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Incapacity Benefit
11. Mr. Bill Michie: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many incapacity benefit claimants have been found to be fit for work by the all-work test since its introduction; how many of these have since claimed benefits as unemployed and seeking work; and how many have obtained employment. [1708]
Mr. Burt: Up to the end of September 1996, about 178,000 incapacity benefit claimants had been found capable of work following the all-work test. Some 73,000 claimed unemployment benefits. A total of 47,000 have since left the register. About 10,000 were placed in employment or on training schemes by the Employment Service.
Mr. Michie: Are not thousands of disabled people a great deal worse off now than they were 18 months ago due to the all-work test? Does not the fact that almost 50 per cent. of those who have appealed have been successful show that the test has not targeted those who really need the benefit?
Mr. Burt: No. As I said, the number of people whose appeals are successful is very similar to the number who were successful using the social security appeal tribunal. As for incomes, perhaps the hon. Gentleman did not hear me earlier when I said that the Government have quadrupled spending on benefits. Those facts answer his charges. The Government have shown no meanness towards disabled people.
Mr. Harry Greenway: Will my hon. Friend tell us how many claimants succeed in appeal who do not succeed in their first application, and what the main reasons for that success might be?
Mr. Burt: The reasons for success at appeal vary. People sometimes succeed at appeal because they are able to bring extra evidence to the tribunal; sometimes they succeed simply because the panel reconsiders the decision. The great strength of the system is that it enables an independent review to be conducted. In terms of the number of people who succeed in their appeals, the system is working in a manner that is not dissimilar to how it worked before.
Mr. Alan Howarth: Does the Minister accept--not least because of the figures he has just given to the House--that there are well-founded apprehensions that people are falling between the two stools of receiving incapacity benefit and jobseeker's allowance, unable to find work and falling into destitution? In the interests of public confidence and the good functioning of the incapacity benefit system--as well as open government and an appropriate accountability of the Executive to Parliament--will he make available for scrutiny by Parliament the draft contract for contracting out the Benefits Agency medical service?
Mr. Burt: I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that we have hardly any evidence of people--as he described
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them--falling between the stools. The answer to a parliamentary question tabled by the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) revealed that only a tiny percentage of people who applied for the jobseeker's allowance did not receive it after they had been knocked off incapacity benefit, and that they were unsuccessful only because they had placed restrictions on their employment. A range of measures has been designed to make it easy for disabled people who may have lost incapacity benefit to retain benefit. I think that the hon. Gentleman will be reassured by the fact that we have asked the Policy Studies Institute to conduct a review of those who leave incapacity benefit so that we can ensure that some of the worries that he expressed are not realised.More information will be made available about the contractorisation of the Benefits Agency medical service. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will find that his questions will be answered, as they have been up to now.
State Pension
12. Mr. Evennett: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what work he has commissioned from the Government Actuary to examine the cost of allowing people to claim a full state pension at 60 years. [1709]
Mr. Lilley: The cost of allowing people to draw their pension at age 60 would be an extra £15 billion per year.
Mr. Evennett: I thank my right hon. Friend for that very informative reply. Does he agree that such a proposal would require huge increases in taxation, or a reduction in the value of the pension? Furthermore, is he aware that the Labour party is merely trying to lure pensioners with those promises? But pensioners will not be fooled. They know that they have had a very good deal under the Government, and they will stick with us.
Mr. Lilley: My hon. Friend is right: the Opposition's policy is to allow people to draw their pension at age 60. The cost of doing so would be an extra £15 billion, unless the level of the basic pension were reduced. The former Opposition spokesman used to refuse to tell me which option they would choose. Imagine my astonishment, therefore, when the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) wrote to me to say:
- "we anticipate . . . a lower level of basic state pension."
Mr. Denham: Why is the Secretary of State wasting the time of the Government Actuary's Department by asking what the cost of retirement on a full state pension would be at 60, when no political party is making that proposal? Is this not another example of civil servants' time being wasted on party-political propaganda? Instead, why does he not accept the growing case for flexibility in the state retirement age? Why does he insist on a one-size-fits-all welfare state when different people want to live their lives in different ways? Why should not people have some choice in the way in which they take
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the pension benefits that they have paid for? As long as personal choice is not subsidised by others, and no one needs to be worse off, why does he want to stop people having the right to choose when they draw their pension?
Mr. Lilley: I asked the Government Actuary to cost Labour's proposal of allowing people to retire at 60 because the hon. Member for Peckham wrote to me suggesting that I did. It is wrong to suggest that Labour's policy would give pensioners more flexibility than ours does. At present and in future, anyone who defers retiring by a year can increase their pension by 7 per cent. for the rest of their life; deferring for two years leads to an increase of 14 per cent., and so on. The only difference in Labour's proposals is that pensioners would start with a basic pension £20 lower.
PRIME MINISTER
Engagements
Q1. Mr. Janner: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 12 November. [1726]
The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.
Mr. Janner: Why is the Prime Minister so determined that people who work in this country should have no statutory minimum holiday rights, while also having no statutory maximum working hours, meaning that they can be forced to work more than 48 hours a week contrary to their wishes? Is not that an unjust, unreasonable and typically Tory policy, going against even their own alleged policy of supporting family rights?
The Prime Minister: I shall tell the hon. and learned Gentleman crisply; Britain wants good jobs, not worthless directives.
Q2. Mr. Hawkins: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 12 November. [1727]
The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave some moments ago.
Mr. Hawkins: Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a huge contrast between yesterday's excellent news of British Aerospace's success in winning the large Hawk order from Australia, which will guarantee British jobs, and the dismay felt by many British businesses at today's news of the adverse European ruling on the 48-hour week? Will he reassure British business that he will do all that he can to resist that Euro-measure, which will undermine the competitive edge of British business and is an adverse decision by a political court?
The Prime Minister: Australia's selection of British Aerospace to supply Hawks is the latest illustration of the keen competitiveness of British industry generally and the British aerospace industry in particular.
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I think that not only will today's European Court of Justice ruling damage the prospects of job creation, should it not be reversed; it has disappointed British business men, as they have made clear repeatedly this morning at the Confederation of British Industry. The position is unacceptable. We cannot agree that our competitiveness should be undermined in this way. Were we to do so, it would clearly be the thin end of the wedge--to judge from what the European Commissioner has said this morning. I have made it clear to the President of the Commission that I shall insist on changes at the intergovernmental conference to ensure that the social protocol will never again be undermined by the presentation of social measures, falsely, under the guise of health and safety.
Mr. Blair:
Will the Prime Minister now answer the question asked by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner)? Quite apart from Europe, why is he so opposed to a law that says that people are perfectly free to work more than 48 hours a week, but cannot be compelled to, and gives them minimum holiday entitlements? Is he going to fight the next election on the basis of, "vote Tory for no right to a holiday"?
The Prime Minister:
Yet again, the right hon. Gentleman is in danger of missing the point. Unemployment is falling as we become more competitive. The directive could reverse that trend and similar directives could push unemployment up, instead of it continuing to fall. I am not prepared to accept that. I want jobs, not directives. I want Britain to continue to create jobs and unemployment to continue to fall. I do not want to place more burdens on business so that unemployment either remains stuck at a very high level or rises from that very high level as it has in other European countries. Competitiveness will create jobs. I want people to be in work. Presumably, the right hon. Gentleman is prepared to keep them out of work.
Mr. Blair:
Perhaps the Prime Minister can tell us of a successful company in Britain that does not give its work force a holiday.
Madam Speaker:
Order. Stop shouting and barracking, for goodness' sake. I want to hear the questions and the answers.
Mr. Blair:
If the directive is so dreadful, why did the Minister not vote against it when he had the chance to do so? May we be clear about the Government's position at the intergovernmental conference? Will the Prime Minister confirm that his position is this: all member states must agree at the outset of the conference that no progress will be made on any change proposed by any country in respect of any issue until the directive is reversed? Is that his position?
The Prime Minister:
If the right hon. Gentleman's first point was correct, why do we need the directive? He made precisely the Government's point. Such directives pile burdens on business and they are bound to undermine our economic success. Their damage to the fruits of our economic success will affect the extra resources that we
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Mr. Blair:
So it will be at the end of the intergovernmental conference--which will, conveniently, be after the election. We can hear escape routes being planned already. Is it not back to beef when, five months on, the Government have not even got the gelatine ban lifted? It is the same old pattern. They seize on an issue, they talk tough, they alienate everybody and then they cave in. May I suggest that the law that gives people the right to a minimum holiday is not the issue upon which to launch beef war mark 2?
The Prime Minister:
Saving British jobs is the issue upon which to draw the line. The right hon. Gentleman may be prepared to live in an area of high unemployment. Unemployment in Britain is falling--I want it to come down much further--but prescriptive directives from Brussels will stop that. We shall seek treaty change, without which there will be no conclusion to the intergovernmental conference. I shall not accept the nonsense that the right hon. Gentleman has been talking about the directive without understanding its impact on British companies. I have written today to the President of the Commission to make clear that we are tabling our proposals for a change in the treaty, and we shall expect that change to be agreed.
Q3. Mr. Luff:
To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 12 November. [1728]
The Prime Minister:
I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave some moments ago.
Mr. Luff:
In the light of the demolition by the Confederation of British Industry of the case for a so-called windfall tax on the privatised utilities, will my right hon. Friend take this opportunity to reassure the House that he will not make it his policy to impose such a tax? Does he agree that the effect of such a tax on the prices of shares held by trade unions and other pension funds would, in fact, be a tax on pensioners--to say nothing about the disastrous effects on consumers through higher prices?
The Prime Minister:
My hon. Friend is of course right. A windfall tax would hit consumers; it would hit shareholders; it would hit employees. It is a tax not on utilities but on jobs, pensions and people's utility bills. The shadow Chancellor either cannot or still will not tell the House which privatised companies would pay,
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Q4. Sir David Steel:
To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 12 November. [1731]
The Prime Minister:
I refer the right hon. Gentleman to the reply I gave some moments ago.
Sir David Steel:
May I refer the right hon. Gentleman back to the negotiations that took place over the European directive? If he looks at Hansard, he will find that, on 7 July 1992, the Secretary of State for Education and Employment boasted to the House that
The Prime Minister:
My right hon. Friend did get significant exclusions--that is true--but the directive is damaging. We made it clear from the outset that we would seek a change in the European Court and that we would then seek to have the directive's impact reversed. The right hon. Gentleman should realise two things. First, this is a damaging directive. Secondly, if we were to accept this directive under that treaty head, it would be but the first of many others, as was implicitly made clear by the European Commissioner this morning. I am concerned to ensure that we protect our jobs and our competitiveness. All over Europe--[Interruption.] Hon. Members do not like it. There are 18 million unemployed people across Europe. Elsewhere in Europe, they are staying unemployed; here, they are getting back into work. That is why we will not accept such legislation.
Mr. Lamont:
Surely the real issue is not whether what the Leader of the Opposition says is right or wrong or whether the working time directive is right or wrong, but whether the matter ought to be decided in Brussels or by the elected Government of this country. What is the point in holding elections if the elected Government cannot carry out the policies on which they were elected?
The Prime Minister:
I have no objection at all to businesses and their employees reaching whatever agreement they wish on working hours. That is entirely right in a properly functioning competitive economy. Like
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Q5. Mr. Rooney:
To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 12 November. [1732]
The Prime Minister:
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply I gave some moments ago.
Mr. Rooney:
Will the Prime Minister tell the House why he favours a free vote on caning but not on gun control?
The Prime Minister:
If the hon. Gentleman thinks the question of gun control is appropriate for a free vote, I do not agree with him. [Hon. Members: "Why?"] The Government considered the Cullen report, we made a judgment on the right way to implement it and we propose to stand by that judgment, lay it before the House of Commons and invite it to support us.
Q6. Mr. Alexander:
To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 12 November. [1733]
The Prime Minister:
I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave some moments ago.
Mr. Alexander:
May I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to the by-election result on Thursday to Newark and Sherwood district council? The Conservative candidate, Mr. Bryan Richardson, took the seat from Labour with a swing of 5.8 per cent. May I put it to my right hon. Friend that results such as that are far more typical of support in the country than the public opinion polls, and that if we continue with sensible policies my right hon. Friend is on course for a record fifth Conservative victory?
The Prime Minister:
I congratulate Mr. Richardson on his win, although I am assured by the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, my hon. Friend, the Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell), that we have taken seats with even larger swings elsewhere in Nottinghamshire in the past two or three weeks. What we are seeing, if I may put it this way, is Conservatives coming home.
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"the United Kingdom secured all its key objectives, in particular the right for employees to work for more than 48 hours a week if they choose to do so."--[Official Report, 7 July 1992; Vol. 211, c. 175.]
In a word, she said, "We have won." Was she not right? If they won, why are they going to war over something that they did not even vote against?
"Why stay in France if conditions for entrepreneurs are better in Britain?"
I do not want that said of Britain. That is why we are determined to keep the right measures to create jobs for our citizens in the future.
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