Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Andrew Bridgen and William Bain

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr William Bain]

This evening’s debate on clause 1 and amendment 12, moved by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), is important because it speaks to more than the £13 billion increase in the welfare budget caused by this Government’s failure on growth since 2010 or even the chronic lack of jobs, in a still depressed economy, faced by so many hundreds of thousands of people in our country. This debate speaks to the very values of our society.

Are we a country that is content to divide socially instead of coming together—jobless and workers, low-paid and middle earners—to defeat again the social evils of worklessness, low pay, slumping living standards and poverty? Are we a country that is content to see the doubling of food banks under this Government since May 2010, as 1.4 million people in work find themselves needing to resort to credit to help to pay the rent or the mortgage each month? Are we a country that will fall for the cynical “divide and rule” tactics of the Chancellor, which treat people as pawns in a squalid political game, amid a campaign of demonising the poor and turning neighbour against neighbour, when a responsible Government would seek to unite people rather than divide the country? This clause is rotten economics, ruinous for weak economic demand up and down the country and rank politics, from a Government who can relaunch as many times as they like, but who will never rediscover any sense of moral purpose while they engage in this basest of agendas of social division.

[Andrew Bridgen]

The hon. Gentleman mentions unity. Does he agree that if people lead their life on welfare, it is not only bad for our economy and for our society but tremendously bad for those people themselves, hugely reducing their life expectancy and seriously damaging their children’s lives and prospects? It should be discouraged; the best way out of poverty is through work.

[Mr Bain]

On this pleasant occasion, I find that I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. Let us hope that that agreement will continue when he contributes to the debate later, and in future debates.

These measures are not pro-growth, as they were included in the analysis from the Office for Budget Responsibility in December that further downgraded growth forecasts for this year by 0.8% of gross domestic product. They are not pro-deficit reduction, as unemployment is set to become 340,000 higher than the level predicted by the OBR in 2010, and benefit bills will be £13 billion higher than forecast. They are not pro-equality either, as two thirds of the real-terms cuts introduced by clauses 1 and 2 will hurt women, and three fifths of them will hurt working families.

If the Government believe that they are standing up for fairness in the midst of the longest slump for 140 years, this must be either the most incompetent or the most misguided set of measures since those proposed by the National Government in 1931. On every count, they will increase, not cut, inequality in our country, given that 71% of the households affected are on or below the average income, and that 60% of the total savings from the Bill will come from the poorest third on the income scale. Only 3% will come from the wealthiest third. On no count can these measures be described as fair. How on earth can the Government believe that it is right to introduce a 4% real-terms cut in benefits until 2015 while continuing to pay top-rate pension tax relief to top-rate taxpayers at a rate of 50p in the pound? They are doing that while impoverishing the very poorest people at the same time.

Unemployment in my constituency remains consistently high at more than 4,000, or 12% of the working-age population. Although more than two thirds of jobless people experience only a few months out of work at the most, there are more than 1,300 people there who have been out of work for a year or more. Within that group, some 600 people have been out of work for two years or more. If the Government were serious about welfare reform, they would accept that ending the crushing blow of such long-term joblessness, which saps the human spirit and harms long-term job prospects—as the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) pointed out—should be the first duty of a responsible Government. Instead, they have put this ruinous set of measures before us tonight.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Given the sense of unity between us, will the hon. Gentleman endorse the coalition Government’s policies that have helped the economy to create 1.2 million new private sector jobs during this Parliament?

[Mr Bain]

I would not endorse that policy because, as the hon. Gentleman knows, that figure includes the transfer of between 200,000 and 250,000 college staff from the public sector to the private sector. I am not going to endorse that figure; he knows that it is not accurate.