argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Government Operations
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): My advice is simple: persist, persist, persist Let me say to the right hon. Gentleman, who is held in the highest esteem in, I think, all parts of the House, that if he, on behalf—and clearly with the agreement—of the Committee, seeks the presence of the Secretary of State prior to an important debate and attendant vote, the Secretary of State should appear before the Committee. That cannot be compelled, certainly not by the Chair, but it is manifest and, I think, incontrovertible that it is desirable in terms of the scrutiny and accountability process; from which something else follows Simply offering individual meetings with members of the Committee does not remotely pass muster. The fact is that the Select Committee is an established body in the House, established to scrutinise the Government’s Brexit policy, and it has a corporate character. Indeed, its members are operating not merely as individual Members of Parliament, but as part of a body politic—in this case, as part of that Committee. So my advice to the right hon. Gentleman is that he should persist, making it absolutely clear that it is the view of the Committee that the presence of the Secretary of State is desired. It is frankly, if I may say so, a point so blindingly obvious—[Interruption.] Be quiet, young man. In ethical terms, it is so manifestly fair, that that is what should happen.
Social Security and Employment Support for Disabled People — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Social Welfare
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will make a statement on the changes that her Department intends to make to social security and employment support, including the assessment process, for disabled people and people with health conditions.
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): Yesterday the Secretary of State provided the House with a written statement, and delivered a speech to Scope that included, among other announcements, an announcement about changes in the delivery of health and disability benefits We are making significant progress in improving people’s experiences of claiming disability benefits by working through the recommendations made by several independent reviews of personal independence payments and the employment support allowance, but we need to continue to make improvements in order to give better support to people with health conditions and disabilities. The written statement set out a number of additional measures that we will implement to make improvements, now and in the future, in support for disabled people and those with health conditions We will improve and simplify people’s experiences by no longer undertaking regular reviews of PIP awards for claimants at or above the state pension age unless they tell us that their needs have changed. We will also transform the delivery of assessment services. We have established a health transformation programme to undertake the significant task of combining the currently separate work capability assessment for ESA and universal credit and PIP assessment services in one unified, integrated service from 2021. We are extending the contract for the health and disability assessment service, which includes the delivery of the work capability assessment, and aligning it with the duration of the extended PIP contracts. That will allow for a safe and stable service now, and as we make the transition to the new integrated service The Department for Work and Pensions will also be testing how we can increase engagement and build a trusted and strong relationship between work coaches and people who are awaiting assessments for universal credit or who are found to have limited capability for work. The Minister for Employment will take that forward The health transformation programme will be co-designed with disabled people. The Secretary of State and I will engage regularly with disabled people, disabled people’s organisations and charities. All of us, whatever our age or need, want an equal chance to live a life of opportunity and fulfilment. We intend to support disabled people during all the phases of their lives, so that the pursuit of equality is a shared goal.
Social Security and Employment Support for Disabled People — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Social Welfare
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will make a statement on the changes that her Department intends to make to social security and employment support, including the assessment process, for disabled people and people with health conditions.
Stephen Crabb (Conservative, Centre-right): It never made sense to me for us to pay different contractors who compete with each other to recruit competent staff to carry out assessments which make many disabled people feel they are involved in a duplicatory process, which adds to the stress. So may I strongly welcome today the decision to combine the ESA and PIP assessments? That will make the system more efficient and hopefully provide more dignity for disabled people.
Social Security and Employment Support for Disabled People — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Social Welfare
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will make a statement on the changes that her Department intends to make to social security and employment support, including the assessment process, for disabled people and people with health conditions.
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. This builds on some of the work he started when he was in the Department. It is very much based on listening to people and their experience of the current benefit system. I could not agree more that we need to have a much more streamlined, simplified process under which people tell us the information once, we gather it once, and we are able to make the best possible accurate decisions the first time.
Social Security and Employment Support for Disabled People — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Labor
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will make a statement on the changes that her Department intends to make to social security and employment support, including the assessment process, for disabled people and people with health conditions.
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): I really would have hoped that, today of all days, the hon. Lady could have found it in her heart to welcome the changes that have been asked for by so many people inside and outside this Chamber, and to recognise the great work that has been done by disabled people, and those who work with them, to engage with us so constructively and enable us to move forward and tackle the issues that she is describing The hon. Lady is right to say that we said yesterday that we were going to be more ambitious in enabling more disabled people into work, because we have made such good progress. Since 2013, over 930,000 more disabled people are now in work. Over that time, the disability employment rate has increased from 7.4% to 51.5%, and the gap between the disabled employment rate and the overall employment rate has been reduced to 30.2%. I do not want to see any disabled person out of work when they would like to be in work, but we have made progress and that is why we have committed to reviewing our targets and to being more ambitious. Access to Work is a great scheme, as we all agree, and it supported record numbers of people last year, including more people with mental health conditions and more young people with learning disabilities. The Access to Work fund is demand-led, and it grows every year because every year we are seeing more disabled people into work, and that is what we want to do Returning to the hon. Lady’s questions about the contracts, it is really important to me that, while we are going through such a fundamental transformation of our assessment process, we have safe and stable delivery for people who are applying for benefits. That is why we have extended the contracts to 2021, to align with the PIP contracts. We have not just accepted the existing situation, as the hon. Lady knows, and I am grateful for the work undertaken by the Select Committee on this. We have been pushing for continuous improvement within those contracts. The new contracts have higher standards for service delivery, and I would be happy to put a letter in the Library so that people can see the terms of the new contracts and see that they are driving forward improvement. We all want to see the right decisions being made at the first opportunity. We do not want to see people having to go through mandatory reconsideration and then on to appeals in the courts, and we have a whole series of reforms to ensure that that does not happen.
Social Security and Employment Support for Disabled People — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Social Welfare
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will make a statement on the changes that her Department intends to make to social security and employment support, including the assessment process, for disabled people and people with health conditions.
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome what was in the written statement yesterday and what the Minister has reiterated about the more ambitious target to get more disabled people into work. As an aside, I also welcome what the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) said earlier. As a former Minister for disabled people, I am particularly attracted to the more ambitious target that we had in our 2015 manifesto. Indeed, I may have had a hand in writing it myself. On the substantive question, if we are going to get more disabled people into work, we need to ensure that the social care system—over half of whose budget is spent on working-age adults, not on older people—works better with our social security system and with the other means that we have of helping disabled people to become more independent. I urge the Minister to publish the social care Green Paper as soon as possible, and to start that much-needed debate so that we can deliver those policy changes that many disabled people across the country are crying out for and give them the opportunity to live more independent and fulfilling lives.
Social Security and Employment Support for Disabled People — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Social Welfare
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will make a statement on the changes that her Department intends to make to social security and employment support, including the assessment process, for disabled people and people with health conditions.
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions. I should like to reassure him that I do indeed work with my opposite number in the Scottish Government, and that we are working closely together as we go through the process of devolving PIP and other benefits to Scotland. Actually, we are testing and learning a great deal from each other. The UK Government are investing a great deal in health and work trials, and we work collaboratively on those. We are always prepared to learn from any part of the United Kingdom. I absolutely agree that too many people are having their decisions overturned on appeal—we want to ensure that we get all the decisions right first time—but it is worth keeping this in perspective, because 10% of all PIP claims go to appeal and only 5% are overturned. However, as I always say from the Dispatch Box, one person’s poor experience is one too many. We have been doing a lot of work with the Courts and Tribunals Service to bring down waiting times, and I hope that all Members will join me in welcoming the fact that we now have a new PIP online appeal service. Since November, people can resolve their appeals online, which is enabling far swifter resolution of those issues.
Social Security and Employment Support for Disabled People — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Social Welfare
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will make a statement on the changes that her Department intends to make to social security and employment support, including the assessment process, for disabled people and people with health conditions.
Kirstene Janette Hair (Conservative, Centre-right): I warmly welcome the changes that my hon. Friend outlined. Last week, the Scottish Government announced their timetable for replacing personal independence payments, disability living allowance, attendance allowance and carer’s allowance, which will now not be completed until 2024, three years after they initially promised. Will she reassure me, my constituents and all in the House that the Department for Work and Pensions and the UK Government did all that they possibly could to ensure that the Scottish Government were set up for this and that actually there is resistance from the Scottish Government to taking the powers?
Social Security and Employment Support for Disabled People — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Government Operations
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will make a statement on the changes that her Department intends to make to social security and employment support, including the assessment process, for disabled people and people with health conditions.
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend for raising video recording, because our hope is that that will bring a lot of transparency, trust and confidence to the assessments. We are reviewing the findings of a successful pilot. We remain committed to rolling out video recording.
Social Security and Employment Support for Disabled People — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Law and Crime
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will make a statement on the changes that her Department intends to make to social security and employment support, including the assessment process, for disabled people and people with health conditions.
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): I pass on my sincere condolences to the hon. Lady’s constituent. Of course I will sit down with her to review the case in great detail, because it is a very, very sad to hear what happened to her constituent. Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service has employed hundreds more people so that cases can be heard sooner. I am particularly pleased that we have introduced an online resolution service so that, once people’s information is uploaded on to the system, DWP decision makers can look at that information. If we can make a decision earlier that could prevent people from having to go to a tribunal, we will do so. I am very hopeful that we will start to see waiting times reduce significantly.
Social Security and Employment Support for Disabled People — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Social Welfare
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will make a statement on the changes that her Department intends to make to social security and employment support, including the assessment process, for disabled people and people with health conditions.
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): It is not true at all that benefits for disabled people have been frozen. This House recently uprated those benefits by 2.4%, and this year we will spend £4 billion more than we spent 10 years ago. All the benefits supporting people with disabilities will continue to grow to 2020. They will be growing throughout this Parliament.
Social Security and Employment Support for Disabled People — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Social Welfare
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will make a statement on the changes that her Department intends to make to social security and employment support, including the assessment process, for disabled people and people with health conditions.
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady makes an important point. We know that too many people have been missing out on billions of pounds’-worth of benefits. That is why I hope she will welcome the fact that universal credit and the personal relationship that people have with their work coaches will enable them to understand the full range of benefits available to them. Citizens Advice, working in partnership with jobcentres, will be able to signpost more people to get more support, and I hope Opposition Members will spend some time in their jobcentres to understand the range of services and signposting that is now available from work coaches.
Social Security and Employment Support for Disabled People — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Labor
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will make a statement on the changes that her Department intends to make to social security and employment support, including the assessment process, for disabled people and people with health conditions.
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): I will take that suggestion away and see whether we can collect that data and whether it is possible to provide it on a constituency basis. I challenge people who say that the whole system has failed because, from the information we have, we can see that millions of people are benefiting from these benefits and that more money is being spent every year. It is important that people have the confidence to come forward and access the benefits to which they are entitled. We remain committed to reforming the work capability assessment, which was brought in by the Labour Government in 2008, and we have taken a lot of time to consult a lot of people. Although everyone can agree that it needs to change, there is no consensus on how it can change. We are continuing that work, because I am determined to see these improvements made.
Social Security and Employment Support for Disabled People — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Labor
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will make a statement on the changes that her Department intends to make to social security and employment support, including the assessment process, for disabled people and people with health conditions.
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, because it gives me a wonderful opportunity to pay tribute to the fantastic, hard-working, dedicated and compassionate DWP staff, both in our operating centres and in our jobcentres. I understand from our lead officials in the Department that they have a very good working relationship with the trade unions and that they are listening very carefully. We are working very hard to make sure that people are fairly rewarded.
Leaving the EU: Protection for Workers — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Labor
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): I am assured that the Government and this Secretary of State want high standards of employment rules in this country, and I look forward to our having independence so that we can have our own domestically crafted high standards, which will be above the minimum EU standards, but will the Secretary of State please explain why he has proceeded with this statement? I thought its sole aim was to win over the Labour party, but it seems Labour is in complete disagreement with it.
Leaving the EU: Protection for Workers — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: International Affairs
Gregory David Clark (Conservative, Centre-right): I was very much influenced by the exchange between my right hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) when the latter spoke to his amendment in January. As I recall, my right hon. Friend correctly intervened on the hon. Gentleman to reinforce his personal commitment to establishing and maintaining Britain as a place of voluntarily high standards. Because that represents a point of agreement in the House and is a reflection of our traditions—our reputation is as place of high standards, thanks to the accretion of steps taken by Governments of both parties—I think this is an opportunity to work together to see whether we can establish something that is rooted in the sovereignty of this House, which my right hon. Friend quite rightly insists on, but also provides assurance to those who want to see measures as well as words.
Leaving the EU: Protection for Workers — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Labor
Gregory David Clark (Conservative, Centre-right): On the good work plan, we will be introducing an employment Bill and it will of course be amendable, in the manner of legislation. We are provided, though, with a more immediate opportunity: that Bill is for the next Session, whereas I very much hope that the withdrawal Bill will be available during the weeks ahead and provide that immediate opportunity to express our determination to apply the commitment that the Prime Minister made on this issue The hon. Gentleman mentions the measures on the gig economy that are being contemplated by the European Union. Actually, that is a fine example of what I said earlier: those measures follow the commitments that we have made in the good work plan, and they are now making their way through Brussels. We were in advance of that. As I made clear in my statement, both those EU directives would go through the procedure that I described and would be available to the House, if Members thought there was anything extra in them. Actually, though, we think the directives are in many respects modelled on our own proposals On the ability of this House to enforce high standards, I say that that been the tradition. My experience as a Minister at European Councils over recent years is that our record of high standards when it comes to workers’ rights, employment protection and health and safety is looked at with admiration by many of our counterparts across the European Union. This allows us to continue that leadership.
Leaving the EU: Protection for Workers — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Environment
Rebecca Faye Clark (Pow) (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome this statement and the proposed clauses therein. As my right hon. Friend has been touching on this matter, does he agree that it is often the UK rather than the EU that has led the way not just on workers’ rights, but on environmental standards, and that we should be proud of that? Will he confirm that today’s announcements will ensure that we continue with these high standards in both areas and that we give due regard to any strengthening of environmental protections and regulations by the EU once we leave?
Leaving the EU: Protection for Workers — House of Commons, 2019-03-06
Topic: Environment
Gregory David Clark (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is quite right. Again, the provisions adopted by the Climate Change Act 2008 were not required by the European Union. They were a set of decisions that were taken by this House, and that has been our record. The proposals that I have set out allow us to continue to do that, while making sure that the House is not only properly informed but required to make an explicit determination that, if there are new policies that are adopted and directives that are proposed, they are debated and considered in this House. That seems to me to be a good mechanism to ensure that we are always aware of what is being done in the European Union after we have left it.