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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“When the conference in New York concluded, the Members who attended sent out three letters. The first was sent to Vietnam, where there are proposals to restrict religious freedom in new legislation. The second was sent to Burma—my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) mentioned Burma—and concerned a member of the Myanmar Parliament who was being prevented from standing in the forthcoming election, which took place in November, because he is a Muslim from the Rohingya minority. We wrote to the President of Myanmar to complain about that, and to urge that people not be barred from standing for election on religious grounds. The third letter was sent to the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, expressing grave concerns about restrictions on religious freedom in that country.”
“Prosperity has been increased by the contributions and brilliance of many people—including Protestants from France and Jews from central and eastern Europe—who fled to Britain to escape from religious persecution elsewhere, because they knew they would find freedom here to practise their beliefs. Recent research has suggested that religious freedom more broadly can enable economic growth more directly. It can help create an environment in which wealth creation can flourish. Researchers in the US—the hon. Member for Strangford referred to research at Georgetown University—looked at GDP growth in 173 countries in 2011, controlling for a range of factors, and found a positive correlation between religious freedom and prosperity. That is another ground for us to support and promote article 18 of the universal declaration.”
“Member for Strangford, I attended a conference in New York of the International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief, focused on that article. There was a big attendance of parliamentarians from a large group of countries, including European countries and Tunisia, Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, Senegal, Malaysia and Turkey. It was good to hear a speaker from Iran addressing that conference on the subject of religious freedom. A strong case was made that more needs to be done to strengthen observation of adherence to that article around the world. It is increasingly clear that there is a link between religious freedom and prosperity. There is no doubt that over our history, economic growth has been bolstered by the ideas and inventiveness of people inspired by deep religious commitment.”
“I note that the Justice Secretary has delayed his consultation on this until the new year, no doubt reflecting serious, very proper concerns among Conservative Members about that course of action. I hope that the Human Rights Act will remain on our statute book. Like the hon. Member for Strangford, I want to say something about article 18 of the universal declaration, which states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” There is growing concern that that article, as well as others, is being breached with increasing frequency around the world. In September, along with the hon.”
“The universal declaration is a vitally important document around the planet. One of the submissions sent to us ahead of this debate came from the British Institute of Human Rights, which published an advertisement today. I think a meeting is being held at this moment in the other place under its auspices, chaired by Sir Nicolas Bratza, who was the president of the European Court of Human Rights. It is drawing attention to the importance of our own Human Rights Act 1998. In its advertisement, the institute describes the legislation as “the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights made law here” in the UK. I hope it will remain part of our law. The Conservative manifesto pledged to scrap the Act. As others have suggested, that would be a terrible mistake, sending very bad signals around the world.”
“I am pleased to follow the very thoughtful speech from the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), and I welcome the way in which the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) opened the debate. There is no doubt that the publication of the universal declaration of human rights on 10 December 1948, 67 years ago, was a profoundly important moment in establishing the freedoms that men and women should expect to enjoy across the planet in the modern era. Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the drafting committee, made the comparison—the hon. Member for Strangford touched on this—with Magna Carta. She referred at the time to the universal declaration as the “international Magna Carta for all”, and in this 700th anniversary year of Magna Carta, it is right for us in this Chamber to underline that comparison.”
“Q11. Will the Chancellor take this opportunity to correct the bizarre claim made yesterday by Donald Trump about parts of London being no-go areas for the Metropolitan police? Will he point out to Mr Trump that relationships between the Muslim communities of London and the police are in fact excellent?”
“Notwithstanding the answer that the Minister has just given, does he not accept that the participation of 16 and 17-year-olds in the referendum in Scotland went well and that voters behaved responsibly? We ought to take advantage of the interest of 16 and 17-year-olds and their knowledge of these matters to support the coming EU referendum as well.”
“On that specific point, as far as I know nobody has made any such complaint about the result of the Scottish referendum. I do not understand why the Minister feels that if it was done in this case, that criticism would be made.”
“My hon. Friend is making a very good case. As he said, it was disappointing that the UK opposed the ban. Does he agree that the scientific evidence gathered since then has strengthened the case in favour of a ban?”
“In the Work programme, extra help has been given to jobseekers who have been out of work for 12 months, but under the new programme it will not be until two years have passed. Will Jobcentre Plus get extra resources to support people who have been out of work for between one and two years, given that the Work programme’s successor will not be doing that?”
“The latest projections show that universal credit is running about four years behind the timetable that the Secretary of State originally set out. He has told us today that the new digital IT solution is to be rolled out from next April. How will he merge that with the prior IT system, which is already in use in quite a lot of jobcentres?”
“The local government grant is available because some local authorities have a lower tax base than others. Can the Chancellor reassure us that the same necessary degree of rebalancing will be delivered once the grant has been phased out?”
“T9. A record number of teachers have left the profession in the past year—more than the number that have been recruited into the profession. What steps are Ministers taking to tackle this growing teacher shortage?”
“T9. Does the Minister plan to increase competition in the superfast broadband market following last week’s debate that highlighted lack of competition as the main source of current frustrations with the roll-out?”
“The national living wage is being phased in over five years. Surely the tax credit cuts should be phased in over the same period, rather than taking huge ill effect next April.”
“I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the importance of greater competition. Whatever the future for BT, does he not agree that it is extraordinary that so far all the public subsidies for superfast broadband roll-out have been handed to a single company? How can that promote competition?”
“We have heard lip service paid to competition since 2010, but have seen no serious attempt to drive forward competition in telecommunications —and now we are paying the price, as seen in the complaints aired in this debate. Earlier this month, there was a very interesting leading article in The Financial Times , pointing to the willingness of the Conservative party “to cosy up to corporate champions and established business interests.” It continued by saying—Conservative Members should listen—that the Conservatives’ “penchant for protecting corporate interests is not healthy. With productivity still the UK’s biggest economic challenge, their instinct should be to promote competition. Politicians of the Thatcher generation must be astonished that the lesson still needs to be learnt.” I think The Financial Times is absolutely right.”
“I, too, would like to congratulate the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) on securing and opening the debate. The question I want to address is why, as we are hearing from the debate across the Chamber, this roll-out is proving so disappointing. [Interruption.] The Minister says it is not, but one simply has to listen to the contributions made from Members from rural and urban areas to realise that there is deep disappointment about what is happening. I think that the essential problem—the Minister knows my view—is that Ministers have lost sight of the lesson that competition needs to be at the heart of telecommunications policy.”
“What Ministers need to do even at this very late stage is to relearn the lessons embraced by their Conservative predecessors and to find ways to inject some competition into this market—a market that, as we are rightly being reminded, is very important for the productivity and prosperity of Britain.”
“Usage of the infrastructure has been a good deal higher than predicted, so BT is paying back some of the windfall it has enjoyed, but I believe only half of it. As with the 3G spectrum auction, this exercise should have been structured to make sure that there was at least some diversity of provision. Other companies bid; BT beats all of them every time. We therefore have nobody else with which to compare BT’s performance, no alternative approaches to consider and no levers at all through which the Minister could try to promote better services in the future. In a few minutes, the Minister will do his duty and assure us that everything is fine with the roll-out of superfast broadband, but the reality, as this debate is making clear, is otherwise.”
“As I said in my intervention, it remains astonishing to me—I raised the issue with Ministers at the time—that no effort was made to ensure that there was at least some diversity of provision in the publicly funded roll-out of superfast broadband. Instead, all the money has gone to BT. The consequence today is that BT has Ministers over a barrel. Ministers have no levers whatever to address the problems we are hearing about from Members of all parties—and they are getting progressively worse—relating to our disappointing position on superfast broadband roll-out. I make no criticism of BT, which has simply done what any effective company would do when presented with a gift horse—it has accepted it. It is now recognised that BT was overpaid for the infrastructure it provided, so it has to start paying back some of the handout it received.”
“I simply refer the hon. Gentleman to the many examples of the effectiveness of competition in telecommunications policy—perhaps most strikingly in the design of the 3G spectrum auction in 2000. That auction was structured to make absolutely sure that there was a new entrant, and one of the licences was taken up by a company that had not previously been in the market. I think we would all agree that over the last 12 years that new entrant has had a dramatic impact on reducing prices, improving quality, extending coverage and promoting innovation. There is no shortage of examples of the beneficial impacts of competition.”
“The accusation about cosying up to corporate interests came from the Financial Times , not me. Does the Minister not accept, with the benefit of hindsight, that he should have ensured that some of the public subsidy went to a provider other than BT?”
“Secondly, the Child Poverty Act requires tracking four measures, all of them related to poverty—relative poverty, absolute poverty, persistent child poverty and material deprivation—but this Bill replaces that with a requirement to publish data on children in workless households and educational attainment. I wonder what each of you thinks about the validity of those alternative indicators for assessing and measuring what is happening to children, compared with the measures in the Child Poverty Act. Thirdly—”
“Q 162 Welcome to the witnesses. Obviously, in the background to what this Bill does in relation to the Child Poverty Act is the controversy about how child poverty should be measured. Everyone recognises that it is quite a difficult subject. Indeed, the Prime Minister himself has argued both in favour of and, more recently, against the use of a relative poverty measure. I wanted to ask each of the three witnesses to comment on three particular points. First, the Bill deletes all the targets around child poverty—there will be no targets left if the Bill is enacted in its current form—and I am interested to know whether each of you thinks that there should be some target around child poverty set by Government, or do you agree that removing every target entirely is appropriate?”
“In fact, we have always said, why not add more indicators? That is a perfectly sensible thing to do. The problem with what has been proposed is that by taking away all the income measures, you are no longer really measuring child poverty; you are measuring something else. Also, you are completely missing out on one of the main causes of child poverty today, which is low-paid work. Two thirds of poor children live with working parents, so if all you measure is worklessness and educational attainment, you are completely sweeping aside that group.”
“He said: “Individuals...in the population can be said to be in poverty when they lack resources to obtain the...diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or...widely encouraged and approved, in the societies in which they belong.” No indicator is perfect, which is why, in order to try and triangulate this problem, there are about five measures in the Child Poverty Act. Some of them relate to low income and some relate to deprivation—things you cannot afford because you lack resources. Some of them relate to the persistence of poverty. If all of those go, we do not know what we are tracking these other life chance events against. If you were to add all those life chance measures to the core set of indicators in the Child Poverty Act, that would be a good thing.”
“I am not saying don’t measure worklessness or educational attainment at the end of key stage 4; I am saying, don’t wholesale abandon income measures, just because of the recent broader economic climate that has meant that relative income measures are showing some very perverse results. Alison Garnham: What I would like to say is that the basket of measures that we currently have is an attempt to operationalise a definition of child poverty. The most well known one that we have is the one that Peter Townsend came up with back in the 1970s.”
“Q 163 I think the Government’s argument would be that if you want to measure the life chances of children, you are better looking at measures of worklessness and educational attainment at key stage 4 instead of the poverty indicators in the Child Poverty Act. If you want to get to life chances, do you think that that is the right approach? Matt Padley: I do not see why it needs to be either/or—I think both in combination. What looking at educational achievement at the end of key stage 4 will tell you or what looking at the proportion of children who have grown up in workless households will tell you is useful information, but still there is so much evidence to suggest that children growing up in low-income households have poorer outcomes that measuring the incidence of low income remains important.”
“The only thing I would say about income is simply that we need to be measuring the numbers of children who live in households where parents are not earning a living wage, or where parents have not earned a living wage for the last two years. Again, that puts the focus on earnings. My understanding of the Government’s welfare reforms is that they have a very dynamic approach, which is what the CSJ asked for in 2009, that will help drive people into behaviour that will mean they increase their income through earnings. In international development, our approach for a very long time has been to not just give people money, but to give them the tools to increase their own life chances.”
“The problem now is that policies are driving us away from reducing child poverty, rather than that the target should go. Dr Callan: The problem with having income targets is that they will always drive effort towards tackling symptoms and not causes of child poverty, so I would be much more in favour of a more rounded set of measures. Currently, we have only got measures to tackle what we would call two of the five pathways to poverty: poor educational attainment in children and parents, and worklessness. We know that family breakdown drives poverty. We know that serious personal debt and addictions, including gambling addictions, drive poverty, so I think we need more measures.”
“Q 164 The other question is: do you think there should be a Government target around child poverty? Alison Garnham: Yes, I do. It keeps the Government honest. I think it is really important. In fact, in 2010 there was a cross-party consensus that we needed to tackle and drive down child poverty, so it is very disappointing that we are now arriving at a point where we are not even going to track it any more. It should continue to be tracked, and there need to be targets, because in that way there is something to aim at. Child poverty was reduced by 1.1 million between the baseline year of 1998 and 2010, so we were on course. We were halfway towards the target of elimination, which was 10%, even though we were not halfway to zero, which was the target the Government had set itself. So we were actually doing rather well.”
“One of the biggest losses in losing the Child Poverty Act is that there will no longer be anything driving action at a local level. It would be a big improvement if something like that was introduced into the Bill to require local authorities to have local child poverty or life chances strategies.”
“Q 165 I have one more question. You may not all be in a position to comment, but I would be interested to hear any of your opinions. One element of the Child Poverty Act was the requirement on local authorities to work with others in their area to develop a child poverty strategy for that area. There is no similar proposal in the Bill—for example, there is no requirement for a life chances strategy. In practice, were those strategies useful? Or do you think that the fact we are not going to have them in future is not a problem? Alison Garnham: I think they were incredibly useful. They drove a lot of action and activity locally. Many local authorities set up their own local child poverty commissions and worked out what they could do to address child poverty.”
“Dr Callan: Again, if we had something in the Bill that recognised that, alongside work and education, family breakdown—or boosting family stability, if you want to put it more positively—is such an important area for Government activity, then local authorities would have a lot more to get their teeth into at a local level. The use of children’s centre stock is very important. The opportunity would be created for children’s centres to do far more around a whole-family package of support, which is something the Prime Minister has talked about. The Bill could help to put some teeth on to that.”
“Q 166 Can you give us any examples of where particularly good work was done in developing a strategy? Alison Garnham: There were a number of local authorities, such as Leicester, Birmingham, Milton Keynes and so on. They tended to take on different characteristics in different areas. For example, in Liverpool they focused on early years strategies to improve early childhood education and care. In other areas they looked at things such as how they could manage their own benefits authority for discretionary housing payments and ameliorations of the council tax benefit scheme. In other areas, they looked at other kinds of projects and services. There was a wide variety of activity, which was very positive.”
“I do not think it is beyond the wit of well intentioned people to come up with a measure for family stability, which would really strengthen the Bill.”
“Q 167 Are you suggesting that there ought to be a requirement for local strategies to be in place, albeit perhaps that they would look rather different from the ones we have had in the past? Dr Callan: Local strategies around life chances. As I say, if it is just education and worklessness, there are not necessarily enough levers at a local level to get local authorities working together more than they are already. Obviously a lot of local authorities already work very closely with the whole school estate in their areas, going right up to further education and universities. I do not think that family support is a niche issue. It should be universal, in the same way that we have universal health and universal education. That is why it has to be in the Bill.”
“With the four measures that we had, that did happen for a while—one indicator showed that poverty was rising, another showed that poverty was falling, and another showed that poverty was flatlining. So I think there should be a single measure and a single target, and that should be a sensible one, maybe close to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s minimum income standard. You can debate the technicalities—how exactly this basket is assembled—but a target can be built around a measure that reflects the living standards of people on low incomes .”
“Q 194 First of all, may I ask you both whether you think that the Government ought to have some target on child poverty, or whether that is not an appropriate thing for the Government to have? Julia Unwin: I run an evidence-based organisation. I find it very hard to understand how you can receive evidence, measure things and then not establish some sort of target. Across government, we have stretch targets for a whole range of issues. Given the importance of this for our growing economy, I do not understand how the Government can receive the information without having at least a stretch target in mind. Dr Niemietz: I think there should be a target. There is a problem if you use a bundle of measures that can move in opposite directions. That undermines the idea of using a target to strengthen accountability.”
“They are with local authorities; they are within the market; they are with employers, and actually we need a public discourse about that. That is what a complex target allowed us to have.”
“Julia Unwin: I am very pleased to hear Kristian talk about the minimum income standard, on which we have done some joint work in the past. I would still argue for a number of different measures, because of the complexity of what we are dealing with; and I think in our modern, more complicated, world we are dealing with poverty that looks rather different from the way it looked in the past. Clearly the disposable income of any household is a very important measure, and how we understand that and determine what that is matters; but so, too, do the other measures, and I believe that the old income measure mattered alongside the others. The fact that they are contradictory, I think, does not give you a binary response; it amplifies what the Government need to do, because the tools are not all with Government.”
“If you convert that list into a consumption basket, and collect the prices of those goods at a regional level, then you have a poverty line that reflects a consensual understanding of what poverty means. You can still use complementary measures—say plus or minus a few items for sensitivity analysis—but you have one central measure that is internally consistent, and you do not get these contradictions. If you use a bundle of measures, and if they can give you contradictory information, you have to have a way of trading them off against each other. It would not be a problem if you could say, “I don’t mind an increase in relative poverty as long as it is accompanied by an x% reduction in absolute poverty, or something else”, but we did not have that kind of trade-off with the four measures that were previously used.”
“Q 195 Can you develop that idea a little bit further? The thinking in the Child Poverty Act was that you had four different indicators. As you say, sometimes they move in different directions, but that means that you end up with a rounded understanding of what is going on. You are suggesting that one could devise a single figure that told you everything you needed. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you think that should look? Dr Niemietz: Well, I wrote a paper a while ago in which the poverty line was based on the poverty and social exclusion survey. People were asked to identify what they thought were the necessities of life in a modern developed country, and it turned out there was a fairly stable consensus on that.”
“People are in and out of work and rarely out of poverty, and our indicators are that four out of five people who get into work are still in low-paid work 10 years on. There is very little progression; so an employment report needs to look at progression, certainty, security. Those are the measures that really matter when you are looking at the nature of employment. It is no longer simply a good thing in itself to be in work, although that may be right for all sorts of other reasons.”
“Q 196 May I ask one more question? This is really to Julia. In your written evidence to us you have commented on and welcomed both the full employment report that is proposed in the Bill and the apprenticeships reporting obligation; but you have argued for some more detailed information to be provided. Could you just tell us a little bit about what you think should be in those reports? Julia Unwin: I think we have to understand that the world of employment has changed in the last decade. Since the global financial crisis, employment at the bottom end of the labour market, which is what we are talking about, is more precarious than it was when some of the legislation was drafted in previous decades.”
“Q 197 You had some comments, I think, about what the apprenticeships report should tell us. Could you say a few words about that? Julia Unwin: Apprenticeships clearly matter. We can learn from other countries about how to do them so much better, but we need to understand in fairly fine-grained detail the impact of apprenticeships and what they do for people’s life chances, as opposed to thinking that they are a process through which people go and that there are automatically positive outcomes.”
“I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 1, page 1, line 4, leave out from ‘and’ to end of subsection and insert ‘for the purposes of this report “full employment” is defined as 80% of the working age population.’ To specify that the purpose of reporting on progress toward full employment, full employment is defined as 80% of the working population.”
“It is time for people who have seen the commitment to full employment in the Conservative party manifesto, and heard the Chancellor’s commitments over the past 18 months, to know what Ministers mean by that term. I hope the Minister will accept amendment 1, which would finally make the position clear.”