Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and Anne McLaughlin

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly look at the issue my hon. Friend raises. As far as I can see, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, working very closely with Border Force, has been highly effective at reducing this tax gap of people selling illegal tobacco and has closed off about £1.3 billion of the tax gap since 2000. They do have a wide range of sanctions to deal with illicit sales, including seizure, penalties and criminal prosecutions—they prosecuted almost 800 different people in the past two years. So I think the powers are there, but I will have a check to see whether more is needed.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

Q6. My constituent works for the Department for Work and Pensions and he tells me that the Government are correct when they deny that staff have targets set for sanctioning benefits—they are not called “targets”; they are called “aspirations”. With the roll-out of in-work benefit sanctions, how many of the Prime Minister’s own low-paid DWP colleagues does he think my constituent should aspire to sanction this year?

[The Prime Minister]

What I say to the hon. Lady is that sanctions in a benefits system are important. We want a benefits system that is there for people who cannot find a job and need support, but it not should not be a lifestyle choice and if people can work, they should work. That is why we have a sanctions system, and I believe that the sanctions system is fairly applied.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and Anne McLaughlin

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Britain has had an excellent record over recent years on employment, with record numbers in work. We now need the productivity improvements that will make sure that we see real and sustained increases in living standards. Part of that is increasing the skills of our population. That is why the school reform, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns) referred, is so important and why our target of 3 million apprentices for this Parliament is vital.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

I represent a constituency of hard-working, decent people, yet in the forgotten communities of Milton, Possilpark, Springburn, Germiston, Garngad, Royston, Blackhill, Ruchazie and Haghill, child poverty lies at an astonishing 38.1%. I was going to ask whether the Prime Minister was at all touched by the waves of compassion coming even from his Back Benches in yesterday’s tax credit debate, but I think we have the answer to that, so I simply ask whether he can offer a personal guarantee that no child in my constituency will be worse off a year from now.

[The Prime Minister]

The point I would make to the hon. Lady is that those poverty figures come after 20 years of the great tax credit experiment. What we saw was an increase in the cost of tax credits and an increase in in-work poverty. We say that it is time for a new approach: higher pay, more jobs, lower taxes. In her constituency, the claimant count has come down by 10% in the last year. Compared with the time of the 2010 election, the number of people claiming unemployment benefit in her constituency is down 43%. I say let us give people the chance of a job, a salary, a decent wage and lower taxes.