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7.7 pm
Mr. David Rendel (Newbury): The main thrust of the Bill is to remove more than £1 billion of benefit from widows, carers and sick and disabled people. The Liberal Democrats therefore strongly oppose it. It is not what people voted for when they elected Labour to government. It is not even what most Labour Members thought they were standing for in the election. If there are still Labour Members of principle who are prepared to stand up for the ideals for which their party has stood so proudly for so many years, I hope that they will have the courage of their convictions, as 47 of them bravely did when joining us in opposing the lone-parent benefit cuts in the previous Session.
With much reluctance, we shall vote for the Conservative reasoned amendment. It is a feeble amendment, making little reference to the Bill's most obnoxious aspects--the benefit cuts. It is not even clear whether the Conservatives will oppose those cuts in Committee. We hear with an ironic laugh the Tories decrying the increased dependency on means-testing that
the Bill involves. Under the Conservatives, spending on means-tested benefits doubled, as did the number of people dependent on such benefits.
We welcome the chance that the single gateway will provide for many people to discuss employment opportunities. We hope that the gateway will focus on more than just employment and will provide advice on benefit take-up, child care facilities and training opportunities. We want interviews to be focused on the individual, not on the benefit that they are claiming, providing support rather than threatening disentitlement.
However, with that welcome come several warnings, some of which mirror the points made by the hon. Member for High Peak (Mr. Levitt). The Bill lists the benefit claimants who will be subject to the single gateway. There appear to be no exempted categories, although there will be some discretion in deferring interviews if they appear to be neither helpful nor appropriate. For people to have peace of mind, the Government must make it clear who will be required to attend an interview, and when.
If the interview is to be solely work-focused, it is surely unsuitable to demand that everyone attend. Severely disabled people may benefit less from a work-focused approach, and more from a service-delivery approach. The Government must be prepared to adapt the gateway to provide for individuals in their own right. By bringing in categories such as carers in receipt of invalid care allowance, the Government risk placing too heavy an emphasis on paid work. Caring for elderly people, children or the sick and disabled is often in itself a full-time job, and it is high time the Government recognised that.
We are told that interviews can take place in the home when it is not feasible or appropriate for claimants to visit an office. It is essential that that measure is interpreted generously. Jobcentres are frequently inaccessible to clients; indeed, something like one third of job centres do not have a disabled toilet. Disabled people--as well as those who live in rural areas--will benefit from the possibility of a home visit.
As for those who must attend interviews in the office, will they receive some reimbursement for the costs of attending--as that, too, would only be fair? When people do not attend an interview, there must be some investigation of why they do not before the benefit is disallowed. For example, someone might have gone into a state of deep depression just before they were called for their interview, and that sort of reason must be taken into account.
Given the climate of fear created by the benefit cuts--and following the disastrous benefit integrity project--claimants are likely to see the interview as nothing more than an attempt to refuse them benefits. The Government must strike a balance between policing claimants and supporting claimants. Both are equally important.
If the Government take only one lesson from the benefit integrity project, it must be that training of staff is essential. In my constituency, a lone parent informed the Benefits Agency that she was going back to work. She handed in her benefit books, and was told to apply for family credit. No one told her to apply for the lone-parent benefit premium. Her housing benefit was altered,
and paid on the assumption that she was getting the lone-parent premium. When the housing benefit department explained the shortfall to her, it was too late for her to apply for lone-parent benefit. Such cases speak for themselves--adequate training is a must.
The gateway provides an opportunity to simplify the system, but unless the Government make clear how the gateway interviews will interact with child support interviews, new deal interviews and the host of other assessment procedures that claimants have to undergo, they are threatening to create more complexity, not less. If the gateway is to be seen as opening an opportunity, rather than closing one, it must remain open after the client has got a job. The Government must recognise that job retention is at least as important as obtaining a job in the first place.
If the Government want to end the something- for-nothing culture, as they claim, and if they want a true contract of rights and responsibilities between the claimant and the state, the gateway offers a valuable opportunity to strengthen the contract on both sides. Sadly, it seems likely, at present, that the gateway will be seen by claimants as an attempt by the authorities to strengthen their hand against that of the claimant.
The Government want an end to the something- for-nothing culture--so whom do they target? They target the recently bereaved. They target those who become incapacitated after the age of 20--or, as we now hearand welcome, after the age of 25 if they are students. They target, disproportionately, women and carers. They penalise savers.
The Bill removes more than £1 billion in benefits. The Secretary of State claims that he is not taking money from the poorest, and he is right to say that the safety net of means-tested benefits is not being removed. So keen is he on those benefits that his changes will force another 250,000 people on to means-tested benefits. The£1.2 billion has to come from somewhere. The first group to be targeted are widows. It never struck me thatwidows were guilty of something for nothing--yet the Government seem to believe that they are guilty to the tune of £500 million a year.
The Secretary of State was keen to stress that the money does not come from the poorest claimants, but he is wrong--the poorest are equally affected. He is targeting everyone. Widows and widowers will benefit from the increased lump sum, but that is costing the Government only £70 million a year, and is nothing more than an overdue recognition of rising costs.
Many of the poorest widows will be able to claim means-tested benefits when their bereavement allowance stops after six months. However, unless they have dependent children, all new widows and widowers will lose their state earnings-related pension scheme payments--on the basis of their spouse's contributions--altogether. These payments previously amounted to up to a quarter of widows' pensions.
Many people have contributed to their pensions, believing that their partner would benefit. The Government are treating that prudence with contempt. In one part of the Bill, the Government's pensions proposals duck the issue of compulsion in second-tier pensions. However, here we find the Government producing a disincentive to save voluntarily. What a contradiction.
What of those widows and widowers with small lifetime savings of just £8,000? They will not be eligible for means-tested benefits, and they, too, will lose out. Sadly, they are often among those who, in terms of income, are the least well-off.
The Government expect that, just six months after losing a spouse, men and women will find it easy to be back in work--in many cases, after many years out of the workplace. Have the Government no feeling or care for those people? Does the Secretary of State really believe that a woman who has suffered the trauma of losing her husband through suicide or a car accident can get straight back to work as if nothing had happened? The Government clearly know nothing about the psychology of bereavement if they think that that is how human beings behave.
In case any hon. Member thinks that six months sounds reasonable, let no one forget that a widow who knows that her bereavement allowance will run out after only six months will worry about how she will manage thereafter many months before it does run out. The restriction of the bereavement allowance to just six months is unnecessary and cruel, and an attack on human beings when they are at their most vulnerable.
The Government are right to extend widows' benefit to widowers. However, many will view that move with cynicism--after all, the Government only moved on the issue when confronted with a court case that was almost certain to force them to do what they are now claiming the credit for doing voluntarily. However, it is sheer opportunism to take the necessary reforms to widows' benefits and twist them so as to make some money for the Treasury. Having done so, the Government have done their best to portray the £100 million cost of extending benefits to widowers as the main effect of the changes, while conveniently hiding--and, apparently, forgetting--the £600 million cut in widows' pensions.
While we are on the subject of bereavement, why is the lump sum payment not paid to bereaved pensioners as well? The Government could have used the opportunity of reforming widows' benefits to remove that piece of unfair age discrimination. We believe that there is no need to seek savings in bereavement benefits. No extra money need be spent, but the £500 million net cuts could be used to increase the time limit on the bereavement allowance, to include SERPS payments and to pay the lump sum payment to the bereaved of retirement age.
Who else do the Government choose to target? They target sick and disabled people, and those who care for them. The Government now want to cut £700 million in disability benefits. Once again, those who are eligible for means-tested benefits will remain relatively unaffected, yet those with small lifetime savings will be excluded. The Government are targeting women, carers and those who have followed Government advice and saved for their retirement. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) hopes to speak on that point later.
The Bill is a mixed bag, and is full of contradictions. The single gateway aims to encourage work, but cuts to incapacity benefit and severe disablement allowance will prove a disincentive to take work.
The stakeholder pension aims to encourage people to save, but the shift to means-testing will pull people in the other direction. The stakeholder pension and the measures
for pension splitting on divorce would seem to support women and carers, but they will simultaneously be penalised through the cuts in severe disablement allowance. The only coherent thread seems to be cutting benefits and promoting means-testing.
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