Speeches by Stephenson.

“Is it worth emphasising that the Conservatives froze fuel duty for 14 years, which took £100 billion off the cost of driving? That is an example of taxes that we cut over those 14 years. In contrast, this Government have increased taxes by £66 billion in the past two years. Is it not outrageous?”

“I congratulate the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) on securing this important debate. Immigration is one of the defining issues of contemporary politics. Polls regularly show that it is one of the most important issues for the public. Much like my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland an…”

“I thought I would intervene to give the hon. Gentleman a little more time. Is he arguing for an amnesty here in the UK? What does he think British citizens would think of such an amnesty? Does he believe that that would be fair or unfair?”

“I could not agree more. That is clearly a back door to Britain, and we need to close it. Our public sector is dependent on a huge number of worker visas, while we debate—even today, in the Chamber —record youth unemployment. As my right hon. Friend said earlier, we need to get those young people into work rather than r…”

“First, I thank Ministers for inviting me to a meeting yesterday on unduly lenient sentences. My constituent, Tracey Hanson, and other campaigners like her continue to raise powerful points on the need for victims to have parity with offenders on rights and support. Will the Minister assure the House that the Government…”

“At what point do you think it is reasonable for this Committee to look at the work that is going on currently to improve productivity, in order for us to assess whether you have been successful in improving productivity among caseworkers in the DWP, both from a backlog perspective and from a business-as-usual perspecti…”

“Indeed, but when would be sensible?”

“That is an interesting response, because what I read to you earlier was a DWP concern: “DWP has concerns that, because it has not designed the scheme in a prescriptive way or defined the rules tightly, awards have not always aligned with the policy intent”. Now you are saying that you deliberately did not design a sche…”

“In response to my earlier questions, you suggested that you will be improving the consistency of decision making through your standard operating procedures. But is there not a more fundamental issue, which is how you have gone about designing the scheme? Looking at the NAO Report, it says, “DWP has concerns that, becau…”

“If there is this lag, what would the work study be telling you this autumn that would inform us about the expectations around productivity in the near term?”

“Thank you for clarifying that. I am pleased that you gave the example of an ergonomic chair being claimed by a large employer, and I agree that it would be totally inappropriate for public money to be spent on that. Could you outline what the DWP is doing to stop the parties from inappropriately profiting from the sche…”

“Absolutely. Do you have a sense of how much money is being spent as a result of decisions that, in an ideal world, would not have been made? As you say, decisions are made case by case, and you want to empower your caseworkers to make decisions, but within that, there is a risk that a lot of money is being spent on, as…”

“Thirty-seven weeks!”

“Yes. Can I just pause you there? For January 2025, we seem to see an inflection point. I do not know if this is a long-term trend, where we are seeing an improvement in productivity, such that you may end up getting closer to your 2.8 target. We can probably argue about whether that is the right target and who set it.”

“But what happened around January 2025, when we saw this slight improvement?”

“That is not productivity; that is just adding more staff.”

“You mentioned a few things about driving productivity. Could you go into a bit more detail about what you are planning and when we should expect to see improvements? I am particularly interested in the IT; the NAO Report refers to particularly archaic IT systems, with staff having to use multiple systems and copy infor…”

“Yes. I just cannot imagine the frustration that our constituents would feel on hearing an automated voice message tell them that it could take 37 weeks for them to have a decision. That is why I was exasperated. However, I want to talk about the productivity improvements that I know DWP is planning. Before I go into th…”

“But you will still have three separate systems; they will just talk to one another better?”

“To summarise, we should expect to see, by the summer, improvements such that caseworkers are making more decisions per day and they are being more consistent in that decision making so that there is fairness in the system.”