Benefits Uprating

Lord Field of Birkenhead Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I can assure my hon. Friend that my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), the employment Minister, has quite categorically stated that Britain does not believe in benefit tourism, and that we will do all we can to prevent it.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

Is it not true that the Minister’s partial statement today will in the next couple of years result in decreasing the incentive to work? If the Treasury believed in localism and had given the £6.6 billion to the Department to spend on uprating as it wished to, would not the Minister have made a statement today that increased work incentives rather than decreased them?

[Steve Webb]

The right hon. Gentleman, for whom I have a great deal of respect, will be aware that the reward for working comes from a combination of factors, one of which is the tax burden on the low-paid, and that this Government have twice increased the personal tax allowance by about £1,500. That is worth more than £300 a year for a standard rate taxpayer and, for two members of a couple in low-paid work, is a £600 gain with more to come. That is a real reward for working which all too often they have not had in the past.