems to have failed to ask even the most basic questions about that absurd claim, now discredited, and it went ahead and cancelled the visas of more than 30,000 students.”
“In east London the position is getting worse. The delays in the east London family court are the worst in London. Several months ago we were told that parts of east London would be transferred to other courts to ease the problems, but nothing seems to have happened so far and families are now having to wait a minimum of seven months for a hearing. When will we finally see some progress on this? Do we not need additional court capacity?”
“DWP’s social security advisory committee highlighted just over a year ago the serious problem that disabled people do not trust the Department. Burying the NatCen report, in breach of the cross-Government social research protocol, has made matters worse. The failure to consult properly on the national disability strategy has also now been found to be in breach of the law. As a first step, should the Minister not accept the social security advisory committee’s recommendation to establish a protocol for engagement to do the job properly with disabled people?”
“It completely failed to properly inform people about the Ombudsman’s ruling that there had been maladministration or that they could claim compensation.” The other emailer complained that the information on his company pension scheme website was misleading: that it made no reference to the factsheet so he had no way of knowing about it, and it gave him no hint that he could apply for compensation. The fact that few people have referred to the factsheet may well mean that they do not know about it, and I hope that a serious effort will now be made to draw attention to it. I very much welcome the debate we have had this afternoon about what is the appropriate level for increasing benefits at this very difficult time. Like others, I say to the Government. “You are going to have to go further.””
“Let me read one of them to the Minister: “I had personally been searching unsuccessfully for the GMP factsheet for months on gov.uk using a range of search terms since you spoke in parliament about this issue in February 2021…How anyone affected was expected to know it was there I will never know. There was no press release or other publicity to encourage the large numbers of people affected to look at the gov.uk site factsheet. I was shocked to read the factsheet.”
“That falls a long way short of the Committee’s call in 2016 for the Government to “focus on identifying the individuals affected, assessing their potential losses, and communicating with them”, but at least it was something. The Department said that it would review the factsheet after six months. The Committee wrote to the permanent secretary recently, setting out points that we would like to be covered in the review, including what steps had been taken to promote the factsheet and how many people had contacted DWP as a result. In a response last month, the permanent secretary said that nobody had so far applied for compensation as a result of reading the factsheet, and that the Department had received only four letters in response to it. I am puzzled by that, because I received two emails just last week about this very issue.”
“It instead chose to focus only on the benefits of the new State Pension and other separate pension changes.” It recommended that the DWP should “review and report back its learning from our investigations…In particular, it should ensure that its literature clearly and appropriately points out that some individuals who have large GMPs and reach State Pension Age in the early years may be negatively affected by the changes. It should explicitly tell people to check their circumstances and should provide details to the public about how they can do this.” In response—it responded rather reluctantly, but it did respond in the end—the Department produced a factsheet last August, entitled “Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) and the effect of the new State Pension”.”
“She replied: “I am not anticipating a big action plan, no.” Given that pensioners on low incomes are being particularly hard-hit by rising energy costs—as we will be reminded more and more frequently in the next few weeks—will the Minister reconsider? The Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order gives pension schemes the percentage by which they need to uprate GMPs built up between 1988 and 1997. This year, as the Minister has explained, it is 3%. Some people with long periods of contracting out—and therefore large GMPs—lost out under the new state pension in 2016. The ombudsman concluded in August 2019 that “when communicating this change, DWP did not explain that people with long periods of contracting out could be significantly worse off.”
“On the most recent figures: six in 10 of those entitled to pension credit actually claimed it; 76% of the total amount of pension credit that could have been claimed was claimed; and up to £1.8 billion of pension credit was unclaimed. Independent Age, the charity, has called on the Government to research who is not claiming pension credit—I hope the Government will publish the research this time—and to draw up an ambitious plan for much higher take-up over five years. Researchers at Loughborough University found that maximising pension credit take-up could lift three in 10 pensioners out of poverty and reduce the number in severe poverty by half. In July I asked the Secretary of State whether the Department would bring forward an action plan.”
“I hope the Department will also reconsider our 2020 recommendation to “increase the speed with which changes can be made to legacy benefit rates.” At the start of the pandemic, local housing allowance was reset to the 30th percentile of local rents, but it has now been frozen again, as my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North said. In our report on the five-week wait for the first payment of universal credit, we recommended keeping it at the 30th percentile, with an annual review to keep rates appropriate for each area. That has not been done, which, as my hon. Friend said, will make things progressively harder for people who depend on the local housing allowance rate. The standard minimum guarantee in pension credit will be increased by only 3.1%, but pension credit take-up remains low.”
“That is completely in breach of the clear requirement of the Government’s protocol on social research, which was adopted in 2015. Instead the Work and Pensions Committee had to obtain the report and publish it, as we did last week. The report says that disabled people “reported that they were often unable to meet essential day to day living costs”. These include food, rent and heating. This 3% real-terms cut in their income will make it a great deal worse. The IFS also points out that universal credit, as we saw in the pandemic—again, the hon. Member for Amber Valley made this point—can be changed at short notice and could be uprated at more recent inflation rates.”
“Robert Joyce, the deputy director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, argues that increasing benefits each April based on inflation in the previous September—this point was powerfully made by the hon. Member for Amber Valley—is “not fit for the period of high and rising inflation we now face…the poorest are heading for a 3% year-on-year cut in their real benefit levels and living standards.” The Government’s protocol on social research requires that commissioned social research should be published within 12 weeks of being received. The DWP refused to publish the NatCen report on disabled people’s experience of the benefits system. Not only did they not publish it within 12 weeks; they did not publish it at all.”
“The other quarter will have a higher income, but they “will probably have that all taken away from them in higher energy bills and in the national insurance rise…It will be particularly grim for those who did not benefit from the change because they are out of work or on very low earnings”. Benefits are uprated each April in line with the CPI rate of the previous September, which this year is 3.1%, but, as we have been reminded, the Bank of England expects inflation to be over 7% by April. As the hon. Member for Waveney said, inflation will not be far short of the 8% by which pensions would have risen if the triple lock had been left in place last year.”
“Last February, a year ago, the Select Committee unanimously called on the Chancellor to extend that increase for at least a year—that view has been expressed this afternoon by the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), too—but the call was rejected. For some people in work, the loss was mitigated, in part, by the welcome changes to work allowances and the universal credit taper rate, but others who are struggling with rapidly rising prices and with an income just from universal credit have a much lower income than a year ago. The chief executive of the Resolution Foundation told the Treasury Committee a week ago that, taking into account the removal of the £20 a week uplift and the improvements to the taper rate and work allowances “around three quarters of Universal Credit claimants will lose out”.”
“Jointly, they have set a great example to the House. I would be grateful if the Minister present communicated that point to his hon. Friend. This is a very singular year for social security uprating. Households, as we have been reminded, are feeling acutely the pressures of rising food and energy prices. From 2016 to 2020, as my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) pointed out, about half the benefits covered by the draft order were frozen. Benefit incomes became completely disconnected from the real cost of living. Last September, as we have been reminded, the temporary increase of £20 a week to universal credit and working tax credit ended.”
“I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), who makes an important contribution to the work of the Select Committee. I agree with much of what he says. May I start by acknowledging—as the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), did at Question Time—the generous tribute that the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), gave in this House to our late colleague Jack Dromey? I often heard each of them privately singing the praises of the other when Jack was the Pensions Minister’s shadow, perhaps particularly when they were both working on the plans from Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union for the combined defined contribution pension scheme that I think is due to be launched later this year.”
“There is an obvious unfairness in the massive profits being made by the oil and gas companies at a time when families are facing such great hardship. Surely the Chancellor must make an intervention to address that. He has announced a discretionary fund for local councils. Worried families will have no idea how much that will benefit them, if at all. Will he instead introduce an uplift in universal credit, having cut it so unfairly just four months ago?”
“Some of those that were accepted have still not been implemented. Dr Paul Litchfield, the former independent assessor of the work capability assessment, told us in December: “Then you look at things seven years down the road and as far as I can see things have not been taken forward.” We have already heard many sensible points in our inquiry, and I very much hope that the Department will accept and implement the recommendations that will be made in our report later this year.”
“I am pleased that NatCen has complied with our order; the Committee now has that report. We will meet tomorrow morning, and my view is that we should publish it. Ministers seem to think that their interests are best served by hiding and covering up, but every botched attempt means that disabled people trust them even less. I hope that this Minister will usher in a new openness. Our inquiry has already heard, extensively, about problems with assessors who lack basic understanding, assessment reports that seem to relate to a different person, and forms that cannot be read by the assistive technology that blind people use. The Department has been very slow to make sensible changes. In 2018, the previous Work and Pensions Committee produced—unanimously, on a cross-party basis—a series of recommendations.”
“In September 2020, the Department received from the National Centre for Social Research a report that it had commissioned on the uses of health and disability benefits. Some 120 people were interviewed for that research and were told, in a letter approved by the Department, that the resulting report would be published. The Government have a protocol on social research, adopted in 2015, which requires the publication of all such research within 12 weeks of receipt. The Secretary of State confirmed to the Select Committee that the protocol applied to that research, but told us that, nevertheless, she was not going to publish it. The Committee agreed, unanimously, that it should be published. We asked the Department again and made it clear that if it was not published, we would use our powers to order NatCen to provide us with a copy.”
“Friend the Member for Battersea mentioned, last week the Department lost the judicial review brought by disabled people regarding the national disability strategy consultation. The Department’s defence in court was that it had not set out to consult disabled people properly and therefore was not guilty of not having done so. As you have reminded us, Sir Gary, the Department is now, absurdly, appealing against that defeat. The Green Paper consultation was launched after the summer recess began. Calls from disabled people’s organisations to extend the deadline were rejected. The Department also rejected the call of its own social security advisory committee for a protocol for engaging with disabled people to try to overcome the problems.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) on securing this important debate. The Green Paper’s commitment to reforming assessments is welcome. Every MP knows of awful problems with them. At the start of the Parliament, the Select Committee on Work and Pensions agreed on an inquiry on the issue. That was put on hold while face-to-face assessments were suspended, but we are now taking evidence. We want disabled people to be at the heart of the inquiry, so we have launched a survey of personal experiences of assessments, to which we have so far had more than 3,500 responses. The survey is on the Committee’s website, including in an easy-read version, and we would welcome further responses. A key problem is that disabled people just do not trust DWP, and the Department keeps making things worse. As my hon.”
“As was said in the debate, the grounds on which the Government resisted that case was that they were not properly consulting people in the first place. That is surely a hopeless position for the Government to be in. They should consult people properly from the start.”
“Does the Prime Minister recognise that repeatedly making statements, including from the Dispatch Box, which turn out subsequently to be untrue, is a serious problem, or does he not recognise that?”
“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) on securing this debate. I agree with the points that the Minister is making about the importance of tackling fraud, particularly as universal credit has the highest level of fraud of any DWP benefit in history. Does he agree that it is not acceptable to take somebody’s benefits away for 11 months, as in one of the cases that my hon. Friend mentioned, with no support available? That potentially completely ruins someone’s life.”
“The introduction of universal credit has led to a big increase in fraud. The current growth of economic crime and corruption poses an existential threat to financial services—one of our biggest and most successful business sectors—and therefore to the UK economy as a whole. Does the Minister accept that effectively tackling this scourge urgently requires an economic crime Bill?”
“Will the Minister confirm that the Government intend to table amendments in the other place to implement the statutory protection for leaseholders announced last week by the Secretary of State? By the time that the Bill is debated there, can we expect amendments to have been published so that we can consider them?”
“I welcome this important report, and I thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting the urgent question. What is the position relating to the payment of interest in cases such as this? The ombudsman found that these failings had had a severe effect on Ms U’s existing mental and physical health problems, and no doubt the same is true for quite a number of the other 118,000 people affected. Will the Department work out, proactively, who should be receiving compensation? One of the ombudsman’s recommendations is that the Department should report to the Select Committee on its progress in considering his report and the decisions that it makes on how to remedy its own failings. Will the Department accept the recommendation and report to the Committee, and if so, when can we expect that to happen?”
“I very much agree with the point my right hon. Friend is making and with the recommendation in the report. I wonder whether she noticed that the Prime Minister told the Liaison Committee in July that “one of the key objectives of the Online Safety Bill is to tackle online fraud.” Does she agree that it cannot possibly do that if it misses out scam adverts?”
“In February 2019, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport announced that it was considering the regulation of online advertising, but three years on, there has been no progress at all. We now understand that there will be another consultation later this year. It will be years before that work delivers, and in the meantime thousands will have lost their life savings and UK financial services will have suffered further damage. The Government must not surrender to organised crime. I urge the Minister to accept the Joint Committee’s recommendation.”
“I welcome the support for that move expressed in the debate. I referred earlier to the Prime Minister’s statement to the Liaison Committee last July that “one of the key objectives of the Online Safety Bill is to tackle online fraud.” However, the current draft of the Bill excludes most of the online fraud problem, so I urge the Minister to tackle it head on in the Bill. The public certainly want that; Aviva has published research concluding that 87% of the public want the Government to legislate to stop search engines and social media platforms promoting financial scams through advertising. Until now, Ministers have said that the problem will be addressed by separate work on online advertising. That really is not enough. That work is proceeding at a snail’s pace.”
“An estimated 86% of fraud is committed online…Action Fraud has told us that victims of pensions-related scams who had worked their whole lives to build a retirement fund had lost £82,000 on average…Online platforms, such as search engines and social media platforms, are playing an increasingly significant role in putting consumers at risk of harm by exposing them to adverts for financial products…Fraudsters have unprecedentedly cheap access to an online population of consumers who find it difficult to differentiate genuine offers from the fraudulent…There are ads online for firms that don’t exist, for firms that claim to be regulated but aren’t, for firms that claim to be based in the UK but aren’t and for clones of legitimate authorised firms.” That is why I applaud so warmly the Joint Committee’s recommendation that the Bill should be broadened, as the Governor of the Bank of England said, to cover online fraud.”
“He said: “When I started challenging them after a couple of months, they started becoming abusive… threatening to sue me for slander when I pointed out what they were doing was illegal…It actually became very stressful…Having warned Google many times, it fails to take action.” We now have a well-established organised crime industry staffed by a large number of accomplished thugs, sustained by cheap and easy access to victims on Google and on Facebook. My interest arises, as the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe mentioned, from the Work and Pensions Committee inquiry on pension scams. In a letter to the Work and Pensions Committee last May, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority told us that “fraud now accounts for one-in-three crimes in the UK, costing up to £190 billion a year.”