Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, I should like to say how encouraged I am by what my noble friend the Minister has said today on the progress made in tackling this virus. In asking my question, I stress that I have been urged so to do by many businesses, large and small, across the country—the backbone of our economy. Will the Minister and his colleagues now accept that we must expect a second wave of the virus,...
Baroness Buscombe: Does the noble Baroness believe that sharia councils do not interfere with our rule of law? Do they fully respect our rule of law?
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester. I am in favour of the Bill; it is a critical stepping-stone to fundamental and urgent reform that will require courage, honesty and acceptance of what is happening in this country, particularly in our prisons. Let us not forget that we are talking about sentencing for treason; a heinous act against our...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, there is no question but that our maternity services across the piece are under enormous pressure. We know that in 2017, somewhere between 30% and 40% of all babies born in the UK were born to foreign nationals. Will the Minister tell me, in broad terms, do foreign nationals, when they have babies in this country, make a financial contribution?
Baroness Buscombe: Before the noble Lord sits down, can he tell me: do you have to pay tax in any EU country in order to obtain EU citizenship?
Baroness Buscombe: So the answer is that you do not necessarily have to pay tax in any EU country in order to obtain that citizenship. You could be claiming benefits in—or, in other words, not contributing to—any one of those countries.
Baroness Buscombe: On 1 February 2016, a cross-party meeting was held in Committee Room 9 in the Commons for any Peers and MPs interested in supporting a campaign to leave the EU. There was a reasonable turnout from both Houses. Part-way through the meeting, an MP rose and said, “If anyone thinks there’s any point in campaigning to leave in the north-east—and probably the north-west—of England, forget...
Baroness Buscombe: I thank my noble friend for his question. As he will know, Harrogate has a strong mix of benefit claimants that will reflect case loads across the country as we start to scale. We looked at this issue carefully and took some time to choose somewhere that would have a strong mix of people who can work with ease with us and others who have differing complex needs. We wanted to be sure that we...
Baroness Buscombe: I will respond to the noble Baroness by saying that I absolutely appreciate and very much respect the work that she does in relation to supporting just the sort of people we want to support through this process. I am quite surprised in some ways that the noble Baroness is not more involved with the stakeholders who we are constantly now engaging with—but I am sure that she is aware of...
Baroness Buscombe: I thank the right reverend Prelate for his positive response to these regulations. I appreciate the frustration of noble Lords who feel that they seem to have come late in the day. As I said, the key reason for that relates to the judgment, which we needed to respond to. We needed to get it right. The judgment said that there was an unintended consequence and we were not being quite fair in...
Baroness Buscombe: I am in full flight here.
Baroness Buscombe: One reason I became a Conservative was that there was an incredible advertisement in 1979 that said, “Labour Isn’t Working”. It showed lines and lines of people outside what we then called the employment exchange. That was a long time ago, but in 2010—the noble Lord knows this—20% of working-age households were still entirely workless. We have got that down to 13.9%. It is still not...
Baroness Buscombe: The right reverend Prelate will know that each and every parent will receive child benefit for each and every child, no matter how many children they might have now and into the future. In addition, we are talking about children born after April 2017. Following a decision that was made under the current Secretary of State, my right honourable friend in another place—and made very public so...
Baroness Buscombe: The noble Lord is quite right. There is no question—it is quite right, absolutely right—that we should report once we have done the pilot, before regulations are laid to roll out the entire managed migration. I apologise to your Lordships if I failed to make that absolutely clear. I think the suggestion put forward by that committee that we have a pilot was right. It has taken us time to...
Baroness Buscombe: I thank both the noble Baronesses, Lady Sherlock and Lady Janke, for their questions. I have to agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, that it has been a journey. It has not been easy, but I am pleased to say that we are, we believe, now in a very good place. It has taken longer than we would have liked, but through that process, we have made some serious improvements not only to the...
Baroness Buscombe: I am glad that the noble Baroness has prompted me. We will publish an assessment of the impacts prior to scaling of managed migration. As we said in our response to SSAC, we are conducting detailed equality assessments of migration plans as part of our public sector equality duty. We will report on the impacts of the testing, which will be evaluated, and we will respond through a report on...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. The Statement is as follows: “Mr Speaker, at the core of this department is the desire to deliver a considered and considerate welfare system that incentivises work. Universal credit has been rolled out nationally and now has...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his response and his understanding that we welcome this judgment. As he will know, we regularly consult stakeholders to help shape the training of DWP staff, and I am proud that we now have, in respect of training, a mental health champion in each of our personal independence payment assessment centres. We welcome this judgment, as it helps us to gain a...
Baroness Buscombe: I shall do my best to respond to the noble Baroness, who of course knows so much about this area. On waiting times, we are committed to processing PIP claims as quickly as possible while ensuring that we have all the evidence we need to make the right decisions. A key issue has been not having sufficient medical information in the first instance. We are working with the NHS to see what we can...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, we are working hard to get on top of these problems, and no one is working harder than my honourable friend in another place the Minister for Disabled People, Justin Tomlinson MP. We recognise that for the most severely disabled claimants the award review process can seem unnecessarily intrusive. That is why those with most severe lifetime disabilities are more likely to have their...
