Results 161–180 of 6000 for (in the 'Commons debates' OR in the 'Westminster Hall debates' OR in the 'Lords debates' OR in the 'Northern Ireland Assembly debates') speaker:Steve Webb

[Sir Roger Gale in the Chair] — Housing Benefit (Wales) ( 1 May 2014)

Steve Webb: No, I will not give way, because I have a whole lot of questions which have already been asked that I want to answer. In response to the question of whether we simply let eight weeks go by, let two months of arrears accumulate and only then start thinking about doing something, the answer is no, we do not. The alternative payment arrangements of universal credit include an assessment of the...

[Sir Roger Gale in the Chair] — Housing Benefit (Wales) ( 1 May 2014)

Steve Webb: No. For example, when the Labour Government introduced the principle that private sector tenants with a spare room should have to pay for it, they did not describe the measure as a bedroom tax, so I do not see why a similar one for a social tenant should be.

[Sir Roger Gale in the Chair] — Housing Benefit (Wales) ( 1 May 2014)

Steve Webb: No, I will not, because I have two hours of questions to answer, and I want to answer them. On the role of discretionary housing payments, several speakers, including the hon. Members for Newport East (Jessica Morden), for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) and for Swansea East (Mrs James), mentioned the pressures in their area on the DHP budget. Let us go through the facts, because people might be...

[Sir Roger Gale in the Chair] — Housing Benefit (Wales) ( 1 May 2014)

Steve Webb: No, I will not. Labour cannot explain why it is right to say that private tenants have to pay for the size of the house that they live in, but that social tenants should not have to. Some suggestions were made about our views on excluding pensioners from the measure. They are generally excluded because, for example, expecting them to take work would be unrealistic. We have excluded pensioners...

[Sir Roger Gale in the Chair] — Housing Benefit (Wales) ( 1 May 2014)

Steve Webb: No—I have only one and a quarter minutes left. Why did we not hear about the 13,000 people in Wales living in overcrowded social sector accommodation? Where was their voice in the debate? What about the people living in overcrowded private sector accommodation, or the 90,000 people on housing waiting lists? There is a whole set of unmet housing need while we have people under-occupying...

[Sir Roger Gale in the Chair] — Housing Benefit (Wales) ( 1 May 2014)

Steve Webb: Will the hon. Lady say how she would define what “significantly adapted” is in practice?

Fairness in Pension Provision ( 8 Apr 2014)

Steve Webb: I congratulate the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe) on securing the debate. We have a common interest in quality pension provision, fairness and making things simpler for people. I entirely accept the premise that we have allowed the pension system to become bafflingly complicated. I entirely accept his point—not only do not all of our colleagues understand the pension system,...

Fairness in Pension Provision ( 8 Apr 2014)

Steve Webb: It will to some extent, for reasons that I will explain. When an individual is contracted out, they will receive a smaller state pension than they would have done, because they are building up only a basic state pension, not SERPS. However, they will not get a smaller pension than they would have done, because the company promises to match the SERPS pension that they would otherwise have...

Fairness in Pension Provision ( 8 Apr 2014)

Steve Webb: They have paid for it, but they have also saved by paying less national insurance. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about people who have not worked, and I will come on to them. In a world of contracting out, if person A pays less national insurance but still gets the same pension as their neighbour who was not contracted out, that would not be fair either. Fairness has a number of...

Fairness in Pension Provision ( 8 Apr 2014)

Steve Webb: Well, temporarily they do. Unless we give everybody everything free, we must recognise that we sometimes do things for poor people because it is right to. Inevitably there will be an element of people who work and think, “It is not fair; I do not get that free.” However, as part of a civilised society I do not want people who have no income to be unable to afford medicines. That is just...

Fairness in Pension Provision ( 8 Apr 2014)

Steve Webb: A zero-hours contract is a contract. If someone has a contract of employment, in the weeks or months—whatever the period is—when they are above the earnings threshold, money goes into the pension. We will not insist on pension contributions being made in weeks when people do not earn any money. How would they put money in? I think the zero-hours contract argument is greatly overdone, in...

Fairness in Pension Provision ( 8 Apr 2014)

Steve Webb: We look at lots of different ways of communicating with people. The thing that we know most of all is that if we opt people in to pensions and they have to opt out, they stay in. We could have hand-printed 1 million booklets—I could have delivered them and sat down for half an hour with each person, and I would not have persuaded them. We have used the power of inertia and what we know...

Bill Presented: Backbench Business — Sanctioning of Benefit Recipients ( 3 Apr 2014)

Steve Webb: I congratulate the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) and the Members who supported him on securing this debate. This has been a worthwhile discussion and a number of important issues have been raised to which I will try to respond in the brief time available to me. I think that there might be more common ground between the Government and the Opposition than has been...

Bill Presented: Backbench Business — Sanctioning of Benefit Recipients ( 3 Apr 2014)

Steve Webb: I will not for now, because I only have a short period and I want to respond to all the points that Members have made. [Interruption.] It was a mistake. The hon. Gentleman asks why it was 60%. There was a miscoding. That was not the correct figure. It is important that the sanctions regime is evaluated. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) for his positive...

Bill Presented: Backbench Business — Sanctioning of Benefit Recipients ( 3 Apr 2014)

Steve Webb: I will not, if the hon. Lady will forgive me, because I want to respond to the points already made. There was some discussion of targets—this is a bit of a chestnut—and to be categorical, there are no targets for sanctions; that is not the way it works. The point was made that statistics are gathered at jobcentre level and among advisers on their use of the sanctions system, and again the...

Bill Presented: Backbench Business — Sanctioning of Benefit Recipients ( 3 Apr 2014)

Steve Webb: No, I will not. It is not that individual advisers are expected to hit a target or number; we are monitoring because we expect both distribution and consistency. That is what we are trying to do. It should not be interpreted as a target; it is simply about us monitoring what is going on. A couple of hon. Members suggested that sanctions are about trying to massage the unemployment numbers,...

Bill Presented: Backbench Business — Sanctioning of Benefit Recipients ( 3 Apr 2014)

Steve Webb: Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to continue. A further point missed by a lot of hon. Members is that two-thirds of sanctions are not disallowances. Someone’s JSA might be reduced because of a sanction, but they do not come off JSA and still count in the claimant count numbers. Of all the sanction numbers, only a third are disallowances. On the unemployment figures, the JSA...

Bill Presented: Backbench Business — Sanctioning of Benefit Recipients ( 3 Apr 2014)

Steve Webb: I wonder if the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to continue. I have not given way to anybody else, and I hope he will forgive me if I am consistent. [Interruption.] If the House would like me to take the intervention, I will happily do so.

Bill Presented: Backbench Business — Sanctioning of Benefit Recipients ( 3 Apr 2014)

Steve Webb: As I say, in two thirds of cases where people are sanctioned, they do not actually flow off JSA. Their JSA claim is regarded as continuing, so only a fraction of those numbers count as coming off benefit. Most people are still on JSA, even though they are sanctioned. It is clearly not the case that this is anything to do with the claim—it patently is not. I have sought to be as consensual...

Oral Answers to Questions — Work and Pensions: Defined Contribution Pension Schemes (31 Mar 2014)

Steve Webb: The Government announced last week that pension providers will have to implement new independent governance committees to oversee workplace pension schemes. This is part of the Government’s package of measures to ensure that workplace pension schemes are well run and deliver value for money.


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