12 Jan 2010 : Column 167WH

12 Jan 2010 : Column 167WH

Westminster Hall

Tuesday 12 January 2010

[Mrs. Joan Humble in the Chair]

Exportable Benefits

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.-(Jonathan Shaw.)

9.30 am

Mr. Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con): Good morning, Mrs. Humble. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this issue and I hope that my voice will last long enough for me to place my concerns on the record.

Simon Morgan e-mailed me just before Christmas. He told me that his father had died on 12 December 2009. Chris Morgan and his wife had lived in Alicante in Spain and were endeavouring to secure the payment of exportable benefits. Let me quote from an article written by Chris Morgan for the Costa Blanca News in May 2009.

secure these benefit payments for

saying

that is, 2009-

to Chris Morgan-

if you satisfy

The late Chris Morgan, eight months ago, summed up the Government's shameful position precisely and they have been wriggling on the hook ever since.

The UK/EU Disability and Carers Group, based in northern France, wrote to the Prime Minister recently, saying:

orders


12 Jan 2010 : Column 168WH

The letter says:

My first question to the Minister is how many more UK citizens now living within the EU or in Switzerland will have to die without receiving the benefits to which they are entitled while this Government remain in breach of the law?

The Minister is aware that this is not the first occasion on which I have raised this issue in debate. He is aware that I have tabled parliamentary questions to his Department and have challenged the Prime Minister orally on the subject at Prime Minister's Question Time.

The Minister may find that he has a personal interest in this matter. Another claimant has written from his home in France to Revenue and Customs, declining to pay his tax. That claimant says:

Her Majesty's Government

Mr. Peter Atkinson (Hexham) (Con): I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on the work he has done over a considerable length of time in sticking up for the unfortunate British citizens who have been so shamefully and dishonourably treated by the Government.

Several of my constituents reside in Spain on doctor's orders-my hon. Friend mentioned that earlier-because living in a warmer climate helps their disability. Recently, with the collapse of the pound against the euro, their financial situation has become much more urgent and that has added to the trouble faced by my constituents, my hon. Friend's constituents and those of all other Members.

Mr. Gale: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind comments and his support: he, in common with a number of Members on both sides of the House, is seeking justice for that group of people.

As I said in the summer Adjournment debate-I will put it on the record again because it is relevant-setting aside the matter of law, which we will come to in a moment, there is an impression abroad that the people we are talking about are rich, have gone to the sun, saying, "The hell with the United Kingdom", and live in splendid retirement with big yachts and lots of drink, and that they do not need any benefits. My hon. Friend has made the point that a huge number of those people have gone south for the benefit of their health, because they have respiratory or other conditions, and are eking out an existence. The other important point, to which I will return, is that they have been UK citizens and taxpayers, and many still are.


12 Jan 2010 : Column 169WH

The chap I mentioned a moment ago who wrote to Revenue and Customs lived-his family and all their friends still live-in the parliamentary constituency of Chatham and Aylesford. Some 50 Members of Parliament from all parties have a constituency interest in this subject, and I hope and believe that more of them will join us later this morning.

Many of the claimants have appealed against the DWP ruling. That is why they have sought the support of their UK Members of Parliament. I believe that the appeal process has been deliberately spun out by the Department. On 3 December 2009, my constituent, John Hamilton, noted that the Directgov website had been revised to read:

That is despite the fact that on 20 November 2009, tribunal Judge Jeremy Bennett ruled:

That was translated by Daniel Vickery, social security and child support appeals tribunals team leader at Sutton into the following request:

My constituent, John Hamilton, has now been told to look at dates at the beginning of March, so Judge Bennett's ruling is effectively being pushed into the long grass.

In the meantime, what of the grounds for the Government's continued defiance of the ECJ ruling-the so-called past presence test, requiring a claimant to have lived in the United Kingdom for 26 of the previous 52 weeks to be eligible to claim? In response to one of my earlier parliamentary questions back in June, the Minister asserted:

We now know that statement to have been ill-advised.

The European Commission website states:

exportable DLA, attendance allowance and carer's allowance-

Abroad in this case means within the European Union or Switzerland. On 9 October, the Commission addressed a letter of formal notice to the UK authorities. The British Government had two months to respond. That is the first stage of what is called the infringement procedure.

The British Government did reply within two months-just. However, in response to my question asking for sight of that response, the Minister for Pensions and the Ageing Society said:


12 Jan 2010 : Column 170WH

I should like to know why. The infringement proceedings are in the public domain; why is the Government's response not in the public domain?

The clue might be found in the tardy answer, sent on 17 December, from the Prime Minister in response to my oral question to him on 11 November. It took the man in No. 10 more than a month to be able to tell me:

So I guess that is what we said in reply to the Commission.

Perhaps it is a pity that instead of relying on his hapless junior Minister for advice, the Prime Minister did not read the Commission website for himself. It states:

Nothing could be clearer. The Government of the United Kingdom are coldly and deliberately acting outside European law. That fact is confirmed by Jackie Morin, a member of the Commission's staff, in a letter to my constituent John Hamilton dated 3 December 2009.

Quite simply, the Government are in breach of the law and they are disingenuously using weasel words and artifice to try to deny to sick, elderly UK citizens who have served this country-many of them in the armed forces-and who have paid their dues throughout their working lives the money owing to them.

The situation gets worse. Overnight, I received an e-mail on the matter. Unfortunately, I have not been able to go back to the person who sent it to me to secure consent to name them, so I shall have to hand it to Hansard on the understanding that for the moment their anonymity is protected. The e-mail states:

the date to which the attempted reclaim related-

that I

That was 11 January. The e-mail continued:

March 2006-

£3,800-

and we


12 Jan 2010 : Column 171WH

Mr. Atkinson: In the case of my constituent, who comes from Northumberland and moved to Spain a long time ago, when the move took place, he was told that disability living allowance would have to stop and he accepted that as one of the penalties of moving abroad. Then, when he discovered the result of the European judgment and reapplied for the allowance, he was told that he was out of court because of the past presence test; he had not lived in the UK for 26 weeks out of 52. This is a classic Catch-22 situation. He thought he had been deprived of disability living allowance, only to be told that if he was entitled to it, he could not have it because he did not pass the test as he had already moved from the United Kingdom.

Mr. Gale: I fear that the situation my hon. Friend describes applies in many cases and I shall come in a moment to what I believe may prove to be the Government's fall-back position, because I can see another area of wriggle room developing if we are not careful.

I believe that the Minister is not only an honourable but a decent man. I know him very well as a Kent Member of Parliament, and outside the Chamber as a friend. I also know that Ministers have to do the bidding of their civil servants, the Secretary of State and the Cabinet, and I know that the Cabinet is in turn leant on by the Treasury, which is seeking to save, for blindingly obvious reasons, every penny that is available. However, I hope that the Minister will believe that it is quite wrong of his Department to send out threatening letters to elderly and infirm people, seeking to claw back money that they do not owe; not only that, they are owed money by the United Kingdom Government.

Mr. John Randall (Uxbridge) (Con): I, too, pay tribute to my hon. Friend's doughty crusade on this matter. Has he any idea of the number of people involved and the sums involved?

Mr. Gale: Information is very hard to come by. The Minister may be able to shed more light; he has access to figures that I do not have. I know roughly the number of appeals that have been lodged. We are probably looking in total at between 2,000 and 3,000 cases across the whole European Union and Switzerland. The majority are in France and Spain or Majorca, and there are some in Greece and one or two others dotted around the European Union, but not many. With regard to the sums involved, the Minister is on record, I think, as saying that this situation could lead to a sum rising to £50 million annually. I am not quite sure what the justification for that figure is, so I hope that the Minister will have time to explain to my hon. Friend, the expatriate community and me how those figures are arrived at.


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