Social Security and Pensions

Debate between Andy McDonald and Nigel Mills

Monday 7th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills]

No, I think the Chancellor could do that at any point and, as I said, he can make changes to the biggest benefit system quite quickly if he sees the need to.

The case that I am trying to make to the Minister is that, at times, the Government can act much faster. I accept that huge investment in IT for legacy benefits that we are phasing out may not be effective, but I would have thought that, in the modern world, with the more modern systems, we could move on from basing the April rise on the inflation position six months earlier. I hope that the Government can find a way to base the rise at least on the December measure, so it is only three months out of date. I accept that for most years that would not make much difference, and for some years it could actually mean a slightly lower rise than using the September figure, but at least that would give us the best possible protection against this awful situation. Inflation is already much higher than it was at the reference point, and it will be even higher still by the time these amounts are paid.

I fear that the position is even worse than that at which I started—that of believing that benefits are in the right place and therefore an inflationary rise is needed. I genuinely fear that many of the benefits we have are now lower than people need, so a lower than inflation rise for benefits that are already too low leaves people in an impossible position. That is why I supported retaining the £20 uplift in universal credit.

I have told the Government many times that, if they believe that all these benefits are sufficient for the standard of living that we want people to have, they should do and publish an assessment of the basket of things that people have to buy and prove they can afford to buy them all. I would then happily support them. If such an assessment showed that benefits were too high, we could have a debate, but it is incredibly unlikely that it would show that. It is overwhelmingly likely that it would show that the measures that were necessary over the last 10 years have ended up going too far and that we are not giving people enough for the decent standard of living they ought to have. If that is so, we need to fix them. I challenge the Government to publish that assessment over the next year and prove their case that benefits are okay. Let us then get the inflationary increase done right. We cannot keep having this same debate in which many of us think that benefits are not in the right place and yet we cannot prove it because that is for the Government to do and, for some reason, they do not want to.

[Andy McDonald]

The hon. Member is making an excellent point about the assessment that would be needed. Does he think that, in an assessment of adequacy, it would be relevant to factor in the consequences of underpayment in terms of monetising demand on other services that people go to? There is a cost to poverty and usually it is extraordinarily expensive not just for the person suffering from it but in regard to the demand on other governmental services.

[Nigel Mills]

I absolutely agree that asking people to live without enough money to heat their houses and to eat creates all manner of knock-on consequences that will inevitably end up costing the taxpayer money in the long run. It should not be a big challenge or a contentious point of debate to want to ensure that the benefits we are giving the poorest in society are enough for them to live on, so I cannot see why we would not publish periodic analysis just to check that everything is in working order.

We should remember that many millions of people cannot go and get a different job or work a few extra hours to make up the difference. They cannot work, they are retired or they are not in work—they have no chance to earn an income, so what we give them is what they get, and we need to make sure that it is sufficient.