Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We have already taken action. We have closed many of the loopholes and tightened things up. Come Monday next week, nobody will be able to claim out-of-work benefit for more than three months, and after that people will have to leave the country. They will not get housing benefit, they have to be able to speak English and they have to show that they are resident here. And that is only the beginning.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

A research group from Oxford university has analysed the data from the Government’s new sanctions regime. It has identified that 4.5 million people on jobseeker’s allowance have been sanctioned, including young people. One in four of those who were sanctioned left JSA. More than half of those who left did so for reasons other than employment. In the light of that, will the Secretary of State apologise for his claim that his policies are getting people into work, when they clearly are not?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

As far as I am concerned, jobcentres apply sanctions only as a last resort. With the new actions that we have taken to get mandatory reconsideration, the number of appeals has dropped. The truth is that when the hon. Lady’s party was in government, it accepted the need for sanctions when people did not do what they were expected to do. Only in opposition does it claim that it is opposed to sanctions. It would not implement that policy if it was in government.

Universal Credit

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Iain Duncan Smith

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

What my hon. Friend says is exactly the point I have been making, but which Opposition Members just do not understand. There were too many disasters under their watch; we do not intend to repeat them. We are doing the implementation exactly as the PAC and the NAO recommended.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Once again, I am absolutely staggered at the Secretary of State’s hubris; there are more cover-ups, and everybody else is to blame apart from the Secretary of State. This has been an absolutely unmitigated disaster. UC is dead in the water, and he should go.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

That is pretty much what the hon. Lady says whenever she stands up on any question to do with welfare. The reality is that she is opposed to absolutely everything that we have done. If it was left to her and some of her colleagues on the Select Committee, they would repeal everything we have done, and welfare would be in the sort of chaos that Labour Members left us when they left Government.

DWP: Performance

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 30th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

This is what is so interesting. Over the weekend, the lid was lifted on what is really going on. [Interruption.] They do not like this, because it is the truth. The hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham said of the Opposition employment policy announced the other day:

“We managed in the political world to condense it into one story about a punitive hit on 18 to 21-year-olds around their benefits. That takes some doing, you know, a report with depth is collapsed into one instrumentalised policy thing which was fairly cynical and punitive.”

He was making the point, I think, that the Opposition are failing to say what they really want to do. The hon. Lady let the cat out of the bag when she made it clear that the Opposition want to spend more on welfare and to reverse our changes to the welfare system.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Perhaps we could get back on track and scrutinise the performance of the Department for Work and Pensions. Will the Secretary of State confirm when he anticipates actually delivering 1 million people on universal credit? Will it be by 2191? At the current rate, it will be.

Universal Credit

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Iain Duncan Smith

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I can tell my hon. Friend that all the recommendations have already been implemented. They were drawn from our own reports internally—both the red team report that I instigated and the PricewaterhouseCoopers report—and all these changes have been made. This roll-out programme bears complete authority on the basis of that.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Yesterday, the Secretary of State claimed that 700,000 people would now not be expected to join universal credit by 2017 because he was having a rethink and wanted to introduce things more slowly for vulnerable claimants. However, on 18 November—three weeks ago—he said to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg):

“As I said to the hon. Lady when I appeared in front of her Committee in July, we have been very clear that we would roll out universal credit on the plan and programme already set out.”—[Official Report, 18 November 2013; Vol. 570, c. 946.]

Which is it?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The funny thing about the Opposition is that they do not know what they want. They say that they support universal credit—[Interruption.]

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 18th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I shall take my hon. Friend’s plaudits and congratulations in the spirit in which they were meant. The benefit cap is intended to be fair to those who pay tax to support people who are out of work by ensuring that people cannot earn more through being out of work than they can through being in work. Of course we keep the whole issue under review, but the cap is working very well at its present level.

How interesting it is that not one Opposition Member wants to talk about issues such as getting people back to work and being fair to the taxpayer. The only policy that the Opposition have come up with so far is reversal of the spare room subsidy. That is a pathetic indictment of the lack of welfare policies in the “welfare party”.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I welcome today’s figures showing a reduction in unemployment, but what are the implications for the targets relating to inappropriate sanctions on jobseeker’s allowance claimants? This is a real issue, and it needs to be addressed. It is distorting the JSA figures.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I said that I would make a little progress and then give way. I wish to make one point, which is that £4 billion has had to be written off as a direct result of this inability to get the money back, with a further £4 billion likely to be written off directly as a result of Labour’s massive failure to control that budget.

The second part of our approach is important and it relates to the issue of fairness, which my hon. Friend the Minister of State addressed. We do not do these things lightly, but we do want to make sure that those paying the tax bill for those receiving it in welfare recognise that their taxes are well spent; we want to ensure that those in work paying their taxes do not see the rises for those on welfare outstripping their own. We have already discussed the increases, so this is fundamentally an issue of fairness.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will not give way. Progress on tackling child poverty stalled, and the previous Government missed their 2010 target by some 600,000 children.

[Debbie Abrahams]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

No, I will not give way yet. From 2004 until the last election the previous Government spent £171 billion trying to hit their target, and that was where the problem came from. They wrecked what might have been a good process because they turned it into a target-chasing process, which never succeeded finally.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Some 200,000 children will be pushed into poverty as a result of this uprating measure, according to the assessments, so how can the Government claim to have any commitment to reducing child poverty?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Let me put the figures in the round within the period of spending review. My hon. Friend the Minister of State made a very good point, with which I agree and which I have made in the past—we do not trumpet our progress because we think the process of setting a target around 60% of the median income line was a recipe for nightmare problems and excess spending. We do not claim that that is the right way to measure the problem. The hon. Lady will have noticed that in answer to a parliamentary question last week, we said that we will go into full public consultation about a better way to measure real child poverty that the coalition Government will set and measure ourselves against—[Interruption.] Income will be part of it, but not the dominant part that her Government made it. If she and her party were honest—when I made this point on Second Reading, I noticed one of her Front Benchers nodding his head—they would admit that when they worked out the arbitrary target in 1997-98, they thought that they would not be in power that long and that they could achieve the targets along the way. What they ended up in doing was create a nightmare for themselves.

Some £170 billion were spent on tax credits but targets to halve child poverty by 2010 were missed by 600,000. Easier successes were found and then later the rate fell from 26% to 23%. It dropped further between 2002 and 2005 but that coincided with a 75% increase in spending on tax credits from £13.2 billion to £22.9 billion. Throughout that period, the amount of severe child poverty was absolutely static.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

11. If he will amend his proposed welfare reforms to minimise the risk of children entering poverty.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

The overhaul of the benefits system through the Welfare Reform Bill will hugely improve the incentives to work. Universal credit will bring in an improvement for children, in that 350,000 children will be lifted out of relative poverty. As the hon. Lady may be aware, we have also made available an extra £300 million for the poorest people who are caring for children.

[Debbie Abrahams]

The Children’s Society’s analysis of the impact of the welfare reforms says that they will push more children into severe poverty and homelessness. Currently, one in four children in my constituency is in severe poverty. Eighteen bishops have called for the Secretary of State to reconsider his position on the reforms—will he listen to them?