Sir Stephen Timms
MP for East Ham · Labour · United Kingdom
“I agree with the hon. Gentleman. If he would like to send me details of that particular case, I will happily look into it. On the subject of people with hearing impairments, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities and I will be meeting the British Sign Language Advisory Board this afternoon.”
“Better outcomes require early identification and support for girls and young women with special educational needs, including dyslexia. That is the aim of the SEND reforms and the development of national inclusion standards.”
“Autistic people and people with ADHD have been struggling to get the right support at the right time. Recommendations from Professor Karen Guldberg’s neurodivergence task and finish group directly informed the SEND reforms that were published earlier this year.”
“The Equality Act 2010 places a duty on public bodies to make reasonable adjustments, so that disabled people are not put at a disadvantage by accessibility challenges.”
“The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. This benefit is there to contribute to the additional costs of disability. Too often, what has happened—my hon.”
“I think we can take the hon. Member’s question as a tacit recognition that in 14 years the previous Government should have done something to fix these problems. The steering group is clear that the provision of cash to meet the additional costs of disability is vital.”
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“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is making an important argument. Did he hear, as I did, the Minister give an assurance only three weeks ago in response to a question from the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) that the Government will provide full mitigation for the losses incurred by ESA claimants in the work-related activity group? Has he yet heard any information at all about any mitigation, let alone full mitigation?”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting the scale of the cuts in my constituency and the scale of the concern among my constituents about that. I have had letters from lots of teachers at Central Park Primary School about the £710,208 being taken out of its budget. Does she agree that that is quite wrong?”
“There is a very big economic challenge ahead. Does the Prime Minister recognise that securing anything like the barrier-free access to the single market that she has rightly set as her goal will require some compromise—some middle ground—to be found on the question of free movement of people?”
“The equality analysis produced by the Department tells us that of the current case load, 143,000 people would have had their mobility award reduced to zero had it been made under the new regulations, and that a further 21,000 would have had their payment reduced. This is not, therefore, a minor or insignificant cut; it is a substantial cut that will affect a large number of people. Table 6 in the equality assessment is titled, “Conditions most likely affected by reversing effect of UT”—upper tribunal—“judgment on mobility activity 1”, and the list includes schizophrenia, learning disability, autism, cognitive disorder due to stroke, dementia and post-traumatic stress disorder. According to the Government, those are the people most affected.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) on securing this debate and on the important case she made from the Dispatch Box. I wish to challenge some of the assertions the Secretary of State has made in commenting on the changes in the regulations since they were announced. I have no doubt that his comments were made in good faith, but I think they were incorrect. In particular, the changes do not restore the original intention of the benefit. The Secretary of State suggested that the changes are not a cut, but they obviously are, and they affect a substantial number of people.”
“If the Secretary of State has been advised that the original intention was something different, he simply needs to check the record. The changes in the regulations are different from the original intention. They introduce an explicit judgment based on impairment type; the original intention was to have no such distinction. The regulations introduce a distinction that was not in the benefit’s original intention. They say that someone is in if they struggle to plan and follow a journey, but if their problem is because of psychological distress, they are out. It is an explicit judgment, it is explicitly contingent, and it carves out a large group of people with mental health problems.”
“The changes explicitly carve out people whose mobility impairment arises from psychological distress. Was that the original intention? On 7 February 2012, the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller)—if I remember rightly, she was the predecessor but two of the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson)—said in a written answer that “when considering entitlement to both rates of the mobility component we will take into account ability to plan and follow a journey, in addition to physical ability to get around. Importantly, PIP is designed to assess barriers individuals face, not make a judgment based on their impairment type.” —[ Official Report , 7 February 2012; Vol. 540, c. 232W.] That is a clear statement of the original intent of this benefit.”
“My hon. Friend is right. I wish to say a little more about the precise content of the regulations. The Secretary of State told us at the beginning of the process that nobody would have their current benefit cut; I think Ministers now accept that that statement was incorrect. Regulation 2(4) states: “In the table in Part 3 (mobility activities), in relation to activity 1 (planning and following journeys), in descriptors c, d and f, for ‘Cannot’ substitute ‘For reasons other than psychological distress, cannot’.” The changes explicitly carve out people who cannot plan and follow a journey because of psychological distress. The Secretary of State has said not to worry, because people with cognitive impairments can still qualify for the highest rate of the mobility component. That may well be the case, but that is a different group of people.”
“That is absolutely explicit in the regulations. That group is now being discriminated against, which is contrary to the original intention. The Secretary of State talked about restoring the original aim of the policy, but the change does not do that; it is different. The Secretary of State suggests that it was never the intention to include this group of people with mental health problems, but his predecessors told the House, in terms, that it was the intention to include people irrespective of their impairment type. That was the intention of Ministers in 2012, but these regulations will thwart it. I hope that, like the other place, we will say no to these changes.”
“We have been reminded that new claimants of employment and support allowance will get a much lower rate of benefit, starting in about 10 days. Some of those people will find themselves in serious difficulty. Do Ministers have any new proposals to help?”
“The cuts to the personal independence payment explicitly exclude people applying for mobility support if the problem arises from psychological distress, despite the Prime Minister’s commitment to treat mental health problems on a par with physical health. I am grateful for the Leader of the House’s commitment that we are finally going to have a debate, but can I press him for a date? Those cuts have already taken effect, but it sounds as though the debate will now have to be after the Easter recess. Can he at least give us a firm date for when it is finally going to happen?”
“I am grateful to the Minister for that answer. Can he reassure us that as the transformation strategy, for very good reasons, puts more and more of our personal data—on our taxes, on our health and so on—online, none of those data will be at risk of ending up in the wrong hands?”
“Vera Lynn was a pupil at Brampton Primary School in my constituency and, along with every other school in my constituency, its budget is going to be cut under the Secretary of State’s proposals. Ministers often tell us that the schools budget as a whole is not being cut. Should not that guarantee apply to individual schools such as Brampton Primary School as well as to the system as a whole?”
“T9. Research shows that when a pupil joins a school at a different time from all the others, the cost is between £250 and £600. I welcome the inclusion of the mobility factor in the new formula, but putting a 0.1% weighting on it means that the amount per move will be less than £70. Will the longer-term formula take a more realistic view of the costs of mobility to schools?”
“I am listening with great interest to the case that my hon. Friend is making. One of the puzzling things about the closure programme is that the Government also want to increase the workload of jobcentres and want some people to go more frequently. They also want to introduce conditionality for people who are in work. It is difficult to see how those additional tasks can be managed at the same time as shutting down so many jobcentres.”
“Will any of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents face what a number of my constituents in East Ham in London will face once our local jobcentre closes, which is a doubling of their public transport fares in order to get to the replacement jobcentre?”
“This is a cut and it directly targets people with mental health problems. The regulation, which is taking effect tomorrow, inserts into the qualifying conditions for PIP, in the section about planning and following a journey, the phrase “For reasons other than psychological distress”. Why is psychological distress being carved out in this way, and a cut made as a result?”
“This is a worrying judgment for all people of faith. Has the Minister seen that the Church of England this morning described the judgment as “troubling”? Will she confirm that she understands why the Church of England has taken that view, and that it is right to do so?”
“In recent discussions I have taken part in, it has been clear that there is no support among any of the parties represented in the German Parliament for the UK to retain barrier-free access to the single market if we no longer operate free movement. The Prime Minister has asserted her optimism, but does she recognise that that is the reality of the starting point we are at?”
“From my recent discussions with senior Members of the German Parliament, it is very clear that we are not going to get barrier-free access to the single market if we no longer operate free movement. Do Ministers yet recognise that reality?”
“A lot of jobs in the UK depend on EU banking passports. For example, US banks can locate subsidiaries in the UK and then trade freely across Europe. In the Minister’s view, what are the prospects for keeping all those jobs in the UK after Brexit?”
“(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to make a statement on the cuts to entitlement to personal independence payment.”
“According to the wording of the regulations, they will no longer be entitled to benefit. Does that not directly contradict the Prime Minister’s commitment to treat mental health on a par with physical health?”
“In a written statement published without warning on Thursday, Ministers announced the cuts to which the Secretary of State has just referred, which will take effect in two weeks’ time. Over the weekend, another Member in government said that this was to stop the payment of benefits to people “taking pills at home, who suffer from anxiety”. Why is so little notice being given, with no opportunity at all for parliamentary scrutiny of these substantial cuts? Will the Secretary of State confirm, as stated in the impact assessment published with the regulations, that people suffering from schizophrenia, learning disability, autism and dementia will be among those worst affected by the cuts? The cut is being achieved by taking the benefit away from people whose mobility impairments are the result of “psychological distress”.”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In a written statement last Thursday, which was published without notice, Ministers announced restrictions on eligibility for the personal independence payment. Over the weekend, a Minister referring to those restrictions made comments which belittled the needs of people with mental health problems. Have you, Mr Speaker, had any notice of a request from a Minister to come to the House to explain to us the changes to PIP entitlement? If there has not been any such request, can you advise us on how we can ensure that Ministers answer questions on what they are doing and why, given the great importance of these matters, which I know you understand as well as any other Member of the House?”
“Can the Minister assure us that he knows the current status and whereabouts of the other three people released from Guantanamo Bay alongside Mr al-Harith in 2004?”
“We were led to expect that there would be at least 3,000 children. My hon. Friend will recall the statement by the then Minister for Immigration, now the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, on 21 April: “We will commit to resettling several hundred individuals in the first year with a view to resettling up to 3,000 individuals over the lifetime of this Parliament, the majority of whom will be children.” —[ Official Report , 21 April 2016; Vol. 608, c. 19WS.] Is it clear to her why that clear commitment has been broken?”
“The Government’s laudable aspiration to halve the disability employment gap is completely meaningless without a date being attached to it. What is the Minister’s latest assessment of how long it will take to halve that gap?”
“This deal would inevitably lead to job losses around Europe. The Prime Minister has said that we might have to leave the EU without a deal, so tariffs on vehicles and components are now a possibility. Does that not mean that UK employees will inevitably be at a disadvantage compared with their colleagues elsewhere in the European Union?”
“The tech sector’s No. 1 Brexit concern is that, when we leave, it will become unlawful to send personal data from Europe to UK firms unless the European Commission has declared our data protection arrangements to be adequate. What steps are being taken to secure that declaration in time?”
“The No. 1 tech Brexit worry is that when we leave, it will become unlawful to send personal data from Europe to the UK unless we have achieved an adequacy declaration from the European Commission about our data privacy arrangements. Important businesses will overnight become unviable. Will that declaration be achieved in time?”
“I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s long record of work on this issue. In his view, are we now beyond the point at which a viable Palestinian state could be set up, were there the agreement to do that, or are there perhaps still grounds for some optimism?”
“I agree with the position the hon. Gentleman sets out. Does he agree that it would be helpful if the British Government made it clearer that British firms should not be trading with those illegal settlements?”
“On standards, does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is potentially an important role for private rented sector licensing schemes, such as the one in my borough of Newham, in helping to tackle the minority of landlords whose accommodation is below standard?”
“They frequently do not know what their rights are and get a very bad deal, which was why my local authority—it was the first in the country to do so—introduced borough-wide private rented sector licensing in 2013.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) for his considerateness. My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) is right that the problem is growing. In 2001, 17% of the residents in my borough—Newham in east London—lived in the private rented sector, whereas today almost half do. That rapid growth is continuing and has led to problems. Regulation in this area is weak. The hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), whom I congratulate on securing the debate, was absolutely right to make the point that the great majority of landlords do a perfectly good job and provide decent accommodation, but a minority do not. The private rented sector has a number of virtues, as we have rightly been reminded. However, when there are problems, vulnerable people suffer disproportionately.”
“The hon. Gentleman is right about that. My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden made the point that universal credit is making the problem worse because of the long delays before any payment is made. I want to make a point to the Minister about the Newham private rented sector licensing scheme, which will end in December. The London borough of Newham is asking Ministers to allow the scheme to be extended for another five years. I would ask him to look sympathetically at that proposal and allow the scheme to go forward.”
“The places where enforcement action is necessary are a small proportion of the total, but the fact that it is possible for the council to intervene in serious, problem cases is an important help to vulnerable people and others living in the borough. For that reason as well, I would particularly ask the Minister to respond sympathetically to the approach that I think he has already received—at least informally—requesting that the scheme should be extended for a further five years after it ends in December.”
“Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) pointed out, there were antisocial behaviour problems for the neighbours as well as grim conditions for those living in the house. Because the scheme was in place, the local authority was able to intervene. There was a fine of more than £8,000 and the position was brought under control. Altogether, licences have been issued for 38,880 private sector properties in the borough and there have been 1,000 prosecutions since the scheme was introduced. Just 28 landlords have been banned for failing to meet the borough’s “fit and proper” test, in relation to 230 properties.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend. In the Newham scheme, licence holders are bound by conditions, as he described, to prevent overcrowding and deal with antisocial behaviour, and to make sure that properties are well managed and safe. He is right to say that wider stock issues are outside the scope of the scheme. Perhaps I can give an example from my constituency of what has happened. In Waterloo Road there is a typical terraced house with three rooms on the first floor and two on the ground floor. All five were being used for people to sleep in. In the main bedroom upstairs, which by ordinary standards is appropriate for a couple to sleep in, four single, unrelated people were sleeping. There were six others staying elsewhere in the house. That was 10 people in total, no doubt with a number of cars between them and, as my hon.”
“However, we can say that over the four-year period, 2012-13 to 2015-16, it had a case conviction rate of 81%, although that goes up and down from year to year, and since then it has achieved some important successes, including the first individual prosecutions for LIBOR rigging, which are welcome, and the recent landmark deferred prosecution agreement with Rolls-Royce, which resulted in a fine of £671 million, which was equivalent to the company’s entire operating profits. The SFO is undoubtedly making an impact. The question is whether it is as effective as it could be and as we would all wish it to be.”
“We believe that is highly unlikely given the SFO’s recent success, the instability and damage to caseload that would be caused by abolition, the detailed analysis that went into the creation of the SFO, and the lack of expertise and track record in any other government agencies regarding prosecutions of corporate corruption.” I therefore hope that the model will be maintained, but how well is the current SFO doing? It is quite difficult to assess its effectiveness. Its case load is deliberately small: under David Green, it has focused its attention, taking the most serious and complicated cases through to prosecution.”
“Secondly, the letter stated: “Corruption must be a top priority for that agency, and not simply one amongst many.” Thirdly, it stated: “There must be specialist corruption teams” in the agency. The current arrangements for the make-up of the SFO meet those requirements, and as a result the UK is one among only four countries that are officially recognised as “active enforcers” of the OECD’s anti-bribery convention. I hope that maintaining that status will be an important concern of the Government and the Minister. Moving the anti-corruption role of the SFO into another agency would undermine UK leadership in this area. I agree with Transparency International UK, which says that it “strongly opposes the abolition of the SFO unless an alternative is proposed which is demonstrably better.”
“Bond, the umbrella organisation representing 370 international development organisations, which sees the impact of corporate corruption at the sharp end, with millions lost to public services and community wellbeing in developing countries, co-ordinated a letter to the then Prime Minister in 2015 from seven charity chief executives, in which they suggested three key tests for the Government on bribery and corruption. First, they stated: “Investigation and prosecution teams should be combined in the same agency.” The Roskill model achieves that requirement, and a number of observers think that moving the work into the NCA would probably end that beneficial arrangement.”
“The Financial Times reported on 5 October 2014 that she was “to revive plans to abolish the UK’s main anti-fraud and corruption agency and bring it into her new FBI-style national crime force, according to officials familiar with the situation.” I am glad to say that that move was resisted. The director of the SFO from 2012 to the present, David Green, QC, was clear in his statement that it would “distract and destabilise the SFO in a really bad way at a time when” it was “grappling with what” was “probably its heaviest-ever workload and making real headway.” He was not alone in making the case against abolition of the office.”
“Those multidisciplinary teams ensure that legal scrutiny is applied to investigations from their commencement. The Roskill model also ensures that there is no hand-off point, when specialist knowledge and insight developed by investigators and accountants who have been studying a case may be lost as it is transferred to the barristers. That does not happen in the SFO model. Institutional memory and continuity are very important in the prosecution of complex fraud cases, and I am concerned that that important virtue of the Roskill model might be being undermined by the way the SFO is funded at the moment. The Prime Minister, when she was Home Secretary, tried in 2011 and again in 2014 to bring the SFO into the new National Crime Agency.”
“A string of failed City of London fraud cases undermined public trust and inspired the recommendation and decision to break with the usual division between those two roles that we see in most of the rest of the English and Welsh legal system. I want to return to the issue of public confidence that justice will be done in fraud cases when arguing that the Government need to look again at the mechanisms by which the SFO is funded. Legal cases are often complex, but the cases that the SFO deals with are frequently an order of magnitude more complex than others. They involve thousands of documents and a huge amount of complex financial data. The SFO requires multidisciplinary teams working under its case controllers: they are made up of lawyers, investigators, forensic accountants and so on.”
“1610.] I very much agree with the view that he expressed and I hope it will be shared by other hon. Members contributing to this important debate. It was in the spirit of wanting the SFO to do the best possible job that I applied for this debate on how it is funded. However, it is worth just revisiting at the outset the case for the SFO, because the model has had its detractors, including the current Prime Minister when she was Home Secretary, so the case needs to continue to be made and the arguments need to be spelt out. The SFO is unique among UK law enforcement agencies. Under the model recommended by Lord Roskill at the conclusion of the fraud trials committee in 1985, it is both investigator and prosecutor of the cases that it handles.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered funding of the Serious Fraud Office. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. The Serious Fraud Office owes its origins to the work of the fraud trials committee, set up under the chairmanship of Lord Roskill in 1983 after a series of failures to secure convictions in relation to high-profile City of London scandals. The SFO began its work in 1988. I know from previous discussions on the SFO in the House that the Minister values its work very highly. He said in one debate that the Roskill model on which the SFO operates is “essential when it comes to this type of offending. It works and it must continue to be supported.” He also said: “It is important that we give our full-throated support to the work of the SFO”. —[ Official Report , 2 July 2015; Vol. 606, c.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I certainly do not want to argue that the SFO has not been effective; there is good evidence that it has been. The question is whether it is as effective as it could and should be, and that is why I now want to come to the numbers and my concerns about the way it is funded. It receives its funding as a mix of core costs and what is termed “blockbuster” funding.”