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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“In fact, according to the House of Commons Library, support for unemployed people is now at a lower level, as a proportion of average earnings, than it was when Lloyd George introduced unemployment benefit in 1911. These are historically low levels of support. When the Minister responds to the debate, will she give us some explanation of why unemployment support has been cut so low? We have had no explanation at all. I have pressed Ministers on the issue at the Work and Pensions Committee but they cannot give any justification for why this has happened. Social security has a job to do; we cannot have successive Ministers simply dipping into it to fund other things. At its current level, particularly in some parts of the country, it has been cut below the level at which it can any longer do its basic job.”
“Those are significant changes that are large enough to be worth while, and they will help low-paid working families to get over the £20 a week cut and will increase work incentives—those are positive things—but they will do nothing at all for unemployed families and people who cannot work because of ill health, all of whom have suffered the £20 a week cut to the rate of universal credit. Benefit support for unemployed families is now at its lowest level, in real terms, for more than 30 years. In those 30 years, GDP has increased by more than 50% in real terms, but support for unemployed families is no bigger at all than it was 30 years ago. It is now at the lowest level ever as a proportion of average earnings.”
“Friend the shadow Chancellor—that the central problem has been weak economic growth since 2010—is very persuasive. We have a difficult winter ahead and the appetite for an approach different from the Government’s may well be rising rapidly next spring, with real wages due to fall again in the next year. We all understand why the tax burden is high coming out of the pandemic, but there seems to have been no attempt to share that burden fairly. It is all being borne by working families, what with the national insurance increase—the jobs tax—and the Chancellor’s evident delight in cutting the duty on champagne then seemed to be rubbing salt in the wound. I welcome yesterday’s announcement of the reduction in the universal credit taper and the increase in the work allowance.”
“The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy told us today that yesterday’s announcement about business rates meant that they would be “more responsive and agile, with more frequent revaluations”; I do not think there is anything very fundamental there. In making the case for fundamental reform, my hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor is absolutely right. That is the kind of bold change that is needed. It is striking that Ministers currently do not seem to be taking much notice of UK businesses. They got into the habit of ignoring all businesses’ fears about Brexit, so they seem to feel they should continue to ignore their views now. From what I can tell, businesses are currently getting a hearing from the Labour Front-Bench team that they are not getting from Conservative Front Benchers. The argument made by my hon.”
“Her commitment to abolishing business rates has clearly rattled the Chancellor, and there is a compelling case for fundamental reform given the dramatic shift to online shopping, as a number of Conservative Members have said. Until the shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), told us at the start of the debate, I did not realise that a promise to do that has been included in every Conservative manifesto since 2010. I do not know why, 11 years on, the Government are still nowhere near doing it.”
“I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone). I attended the reception he hosted yesterday for young people working in the renewable energy sector. He mentioned the reception in a couple of his earlier interventions, and I agree with those points. I congratulate the shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), on her assured response to yesterday’s Budget statement. I am not sure how much notice she had, but I do not think it was very long—perhaps half an hour. She had to put up with some very ill-mannered barracking from two or three Conservative Members, but she seemed, if anything, to relish it and she set out a compelling case that the heart of the problem is the poor record on growth over the past 11 years.”
“We will rightly reflect on what more we can do to stop that happening again—I wonder if we might ask the police to review our appointment lists ahead of each surgery, for example—but we must not give up on the accessibility of Members of Parliament. If we do, the sponsors of those who attacked David and who attacked me will have succeeded. That must not happen.”
“Singlehandedly, he made the campaign cross-party, and that was crucial to its success, leading to London 2012 and the regeneration that is under way at the moment. Of course, David was not initially seen as a friend by my Newham Council colleagues, who have not seen a Conservative elected for 30 years. We all remembered David dashing our 1992 general election hopes by holding Basildon, but we invited him to our town hall celebration when the Stratford campaign succeeded. I was not quite sure how that was going to go, but David won over everybody with a beautifully judged speech. Newham has lost a great friend. David was accessible to his constituents. Tragically, he has now given his life.”
“He also told me that in a period when he was not able to attend quite a lot of the politics lessons, David very carefully wrote out all of his notes so that his friend could copy those notes afterwards. Kindness was evident at that early stage as well. David stood for election to the council in Newham in 1974 and 1978 and for Parliament in Newham North West in 1979, before finding more promising opportunities further east, but notwithstanding party differences, his supportive interest in Newham remained. As council leader from 1990, I pressed the Conservative Government to bring the channel tunnel rail link through a station in Stratford. David was our unwavering ally on the Government side.”
“We have rightly been reminded of David’s enthusiastic advocacy for the constituencies that he represented, but he was also an enthusiast for the London Borough of Newham, where he was born and grew up; where he attended the excellent St Bonaventure’s Catholic school, which he stayed in touch with for the rest of his life; where he supported West Ham United football club; and where his mother lived until her death five years ago, as we have been reminded, at the age of 104. I heard over the weekend from somebody who was in the sixth form at St Bonaventure’s with David but who, unlike David, supported the Labour party. He told me that the politics teacher, Mr Cunningham, predicted that David was going to be a Conservative MP.”
“The most recent figures show that only six in 10 of those who are eligible for pension credit are claiming it, and that only 76% of the total amount of pension credit that could have been claimed is claimed. That is quite a significant reason why the problem of pensioner poverty is rising.”
“Its analysis shows that pensioner poverty has started to increase again since 2012, with 18% of pensioners—more than 2 million people—in 2020 living in poverty after paying housing costs, of whom more than 1 million are in severe poverty. This is a significant challenge and it is getting worse. Of the English regions, the problem is particularly acute in London. There is no room for complacency about pensioner poverty. The Bill will increase the standard minimum guarantee of pension credit by 2.5% or inflation—whichever is the greater—next April. When the Minister responds, will he tell us what the Department will do to increase take-up of pension credit so that more people can benefit from the increase?”
“I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), who makes an important contribution to the work of the Work and Pensions Committee. I echo his words of appreciation and good wishes to the hon. Members for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) and for Colchester (Will Quince). The Bill reduces an increase in the state pension that the Government’s triple lock policy would have delivered. I understand why it has been done, but let us not kid ourselves; we have a growing problem with pensioner poverty, after a quite long-sustained improvement following the introduction of pension credit 18 years ago. The charity Independent Age has analysed the Government’s households below average income statistics.”
“Speaking to the Committee last week, Ministers from the Department could give no reason at all for the Government choosing to set the rate of universal credit so low, other than as a consequence of historical accidents. They said that the Government had made no assessment of the impact of ending the £20 a week uplift on people claiming, nor of how many people would be pushed into poverty as a result. The Legatum Institute has today published research suggesting that the number of people in poverty will go up by 840,000, including 290,000 children, if the uplift is removed. The Government have also made no new estimate of the annual cost of keeping the uplift.”
“As a proportion of average earnings, support for unemployed families will be the lowest since the modern welfare state was introduced in 1948. The Library tells me that it will be lower as a proportion of average earnings than it was when unemployment benefit was first introduced in 1911. We are told that the Government’s priority is levelling up. This policy is not levelling up; this is a policy of grinding down. Social security has a job to do—an important job that we all recognise needs to be done. Pushing it inexorably downwards when prices are surging upwards means that it cannot do that job. People cannot focus on getting a job if they are worrying about whether they can afford to eat their next meal.”
“This cannot be the right time to take £20 a week away from everyone receiving universal credit. The Select Committee recently heard evidence of people having to skip meals before the uplift was introduced. Well, their position will be a good deal worse if the uplift is taken away in a couple of weeks, because the prices they now face are so much higher, and have become so much higher in just the last few weeks. Thirdly, what justification can there be for reducing universal credit to a historically low level? If the uplift is taken away, support for unemployed families will be the lowest in real terms for more than 30 years. The economy has grown by more than 50% in real terms over that period, but we are being asked to agree that support for unemployed families should be no higher at all in real terms than it was 30 years ago.”
“Ministers told the Select Committee last week that the Government have no estimate of the number of redundancies that will follow the end of the furlough scheme, but the most recent figures showed that 1.6 million people were furloughed at the end of July. Surely the consideration given to people who became unemployed at the start of the first lockdown should be given to those losing their livelihood next week as well. What justification could there be for treating them differently? Secondly, since the decision to introduce the uplift—especially in the past month—we have seen a surge of price rises. September’s inflation figure was a record, reflecting increased food prices in particular, and earlier this afternoon the House was considering the current steep increases in energy prices.”
“Member for Chingford and Woodford Green pointed out, the money that the Bill will save the Government next year would almost deliver the £20 a week uplift to universal credit next year. Many Members across the House are deeply worried by the plan to remove the uplift next month. The Select Committee’s call to at least postpone the removal of the uplift was unanimous. There are lots of different kinds of worry, which I will outline. First, this is not the right time, because the furlough scheme is about to end. We are told that Ministers’ intention in introducing the uplift was to protect people who were becoming newly unemployed, but there will be a surge of newly unemployed people when furlough ends.”
“Given that the Bill will deny pensioners an increase that the Government’s policy appeared to promise, I ask the Minister to look again at further steps to increase pension credit take-up. My name was also on the reasoned amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), which, as he reminded the House, was not selected. However, I want to comment on the reasoned amendment that was selected, which states that we should reject the Bill because it “fails to increase key benefits, such as making permanent the uplift to Universal Credit.” Let me pick up that specific point. As the amendment drafted by the right hon.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. That is why Independent Age has called on the Government properly to research who is not claiming pension credit, and to draw up a plan to increase take-up over five years. Research by academics at Loughborough University found that maximising pension credit uptake could lift three in 10 pensioners out of poverty and reduce the number living in severe poverty by half. When the Secretary of State came to the Select Committee in July, I asked her whether the Department would bring forward an action plan. She replied that there had been a “media day of action” in June to encourage take-up of pension credit, and told the Committee: “We will continue to advertise it in a different way but I am not anticipating a big action plan, no.” That is disappointing.”
“The Bill misses the chance—the Liberal Democrats’ reasoned amendment gives us the opportunity to reflect on this—to address this very serious flaw in the Government’s current intentions. We are heading into an extremely difficult period for both working families and unemployed families who depend on universal credit, because of price rises across the board.”
“The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point that I agree with. It is a vital fact, often not understood, that universal credit is an in-work benefit as well as an out-of-work benefit. I think that 40% of universal credit claimants are in work. We have taken evidence in the Select Committee from working parents receiving universal credit who are having quite a hard time at the moment and are going to have a very hard time indeed if they lose the £86 a month that they will if the uplift is removed. The cost of keeping the uplift, the figure that we are given, is £6 billion a year, but—the hon. Member for Amber Valley drew attention to this in the Select Committee last week—that figure was calculated when lockdown was still in place and job vacancies were much lower, so presumably the cost would be less if the uplift was kept.”
“I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way, and I am delighted he is still in his post. He talked about pensioner poverty, but rather idiosyncratically, he is using the absolute measure. The much more widely used measure is the relative measure of poverty, on which the analysis of Independent Age is based, and on that much more widely used measure, pensioner poverty is of course going up.”
“Paid-for scam adverts are rife online, and it is not unusual for people to lose their entire life savings to them. 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,” but the Bill as drafted does not cover paid-for scam adverts at all. I am pleased that the prelegislative scrutiny Committee is going to take a look at this, but will the Minister review the Department’s currently indefensible position? We cannot wait years for the other process that he referred to to work its way through the system.”
“If this cut goes ahead, with £20 a week taken off universal credit, it will reduce the support for an unemployed family to the lowest level as a proportion of average earnings at any time since the welfare state was established after the second world war. How can that possibly be justified?”
“Half of those claiming universal credit only started doing so during the pandemic. They are not returning to their former level of support. Many will have to get used to a lower income than they have ever had to cope with, and that will come as a rude shock to those who were convinced at the 2019 election, maybe for the first time, that the Conservative party understood what they were dealing with. Every former Work and Pensions Secretary since 2010 opposes the cut, as the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire reminded us. It will leave the system unable to do the job we need it to do, and the House must reject this cut.”
“We will instead be imposing grinding hardship on a very large number of people at a time of surging costs and inflation. Taking away the £20 a week now will mean that the level of support provided will be less in real terms, given today’s inflation figures, than the support that was available going into the pandemic. The Government have lost touch with what people are having to deal with. The Secretary of State’s claim that people could make up the extra £20 a week by working an extra two hours is simply wrong. Governments do lose touch, but this House must not. We must retain a recognition of the realities that people are dealing with. We need to grasp what this will do to families, even though Ministers do not. It is not just about numbers on a spreadsheet.”
“One of them told us that “if one of the children gets a party invite—which some weeks is my worst nightmare because then I have to find the money for them to be able to do that—it is kind of a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul all of the time anyway. There have been months where I have to decide which bill I am not going to pay this month...you are constantly playing catch-up on utilities particularly...The extra £86 a month has allowed for us not to be doing that so much.” And that is a parent who is in full-time employment. If this cut goes ahead, it will reduce support for working parents and unemployed parents below the basic minimum that we all want people to have to enable them to look for a job, or for a better job, and to care for their children—things we all want them to do.”
“The Work and Pensions Committee heard last week from a lone father of two children who told us what this was going to mean for him: “The uplift sent some relief and for that to be removed is going to leave us with that big question again: do I go hungry, do my kids go hungry or do we keep the house warm?” Somebody worrying about how to buy their next meal is not going to be able to focus on finding a decent job. Taking away £20 a week will leave the level of support below the basic minimum that is needed and that we require the system to provide. The cut will hit working families hard as well. The Committee heard from working lone parents who will lose £86 a month from their income.”
“I invited her to do so, but she did not, and of course it cannot be justified. The House of Commons Library tells us that, if we go back to 1911 when unemployment benefit was introduced, it was set at a higher level as a proportion of average earnings than the system will deliver if this cut goes ahead. The cut will take effect just as we are seeing prices surge, including food prices, as we have seen in today’s inflation figures, and energy bills, with the Ofgem price cap lifted.”
“I very much welcome the argument that the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) has just set out, and I am grateful to him for reaffirming his support for the £20 a week rise. Like him, I want to focus on the question of adequacy. If this cut goes ahead, it will reduce real-terms support for an out-of-work family to the lowest level since Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. The economy has grown by more than 50% in real terms since then, but the Government’s proposal is that support for unemployed families should not have grown at all over those 30 years. That support will be about one seventh of average earnings, which is, as I said in my intervention on the Secretary of State, the lowest proportion of average earnings it has been since 1948. The Secretary of State made no attempt to justify why it was so low.”
“Single parents who are in work told the Work and Pensions Committee last week how hard they are going to find it to sustain the £87 a month fall in their income that this cut will deliver. One witness told us that he is going to have to skip meals to make sure that his children do not have to. Surely social security must be better than that.”
“18. What discussions he plans to have with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the impact on the Exchequer of ending the £20 uplift to universal credit.”
“Forty per cent. of the people who claim universal credit are already in work. Does the Chancellor understand that they will be very hard hit by this cut, which is the biggest overnight benefit cut in our history?”
“Cutting universal credit by £20 a week will hit working families very hard. It will leave support for unemployed families at the lowest real terms level for over 30 years. It will undermine the recovery and scupper the prospects for levelling up. Does the Chancellor of the Exchequer understand why every single former Work and Pensions Secretary since 2010 has opposed his cut?”
“Is it still the Secretary of State’s view that it is important that the level of the basic state pension keeps track with earnings over time, as the coalition pension reforms assumed? If so, will it not require some further adjustment after these two exceptional years? Given that pensioner poverty was starting to increase before the pandemic, after a long period in which, as she said, that did not happen, what will her Department do to increase the currently very low take-up of pension credit?”
“Together, the Chairs of the Committees dealing with social security in the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd and the Northern Ireland Assembly and I have made a call that the £20 a week cut in universal credit due in October should not go ahead. A new Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report shows that if it does go ahead, out-of-work families with children will have an income way below what the general public regard as the minimum necessary for an acceptable standard of living. Instead of cutting down, will the Prime Minister not follow his own policy, level up and leave the £20 a week in place?”
“One of the big problems at present is the very long time that it takes to determine asylum applications. Since the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), left the Home Office, the number of case workers has gone up but the number of decisions has gone down in every single year. Why has that catastrophic fall in productivity been allowed to occur?”
“I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way, and I agree with him about this point. Of course, Australia has undertaken offshore processing, and there are terrible stories, which shame Australia, about what has happened to some people in those places. Has he had any indication: where might these offshore places be where asylum applicants could be processed?”
“If people cannot stay, they should be told soon, not, as happens so often at the moment, after years, so that leaving is impractical and in practice hardly ever happens. The current gross inefficiency helps nobody. I hope the House will reject this Bill.”
“Why has productivity fallen so far? I asked the Home Secretary that and she did not give me an answer. Without fixing the problem, things will just carry on getting worse. The number waiting more than a year for initial decisions, as we have been reminded repeatedly in this debate, has risen tenfold since 2010. I have seen that in constituency surgeries. People wait four years, and they have no idea when they will hear anything. Sometimes a reply to me is the only way they know they actually are in the Home Office system. They have no other evidence that they are. I strongly support the proposal of my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) for legally binding targets to process asylum cases more quickly.”
“No doubt that will end up in the courts. I am particularly dismayed by plans to process asylum applications overseas. We have no idea where this will happen. We certainly should know before we agree to this Bill. Australia has offshore facilities in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, although nobody has been sent there since 2013. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees urged that they should be evacuated because of poor health standards, highlighting in particular the number of suicides there. Those facilities shame Australia, and if we go down the same road, it will shame us too. The long wait for asylum decisions is a massive problem. I asked the Home Secretary about this earlier. There are 50% more asylum caseworkers now than there were in 2014-15, but the number of decisions they make has gone down every single year in that time.”
“Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker, and congratulations on taking the Chair. I am delighted to see you there. Every year or two, we hear from a Conservative Home Secretary that they are going to fix the broken system. The Home Secretary has told us again tonight that the system is broken, and of course she is right: it is broken. All the previous attempts—we have heard about exactly the same things in the past—have not fixed it, and this one will not either. I cannot agree with the thinking in this Bill that making life more miserable for people whose circumstances are already utterly miserable will fix these problems and deter people from their desperate efforts to reach the UK. Most people think that distinguishing between asylum seekers on the basis of their route to the UK is contrary to the 1951 refugee convention.”
“Will the Minister commit not just to the principle of alternative student finance but to a clear timetable for delivering it in time—I hope—for the 2022-23 academic year?”
“I hope he recognises, as his predecessor did, the need for and benefits of alternative student finance. For eight years, British Muslims have been given hope that such interest-free loans will be provided. David Cameron’s promise gave rise to optimism and confidence that the Government would remove financial barriers for those wanting to attend university, but, time after time, those hopes have been dashed. Muslims are missing out on university and Muslim young people are left to struggle and wrestle over the conflict between what they believe in and their hopes for university study. As the Government recognised eight years ago, our system should not be doing that to people.”
“1329.] In response to the debate, the Minister, Lord True, said that, before that could happen, “complex policy, legal and systemic issues need to be resolved”. —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 14 April 2021; Vol. 811, c. 1332.] However, Governments have repeatedly promised to sort it out and it is more than eight years since David Cameron made the first promise. I hope that the Minister will not simply read out a list of departmental excuses that boil down to: we cannot be bothered. The all-party parliamentary group on Islamic finance recently wrote to the Prime Minister. I was one of the 50 signatories along with other parliamentarians, Muslim organisations and student groups from across the country, and we are awaiting his response.”
“The Minister will tell us that the Government remain committed to solving the problem at some unspecified future date, but I want her to be clearer about the timetable. Will students who want to start university in 2022-23 have access to alternative student finance? I commend the efforts of Lord Sharkey and Lord Sheikh in the other place on this issue. Lord Sharkey tabled an amendment to the Financial Services Bill that would have given the Government six months to introduce a sharia-compliant finance product for tuition fees. In moving it, he noted the repeated failure to take the issue seriously, citing Ministers’ “absurdly unfriendly and unfeeling” responses that make “no attempt to reassure or comfort the Muslim community.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 14 April 2021; Vol. 811, c.”
“One was a young woman who went straight from her A-levels to university and studied a subject she had not considered before because the course was funded by the Government, so she would not need an interest-bearing student loan. It was a demanding course and she was insufficiently interested in the career that it was leading to, so after six months she dropped out. She said: “I ended up doing a course that I didn’t want to do, at a university that I didn’t want to be at, I inevitably didn’t enjoy it and that’s why I dropped out”. She still hopes that she might get to university one day. Last month, I tabled early-day motion 227, which calls on the Government to introduce alternative student finance in time for the 2022-23 academic year.”
“The “Alternative Student Finance” report, commissioned by the Department and published in 2019, set out the key attraction factors of alternative student finance as follows: “a ring-fenced pot where contributions fund the education of others and so benefits future students rather than go to a profit-making organisation; does not accrue interest but instead involves a fee or contribution; available to everyone regardless of background or religion; is straightforward…permissible under Islamic law and would be approved by a council of scholars; fair, as it neither advantages nor disadvantages individuals in comparison to the mainstream student loan.” It concluded that the takaful model would be a “positive move on the part of Government.” The report included pen portraits of some of those affected.”
“David Cameron made his promise in 2013 and young Muslims have waited patiently. How much longer must they wait? Many have given up. Some think that the Government will never deliver what has been promised.”