Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Healey and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is worth highlighting one particularly revealing set of figures. For workless households, both the number and the rate are at record lows: 3.3 million and 15.9% are the lowest since ’96. Children in workless households number 1.5 million, at a rate of 12.7%—again, the lowest on record. Under Labour, some 2 million children lived in workless households. That is now collapsing, thanks to the work we are doing. Labour’s plans would only return us to the bad old days.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

Why are jobcentre staff being told to say to people, “We are not here to help you to find work; we are simply here to check that you do it for yourself”?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I do not believe that that is correct. I have the highest respect for the people who man jobcentres all over the country, and who do a remarkable job in helping many of those who have fallen out of work to get back into it. Jobcentre staff now tell people that their own job is to help them to find and take work, but that they themselves have a responsibility to do whatever is necessary to find work and take it. Their job is a combination of helping people and ensuring that they perform their task of seeking work and taking it. I am sure that, actually, the right hon. Gentleman agrees that that is the right thing to do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Healey and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The answer I gave previously was based on what the hon. Lady actually said previously, which was:

“The money is fast running out, if it has not already run out”.—[Official Report, 12 November 2013; Vol. 570, c. 838.]

At the six-month cut, Manchester city council had spent 28% of the discretionary payments. I suspect that, in reality, the hon. Lady was about to ask me about that, but realised that she could not because she had got it wrong.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

What a lot of waffle in response to that planted question from the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin). The bulletin that the Secretary of State issued last week is a clear admission that he has been hitting thousands of people illegally with the bedroom tax since April. Is he aware of the latest survey from the Northern Housing Consortium, which says that nearly half of all front-line housing workers have dealt with someone who has threatened to commit suicide, largely because of the Government’s welfare changes? Will he apologise this afternoon to those people for the concern and chaos that he is causing?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I said it all right, and I say it again: the Department is, and I am, absolutely sorry that anybody may have been caught up in this who should not have been. However, what we were left by the last Government was this: 1,000 pages of complex housing benefit regulations. Under universal credit, they will be reduced to 300 pages and we will simplify them. The reality is that this is a problem of the massive complexity of housing benefit that the last Government left us, with a housing benefit bill that has been rising and that doubled in 10 years on the right hon. Gentleman’s watch.

Universal Credit and Welfare Reform

Debate between John Healey and Iain Duncan Smith

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

No; it has always been part of the process that jobseeker’s allowance will be the first to move across. I am happy to discuss that further. Universal credit will run in parallel with the other systems until we shut them down and move them across. That is the way it will work. That has always been clear. I think that the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee knows that, because I have been open with her about it from the word go.

[John Healey]

Will the Secretary of State give way on that matter?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I have explained the plan that we have and I want to make some progress, but I will give way.

[John Healey]

The Secretary of State maintains that the project is on track, when everybody else seems to think that it is in serious trouble and way off track. Rotherham Jobcentre Plus staff have told me that he has told the public that jobseeker’s allowance and new claims for out-of-work support will be treated as new claims for universal credit from October 2013. Is that still the case?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I thought that I had been pretty clear about that. The plan is that, starting in October 2013, we will move through the different groups of benefits and tax credits progressively over the four years, bringing in different groups at different stages. That is how it will work. We will be giving a big presentation next week for members of the media.

[John Healey]

Has the timetable not slipped?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The timetable is not slipping at all. We are on target. The right hon. Gentleman needs to be happy about that.

It is all very well for the Opposition to carp, while saying that they support universal credit, but let me be absolutely clear why I believe that we have to do this. First, we inherited a complex mess of 30 different benefits. There are seven additions relating to disability alone, which are complicated for people who are disabled. They are often confused about what to do. Some payments are available when a person works for 16 hours, some at 24 hours and some at 30. Some are withdrawn at 40%, some at 65% and some even at 100%. Some are net and some are gross. One needs to be a mathematician to figure them out.

My previous permanent secretary admitted that one day, when he was listening to a lone parent who had come in for guidance on what benefit she would receive and how it would work if she took extra hours beyond the 16 hours at which she was already being supported. It took the adviser about 40 minutes to figure out whether she would be better off, marginally in the same position or marginally worse off because of the dramatic rise in the deduction rates. How can we expect every lone parent who is worried about authority and may not come in for help to understand what these things mean? The complexity and confusion are a problem. The decision whether to go to work is often a marginal one, and many people do not feel that it is worth while.

It is small wonder, therefore, that even before the recession there were over 4 million people on out-of-work benefits and 1.4 million people who had never worked at all. Things then got a lot worse because of the recession. The inheritance that we received included 5 million people on out-of-work benefits, youth unemployment already high and more children in workless households in this country than in the rest of the EU—that is a staggering thought. And that came after years of growth and plenty, which the previous Government wasted.

Ending that failure is a monumental task, and we have undertaken it because it has to be done, whether there is a Labour Government, a Conservative one, a coalition one or even a Liberal one. Universal credit is one of the most fundamental reforms to the welfare system, and it deserves to be supported and helped.