Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Debate between Toby Perkins and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is so gloomy about the fun of a wedding, which most of us think is an enjoyable way of starting off a marriage. I hope that he celebrates golden wedding anniversaries, diamond wedding anniversaries and long-term marriage.

[Toby Perkins]

Does my right hon. Friend recognise that many of the people who argued strongly and passionately against civil partnerships just a few years ago have no argument with them now and recognise that they have been a success? Perhaps in a few years’ time, the argument will have moved on and we will all be able to recognise that equality in our country is a good thing.

Jobs and the Unemployed

Debate between Toby Perkins and Yvette Cooper

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. In fact, the welfare spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats said that his party had no plans to cut the future jobs fund and, indeed, that it supported help to get young people into work. He is not here either, despite the fact that he is a Minister in the Department that is responding to the debate.

In the ’80s and ’90s, the then Conservative Government turned their back on the unemployed, particularly the young unemployed, and unemployment rose for years as a result. But unemployment scars. Unemployment causes people problems for years to come. If people lose their jobs and cannot get back to work quickly, they can find it much harder to get back into jobs, even when the economy is growing again. That is what happened in the 1980s. It took a long time to get new job growth in many communities across the country, and by the time that we did, many people had been scarred for life and some have never worked again.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend share my fear that the problem basically is that the Conservative party believes that the only reason people are unemployed is that benefits are too generous, that we do not need job creation projects and that all they need do is to cut benefits and, somehow, unemployment will magic itself away?

[Yvette Cooper]

The troubling approach that the new Tory-Liberal Government are taking is to cut the help to get people back into jobs and to cut their benefits when they cannot get back into work. The Secretary of State has claimed to be concerned about intergenerational poverty and worklessness, but the truth is that many of the problems that the Government worry about have their roots in the unemployment and hopelessness of communities without work in the 1980s. If they are really serious about tackling long-term poverty, they should act to prevent long-term unemployment now. They talk about broken Britain, but the truth is that their party broke Britain in the 1980s and now they are trying to do the same thing again. Let us look at their actions in the first four weeks: cuts of £1.2 billion in support that was getting people back to work; cuts in the future jobs fund; cuts in the youth guarantee and in help for the long-term unemployed just when they need it most; and a Budget that cuts the number of jobs in the economy so that there are fewer jobs than there would have been, not just next year but in every year for the rest of the Parliament too.