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Young Carers
13. Mr. David Kidney (Stafford): How his Department (a) identifies and (b) helps young carers. [88038]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Hugh Bayley): I know that my hon. Friend has a close interest in children's welfare. He will be aware that social security benefits are not available to children under 16 in their own right, but if, unusually, we received a claim from someone under 16 who was clearly a carer and requested help, we would give appropriate advice, such as suggesting that the parent should receive benefits advice or that the family should contact social services.
Mr. Kidney: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Does he agree that some carers as young as 12 and 13 bear the heavy responsibility of caring for adults with disabilities? The national carers strategy challenges us all to identify and provide help and support to such youngsters. Although the main aim of that challenge is education and health services, there is a role for the Department of Social Security and the Benefits Agency. One inexpensive way of alerting all claimants for invalid care allowance of the possible availability of local support is shown by the south Staffordshire carers support project, which has produced an excellent leaflet called "Young Carers Need You to Listen". Will my hon. Friend look again at the rules for entitlement to invalid care allowance, which currently exclude those who stay in full-time education? Will personal advisers for 16 and 17-year-olds be sensitive to the needs of young carers?
Mr. Bayley: I thank my hon. Friend for that interesting question. I am sure that he joins me in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North (Mr. Wicks), whose Carers (Recognition and Services) Bill a few years ago contained proposals, opposed by the then Conservative Government, to ensure that the needs of young carers as well as adult carers were taken into account. That laid the groundwork. I have considered the issue that my hon. Friend has raised. It would not be appropriate to pay invalid care allowance to those under 18, because the benefit replaces earnings for those who are unable to work, although there are circumstances in which a full-time carer under 18 who is not in full-time education would be able to claim income support with a carers premium, which answers my hon. Friend's point.
Mrs. Virginia Bottomley (South-West Surrey): Many people welcomed the words of the carers strategy. However, I ask the Minister to visit the home counties. He would be welcomed in Surrey, where he would find that the social services, education and health settlements meant that there was no prospect of expanding services--it was a question of retreating. Perhaps the most irresponsible step is to mouth the words, but not to make the means available to deliver the objectives.
Mr. Bayley: Many things have changed since the legislation was placed on the statute book and since the publication of the carers strategy. I have visited a number of carers projects in different parts of the country, and they welcome the fact that, as part of the strategy, an additional £140 million has been made available, principally to provide breaks for carers.
ONE Service
14. Mr. John Healey (Wentworth): What reduction in incomplete or incorrect first-time benefit claims he estimates will result from the introduction of the ONE service. [88039]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Angela Eagle): The first pilot offices offering the ONE service opened for business on 28 June. One of the many advantages of the new service is that advisers will be able to help clients to complete their claim forms during the initial work-focused interview. We therefore anticipate that there will be fewer incomplete or incorrect first-time benefit claims.
Mr. Healey: Will my hon. Friend acknowledge that one of the understated strengths of the concept of the ONE service is the opportunity to get claims complete and correct from day one? Will she therefore consider making that objective one of the yardsticks by which the pilots are judged?
Angela Eagle: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We believe that there are large administrative gains to be made from preventing the duplication of work and the chasing of incorrect forms, and from ensuring that people can get their benefit payments quickly. They can then concentrate more effectively on how to get off benefit and back into work. I can confirm that that is one of the things that we will be measuring in the monitoring and implementation process, and we will be expecting significant beneficial effects.
Public Service Delivery
15. Mrs. Joan Humble (Blackpool, North and Fleetwood): What progress his Department is making with integrating the delivery of its services to the public with services offered by other parts of Government. [88040]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Angela Eagle): This Department is making substantial progress in planning the integration of its services to customers through a modern service programme which will deliver business change and enhance information technology support. Our primary focus at the moment is the ONE project pilots, which commenced on 28 June, in which we are ensuring the delivery of work-focused benefit services and promoting partnership, working with the Benefits Agency, the Employment Service and local authorities.
Mrs. Humble: I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware of how confusing and time consuming it is for many disabled people in particular to try to access different Government Departments and local authority departments. What plans does my hon. Friend have to ensure that areas such as Blackpool, which are not part of the pilot for the ONE service, have a single gateway to enable disabled people to access all the services that they need?
Angela Eagle: We are hoping to learn from the ONE pilots how we can offer the service throughout the country. We are doing other things to try to integrate interdepartmental working, and the work of local authorities and the agencies of Departments. That includes
the presence in all 349 local authorities of remote access terminals which allow people to look at the information we have to ensure that they can process housing benefit correctly. I assure my hon. Friend that the benefits of integration will be coming to all areas of the country as soon as we can ensure that that can be done practically.
Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East): As the Government are doing such a good job in integrating the services offered by different Departments, will the Minister have a word with the Secretary of State for Health and advise him that by focusing on the numbers on waiting lists, he is making waiting times longer, and thus adding tremendously to the social security bill?
Angela Eagle: The hon. Gentleman should know that both waiting times and waiting lists are falling.
Disabled People (New Deal)
16. Dr. Brian Iddon (Bolton, South-East): What progress his Department has made in implementing the new deal for the disabled. [88041]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Hugh Bayley): Together with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, we have introduced the new deal for disabled people. We are also piloting a personal adviser service under the new deal in 12 areas, including my hon. Friend's constituency. I know that he has visited the scheme and has taken a close interest in its work.
Dr. Iddon: Not only has the pilot scheme in Bolton employed four people previously on incapacity benefit but so far, in the first eight months, it has seen 565 people, half of whom have been assessed and 88 of whom have been put into an occupation. There are excellent partnerships running; with Bolton local authority, for example, with whom the scheme has won European structural fund money for 200 workplaces. Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating Peter Jones and his staff on the excellent start that they have made?
Mr. Bayley: I do indeed congratulate Peter Jones and his staff. I have visited the project and I know that it is working extremely well. It shows the difference between our approach to welfare benefits and that of the Conservatives. We seek to get people off benefits and back into work.
Northern Ireland
Madam Speaker: The right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) raised an important point of order at 2.30 pm today about the joint statement by the British and Irish Governments, which should have been available in the Vote Office at that time. I understand that it was available in Northern Ireland at 9 pm on Friday. There is no reason whatever why it should not have been in our Vote Office early this morning. I hope that those who are responsible for distribution will improve efficiency.
3.31 pm
The Prime Minister (Mr. Tony Blair): With permission, Madam Speaker, I should like to make a statement on last week's talks on Northern Ireland.
Last Friday, I proposed a way forward for Northern Ireland. The starting point was the Good Friday agreement, which set out an agreed basis for a peace settlement in Northern Ireland. It offered Unionists what they have sought for the past 70 years: the principle of consent--that is, no change to the status of Northern Ireland without the agreement of the majority of its population; changes to the Irish constitution, with Dublin dropping its legal claim to the North; and devolution of powers to Northern Ireland, with an elected Assembly, an Executive and other institutions.
For the nationalists and republicans, the Good Friday agreement offers equality, justice, and the normalisation of Northern Ireland society; for the first time since partition, the ability to share power and responsibility and not have their electoral mandate set at naught; a range of new institutions, including north-south bodies; and, over time, as the security situation improves, demilitarisation.
Above all, the Good Friday agreement offered all the people of Northern Ireland the prospects of permanent peace and an end to violence. I believe that it is still the only true way forward for Northern Ireland.
Of course, difficulties remain. There is still violence, much of it recently by loyalists opposed to the Good Friday agreement, and there is still conflict and bitterness, as we can see in Portadown, where I will continue to work for a settlement of the Drumcree issue; but life in Northern Ireland has improved immeasurably since the Good Friday agreement. Normality has returned to most parts of the Province.
Whatever their disagreements, the two sides now talk to one another regularly, but one vital issue is unresolved: how to secure the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons. The Good Friday agreement required all parties to use their best endeavours to secure decommissioning.
On 25 June, the Taoiseach and I secured the commitment of all the signatories to the Good Friday agreement to three principles on which the rest of our work was then based: that an inclusive Executive should be formed, exercising devolved powers; that all paramilitary arms should be decommissioned by May 2000; and that decommissioning should be carried out in a manner determined by the International Commission on Decommissioning under General John de Chastelain.
Both sides need certainty. Unionists want certainty that decommissioning will happen, and a guarantee that, if it does not, they will not be left in an Executive with those who refuse to make it happen. Republicans want the
certainty that Unionists are serious about participating in a genuinely inclusive Government. Our agreement last Friday, in my view, provides both.
In more detail, the proposal is as follows. Northern Ireland Ministers would be nominated by the parties, using the d'Hondt procedure, on 15 July. The devolution order would be laid before Parliament on the following day, and powers transferred on 18 July.
The de Chastelain commission would require a start to the process of decommissioning. The general has already said that he expects this to be within
The commission then sets a further time limit, within which there is to be a start to actual decommissioning of weapons. The general has said that he would expect that to be within a few weeks. Again, should the actual decommissioning not come as de Chastelain has laid down according to the Good Friday agreement, then the failsafe kicks in. De Chastelain is due to make reports on progress on actual decommissioning in September, October and December and in May 2000, by which time it is to be complete. That is all entirely in line with the Good Friday agreement. Under it, parties are expected to use their best efforts to secure decommissioning. Last Friday's agreement is effectively the basis for how that will be judged.
Should default occur, the institutions are suspended automatically while we find a way forward. We are then, in effect, back to where we are now, but with these two vital differences: the blame for default is clear, and the parties are then free to move on in an Executive without the defaulting party. I cannot make the other parties agree to a new Executive, or force anyone to sit in a Government with anyone else, but I can make sure that Sinn Fein does not continue in an Executive with the Ulster Unionists should there be a default of the de Chastelain process. All that will be set out in legislation.
In my judgment, it is a far better deal than was on offer at Hillsborough. That offered a token act of decommissioning, dependent on reciprocal steps by the British and Irish, with no clear framework for completing the decommissioning process by May 2000. This, by contrast, provides a guarantee of a complete process of decommissioning, plus a failsafe that fully protects the interests of Unionists. There is a challenge to all parties: to Unionists to agree to a power-sharing Executive; to republicans not just to give up violence but to decommission weapons in accordance with the undertakings set out in the Good Friday agreement; and to nationalist opinion to support parties implementing this agreement and not to support those who refuse to do so.
"literally a couple of days".
That process of decommissioning begins when a paramilitary group
"makes an unambiguous commitment that decommissioning will be completed by 22 May 2000 and commences detailed discussions of actual modalities (amounts, types, location, timing) with the Commission through an authorised representative."
So there would have to be definitive statement of intent, certified by de Chastelain literally within days. If that does not happen, and de Chastelain certifies a breach of this process, at that point the Executive is unwound. So we shall know within days whether decommissioning is to happen or not.
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