The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kate Green on 2014-05-07.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether Atos staff have been offered any additional retention or performance-related payments since the decision to terminate the contract to carry out work capability assessments was announced.
Mike Penning
The detail of any remuneration of their own staff is an issue for Atos Healthcare and not the Department.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kate Green on 2014-06-18.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, in how many cases child support arrears have been written off under the Child Support Management of Payments and Arrears (Amendment) Regulations 2012 since November 2012; and how much has been written off in such a fashion.
Steve Webb
The circumstances, provided for in The Child Support Management of Payments and Arrears (Amendment) Regulations 2012, in which debt can be written off are:
– Where the Parent with Care (PWC) requests it;
– Where the Non-resident Parent (NRP) has died prior to 25/01/2010, or no further action can be taken to recover debt from the estate;
– Where the PWC has died;
– Where there is Interim Maintenance Assessment (IMA) debt and the IMA was in place between 5th April 93 and 18th April 95, and the assessment cannot be adjusted in light of a parent’s actual income for this form of debt when it arises over that period; or,
– Where the NRP has been told that no further action would ever be taken to collect the debt.
Since the introduction of the write off powers in November 2012 the Department has written off the following amounts:
– Financial year ended 31 March 2013 £1,133,310
– Financial year ended 31 March 2014 £15,480,677
The Department does not hold information on the number of cases this relates to.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kate Green on 2014-03-17.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 13 March 2014, Official Report, column 316W, on children: maintenance, in how many cases within the Child Support Agency collection service, excluding those with a deduction from earnings order, the Agency was notified of a missed child maintenance payment in the quarter up to and including December 2013; and in what proportion of such cases the non-resident parent was contacted by the Agency within 72 hours.
Steve Webb
There are currently three statutory maintenance schemes. The 1993 and 2003 schemes are delivered by the Child Support Agency and the 2012 scheme is delivered by the Child Maintenance Service.
In all schemes, our aim is to act within 72 hours of when we are notified of a missed payment where there is a current liability. The notification trigger comes after a five day tolerance period of a missed payment. This tolerance period is to allow for issues which may have caused the missed payment to be resolved (i.e. clearances through bank accounts) without the need for our intervention. While this trigger is built into the design for the 2012 system, there is no comparable automated process for the 1993 and 2003 systems.
As such, information on (a) the number of notifications of a missed child maintenance payment in cases within the Child Support Agency collection service and (b) the proportion of such cases where the non-resident parent was contacted by the Agency within 72 hours is not available as it is not routinely recorded for management information purposes. To provide this information would require the creation of new information which could only be completed and appropriately assured at a disproportionate cost.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kate Green on 2014-04-08.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to monitor the transitional arrangements put in place by Atos Healthcare following the termination of his Department’s contract with that company for the provision of work capability assessments.
Mike Penning
The Department has negotiated a more robust agreement covering the remaining contract term; with an agreed performance regime that gives us confidence delivery goals will be achieved. Atos will continue to deliver Work Capability Assessments (and other assessments and advice) until contract exit and will be subject to a rigorous quality and service credit regime. To this end, a remedial advisory team is being appointed to work with the Atos Healthcare management during this period to assist Atos in meeting their contractual obligations, ahead of awarding the contract to a new provider.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kate Green on 2014-05-07.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what funding will be provided to local authorities after June 2016 to support former Independent Living Fund users.
Mike Penning
The 2013 Spending Review announced that local authorities and the devolved administrations will be fully funded to meet their additional responsibilities towards former ILF users in 2015/16. Funding in respect of former ILF users from 2016/17 onwards will be decided in the next Spending Review.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kate Green on 2014-04-03.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average waiting time for applicants for the personal independence payment (PIP) in each region of the UK is between submission of the PIP2 form and the date of receipt of the first payment after an assessment from each assessment provider.
Mike Penning
I refer the hon Member to the answer I gave to the hon Member for Liverpool, West Derby, official report, 5 March, column 850W.
In order to manage the gap between Personal Independence Payment go-live and the first release of Official Statistics in Spring 2014, we are assessing whether we can release some further information. If the quality assurance of this information shows that it is sufficiently robust and reliable then we will publish it via ad-hoc statistical releases.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kate Green on 2014-04-08.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what contracts are held by his Department with Atos Healthcare for the provision of medical and health-related assessments.
Mike Penning
The Department holds a national contract with Atos Healthcare for the provision of Work Capability Assessments and contracts for Personal Independence Payment Assessments for PIP Lot 1 covering North West England, North East England, Scotland and Isle of Man and PIP Lot 3 covering London / Southern England.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kate Green on 2014-05-07.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many work capability assessment reassessments were undertaken by Atos in each of the last 12 months.
Mike Penning
This information for completed functional assessments can be found in tables at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-work-pensions/about/statistics
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The speech made by Kate Green, the Labour MP for Stretford and Urmston, in the House of Commons on 13 October 2022.
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, which has faced in two extreme directions at once. On the one hand, Members have rightly talked about the potential of the Bill to address issues of serious organised crime and national security. On the other hand, we have heard again and again of constituents’ experiences of crimes that are low level in the scheme of things but are significant abuses, frauds and criminal behaviour, facilitated by the weakness of our company law. Like others, I will concentrate on provisions in part 1 of the Bill, and my interest stems from experience in my constituency of conduct by unscrupulous directors and owners who misuse registration and dissolution processes to avoid their obligations to their creditors and others.
I am pleased that the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Watford (Dean Russell), has sat through the debate, and I am grateful to his colleague Lord Callanan and his officials for meeting me earlier this year to discuss my concerns. However, as we have heard repeatedly this afternoon, the Bill, while welcome as far as it goes, is a disappointment in terms of its reach and effect. Unless Companies House actually enforces the law and has the resources to do so, the Bill will simply fail to deter directors determined on misconduct from fraudulent and wrongful behaviour.
I turn first to provisions in relation to verification of identity and people with significant control. Clause 76 gives the registrar power to reject documents for inconsistencies, and clause 80 gives her the power to request additional information if inconsistencies are identified. As the Bill progresses, I hope we will get more clarity from Ministers on how inconsistencies in PSC statements will be identified by the registrar and how decisions will be taken regarding criminal proceedings. What processes will be followed? What information will be considered by the registrar? What resources will be available to enable her to carry out her task?
By way of exemplifying my concerns, of a group of eight companies controlled by Mr Jason Alexander and operating in my constituency, only two appear to comply with PSC registration requirements. BEIS and Companies House have been aware of this situation since at least 2019, yet he continues to operate the companies with impunity. How can the new provisions in the Bill have credibility when there has been such a history of lax enforcement?
A particular issue arises where companies are owned and controlled via a network of trusts, for which there is of course no public register, and these trusts are used to obscure the identity of the true owners. In a letter to me in May, Lord Callanan told me that if a trust has any ownership or control over a company, the company must “consider” whether that trust would have met any of the control conditions if it were an individual. He confirmed that if it does meet such conditions, the trustees of the trust may be persons with significant control. A request for companies merely to “consider” the position does not seem to be a very stringent requirement, and the Bill does nothing to prevent shares from being held in trusts in order to obscure ownership and control.
I hope there will be an opportunity in Committee to ensure that the registrar follows up on non-registrable relevant legal entities and to require that those who control trusts are identified. In addition, I cannot see how the Bill will stop phoenixing. Again, I hope there will be opportunities in Committee to consider how the Bill can be strengthened to make it easier for the victims of phoenixing to seek redress.
I turn now to the strike-off, dissolution and restoration of companies. The Government are well aware of concerns about compulsory strike-off. In their response to their consultation in 2018, they stated that
“where a company is insolvent, dissolution should not be used as an alternative to insolvency proceedings.”
But compulsory strike-off continues to be used in that manner; 94% of strike-offs are due to a failure to file required information, and R3, the insolvency practitioners’ group, says that it is that estimated 50% of those companies are insolvent. The compulsory strike-off process, in which the registrar contacts a company and if she hears nothing, can strike it off, suits directors who can use the simple device of ignoring the registrar’s requests in order to take advantage of compulsory strike-off to avoid their obligations to creditors and others, and to avoid late-filing penalties—this is income forgone to the taxpayer. Even so, the process of strike-off is dilatory. Aura Business Centres Limited, another of Mr Alexander’s companies, was finally dissolved by compulsory strike-off early this year, having never once filed accounts in the five-plus years since it was incorporated, and despite Companies House and the Insolvency Service being alerted to this in August 2019.
All that stands in stark contrast to the more onerous expectations placed on those who wish to object to strike-off. When a constituent of mine sought to object to compulsory strike-off in a recent case, she was told:
“We are unable to register your objection without documentary evidence to support your complaint.
Please provide evidence such as invoices, court documents, general correspondence or emails between you and the company, to show that you are actively pursuing them for an outstanding debt.
All evidence should be recent and dated within the last 6 months and must show the full company name, including the word ‘Limited’, or equivalent.”
So a much more demanding burden is placed on an individual who has suffered wrong and seeks redress than the do-nothing approach that can be taken by a company that wishes to use strike-off as a means to avoid its obligations.
R3 has suggested tightening up the compulsory strike-off process by automatically placing a company that fails to comply with its obligations into liquidation, with the process overseen by the Government’s official receiver. That would allow for earlier investigation into the conduct of directors and for the earlier recovery of misappropriated company assets for the benefit of all the company’s creditors. Directors could be made liable for the costs of liquidation, which would be an additional deterrent to misconduct.
Finally, concerns also exist about the process of restoring companies to the register. Currently, that can require a costly court order, creating a clear asymmetry between those who wish to avoid their obligations and those such as creditors, or insolvency practitioners, who need to put things right. R3 has proposed a system of administrative restoration in all cases, which could be triggered by a company director or a creditor once suitable requirements have been met, such as producing evidence of an unpaid debt or a commitment to petition for the winding-up of the restored company.
The fee for doing so could be similar to the cost of dissolving a company. I really hope that the Minister will now carefully consider the provisions on compulsory strike-off and administrative restoration that are missing from the Bill.
I conclude where I began. The Bill is fine as far as it goes, but its modest provisions will not act as a deterrent to misconduct if the registrar lacks the will, powers and resources to enforce them. I welcome the intentions behind the Bill but hope that, as it continues its parliamentary passage, we will be able to make improvements to it to give them full effect.
The speech made by Kate Green, the Labour MP for Stretford and Urmston, in the House of Commons on 14 July 2022.
It is a great honour to speak in this debate, and particularly to speak after the contributions of my hon. Friends—if I may say that of both ladies—the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) and the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), who has done an enormous amount in her short time in this House to ensure that Bosnia is indeed not forgotten here.
Some years ago, I visited Bosnia with the charity Remembering Srebrenica, and I am very proud to be its ambassador in the north-west. I pay tribute to all who contributed to our commemorative event in Manchester cathedral last Thursday. I was very sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East could not be with us because of her brother’s illness, and I give her my deep condolences on his death. I pay particular tribute—I know my hon. Friend will join me in this—to Elinor Chohan MBE, the chair of Remembering Srebrenica in the north-west. She does exceptional work to educate and raise awareness of the genocide and of the need to bring peace to the Balkan region, and to make sure that young people in this country, in particular, understand the horror of genocide and why it must not happen again.
No one who has visited Srebrenica can come away anything other than appalled at the massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys on European soil 27 years ago. As we have heard, 27 years is not long; many of us still clearly remember those events. We remember, too, that a reason for our exceptional horror was that we had believed in the vow made after the holocaust—never again. Yet Srebrenica showed us how easily and quickly that pledge could be forgotten, and is still in danger of being forgotten, or ignored, today. The actions of Republika Srpska, and the rise of a Serbian nationalist narrative that seeks to rewrite history—to deny the fact of the Srebrenica genocide, despite Srebrenica being one of the most well-documented and scientifically verified atrocity sites in recent history—is a powerful lesson on the importance of the theme of this year’s Remembering Srebrenica commemoration: “Combating Denial: Challenging Hatred”.
We know that denial is the final step on the road to genocide, and we know today that it is happening all over again. We think of Milorad Dodik’s unspeakable claim that the killing of 8,372 Bosnian Muslims was a justified reprisal for the killing of 3,500 Serbs by Muslim forces. We think of the boycott of state institutions by Bosnian Serb politicians in direct retaliation for the decision of the UN High Representative to impose a genocide denial ban—a boycott that is now being used as a Trojan horse for Republika Srpska’s ambition for the effective dismemberment of, and its secession from, Bosnia. We think of the charging of a Montenegro mayor for denying the Srebrenica genocide; and we think of Russia’s veto, in 2015, of a UN resolution to recognise Srebrenica as a genocide.
In the face of this ongoing pattern of denial, I want particularly to raise the UK’s role in supporting reconciliation and peace building. That is hard, but the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton was absolutely right to say that peace building must be founded on truth. We remain an active member of the Peace Implementation Council Steering Board, and in that context I hope that the Minister will describe this afternoon how the UK is working with international partners to use our influence to support credible democratic and liberal reforms in Bosnia, and to challenge any genocide denial and nationalist rhetoric. Both the Royal United Services Institute and the Aegis Trust have suggested the need for UK peace- keepers on the ground, in partnership with international allies. I should be grateful if the Minister explained how he sees the UK’s peacekeeping role evolving even as tensions increase.
Ultimately, of course, peace must come from within rather than outside the region, with the different communities, civil society organisations and civic leaders working together to challenge denial and hate. That will not be easy, but we should not forget that one of the reasons for the horror of the 1990s war in Bosnia was the fact that people who only days earlier had been neighbours and friends found themselves taking arms in brutal opposition to one another. That is horror, but it also shows the capacity for people from different communities to live side by side in peace. Non-governmental organisations and faith groups must be supported and enabled to work together, and with the Bosnian authorities, to bring people together to help rebuild the lives of families and survivors. That work remains sorely needed even today, as families continue to mourn the loss of loved ones, and—as we have heard—as body parts continue to be discovered and identified.
We have also heard this afternoon of the Mothers of Srebrenica, women whom many of us in the Chamber will have had the great honour of meeting. I believe that we should particularly recognise the important role of women in peace building. In every community in every country where I have ever known of conflict, it is women who have been important and instrumental in helping to rebuild the peace. Let me also emphasise the importance of young people in peace building, and their importance to Bosnia’s future success. If future generations, from different communities, are to live harmoniously side by side, we must invest in them now. We must invest in jobs in Bosnia, invest in the economy, and invest in education. These too will be vital drivers of peace. Today, the lack of hope for a peaceful future means that Bosnia’s economic potential is being harmed by a brain drain of its talented young people. May I ask the Minister what priority the UK Government are giving to investment in the western Balkans to support the region’s economy, to support vital sectors such as tourism, and to encourage trade, sharing training and business expertise?
A peaceful and prosperous Bosnia is, of course, in the interests of Bosnians, but peace in the region is in the interests of everyone. The UK has a vital role to play in leading that endeavour, and I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the chance to reaffirm our commitment to that in this Parliament this afternoon.