Jobs and the Unemployed

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Sarah Newton

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

rose—

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I advise the hon. Lady that asking me to give way and answer another question when I have not yet answered the first is probably not the best way to get her question answered.

I ask the hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) where is this Work programme and this extra support? All that we see so far is £1.2 billion-worth of cuts. There are cuts to the future jobs fund, a programme that is already in place and delivering real opportunities. She should go and talk to the voluntary sector providers in her constituency and constituencies across the country about the great work that they are doing. Social enterprises, charities and organisations in the public and social sectors are doing some great things to give young people a chance, and her party wants to pull the plug on that. That would be madness at a time when young people need our help.

[Sarah Newton]

I wish to return to the right hon. Lady’s point about giving out food vouchers. What is compassionate about a benefits system that is leaving people hungry in their hour of need? Voluntary organisations in my constituency, such as Church organisations providing food banks, are barred from offering vital necessities to people in jobcentres who are literally starving. That is ridiculous when people are going hungry.

[Yvette Cooper]

I am interested that the hon. Lady is concerned that people are not getting enough support and believes that they should have more help. I wonder why on earth, then, she has voted for a Budget that cuts £11 billion from benefit support for those on the lowest incomes in the country. What she is arguing for are cuts in Government and taxpayer support, and for people simply to depend on charities instead. That would be a return to the Victorian approach of the workhouse and the pre-Beveridge, pre-welfare state approach of not supporting families across the country, which would be deeply unfair. There may not be the type of charity that she happens to have in her constituency in every constituency and working with every jobcentre in the country. We in the Labour party believe that we should support people, which is why we have not proposed cutting benefits by uprating them only by the level of the consumer prices index, which will take £5.8 billion out of the value of benefits for some of the lowest-income people in this country.