argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman asked me a range of questions. First, let me say that nobody has dragged me to the House. I regularly update the House; it is a matter of record how often I update the House through a whole series of written statements and by publishing a lot of data. I have made those commitments to the House and I regularly honour those commitments In terms of the additional resources, the hon. Gentleman will know that ESA has not been open for applications since the end of last year because people now apply for universal credit, so we now have extremely experienced ESA decision makers who have the time and capacity to support us with this exercise. We had recruited an additional 400 staff before the announcement that I made today In terms of the number of people who sadly will have deceased since we recognised this problem and who could have benefited from additional payments, we are very anxious to ensure that we contact people as soon as possible, and if we can find people’s families, we will make those payments to them. Virtually every time I come to the House or Westminster Hall, Members make allegations about the causal link between people being on benefits and them tragically taking their lives. Members need to be very careful when they say those things. As our deputy chief medical officer, Professor Gina Radford, has said, and as the NHS’s survey data show, we cannot make causal links between people being on benefits and them tragically taking their own lives.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a good point. In not only the process for claiming new benefits but this particular exercise, a lot of effort is going into ensuring that we find people and engage with them to check whether they are eligible for these additional payments. That happens through letters, telephone calls and even home visits, to ensure that we contact people in the most appropriate way possible for them.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): I think my hon. Friend is talking about the benefits that are available for the additional costs of disability. There are three benefits there: disability living allowance, attendance allowance and the personal independence payment. As a country, we are going to spend over £50 billion on those benefits this year, which is a £4 billion increase on 2010, and those benefits are of course uprated each year.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Kevin John Foster (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the overall tone of the Minister’s statement and her replies to questions so far. Will she confirm what work the Department will be doing with advice charities locally to ensure that people are aware of this process and when they can expect to be repaid the moneys they should have been due?
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): For the first phase of people we have contacted, we have nearly completed the exercise. Most of those people will have been contacted and we will have paid them their arrears by the end of April. As we start on the next phase, we will be contacting people by letter. We have really good stakeholder engagement with a range of disabled people’s organisations and charities to make sure that people know this is happening and, when they do receive the letters and communications, that they understand what we are trying to do, which is to make sure that they get all the benefits to which they are entitled.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): We are absolutely determined to learn the lessons from this particular situation, but also from all other situations, and to make sure that people have the personal, tailor-made support they need so that they can make a smooth transition on to universal credit.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): The incorrect transfer of people from incapacity benefit to employment and support allowance since 2011 has been a big and costly mistake, with over 600,000 cases examined, potentially at a cost of £920 million. May I congratulate my hon. Friend on getting on top of this issue and sorting it out? Is not the big lesson here that, when it comes to new benefits such as universal credit, it is important to get these things right before they are rolled out?
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): I very much thank my hon. Friend for what he says. This is why the Government are taking such a measured and careful approach to the managed migration of people on ESA on to universal credit. It is absolutely essential that this is done accurately, with compassion and treating everyone with dignity, and that nobody has a loss of benefit.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point and I want to reassure him and all other hon. Members. This was an official error, so the additional payment that people will get and to which they are obviously entitled—it is a back payment—is discarded for all income-related benefits, including universal credit.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): As I have said, we have repeatedly come to the House and discussed with hon. Members what is happening. It is really important, as I have said, that we do the right thing as urgently as possible I will answer directly the question about additional estimates. Because we want to be so thorough in making sure that we are not leaving anybody out of this exercise, we did some additional sampling. We were not satisfied that people had always been given the right benefits since 2015, even though new measures were brought into the Department, and that is why there are some additional numbers. I would have thought that Members on all Benches would welcome the fact that we are being so thorough as to make sure that everybody who can benefit will do so.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): If people were eligible for additional disability premium, then absolutely they would be backdated and going forward they would have those. Other Government Departments have other schemes which can benefit people who claim ESA, but they are the responsibility of those Departments.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): Our focus has been to make sure that people receive their back payments as soon as possible, so we have not looked at the particular conditions for which people were applying to ESA. We do produce ad hoc statistics, so I will certainly take away that request on how we might provide that for the House in future.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Labor
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): Of course I am willing to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss that particular case. I assure him that we are absolutely committed to improvements to the work capability assessment, but for the vast majority of people the process works well.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Gentleman for a question that goes way beyond what we are discussing today. He makes a very good point about when children are growing up and move from childhood benefits to adult benefits. Those young people will now be applying to universal credit, which has the huge benefit of the personalised tailor-made support that is available through the work coach.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): I am happy to provide the hon. Lady with that clarification. The onus is on the Department. The Department is working really hard to find the family members of anyone who is deceased, so we can make the back payments of their benefits to them.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): I reassure the hon. Lady that we are spending record levels of money to support people with disabilities and health conditions. I am absolutely determined to make sure that we are constantly reforming the system to ensure that everybody gets the support to which they are entitled.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Law and Crime
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): I assure the hon. Gentleman that we are absolutely focused on making the right decision the first time, but we do not force anyone to an appeal. It is up to them whether they would like a mandatory reconsideration or whether they would like to go to appeal On the presenting officers, we never, ever intended to send a presenting officer to every tribunal. We send them to a sample so that we can learn—[Interruption.] I am very happy to answer questions, but I would appreciate it if people did not chunter from a sedentary position, because it makes it very difficult for me to listen and respond to them in the way I am sure the hon. Gentleman would like. Those presenting officers are there to make sure that we are learning from where things go wrong so that we can get them right.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Labor
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): Of course, we will be contacting people who are concerned, but I reassure everyone in the House that the Department has taken this issue extremely seriously and has undertaken a very thorough review to make sure that everybody who can benefit from being back-paid will receive those back-payments.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): I reassure the hon. Gentleman that people would have been on benefits, so it is not fair to say that—or to characterise the situation as one in which—people would not have had any benefits. Clearly, some people would have benefited from additional payments because we did not give them the right amount of money, but people did have those payments in the first place.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Government Operations
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): On the question about accountability, of course the National Audit Office has undertaken an inquiry into this issue and so has the Public Accounts Committee. There has been a lot of scrutiny, and it is quite right that there has been so much. I do not hold back from saying that this should never have happened. It is a very serious situation that we do take very seriously and are working hard to rectify. Please be assured that that is the case, that we have made the resources available, and that we will complete this exercise this year.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, but it does not sound as though that particular case relates to what we are discussing today. Clearly anyone who needs support should receive that support. The person the hon. Gentleman describes will now be claiming universal credit, and the huge benefit of universal credit is that that young man will have a relationship with his work coach, and they can work together to make sure he is getting all the support that he needs.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): If people have not got any money and are destitute in the way that the hon. Gentleman describes, they need to go to their jobcentre and speak to their work coach. They can be signed up to universal credit and go away with an advance on the same day. I wholeheartedly agree with the more general point about making sure that we make the right decision the first time so that people are not delayed by going through mandatory reconsideration and appeals, and that is what we are working to do.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me reassure the hon. Gentleman and other Members that if anyone makes an assertion to the DWP that in some way the treatment of someone’s benefits contributed to them taking their own life, that matter is taken extremely seriously and a full investigation is undertaken into the circumstances.
Relationships and Sex Education — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Education
Robert Henry Halfon (Conservative, Centre-right): I strongly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Did he see the report in The Times at the weekend suggesting that more than 6,000 sex assaults had taken place in schools between 2015 and 2017, which was an increase of 60% during that time, and that some victims were forced to stay in the same school as those who had conducted the sexual assault? Will he look into that and ensure that it does not continue?
Relationships and Sex Education — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Education
Damian Patrick George Hinds (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, and of course I share my right hon. Friend’s deep concern. Our "Keeping children safe in education" guidance sets out what should happen on safeguarding in schools. It includes specific guidance on what happens with reports of sexual violence and harassment between children, to ensure that if someone is at risk or is going to be at risk, an immediate referral should be made. If appropriate, that should be to the police.
Relationships and Sex Education — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Technology
Justine Greening (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the steps forward being taken today. They are incredibly important for many children and especially young people, whose voices have been listened to. It is very hard for them to protect themselves from a risk if they have never been alerted to its existence in the first place. It is also very hard for them to know what is normal and acceptable online—what they should share, what they should look at and what they should put online themselves—if no one has ever sat down and tried to explain to them the context and how that behaviour affects others, so what we are doing is crucial. Clearly, the online world in particular moves at a pace that often makes it hard for this place to keep up. Will my right hon. Friend set out what plans there are to ensure that it is not another 19 years before a Government revisit and update the guidance?
Relationships and Sex Education — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Education
Damian Patrick George Hinds (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Lady for her kind words. Of course, many people have been involved in this work, and I know that it has support right across the House. I join her in commending schools—faith schools, community schools; all sorts of schools—that do such a good job of ensuring that all their children feel totally included and supported as they grow up.
Relationships and Sex Education — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Education
Maria Frances Lewis Miller (Conservative, Centre-right): The last time sex and relationships guidance was updated, the internet had not been invented, sexting had not been invented, social media had not been invented—the list goes on. All these things have become part of our children’s childhood, so my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench today deserve the wholehearted support of everyone in this House for what they have done How will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State make sure that parents understand that enabling their children to be part of sex and relationship education is about helping to keep them safe and that it is not a threat to their children’s safety? It is through that work that the Government can most help schools understand how they deliver.
Relationships and Sex Education — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Technology
Damian Patrick George Hinds (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend characteristically makes a very telling intervention. She is absolutely right. As we have gone through this process, I have been struck by the support that has come from some quite unexpected quarters. Often that is because of the jolt that adults have had from discovering the things that children find out and see on the internet in particular. There have always been stranger dangers, but there are now dangers from people whom children do not consider to be strangers or to be a threat and that has galvanised many people into supporting this kind of action.
Relationships and Sex Education — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Education
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): As far as I am concerned, the best form of sex education is—to coin a phrase—to respect and love your neighbour as yourself whatever their sexuality, just as you would respect and love them regardless of their race, ethnicity or anything else. How boring life would be if we were all the same. This very diversity sums up why all previous Conservative Governments have recognised that religious people, and indeed non-religious people, have their own justifiable formal belief about the best way to teach sex education. All previous Conservative Governments, therefore, have given an untrammelled right to parents to remove their children from sex education, but here, in certain circumstances, that right has been transferred to the headteacher—a fundamental shift of power to the state. How does that square with what Edward Timpson, the then Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families, said during the passage of the Children and Social Work Bill? He said: "We have committed to retain a right to withdraw from sex education in RSE, because parents should have the right, if they wish, to teach sex education themselves in a way that is consistent with their values."—[Official Report, 7 March 2017; Vol. 622, c. 705.]
Relationships and Sex Education — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Education
Damian Patrick George Hinds (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. I do not think I can do any better than read word for word from the guidance: "Once those discussions"— that is to say, those on the request to withdraw— "have taken place, except in exceptional circumstances, the school should respect the parents’ request to withdraw the child, up to and until three terms before the child turns 16. After that point, if the child wishes to receive sex education rather than be withdrawn, the school should make arrangements to provide the child with sex education during one of those terms." But the right continues to exist up until the three terms before the child reaches 16.
Relationships and Sex Education — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Education
Damian Patrick George Hinds (Conservative, Centre-right): I am glad to hear that the hon. Lady really enjoyed teaching these lessons. That is not true, of course, for every single teacher. Some can find it quite difficult, which makes the provision of good training and materials even more important. There are lots of third party organisations that produce high quality materials. We want to make sure that schools are easily able to access them, but I can give her the commitment that we will make sure that good training is in place.
Relationships and Sex Education — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Education
Julian Murray Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): I am afraid that the Secretary of State did not quite answer the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). I agree with most of this, but I remember Edward Timpson categorically saying that parents would have the right to withdraw their children if they wanted to. The Secretary of State has made a very strong case for the three terms before the age of 16 exception, but he keeps adding the words, "unless there are exceptional circumstances". Why have those words been added? In what circumstances would a headteacher overrule a parent? Is not the likely effect of this going to be that in some cases, instead of children getting necessary sex education in schools, more parents are going to keep their children out of school?
Relationships and Sex Education — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Education
Damian Patrick George Hinds (Conservative, Centre-right): We do not want parents to keep their children out of school. I hope I can reassure my right hon. Friend that the intention is to say that the long-standing right to withdraw children from sex education does not apply to relationships education or the subject of human reproduction in the science curriculum, but that there is that right to request when it comes to sex education. The request is put to the headteacher, and the guidance that we issue to headteachers clearly says that the headteacher should comply with that request up to three terms before the child reaches the age of 16. Why three terms before the age of 16? Because 16 is the age of consent, so the child should be able—if they wish—to have some sex education for at least a term before they reach that age.
Relationships and Sex Education — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Education
Damian Patrick George Hinds (Conservative, Centre-right): There is a distinction to be drawn between children who are being home-educated and children who are not in school but who are sometimes statistically deemed to be home-educated because they are not in school; those are two different matters. Many parents are home-educating their children, sometimes because their children have had difficult experiences at school or have special needs and so on, and those parents are doing the most amazing and dedicated job in educating their children. The simple answer to the hon. Lady’s question regarding how this reform will help children who are not at school is that it will not because this is about lessons that happen in schools. Where children are able to be in school, we want them to be in school.
Relationships and Sex Education — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Education
Stephen Daniel Double (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, and particularly for his reassurances that the primary responsibility for educating children in relationships, sex and health remains with parents. In the light of his answer to previous questions, will he reassure the House that there is no intention whatever in these guidelines to usurp or undermine the rights and responsibilities of parents to educate their children in these matters if that is what they choose to do?