Thank you, Mr Speaker. I also associate myself with your remarks regarding Paul Pelosi and the Speaker in the United States. Our thoughts are with them both.
It is a huge honour to stand here as the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. In so doing, I pay tribute to all those who have preceded me, in particular my right hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), who was an outstanding Secretary of State and also an outstanding Minister of State for disabled people.
The cold weather payment’s design ensures that support reaches those most vulnerable. The energy price guarantee is supporting millions of households with energy costs from now until April 2023. This is on top of the cost of living support worth more than £37 billion for around 8 million households on means-tested benefits.
Mr Speaker, may I associate myself with your remarks about the Pelosi family?
I congratulate the right hon. Member on his appointment. The £25 cold weather payment rate has not been updated since 2008. In today’s money, it should be worth £37. Parts of Blaenau Gwent are more than 1,000 feet above sea level, and the constituency itself is one of the most deprived in the UK. Will the Secretary of State look again at the criteria for this scheme? Surely areas with bad weather, higher energy costs and lower incomes should get a fairer deal.
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s question, because these are very important payments. They are automatic, as he will know. Typically, they are received within 14 days and they are targeted at those who are most vulnerable. His point about the particular local conditions and the elevation of parts of his constituency are well made and I would be very happy to have further discussions with him about that. I should point out though that I believe there are 72 different weather stations to serve as reference points for different temperatures, so it may be that there is one very close to the area he describes.
I welcome my right hon. Friend to his new position. Will he tell the House what progress his Department is making to increase the uptake of pension credit, which means that more vulnerable elderly people will be eligible for cold weather payments?
My hon. Friend is right to raise this very important benefit, pension credit. He will be aware that the Department has been fully engaged in encouraging pensioners who will qualify to take up this benefit, and it is important that they do, because it is worth more than £3,000 a year and it is a gateway benefit for other benefits in turn. I pay tribute to the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), who has done a great deal to push greater uptake, including a week of effort back in June when the uptake increased by 275% in that week.
The labour market has recovered strongly since 2020, with payroll employment up on the pre-pandemic level in all 12 regions of the United Kingdom. We have comprehensive support in place to help people to find, progress and stay in work, with additional support for groups we know are more likely to be inactive, such as those aged 50-plus and people with a disability.
Work is the best route out of poverty, and it is concerning that claimants of, and public spending on, working-age benefits have increased significantly since 2019. There is more that the Government can do beyond the conditionality regime, so can the Secretary of State confirm that implementing universal support, which is designed to help those facing barriers to work and to overcome the complex challenges holding them back, will be considered?
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend that work is the best route out of poverty, and in that regard I commend her for her private Member’s Bill, which the Department is pleased to support. Our low unemployment rate demonstrates our extensive support for those moving into work; universal support has been replaced, as she may know, by Help to Claim, which provides tailored support to individuals making a universal credit claim across England, Scotland and Wales.
The economy is plagued by labour shortages, from care to hospitality. On Saturday, 200 bus services in Cambridge were cancelled because of a lack of drivers, leaving health workers unable to get to and from their places of work. After a decade of zero-hours and short-term contracts, it is no surprise that people want out—they do not want to be at work because it is too tough. Is it not time for the Government to recognise that good workplace rights are not just good for workers, but good for employers and good for us all?
I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. He is right to raise the issue of economic activity. That will be a major focus of mine as Secretary of State: we have 9 million people who are economically inactive, and we desperately need to get as many as we can into the workforce, not least because under this Government we have very low unemployment, very high levels of employment and 1.25 million vacancies in the economy.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend and send him my best wishes for his time in this important job. May I suggest that he has a look at some research published earlier this year by the Prince’s Trust, which found that there are hundreds of thousands of young people not in education, employment or training, many of whom are economically active? They want to work, but many of them are living with physical or mental disabilities. Does he agree that the right support would enable them to stay in touch with the labour market and prevent patterns of worklessness from setting in at a very young age?
I recognise the great work that my right hon. Friend did as a Secretary of State. There are 820,000 young people out of work and not in full-time education, and he is right that there are many things this Government can do, and indeed are doing, with our youth offer. That includes our youth employment programme, youth employability coaches and 150 youth hubs across Great Britain.
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman, who is one of my neighbours, to his new post and congratulate him on his appointment. What estimate has he made of the number of people who would like to work but currently cannot do so, because they are among the hundreds of thousands waiting on record-long NHS waiting lists?