T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities. (904383)

Today I welcome the National Audit Office’s positive response to the report on the child maintenance scheme, which simplifies the system and helps parents work together in the best interests of their children. There will be further to come on this soon. Already we know that twice as many parents intend to pay direct, even before the second stage of our reforms and ahead of expectation.

What support are the Government giving to older workers and their employers in Medway to assist them into work and to build a fairer society?

I, along with the Pensions Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), recently published the “Fuller Working Lives—A Framework for Action” document, which sets out the support that we are going to give to older workers. That includes a new health in work service, Jobcentre Plus tailored support, guidance and a toolkit for employees, and from next week the right to request flexible working hours.

At the start of this year 3,780 people were claiming universal credit. The most recent numbers show that 5,610 people are receiving the benefit. At this rate of progress, how long will it be until the 7.7 million households that are supposed to receive this Government’s flagship benefit, as the Secretary of State originally set out, are receiving it?

We have already made that clear. To date around 11,000 people are on the pathfinders. We have started a roll-out to another 90 sites beyond the 10 sites where the pathfinder took place. There will be further changes and enhancements, and we expect and believe, according to the plan that we laid out, that everybody eligible will be on the benefit by 2017.

I think that is the first time I have not heard the Secretary of State say that his project is on time and on budget, but we still hear total and utter complacency. At the present rate of progress, it will take a staggering 1,052 years before universal credit is fully rolled out. So what do we have? Universal credit delayed, personal independence payments delayed and employment and support allowance delayed. Does not the Secretary of State realise that his incompetence is not only wasting tens and hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, but causing untold pain and hardship for some of the most vulnerable people in our country?

As I said, we are rolling out universal credit to 90 sites and we will deliver it safely and carefully, unlike what the Labour Government did with tax credits. To answer the hon. Lady’s general question about what we are doing, this Department and this Government have undertaken the biggest welfare reform programme ever and we are getting more people into work—there are record numbers in work and record falls in unemployment; and we are getting more young people into work and more young people who have been long-term unemployed back into work. The benefit cap means that 42,000 people have been capped, as a result of which 6,000 have moved into work.

On universal credit, 600,000 claimant commitments have been signed. There are 6.9 million people registered for Universal Jobmatch. The Work programme—[Interruption.] She does not want to hear this because these are all records of the success of welfare reform. Through the Work programme, 550,000 people whom the previous Government wrote off and who never got a job are now back in work, and through auto-enrolment under the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), 3.6 million people have moved into a workplace pension. This is a Government who are reforming welfare. The Opposition have no policies, no purpose and no prospects.

T5. This morning I was with the staff and students of Farleigh college of further education in my constituency, which offers excellent education and training opportunities to young people with autism and other complex conditions. What more can my right hon. Friend do to ensure that we reach the goal of full employment by ensuring that increased opportunities exist for young people with learning disabilities and autism? (904387)

I think the whole House would agree that we need to give everyone the opportunity to live their dreams and have their aspirations, and that is exactly what this Government want to do. I would love to come and see the scheme that my hon. Friend is talking about, so that I can see for myself what it is delivering.

T2. In last week’s Westminster Hall debate, the Minister said of the closure of the independent living fund that “there really should not be concern.”—[Official Report, 18 June 2014; Vol. 582, c. 91WH.] How will he ensure that the concern being expressed by current ILF recipients that they will lose their independence is unfounded? (904384)

I also said during that Westminster Hall debate that, for nearly three years, new recipients of ILF have been dealt with by local authorities. There have not been any major problems. We are confident that this will roll out correctly and we intend to roll it out as soon as possible.

T7. Unemployment in Braintree between May 2010 and May 2014 has dropped from 3.4% to 2%, and youth unemployment in that same period has dropped from 6.3% to 3.8%. There remains a challenge, however, in that the unemployment rate is not falling as fast for young women as it is for young men. What are the Government’s policies doing to help young women to get back into work? (904390)

I am pleased to say that unemployment is falling right across the country and across all age groups. Employment is up as a consequence. We are doing significant things. We now have record numbers of women going into work, and at record rates. Our policies, more than anything, are supporting young girls.

T3. It is all very well for the Minister to say that, but more than 200,000 young people have been out of work for over a year, which has consequences for the possibility of their finding work in the future. Youth unemployment is falling more slowly than overall unemployment, so what is she doing to help the youth of this country get back into employment? (904385)

It is quite incredible that the hon. Gentleman should ask that question, considering that youth unemployment shot up by 45% under the Labour Government, and that we have managed to get more young people into work. As I have said, youth unemployment has fallen for nine consecutive months; it is 100,000 fewer than at the general election. He would be better off reading about what we have done, if he wants to know how to get young people into work.

Will the Minister provide the House with an update on the implementation and delivery of the mesothelioma compensation payment scheme?

I am really proud that the coalition Government have introduced this new scheme. It is now fully funded and it is rolling out on time. Payments will be made on time to the people who need those funds so much, through no fault of their own, and we are all very proud of that.

T4. My local citizens advice bureau has been contacted by a young single woman who has been hit by the bedroom tax. After paying her rent and utility bills, she has just 84p a day left to spend on food and toiletries. With eight households for each available one-bedroom property in my area, moving is simply not an option. How can the Secretary of State continue to try to justify a policy that results in such extreme poverty? (904386)

We have given local authorities between £300 million and £400 million for discretionary payments. It is their job to ensure that individuals with particularly difficult circumstances can be helped with that money. The overall policy is very simple. It is about people who are living in accommodation that they do not fully utilise, and about others, including the quarter of a million left by the last Government in overcrowded circumstances and the 1 million people on waiting lists. I do not think that the hon. Lady has ever got up and asked a question about those people. The reality is that this policy will help them to get the accommodation they need to improve their lives, and not waste it on people who do not need it.

I hear repeated concerns that there may be targets for benefit sanctions at jobcentres. Will the Secretary of State confirm that that is not the case, and send a clear message to advisers that they should not be seeking to sanction people inappropriately to hit some sort of target? Their aim is to help people.

I can assure my hon. Friend that there is no target on benefit sanctions, that the advisers give benefit sanctions as a last resort, and that the system has a full set of checks and balances. There is a mandatory reconsideration almost immediately of that decision, and then there is the opportunity to appeal. The purpose of a sanction is to help to remind the individual that this taxpayers’ money comes with an obligation to co-operate; to find work by seeking work.

T6. Why will the Government not pay universal credit payments to the main carer of children in a family rather than the main earner? (904389)

Let us pause and get this absolutely right. The reality is that what the Opposition are now saying is utterly illogical. [Interruption.] Let me give the hon. Lady the figures. What is fascinating is that 93% of cohabiting couples and 98% of married couples share their finances, so most of those people will reach a conclusion. The second point is that we have put safeguards in place within universal credit so that the payments can be nominated as an exception if the carer is to receive the money. Right now, this is about a household getting more money than under the existing systems. This is a benefit that benefits more people, and, honestly, the idea of micro-managing everybody’s lives from Westminster is the kind of absurdity that the Labour party tried when it was in government.

It is welcome that youth unemployment has fallen by some 59,000 in the past three months, but I understand that there has been an underspend of some £50 million on the Youth Contract budget. Can my right hon. Friend reassure the House that that money will be spent on supporting young people into work?

Absolutely, I can. All the money that we said that we would be spending on youth schemes—we are doing just that.

T8. It is a great shame that Tory Members of Parliament criticised the Trussell Trust and Oxfam—in fact, some might say threatened them—for daring to suggest a link between food poverty and the social security system: the cuts, the delays, the misapplied sanctions and the abolition of the social fund. Will the Secretary of State now accept his responsibility for what has been a 54% increase in the need for food aid in just one year, and commit to working positively with those organisations to see how his Department can help to address the root causes of food poverty? (904391)

Inequality is at its lowest since 1986. There are 500,000 fewer people in relative poverty than at the election; 300,000 fewer children in relative poverty than at the election; 200,000 fewer pensioners in relative poverty than at the election; and 450,000 fewer workless households than at the end of 2010. We have done more to help people who are hard up than the hon. Lady’s Government ever did.

What impact has the Government’s long-term plan had on long-term unemployment, and what representations have the Government received on long-term unemployment from the Opposition?

I thank my hon. Friend for asking that question because we have seen the biggest annual fall in long-term unemployment since 1998—108,000 fewer people on long-term benefits. That is a significant change. When we came into office we said that we would help those whom the Labour Government left behind and forgot about. We have set up the Work programme and other schemes, and the consequences are more of them in work.

T9. Last week I met a constituent who received her husband’s personal independence payment only after he had passed away. Will the Minister guarantee that no one else will suffer that deeply distressing situation in the future? (904392)

Of course I cannot guarantee that, but we need to do everything we possibly can on this. Perhaps the hon. Lady will pass on our thoughts to her constituent for her loss. It is very important that we get the scheme to run faster, but the quality needs to be right. I am very sad when that sort of thing happens, but I cannot possibly guarantee to the House that it will not happen again. We just have to make sure that it does not happen very often.

I have been here since the beginning of Question Time and may I tell the Secretary of State that I have been sickened—there is no other way to describe my feelings—by his complacent indifference to the agonising hardship suffered by the most vulnerable in our society? He should be ashamed of the policies he is pursuing.

The only sickening thing is the last Government plunging the economy into such a crisis that more people fell into unemployment and hardship as a direct result of the incompetence of the people whom the hon. Gentleman has progressively supported.

Under this Government, how many more women are now in employment?

The rate is the highest it has ever been, at nearly 68%. The number and rate of women in employment is the highest we have ever seen.

After nine months, fewer than 200 people in Hammersmith and Fulham are on universal credit. This morning the shadow ministerial team visited Hammersmith’s citizens advice bureau to hear directly from my constituents about the catastrophic failure of the Secretary of State’s Department in every area of operation. Is his failure to roll out universal credit just a cover-up of another DWP crisis in the making?

Isn’t that interesting? What a revealing statement. We have endlessly offered the Opposition Front Bench team the opportunity to visit jobcentres where universal credit is rolling out, but only one spokesman went—[Interruption.] No, the shadow Secretary of State never went and is refusing to go. Now she would rather visit citizens advice bureaux than the people who are actually delivering universal credit. Surely that is the most pathetic excuse I have ever heard.

I have a number of very sick constituents who have been pushed into severe financial hardship as a result of unacceptable delays in the PIP process. Some of them are now dependent on food banks. I listened carefully to the Minister earlier, but will he set out a timetable for clearing the backlog for all applicants, not just the terminally ill? What interim support will he offer to those having to wait more than 28 days?

I repeat that it is taking too long. I accept that and am determined to get the time down. We are working with the providers to ensure that we get it down. I will look into individual cases if the hon. Lady wants to bring them to me, but we are doing everything we possibly can. I would rather see people being assessed than left without any assessment, as the previous Administration did, or with paper-based assessments.

Underlying the overly positive spin that Ministers have put on the employment figures is the fact that for the first time ever the majority of families living below the poverty line are in work. What are the Government going to do to make sure that work is always a route out of poverty?

Nothing is more revealing than when the Opposition start claiming that we somehow have to spin the fact that there are more people in work now than when we came into office. We will soon break through the barrier and have the highest proportion of people in work. Unemployment is falling, youth unemployment is falling, and adult unemployment is falling. We do not need to spin facts, because facts in this case tell us that our welfare reforms are working.

rose—

Order. I am sorry, but as usual demand exceeds supply and we must move on.