Stephen Timms MP: speeches 2025

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Speeches

18 Jun 2025 · Digital Exclusion · Hansard source
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The digital inclusion action plan, published in February, sets out plans to widen access to devices, drive digital upskilling, break down barriers to participation and support people in their own communities. The plan highlights disabled people as one of five priority groups more likely to be digitally excluded, and the focus is therefore on them in particular.
18 Jun 2025 · Digital Exclusion · Hansard source
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The hon. Lady has raised some interesting points. The action plan outlines five initial actions, including the establishment of an ambitious digital inclusion innovation fund. I do not know whether some of those ideas could be used to address the concern that the hon. Lady has raised, but we do want to be ambitious in all this. In the “Pathways to Work” Green Paper, published a couple of months ago, we talked about assistive tech and the possibility of making it more widely available; maybe there are solutions there that could be taken forward. I would be interested to talk to the hon. Lady about what more we might do.
18 Jun 2025 · Welfare Reforms: Impact on Disabled People · Hansard source
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We are consulting on the support that will be needed over the next few years for perhaps one in 10 of those currently claiming PIP. Support will be needed for those who lose their benefit, and that will include family carers who receive carer’s allowance at the moment.
18 Jun 2025 · Welfare Reforms: Impact on Disabled People · Hansard source
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The hon. Member is right to raise this issue; the current system does track too many people in financial inequality. We want disabled people to have chances in work, which others have always taken for granted. We will invest an additional £1 billion a year by the end of the decade in work, health and skills support.
18 Jun 2025 · Welfare Reforms: Impact on Disabled People · Hansard source
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At the moment, there are 200,000 people out of work on health and disability grounds who would love to be in a job, and who say they could be in a job today if they had the support to make that possible for them. We are determined to provide them with that support.
12 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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I can reassure my hon. Friend that we are listening. We are consulting precisely on how best to deploy the additional £1 billion a year for employment support that we have committed to in the Green Paper. However, the assessment of those measures needs to take account of the significant impact that supporting many more people into work will have on reducing poverty.
12 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend raises a very important subject. Social security must always be there for those who cannot work. The changes announced recently to the rates of universal credit protect the incomes of those with the most severe lifelong conditions who will never be able to work. We will also guarantee that, for both new and existing claims, those in this group will not need to be reassessed in future. Those are baked into the Green Paper proposals.
12 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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I recognise my hon. Friend’s concern. We will engage stakeholders to consider the scope of the review before publishing terms of reference. In the review we will consider whether the assessment criteria effectively target the right people at the right level. We will look at the descriptors and consider the points allocated to them.
12 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend raises an important matter. I just point out that the April 2024 one-year local housing allowance increase has cost an additional £1.2 billion in the last financial year, and it will cost about £7 billion over five years. We keep local housing allowance rates under review. He is right to stress the importance of those, but future decisions on them will need to be based on the Government’s priorities and reflect the difficult fiscal conditions that the Government are dealing with.
12 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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That is an important concern. As my hon. Friend knows, we are determined to open up opportunities for people who have been out of work, often for a long time, on health and disability grounds, and to give them the chance to get into work through much better employment support. However, we recognise that there will be people who will never be able to work. Under the proposals for claims for the new universal credit health element, from next April, a higher payment will protect those with the most severe lifelong conditions that have no prospect of improvement, and who will never be able to work. Eligibility for that will be through the work capability assessment severe conditions criteria.
12 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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The crucial thing is to improve the employment support for people who are out of work on health and disability grounds. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have an ambitious programme, Connect to Work, which is being rolled out this calendar year, building up to an additional £1 billion a year in employment support by the end of the Parliament. At the moment there are 200,000 people out of work on health and disability grounds who say they would like to be in a job now, and could be in a job now, if they had the support they need. We are determined, through the changes, to provide exactly that support.
12 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend is right that there are currently delays with the Access to Work scheme, reflecting the very large increase in demand and applications for it over the past year or two. We are making changes to speed things up. We are also, in the Green Paper, consulting on the future of the Access to Work scheme. I would really welcome input from my hon. Friend, and perhaps her constituent as well, about the changes we should be making.
12 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend raises an important point. I recognise that there is a good deal of concern at the moment, and we want to ensure that people respond fully to our consultation set out in the Green Paper. We have said clearly in the Green Paper that we will ensure that those who will never be able to work will not go through repeated reassessments. That will be built into the system. Initially, the people who will benefit from that will be those who meet the work capability assessment’s severe conditions criteria.
12 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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There is an issue with compensation payments more widely, and the right hon. Gentleman gives an example of a current case. We are looking at how we can ensure that people who receive those payments are protected.
12 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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I am aware that there are concerns along those lines across the charity sector as a whole. I would be delighted to work with my hon. Friend to address the concerns in Middlesbrough specifically.
12 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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The hon. Gentleman is right that there has been a problem over a long period with overpayments—often inadvertent—of carer’s allowance. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State appointed Liz Sayce to undertake her independent review. I know she is making good progress, and I have regularly kept in touch with her. We are looking forward to receiving her recommendations, which will cover those who have been affected, and will recommend changes for the future, too.
12 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Eligibility Criteria · Hansard source
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Pathways to Work sets out reforms to stop people falling into inactivity. They include tailored employment support for people out of work on health and disability grounds, including those claiming personal independence payments, so that they can fulfil their ambitions like everybody else.
12 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Eligibility Criteria · Hansard source
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As I have just told the House, the Office for Budget Responsibility will publish its assessment in the autumn—that is what we said at the time of the spring statement. This is a very big programme; the commitment of an additional £1 billion a year to employment support will open up opportunities for a very large number of people, in the way that the new deal for disabled people did under the last Labour Government all those years ago. We want to get back to providing the support that people need. At the moment, 200,000 people who are out of work on health and disability grounds say that they could be in work today if they had the support they need. We are committed to delivering that support.
12 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Eligibility Criteria · Hansard source
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The hon. Gentleman is completely mistaken. These changes will not take effect until November next year and following each claimant’s award review after that date. Who receives the benefit will depend on the outcome of the assessment at that time. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the view of the Office for Budget Responsibility is that about 10% of those who are currently claiming PIP will lose their benefit as a result of these changes—a much lower proportion than the one he has just referred to.
12 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Eligibility Criteria · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend is right about the scale of the ambition and the changes that need to be made to deliver on it. Sir Charlie Mayfield is leading the Keep Britain Working review at the moment, looking at what more employers can contribute to those goals. We have committed an extra £1 billion a year for employment support, but we need to get on with the changes we have announced in order to ensure that the costs of PIP in particular are sustainable in the future, as it is very important they should be.
12 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Eligibility Criteria · Hansard source
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This is a very important set of reforms, for exactly that reason—to make sure people do have the opportunity to move into work. One in five working-age PIP claimants were in work in March last year; we want many more to have that opportunity. We are going to improve employment support substantially, Connect to Work is being rolled out across the country this year, and there will be an additional £1 billion per year for employment support by the end of the Parliament. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the impacts of these changes will be set out by the Office for Budget Responsibility at the time of the autumn Budget, and there will be very big improvements for those who are intended to benefit from them.
7 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source
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I cannot give way again; a lot of points were made in the debate. For a given individual, the changes will take effect only at their first award review after November 2026. Award reviews take place on average at three-year intervals, so for many PIP claimants the change will take effect only a year or two after November 2026. In line with existing practice, people who are above state pension age will not normally be reassessed and so will not be affected at all. If and when people are reassessed, it will be by a trained assessor, and the assessment will be of their individual needs and circumstances. We are consulting on how best to support those who lose entitlement, including those who will lose carers’ allowance, who are explicitly flagged up in the Green Paper. We set out in the Green Paper our plans to improve trust in the way that both PIP and WCA assessments work, which many of us have heard worries about, through reviewing our approach to safeguarding; recording assessments as standard so that when something goes wrong with the assessment, we can look back at the recording, see what happened and improve the assessment for next time; and moving back to having more face-to-face assessments, while continuing to meet the needs of people who may require different methods of assessment. I think I have time to give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon).
7 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source
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I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. Like everyone else, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) on securing the debate and on the way she introduced it. I pay tribute to her for her consistent focus on this very important topic for a long time. To everyone who has spoken, I say that it is absolutely right to be passionate about this topic. The “Pathways to Work” Green Paper, published in March, set out to deliver three things with a properly thought-through plan—contrary to what the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) just said. First, we will provide proper, tailored employment support for people who are out of work on health and disability grounds, with the biggest reforms to support for a generation and a funding commitment rising to an additional £1 billion a year by the end of this Parliament. Secondly, we will remove the disincentives to work that were left behind in the benefits system by the previous Government’s haphazard benefit freezes, which forced too many people to aspire to so-called limited capability for work and work-related activity status, when it should be supporting people to aspire to work and providing the support to enable them to achieve those aspirations. As has been mentioned, we have announced the first ever permanent real-terms increase in the universal credit standard allowance. Thirdly—this is where we have focused in the debate—we will make the costs of PIP sustainable and address the unsustainable increases that have led to an almost doubling of the real-terms cost of the benefit, from £12 billion to £22 billion, since the year before the pandemic. Last year alone, it increased by £2.8 billion beyond inflation. I think everybody who has spoken would recognise that we simply cannot let that trend carry on. I think I am right in saying that 30 years ago my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington and I served together on the Treasury Committee. She knows as well as anybody the need for funding to be sustainable. It is not in the interests of those for whom PIP is a lifeline, in anything beyond the very short term, for the Government simply to allow the costs to rise as they have done over the last five years.
7 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source
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I am afraid I cannot give way again. The OBR is right on this. Its assessment is based on previous experience of changes of this kind. The behaviour both of the people claiming the benefits and of those who conduct the assessments changes. For example, I have met people who were awarded two points for one of the activities last time around, when I thought they were entitled to four, but it did not change their award, so it was not challenged and nobody minded. In future, someone in that position could well score four points on that activity and so retain the benefit, even though they did not score four points on any of the activities last time around. Changes to the PIP assessment will not be immediate; they will take effect from November 2026.
7 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The people who are getting PIP are the people who meet the criteria. My point is that we cannot simply carry on increasing spending at the current rate. That has to be addressed. I well understand the concerns among people who claim PIP, and I want to take the opportunity of this debate to address those concerns. We are talking to disabled people, disability charities and disabled people’s organisations. The Green Paper consultation will continue until the end of June, and a White Paper will follow later this year. But we need to act ahead of a White Paper. Claims to PIP are set to more than double this decade, from 2 million to more than 4.3 million. That increase is partly accounted for by a 17% increase in disability prevalence, as mentioned, but the increase in the benefit caseload is much higher. It would certainly not be in the interests of people currently claiming the benefits for the Government to bury their heads in the sand over that rate of increase. Following the Green Paper, we are consulting on how best to support those affected by the eligibility changes. We are looking to improve the PIP assessment; as mentioned, I will lead a review of that. The current system produces poor employment outcomes, high economic inactivity, low living standards and high costs to the taxpayer. It needs to change. We want a more proactive, pro-work system that supports people better and supports the economy as well. I will turn specifically to the changes to PIP eligibility. PIP is a crucial benefit that contributes to the extra living costs that arise from disability or a health impairment. The changes we have announced relate to PIP daily living; the PIP mobility component is not affected. We are clear that the daily living component of PIP should not be means-tested, taxed, frozen or anything else that has been suggested. We are committed to continue increasing it in line with inflation. For the majority of current claimants, and categorically for the most vulnerable, who have been highlighted in this debate, it will continue to provide, in full, the support that it currently provides. Employment support for those who are able and want to work will be substantially improved as well. As has been referenced, we have published data that shows that just over half of those who claim PIP today scored four points in one daily living activity in the last PIP assessment. Understandably, as we have heard, almost half of those who currently claim the benefit will be concerned that they will not be eligible in future. However, we have also published the Office for Budget Responsibility’s assessment, which is that by 2029-30 only around 10% of those who currently claim the daily living component of PIP will lose it as a result of the changes. That is the assumption that has gone into the spending forecasts. We are projecting that spending on PIP will continue to increase in real terms every year, but not at the unsustainable rate of the last five years.

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