Amendment of the Law

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Oliver Heald

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is always a pleasure to give way to the right hon. Lady, because if anything she is always honest with her own side. I understand that quite recently she said that her own party had been pretty much unrealistic about the situation, and I seem to recall that she even said that it should be more specific about what reductions it would make. She was a part of a governing party that left this country with the worst recession, the worst deficit and massive debts, so I do not need to explain where we were in ’97; she needs to explain why we got to where we were at the last election.

[Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend think that it is actually the right hon. Lady who is something of an amnesiac? She seems to have forgotten the £5 billion a year taken out of pensions, and the fact that Labour sold the gold.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Indeed. My hon. Friend is, as ever, right.

It is worth reminding—

Welfare Reform

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Oliver Heald

Monday 11th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The right hon. Gentleman refers to the benefit cap, as announced last week. I think that it is fair. It is fair for us to offer an explanation to the public, most of whom work for low incomes and pay their taxes. They do not want to see somebody on benefits disincentivised from work because of the very level of money that they receive. I repeat what I said in the statement: to net-out £26,000, somebody in employment would have to earn about £35,000. So, I do not think that the measure is effective, in the sense that we are bearing down too hard. It is fair.

On housing, over the next few years we will manage the process with the changes to housing benefit. After all, over the last five years of the right hon. Gentleman’s Government, housing benefit costs ballooned by £5 billion a year, and they were set to balloon to £20 billion a year. I have one last point for him: his Government had the lowest number of houses built at any time since the 1920s. I wonder whom he blames for local authorities having had to place people in those expensive houses.

[Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

For a generation, disability campaigners have pressed for more jobs for people with disabilities, yet the employment rate of those people has remained pitifully low. Does my right hon. Friend agree that what his pilots aim to achieve, taken with the universal credit, is a situation in which people with disabilities get a fair break and a chance of a job, and that if they have a fluctuating condition there is a benefit system that supports them?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Yes, I agree. That is exactly the point of all the changes that we are making, and the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller) is bound with that to review all that we do for disabled people in order to ensure that we do not write them off at any stage but give them an opportunity to go to work, if they can. We will absolutely support those who are not able to go to work. It is their right, and we will ensure that that is the case.