Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Richard Fuller

Monday 13th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller]

The hon. Lady repeats a point that one of her colleagues made in an earlier day of the debates on the Budget. We need to examine in this debate the broad range of the impact of the Government’s policies. When the Government make any change, they are moving big blocks around—that is one reason why I am a Conservative, actually. When that happens, there will be specific examples of an impact on people’s lives that the general policy was not supposed to have. The hon. Lady should raise those instances directly with Ministers, so that changes can be considered. However, we should not undermine the entire sweep of Government policy because of a particular example. I have found the Government reasonable in understanding the need for certain changes to benefit policies if they have a deleterious impact on individuals.

[Emily Thornberry]

The hon. Gentleman is making a thoughtful, although wrong, speech.

If a constituent of mine were a single parent with two children and met up with a man who had a child, would the hon. Gentleman advise her not to get together with that man because they would then have three children and be subject to cuts in their benefits?

[Richard Fuller]

It is not the role of an MP to advise an individual constituent on their life choices. That is their decision. With respect, the role of an MP is to analyse and scrutinise Government policies to see whether, in the round, they will provide the changes that the British public think are fair and reasonable. Against that test the deficit reduction policies, with welfare reform at their core, accord with what I heard on the streets of Bedford and Kempston. I hope that when the hon. Lady’s party has finished tearing itself apart at its parliamentary Labour party meeting, it will come together and see that it is worth supporting the welfare reforms.

I wish to say a few words about the Government’s proposals on pay. A lot of hon. Members have mentioned the interaction between the introduction of a national living wage and the changes to tax credits. That is an important debate to have, but I hope that Members of all parties will give the Chancellor credit for grasping that important nettle. At some point, the era of corporate welfare, with the taxpayer subsidising wages, had to be brought to a close. The cost to the Exchequer and the taxpayer was getting larger and larger. We were sending terrible signals to employers about what they should do about pay rates, and terrible signals to people in work that if they chose to improve their wages by getting extra skills or training, all their extra pay would be taken away because of changes in benefits. The change needed to be made, so I look to the Opposition to bring forward more thoughtful responses in the weeks ahead. They should have the grace to say that the change is important and that, overall, they support it.

As a Conservative, I say to my party’s Front Benchers that we have not yet seen the impact of tax credits following the recent recession. There is an argument that in the previous recession, during which the Government had a tremendous record of overseeing growth in jobs, tax credits had a beneficial impact in dampening the impact of the recession. They made people more willing to accept reduced hours, because their income was increased by tax credits, so employment could stay high. I urge the Government not to get too ideological about the transition from tax credits to the national living wage, and to be cautious about the impact on businesses on a sector by sector basis.

I welcome my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s comments about housing policy. There has been tremendous take-up of Help to Buy in Bedford—one of the highest proportions in the country. The extension of the right to buy to social landlords will be particularly welcome in Bedford. Between 1991 and 2001 the decline in home ownership there was 10%, compared with 4% in the rest of the country, because in 1991 the council put all the housing stock into a social landlord. Since then, the most significant increase in household wealth has been through people buying their own home. For 20 years, a large proportion of people in my constituency were denied access to one of the most fundamental ways in which they could have provided a better future for their children, because they were denied the right to buy. The change to the right to buy has been presented thoughtfully, and I encourage the Government to move it forward.

This afternoon I have heard the progressives and socialists on the Opposition Benches say that they do not support the national living wage, poor people getting a pay rise or people in council houses having a cut in their rent, and that they would deny people on low incomes the chance to buy their home. The right to buy has been one of the most successful policies that any Conservative Government have ever introduced, and I hope that the Government will move forward with it later this year.