Autumn Statement Distributional Analysis, Universal Credit and ESA

Debate between Stephen Timms and Iain Duncan Smith

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I shall be as brief as possible and certainly intend to be well under that limit. I shall not follow the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) down a memory-lane trip involving independence or leaving the single market. I will say, however, that I am a huge admirer of him. Many of my ancestors are buried in his constituency, so I like to claim a little bit of union with him, even though he would not want to admit it. I shall visit the area as often as possible to ensure that I give the hon. Gentleman the best support I can for him to stay up there as long as possible.

I rise for the first time in, I think, nearly seven years to speak from the Back Benches, and I do so to speak on an issue that is very close to my heart. I want to explain why that is the case to my colleagues. Let me start by welcoming both Ministers to their new roles on the Front Bench, and I congratulate them on continuing to commit to the changes and reforms necessary to improve the quality of life for so many people who would otherwise be left behind.

In passing, let me note one or two figures. The number of children in workless households has fallen to record levels—down to just under 11% from the 20% that we inherited. A child in a workless household is nearly three quarters more likely to be in poverty than a child in an in-work household. That is an important point, because that dynamic is critical—a point to which I shall return. The fall in income inequality has been mentioned, and it is falling because more people at the lower end are going back into work.

There is another important issue about disability. We have committed to, want to commit to and must stay with the position of wanting to see more people with disabilities in work. We want the gap to be at least halved, which I think is feasible. I shall explain in a few moments why I think that it is feasible.

[Stephen Timms]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

In a minute, but let me finish this point first.

A lot of the work of the Green Paper was done when I was in the Department. It was a White Paper at that stage, and I hope it gets speeded up and becomes a White Paper again fairly soon. After five reviews of the inherited employment and support allowance, I would be the first to acknowledge that although we have stabilised it and it is better than it was, it is a very difficult area, as we all know. If every Member was prepared to be reasonable, we would all recognise that these things need to change.

Let me clarify that the main single thing that I wanted to see change and I still want to see changed is this artificial idea that people are either too sick to work or unable to work. There should be a greater nuancing in people’s lives, and universal credit now opens the door to a much more flexible process that allows even those diagnosed and reasonably said to be “not capable of work” to be able to work—and if they wish to work, they should be allowed to do so as far as they possibly can, with the taper used to take benefit money away gradually. I think that might improve the quality of life for many people. I know that this is a submission in the Green Paper, and I hope the Minister will bear it in mind.

Let me return to the point that when universal credit was set up by my noble Friend Lord Freud, who worked very hard on it, and me, the idea was that it was not just about money, but about human interface. The people in jobcentres now stay with individuals as they go into work to help advise them and be with them. This will be a more human interface, so that people can be helped through to gain extra hours, which opens the door for people with limited capabilities to work to be helped in a way that would not have been possible if we had stayed with the original system. All this is very good and very positive.

There are two critical elements. First, when people step into work, the barrier must be reduced by improving the amount of money that can be held from benefit before it is tapered away. The second element is the taper itself, which is the simple process by which people have their income reduced. I say to the Minister that those two elements, notwithstanding all the other stuff such as improved childcare and everything else, are at the heart of what delivers.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies and others recently looked at what the dynamic effect of universal credit might be as it rolls out. The IFS was very clear: it said that the effect was a 13% improvement in all elements—going back to work, staying in work, taking more hours and earning more money. I know from my experience in the Department that every time one benefit has been substituted for another, it has almost always been worse on arrival than the previous benefit before people engage with it and improve it. This is the first time that a benefit being rolled out is a net improvement on a previous benefit.

I therefore make this recommendation. That figure of a 13% improvement was made on the basis of the original work allowances. In the spirit of general collective view and belief, I say that if we really want to see the right thing happen to people out there who try to get into work and stay in work, the allowances are critical. I recommend and hope that my colleagues in government will think very carefully again about the decision to reduce those allowances. I recognise the problem with the deficit, and we of course want to reduce it. I am not asking for more money; I am asking for wiser spending. I wonder whether we could revisit the idea of a tax threshold allowance and look to see whether getting the money to the lower five deciles would be better served by universal credit. Some 70% of those people will be on universal credit, whereas only 25p of a tax threshold allowance will actually go to the bottom five deciles.

I urge the Minister to speak to his right hon. Friends and say, “Look, we have a very good opportunity to do something that is really bold and right for those whose lives we really want to improve—those that the Prime Minister rightly said was her target group.” It is a very Conservative thing to do to help people who are doing the right thing to improve their lives. Even if the Government cannot do it all, they should look at two elements: lone parents and those with limited capability for work. This would answer the problems surrounding the WRAG, too. I urge Ministers to do just that. It is the right thing to do, and it will be the thing to do that changes lives and improves the quality of those lives.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stephen Timms and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 1st February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I commend my hon. Friend for working for such organisations, about which he has spoken to me in the past. A huge amount of progress has taken place in this area, as he maintains. It is worth noting that, as a result of what we have been doing with the reforms and in working with organisations such as the one he mentions, the youth claimant count is at its lowest level since the mid-1970s, the number of those unemployed is down nearly 300,000 since 2010 and, most importantly, the unemployment rate for those not in education is 5.8%—pretty near the lowest it has ever been. We will carry on trying to get this right, but this is good evidence that welfare reform is working.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

On 1 November 2011, the Secretary of State issued a press release saying that

“the Universal Credit IT programme is…progressing well with 30% of the new technology required to deliver it now complete”.

Will the Secretary of State tell the House what proportion of universal credit IT has now been completed?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The roll-out of IT across the country is nearly complete. The roll-out nationally will be complete before April, as I said to the right hon. Gentleman last time he asked exactly the same question. It is always good to have old questions: the old ones are always the best. The roll-out is progressing well. As he knows, he has an invitation to come and visit the final digital development, which will start to roll all the other benefits into universal credit in May.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stephen Timms and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 7th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Under universal support, which is delivered locally, we are talking hugely to local authorities and all the local organisations in the area, and my hon. Friend will find that this will be swept up as part of that process; it is a dramatic improvement on where tax credits are right now, because it brings in all those other benefits as well.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

The latest projections show that universal credit is running about four years behind the timetable that the Secretary of State originally set out. He has told us today that the new digital IT solution is to be rolled out from next April. How will he merge that with the prior IT system, which is already in use in quite a lot of jobcentres?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The universal programme is on track and has been approved by the Major Projects Authority, which has said that it is delisted. I say to the right hon. Gentleman, who has been here long enough to remember, that I will take no lessons from a Labour Government who gave us a tax credit debacle—they rolled it out and more than three quarters of a million people failed to receive any benefit on the day it was launched. He should come to see this system; the live service and the digital service are merged because a lot of the digital service will use elements of the live service. They are therefore merging in the run-up to May and will then be rolled out together at the same time.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stephen Timms and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Unemployment went up last month. The Government’s commission on employment and skills pointed out earlier this year that although we currently have German levels of adult unemployment, we have eurozone levels of youth unemployment, which went up in July and in August. Does the Secretary of State accept that much more needs to be done to give young people the chance of a decent start?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Of course we are focused on youth unemployment, but it has actually been falling from what we inherited. It has fallen by more than 200,000 since we took over, and the claimant count has fallen every month in the past three and a half years. The right hon. Gentleman talked about the figures going up, and in a sense I am not surprised, because they cover the period leading up to the last election. Given what the Opposition were saying, and looking at the polls that some businesses carried out, it is no surprise to me that they might have held back. If he looks at the vacancies, he will see that there are 735,000 vacancies in the jobcentres every week, which is more than he managed.

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[Mr Duncan Smith]

We inherited a situation where nearly one in five households in Britain had nobody in work at all. It is far more likely for someone who is out of work to be in poverty and for their children to be in poverty. We have pretty nearly halved that level and have the lowest number of workless households since records began.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Until a few weeks ago, the Secretary of State told us that he was committed to the targets in the Child Poverty Act 2010, but now he has brought forward legislation that not only scraps those targets, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) pointed out, will leave Ministers with no child poverty targets at all. He has just denied that from the Dispatch Box, but the fact is that the Welfare Reform and Work Bill removes all the child poverty targets. Why are the Government, in reality, despite his fine words, throwing in the towel on child poverty?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We are not; we are committed to eradicating child poverty and we will have to report every year on our achievement in line with the figures that I gave the right hon. Gentleman earlier. I simply say to him that his Government failed to meet their targets—they spent £75 billion on tax credits in their last six years and still failed—and it is under this Government, in the past five years, that child poverty has actually fallen by some 300,000, rather than under them.

[Stephen Timms]

The truth is that child poverty is now going to rise even faster than already predicted because of the huge cuts in tax credits next April, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) referred. With most children in poverty now living in working households, not workless households, should the Secretary of State’s children’s life chances reports not include data on children in low-income working households, as well as on those in workless households?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I believe that our reports will cover a much wider range of issues that affect child poverty. I have always felt that issues to do with family stability, drug and alcohol addiction and education are critical to a child achieving a decent outcome. If the right hon. Gentleman has anything further to add, I am always willing to take his submissions, and the Select Committee has also said that it will do the same. My point is that an arbitrary target simply for an income line, which is what his Government did, leads to a huge distortion in the benefits system, and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) has said exactly the same.

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[Mr Duncan Smith]

I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. In all the areas in which we have rolled out universal credit—in more than half of jobcentres—it is dramatically improving people’s lives. Unlike when the previous Government rolled out tax credit and hundreds of thousands of people lost their money, this scheme is ensuring that people who deserve the money and are ready for it are paid it.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

The number of people receiving universal credit remains derisorily small. Four years ago, the Secretary of State told us that the transition to universal credit would be complete by 2017. We told him he would not manage it. We were right; he was wrong. He still has not given us a revised date for the completion of universal credit roll-out. Has he given up entirely on ever having one?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am on the verge of giving up speaking to the right hon. Gentleman, because he misuses all the facts. As I have told him again and again and again, he is more than welcome to visit the sites where it has been rolled out. He has had an open invitation to come to see the digital site and I recommend that he does so. Universal credit is already working; no one has lost any money; it will be online; and it will go out fully and start next year. This is a successful programme and if the right hon. Gentleman wants to compare notes about tax credit roll-outs, I would be more than happy to do that.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Stephen Timms and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am not going to give way to the hon. Lady again, because I thought it was pretty simple maths. However, I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Stephen Timms]

Given what the right hon. Gentleman was just saying about ESA, what is his response to Parkinson's UK and Macmillan Cancer Support? They point out that, in the case of Parkinson’s, there are some 8,000 people in the work-related activity group with Parkinson’s and other progressive diseases who are not going to get better but who, under his proposals, will lose £30 a week. How can he defend that?

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[Mr Duncan Smith]

As originally designed by the Labour Government, the work-related activity group was to be a transitional stage on the way to work. It included people who had conditions that were perceived to be likely to improve, thus enabling them to move into work, and people who could, even while they were in the work-related activity group, do some work, and that had to be assessed. If a person’s condition is such that they are unable to do any work at all, under the existing rules of the work capability assessment, they should be assessed and moved into the support group. That is exactly the point.

The objective of the work-related activity group—its design was, I think, rather faulty, but we have what we have—is to encourage people to go into work. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, there are no sanctions to make them take work. There are sanctions if they are unwilling to make an effort, but if they cannot take the work they are not sanctioned.

[Stephen Timms]

The Secretary of State will readily acknowledge that people with Parkinson’s or multiple sclerosis who are in the work-related activity group are not going to get better. Surely he should not be taking £30 a week away from them.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

As I said—the right hon. Gentleman should remember this—the purpose of the work-related activity group is that the people in that group are deemed to be capable of some work, or at least to be capable of doing some work very soon. That is the point of the group. My point is that when someone becomes too ill to do any work, at that point they are assessed and they should go into the support group. I am happy to discuss the matter further with him elsewhere, but those are the rules as they stand.

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[Stephen Timms]

I look forward to coming to that part of my speech. The Bill, as I understand it, says that the limit does not apply in the case of tax credits for children born before 6 April 2017. The limit does apply in the case of universal credit for children born before 6 April. That seems to me a pretty clear unfairness and we will oppose that unfairness, and we will table amendments to deal with that and other unfairnesses in the Bill.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

For the sake of clarity for Opposition Members if not for Government Members, will the right hon. Gentleman tell us, as this is missing from his reasoned amendment, whether he supports in principle that reduction of payments for two children for families on child tax credits?

[Stephen Timms]

As I told the House, we will table amendments to deal with unfairness in those measures and in others in the Bill, and we will vote on those in Committee in the autumn.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I want to be very clear about this. Is it now the official Opposition’s position that they support the limiting of payments of child tax credit for two children from the date specified in the Bill?

[Stephen Timms]

We support removing unfairness from the Bill that the Secretary of State published. For that reason we will tonight table a raft of amendments to that part of the Bill and others where we think there is unfairness.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

rose—

[Stephen Timms]

I will give way one more time.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The right hon. Gentleman is very generous in giving way. I want to establish clarity for those on the Government Benches as well as those on the Opposition Benches. Putting aside the fact that in Committee he may want to table amendments to make changes, do the official Opposition support the principle that those with more than two children should not receive further child tax credits? Is that the principled position they support? That is missing from the right hon. Gentleman’s reasoned amendment.

[Stephen Timms]

The Secretary of State does not need to wait until the Committee because we will table a raft of amendments tonight: if our reasoned amendment fails and the Bill receives a Second Reading, we will table our amendments. He will see in that list of amendments a series of amendments to deal with the unfairness in that part of the Bill. Those amendments will give him the answer that he seeks. They will appear on the Order Paper tomorrow so that the House can consider them over the weeks ahead.

Child Poverty

Debate between Stephen Timms and Iain Duncan Smith

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for early sight of his statement. What he read out today is the obituary notice for compassionate conservatism. It is the death knell for any idea that his party might one day be a party for working people.

It is only a week since we received the news that progress on child poverty has stalled, with most poor children now living in working households. The Conservatives’ manifesto said that they would

“work to eliminate child poverty”.

Instead, their solution is to change the definition—incidentally, at their second attempt; they tried this before and gave up—to remove altogether child poverty from the remit of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, and next week to announce cuts that will make the problems much worse.

The Child Poverty Act, which the Secretary of State, if I understood his statement correctly, now wants to repeal, received all-party support before 2010, and it put one of the most important duties on Government: to ensure that, in the 21st century, children do not grow up suffering deprivation or lacking the necessities that most of us take for granted. It has not just one, but four measures of poverty: absolute, relative, persistent, and material deprivation. The relative measure is the internationally accepted definition used by every OECD country.

Do the Government accept the importance of relative poverty? Will the Secretary of State clarify that? He told us in his statement that a decade or so ago he was arguing against the use of relative poverty. As he knows, at the same time the current Prime Minister was arguing for acceptance of relative poverty. In what he said today the Secretary of State echoed the words of the Prime Minister last week when he said:

“Just take the historic approach to tackling child poverty. Today, because of the way it is measured, we are in the absurd situation where if we increase the state pension, child poverty actually goes up.”

Of course, the Prime Minister was right. If the Government increase the income of better-off people, they make others relatively poorer. The Prime Minister last week described that as absurd, but that was not what he said when he was trying to re-brand the Conservative party in 2006. In his Scarman lecture he said that the Conservative party

“will measure and will act on relative poverty…poverty is relative and those who pretend otherwise are wrong.”

He went on to say:

“We need to think of poverty in relative terms—the fact that some people lack those things which others in society take for granted.”

That was the Prime Minister speaking in 2006.

So what is the Government’s current view? Is it that focusing on relative poverty is absurd, as the Prime Minister said with conviction last week, or is it the diametrically opposite view that he set out with apparently equal conviction on behalf of his party before? Where do they now stand? The Prime Minister promised that a Government he led would “act on relative poverty”. Why is that promise being broken?

Why cannot the Secretary of State level with the House? He hopes nobody will notice this announcement or its significance because it coincides with the airports statement. Am I right in understanding that he proposes that in his legislation there will be no targets at all, or will he include some targets in it and, if so, will he tell us what they are? I remind the Secretary of State that he and his colleagues all voted for the Child Poverty Act in 2010.

When in government, Labour lifted more than 1 million children out of relative poverty and more than 2 million out of absolute poverty. A key success was raising lone parent employment from less than 45% in 1997 to more than 60% today, mainly thanks to tax credits. That was not about lifting a few people from just below a line to just above it; it was about a very substantial change in the way the economy works. Will the Secretary of State tell us whether next week the Government will announce big cuts to tax credits? That is not about making work pay; it is about making working families pay.

What we need is not a change in the definition of poverty, but a plan to deal with poverty and boost productivity. Ministers should be tackling low pay, but instead they are attacking the low-paid. The Children’s Commissioners for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have today come together to warn that the Government’s policies will push more young people into poverty. What happened to the long-term plan? Why have children been left out? Why is the party that promised in its pre-election manifesto to work to eliminate child poverty now planning to increase it?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Let me deal with the points that the right hon. Gentleman has made. First, I thought that his comments were a little ridiculous. The idea that this is somehow an obituary for compassionate conservatism does him ill. He knows very well that the purpose of what we are doing is to get rid of child poverty, and that remains our central purpose. As I said earlier—and we are not alone in this—the problem is that if we lock two sets of measures that actually drive spending to rotate people over that line, what we get is a process of churning, but not the real and deeper change in people’s lives. That is the big reason why we want to do this.

The truth is that the previous Labour Government, on their own measure, failed to achieve their target—they failed to halve child poverty by 2010. Worse, in-work poverty actually rose. We could go through the list, but I would have thought that there was a better way of building some consensus than saying that Labour, if in power, could somehow embark on a massive spending spree and everything would be all right. Even Alan Milburn said that was unrealistic, and it remains unrealistic. We have to deal with the world as it is now, and we have to change the life chances of those children.

It is worth remembering that under this Government 74% of poor workless families who found work escaped poverty, and there was a higher poverty exit rate of 75% for children living in families who went from part-time to full-time employment. That has happened under this Government.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about international measures and suggested that we are somehow breaking away from everyone else. The reality is that no other country embarked on a plan to get rid of child poverty using that child poverty measure, and the reason is that other countries realised that it would lead to peculiar patterns of expenditure, with very little result for those who most need help.

The right hon. Gentleman asked whether relative poverty is important. Yes it is, which is why we continue to publish statistics on houses below average income, and we will continue to do so, so everybody will still be able to comment on that. Our focus will be on turning around the lives of the poorest through education and ensuring that they get back to work through skilling, which my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary has been working on.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about the poverty figures published by the IFS last week. He knows very well that before last week most of his colleagues were running around saying, “It’s going to be terrible. The IFS is predicting that child poverty will rise dramatically.” Actually, none of that happened. [Interruption.] Even on those measures, child poverty fell by over 300,000 under this Government.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to a well-respected body such as the IFS, which has all the means at its disposal, and we have enormous respect for its ability to predict things, but its predictions on child poverty have been wrong every single year that we have been in government. In its most recent prediction it was wrong again. Its original prediction was that child poverty would rise to 2.8 million, but that was out by over half a million.

I am not attacking the IFS—far from it—but simply saying that if a Government set a policy on something they find incredibly difficult to forecast or predict, they will end up chasing the error, as the previous Labour Government did. Well over £200 billion was spent on tax credits, but the key point is to turn lives around. That is why we will present this Bill, and why we will change this so that we can reach the poorest children.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stephen Timms and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

As I have said, we did a huge amount to support carers in the last Parliament, and we intend to continue to protect and support them throughout this Parliament. Carers do a huge amount to support people, including in the national health service, and including people with disabilities. This has been our promise and our pledge. We will continue to support carers.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State referred to the shadow Secretary of State; I am pleased to tell the House that she gave birth to a baby boy last Wednesday and that mother and baby are doing well. The Secretary of State referred to disabled people and the effect on them of the £12 billion benefit cuts. It now appears that the anxiety and uncertainty facing carers will be extended, because we will not get the full list of cuts on 8 July; we will have to await a further statement in the autumn. When the final list of £12 billion is announced, will carers be protected from those cuts?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

First, will the right hon. Gentleman pass on our thanks—I mean congratulations—to the hon. Lady on her great news? I have already made it clear that we have done a great deal to support carers, and it is my intention to keep on supporting them. It is worth pointing out that our changes improved the lot of carers over the course of the previous Parliament, and will continue to do so.

[Stephen Timms]

The absence of any reassurance there will give rise to a great deal of concern among carers. May I ask the Secretary of State about working families on lower and average incomes? Will they be better off or worse off once his £12 billion of cuts have been announced?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We are looking at welfare, and at how to reform it. When we are ready, I will come forward with an announcement. Let me take the right hon. Gentleman back to the issue of tax credits. We have had many Labour Members going on about tax credits. I looked up how tax credits were increased under a Labour Government. Interestingly, it appears that just before every election, the Labour Government dramatically increased tax credits—in 2004 by 60%; in 2005, just before the election, by 7.2%; and in 2010, just before the election, by 14.4% and by 8.5%. The truth is that his Government have always used benefits as a way of trying to buy votes. We believe that benefits are about supporting people to do the right thing, to get back to work, and to live a more prosperous life.

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[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

We welcome the Government’s belated decision to consult on a charge cap for savers withdrawing their money from pensions. Will the cap apply only to exit fees, or will it also cover recurring charges on investment and income drawdown products? Which? says that that sort of cap could save £10,000 out of a typical £36,000 pension pot, and before her appointment, in March, the new Minister for Pensions said that that sort of cap was needed to protect savers. Will the wider cap be the subject of the Government’s consultation?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The right hon. Gentleman is right in the first part of his question. In the second part, as he knows, the Chancellor announced the consultation, which will go out in July. We have concerns about some companies that may be overcharging, and that will form part of the consultation.