Social Security

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for clarifying the way we are taking these orders today. We welcome the social security uprating, because we want to see social security keep pace with prices, particularly at a time of spiking inflation and economic instability. However, it is worth pointing out that before 2010, uprating in the manner we are doing it today was the norm for both Labour and Conservative Governments, but the past decade and a half has seen a change, and a variable approach to uprating from this Government. The debate about uprating has become almost farcical. Year by year there is speculation—I presume from some part of Government—that the uprating that was standard year in, year out under previous Governments may or may not happen.

That speculation does not come out of thin air. It causes immense amounts of distress and worry for people. It is almost as though there has to be a campaign for the status quo, which is not acceptable. I wonder why we are in what seems to be a policy roundabout where every time we have this debate about uprating, only for the Government to do it. That is a problematic way to do what is a normal function of social security: to keep pace with the cost of living.

We have to be honest about the reality of the situation we face. We have had universal credit for a decade or more, and I have been in this House long enough to have heard promise after promise that it would radically improve people’s work incentives, and that people’s position in life would be made much better by universal credit reforms. The DWP has many talented civil servants, who I am sure have worked hard to try to make the customer service elements function better, but we have to look at reality: 400,000 more children are now in poverty than when Labour left office in 2010. That is not acceptable to me.

Most people in poverty today are in work, so the idea that we hear again and again in this Chamber, that the best route out of poverty is work, is simply not true. Two thirds of children in poverty live in a house where someone goes out to work. I would like the Government to recognise that fact. We have had a decade and a half of so-called reform, and all we have done is get back to the situation where children are growing up dealing with the stress of not having enough money in the family home to give them a proper childhood. That is not acceptable. We see the consequences of a decade and a half of Tory rule all around us, whether the food bank parcels in the school office, the nurses who do a 12-hour shift but cannot make ends meet or, in the worst case, the man curled up in a sleeping bag in Westminster tube station as we leave this House. We see the consequences of Conservative Government all around us.

Labour has a plan to get people a better life, able to make ends meet and with a good start for their children. We will ensure that there is a breakfast club in every primary school. We will help people have access to cheaper energy and an insulated home, to deal with the spike in costs that people have faced in recent years. We will reform universal credit, jobcentres and employment support to ensure that people get a better job with better pay, to help them live their life properly and save money for the Treasury. We will have a child poverty strategy that will overhaul universal credit.

On social security, I simply say this: we need an end to the uprating roundabout. We are simply asking for consistency of approach so that, as in previous decades under Governments of all kinds, we have the proper uprating of social security without the constant speculation from wherever it is in the Conservative Government that, somehow, ordinary working people must pay the price of the Government’s economic chaos. That is not fair. Let us end the chaos and have proper, normal uprating in the usual way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Maynard]

I thank everyone who has participated in this debate. I am very disappointed in the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), who seems to think that I do not write my own material. He should know that my private office staff are sitting in trepidation, as I write across every speech they give me in blue and red ink. They never know what will emerge from my mouth. I can assure him that it is all my own work, and he can criticise it all the more for that reason.

I am also disappointed that people think this order is just a technical necessity. I do not call £19 billion of Government spending a technical necessity. It is one of the largest amounts of extra spending in which the Government engage in any particular year, and it will make a considerable difference to the lives of people across the country.

[Alison McGovern]

Do you want a round of applause?

[Paul Maynard]

No, I certainly do not, but I would want to think that those of us in this Chamber did not dismiss the order as a technical measure.

My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) repeated a point that I think he made this time last year—I also made this point when I was sitting in the far corner of the Chamber as a Back Bencher—on the timely application of these measures and whether we ought to make them more promptly after inflation is measured. As a member of the Work and Pensions Committee, he will know that this issue is often discussed, with the discussion often revolving around the robustness of universal credit’s IT system compared with the IT systems for legacy benefits. I am told the hopefully promising news that state pension benefits, in particular, will be moving to a more modern IT platform by 2025, followed by disability benefits, contributory benefits and carer’s allowance, so there is a pathway towards getting all our benefits on to modern IT systems that are more agile in responding to economic situations. I hear his point, and work is under way.

The hon. Members for Glasgow East and for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) both talked about the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and I am a great admirer of its work. As a Back Bencher, I sat on many Zoom meetings and Teams meetings to listen to its briefings. The hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) and I have discussed the essentials guarantee many times, so I take a personal interest in what the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says. Since the period covered by its report, the Government have provided over £104 billion of extra support to help households with the high cost of living. Although I understand that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation will stick to the broad themes of its argument, we need to recognise that Government support has moved on.

I do not want to pre-empt the meeting of the hon. Member for North East Fife with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, which I hope will bring better news than I am able to deliver from the Dispatch Box. I have heard about her letter. My favourite episode of “Fawlty Towers” is “Communication Problems”, which is a comic classic, and the tale she tells is such an example. I am sure my officials have made a note, and we will hopefully follow up with a clarifying letter.

Finally, I turn to the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). Not being the Minister in charge of local housing allowance, I am a little cautious about giving him a more definitive answer at this stage—[Interruption.] Nothing annoys me more than when other Ministers intrude on my brief without telling me, so it is a courtesy to them, nothing more.

The draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order will increase the state pension by 8.5%, in line with the rise in average earnings, and it will increase most other benefit rates by 6.7%, in line with the rise in consumer prices. These changes commit the Government to increased expenditure of £19 billion in 2024-25. They maintain the triple lock, protect pensioners on the lowest incomes and support those in the labour market, while maintaining work incentives and protecting the value of benefits for those who cannot work and who have additional disability needs.

I commend this statutory instrument to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2024, which was laid before this House on 15 January, be approved.