Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Andrew George Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Redwood]

If somebody wanted a part-time job, I am delighted that they have now got a part-time job. Quite a lot of people choose to have a part-time job. Their family commitments mean that that is what they can manage and it is a very good thing that we have generated more part-time jobs so that they can have them. To those who seriously want a full-time job—I am sure the hon. Gentleman can find people who would prefer a full-time job and are still in part-time work—I would say it is easier to get that full-time job from their part-time job than from unemployment. It is easier to get work from work. It is easier to get promoted when they are in the company and very difficult to get promoted if they have not joined the company.

It is very encouraging that people in some of our best large enterprises start off in part-time, low-paid, not very glamorous work, and when they show application and interest, they get trained and are then given greater responsibilities, and they can go on to do great things. When I last visited one of my local supermarkets, I met the manager and the deputy manager who had worked their way up from shelf-stacking some years before. That is great and shows that that path can work for people.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

The broad-brush principles that my right hon. Friend describes are pretty much unarguable, but the Bill is very specific. It specifies a 1% uprating for two years beyond the coming year. Does he sign up to that inflexible approach? He is talking about keeping inflation down. Does he think that being able to predetermine and know the rate of increase is a wise approach to deal with the problem?

[Mr Redwood]

I have already expressed the view that I did not come to Parliament to impose such restrictions on people with very little income, that that is a difficult thing to have to do but that I quite understand why Front Benchers are in that position.

Yes, I will trust Ministers’ judgment today but I am also saying to them that there are those two important conditions. They have to watch the situation because if inflation starts to rise too far, things will be too tough, and it would be wrong not to recognise that. If there is not a sustained increase in the number of jobs, that, too, will make the policy difficult to sustain. I am hoping that the economic policy can kick in with lower price rises and more jobs, which would make the measure a little less unpalatable. However, surely nobody can say that they want to do this—it is not very pleasant—but what else can we do?

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[Caroline Lucas]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his attempt, but it was a bit feeble. All the evidence from Deutsche bank, the International Energy Agency and many other places tells us that rising fuel bills are a result of rising gas prices, and the percentage extra on people’s fuel bills that is coming from renewable energy, which, sadly, he is not a fan of, is very much smaller. I do not agree with his premise.

If our priority is fairness, we should be seeking savings from those who can afford it, not penalising the poorest and pushing them into ever more precarious misery. Without this very basic link to RPI, what exactly are we saying to people on benefits? We are giving them a message of punishment that says, “You’ve done something wrong. It’s your fault that you don’t have a job and the state is going to make life hard for you.” Frankly, that is despicable. Oxfam says that it is Dickensian and rightly points out that slashing the incomes of those at the bottom is not just cold-hearted but wrong-headed, because it will depress the economy further.

I said earlier that most people want to work, and I could cite very many examples from my own constituency of people who have come to my surgeries who are desperate for work but have been unable to find it. The link to RPI, as I have said, is essential. It is the absolute minimum acceptable. The Government have already taken from the poorest by switching to CPI and now they want to heap even more misery on people who simply cannot absorb it. Amendment 7 seeks to provide the most basic protection for benefits from the accumulative erosion of value that severing the historic link to prices will create. I commend the amendment, and hope to press it to a vote.

[Andrew George]

Amendment 10 stands in my name and in those of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy) and my hon. Friends the Members for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid), for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech), for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) and for Ceredigion (Mr Williams). Its purpose is to address the oft-repeated key concern of the Secretary of State and the Government—it has been repeated today by the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) and others—that in certain circumstances and, admittedly, over selected periods, benefits have risen at a rate higher than wages, and that in straitened times such as these, a principle should be established whereby that should not happen and that average wages should be the marker against which future benefit rises are set.

A further weakness in the Government’s proposals, to repeat an earlier intervention of mine on the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), relates to their intention to enshrine in future policy the blunt and inflexible instrument of a 1% rise beyond the next general election—up until 2016—and whether we can foretell with confidence what is likely to happen during that time.

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

Is it not the case that the 1% uprating is for two years? It is not designed to be extended after the next election.

[Andrew George]

The hon. Gentleman is right that it is for two years—it is from 2014 to 2016, which is beyond the next general election.

[Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)]

The Bill covers only two years, but the Government have already announced in the autumn statement their intention to introduce a statutory instrument so that the 1% also applies next year, so it will cover three years in total.

[Andrew George]

The combined effect of both the statutory instrument and the Bill will, indeed, be for three years. I have no clairvoyant skills whatsoever and would never follow my forecasts on the future of the economy or prices, but the Bill is asking us to forecast what is likely to happen, particularly in relation to prices. In the context of food price volatility, which we know takes place, and of tremendous uncertainty in the energy market and, indeed, other markets, we are being asked to predict what the circumstances are likely to be in 2016, beyond the next general election.

In his opening remarks, the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) said that large swathes of people are out of work in some parts of the country and in work in other parts. There are also many places, including my own in west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, where a lot of people spend their lives going in and out of work because of the seasonality of the area’s economy. Not only are such people moving in and out of work—not of their own choice, but because of their circumstances—but there is also a plethora of zero-hours contracts and of people who exist on the basis of putting together part-time work.

I congratulate the Government on their achievement in rolling out apprenticeships, but the fact is that those apprentices are being paid £2.65 an hour for their apprenticeship and have to do bar work, waitressing and other work at the weekend in order to get themselves up to a living wage. An apprenticeship offers a good opportunity, but we have to acknowledge that, among working people and those who are moving in and out of wages, there is a class or group who are, in effect, on the very margins of survival. They will be significantly affected by the proposal to peg benefits at 1%. Some argue that the Bill is about ensuring that we make work pay and that clause 1 is entirely about out-of-work benefits, but the fact is that a significant number of people—many thousands—who are in work or, indeed, in and out of work will be affected by it. That is the most difficult position.

[Andrew Bridgen]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point about those who move from unemployment into temporary work and the complexities involved in re-applying for benefits under the current system. Does he agree that the introduction of universal credit will improve the situation, remove that uncertainty and make it a much bigger incentive for those who are out of work to take temporary work?

[Andrew George]

I agree with that point and congratulate in particular the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb) on advocating that for many years. He must be pleased. Indeed, I am pleased for him and it is appropriate that that policy is being rolled out. I hope that it will help to iron out the difficulties faced by a lot of people. Having said that, let us see whether it addresses those issues, as I hope it will, when it is rolled out.

If we look back at the principles set out by the Chancellor in the first emergency Budget, we will see that we were clearly told that we were all in it together, that those with the broadest shoulders would bear the greatest burden and that the vulnerable would be protected. Those are the principles against which we must measure the Government. We all have different views on where the lines should be drawn with regard to achieving those objectives, and that is where we get into specifics such as those in the Bill.

It would be a kamikaze mission for me to begin a debate—I am only seven minutes into my speech—by asking my hon. Friend the Minister, for whom I have the highest respect this: what on earth does he know about benefits? He is highly regarded in that sphere. He is respected considerably by people and, indeed, by his political opponents—and rightly so—for what he has achieved. I think we would have ended up with something a great deal worse had he not been in his position.

[Helen Goodman]

Before the hon. Gentleman began on his paean of praise for the Minister, I thought he was making a very good case about the situation in west Cornwall and the difficulties faced by people on the margins of the labour market. That being so, when it comes to the vote will he and his colleagues who tabled amendment 10 vote against clause stand part?

[Andrew George]

I am sure that my right hon. and hon. Friends will make up their own minds on that issue. I do not speak for them, but I have made it clear that I will vote against the Bill as it stands, because I do not think it addresses the fundamental concerns that I have enunciated elsewhere.

To return to congratulating my hon. Friend the Minister on his achievements, my beloved coalition colleagues may not like what I am about to say—[Hon. Members: “Don’t say it!”] Having listened to what has been articulated by those in the Conservative party in recent months, we have to acknowledge what would have happened had my hon. Friend and, indeed, the Liberal Democrats not been in the coalition Government. First, we have to question whether we would have had the increase in the personal tax allowance, on which I congratulate the coalition Government. The Conservatives made it quite clear that they wished not only to freeze benefits altogether but to do so for six years, so we would not even be getting a 1% rise. There would have been a wider impact on pensioners and the disabled, which would have been significant. Child benefit would have been constrained, as well as being cut from families with more than two children.

[Ian Mearns]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful contribution. Given what he has said, does he reject the spin of some Government Members who have said that people on benefits have had their income uprated by 20% over a five-year period as opposed to 12.5% for those who work? When we examine the figures in cash terms—the impact on people’s pockets—we see that the uprating has been worth an average of £49 for people in work and only £12 or so for those who rely on benefits.

[Andrew George]

There has been a lot of selective quotation of statistics, with selective beginnings and ends of the time period within which those comparators are applied. I understood that the purpose of the Bill was as the Secretary of State articulated it when he introduced it—to ensure that benefits would never rise faster than average wages. Our amendment would deal with that.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend has suggested that people are referring to arbitrary time frames, but they are not. By looking at the past five years we can determine when the financial crisis began, so that is an entirely natural time frame to examine.

[Andrew George]

One can look at it in a variety of ways. If we examined a much wider time period, say the past 20 or 30 years, we would certainly not come to the conclusion that benefits have risen significantly faster than wages, because that is clearly not the case.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Will my hon. Friend acknowledge that the fiscal problem that the Government face began as a result of the financial crisis? It is therefore entirely logical to consider the matter over the period between the financial crisis beginning in 2008 and the present day.

[Andrew George]

But when does the crisis end? The figures produced by the Office for Budget Responsibility estimate that in three years’ time, wages will exceed CPI. One has to examine the matter over a much longer period. The Conservatives paid for some posters a couple of weeks ago to make the point that it was unacceptable for benefits to rise faster than wages, and the amendment would deal with that issue.

I said earlier that one big weakness of the Government’s proposal, and the reason why I opposed it, was the inflexibility of the 1% uprating. It takes no account of what may happen to food prices, for example, by 2015-16. It is all very well having a Bill that takes a clairvoyant view that a 1% increase will not press large numbers of working families, as well as out-of-work families, into severe and extreme hardship. However, we have experienced this year in the UK the impact of significant volatility in our climate. There has been significant climate change, which is having an impact on the food baskets of the world, including those in many developing countries and here. We therefore need to ask ourselves whether we can confidently say that there will not be food price spikes such as we saw only a few years ago. I suggest that we may see such spikes again. There is also tremendous concern about the potential volatility of energy prices. The 1% uprating figure is inflexible and somewhat arbitrary, and we cannot say with confidence that we will not need to introduce further primary legislation to revise that figure in 2016.

We must also consider the impact of the 1% uprating on housing. In their emergency Budget, the Government proposed to cut housing benefit from the 50th percentile of rents to the 30th percentile. Whether or not we like the fact that only 30% of the private rental market might be available to people in receipt of housing benefit, rather than half of it, it is essential that the rate is linked to the variation in private sector rents. The 1% uprating will break the link with what is available in the market and instead peg housing benefit back. In my area, and I know in many others, the Government’s attempt to peg it back by cutting the rate to the 30th per- centile of rents has failed to constrain private sector rents, so it has not had the desired impact. Maybe it has in some areas, but certainly not in mine or many others.

The measures that the Government have brought forward in the Bill have been ill thought through, and I fear that we will have to reconsider the figure set out in it next year or the year after. On that basis, we will listen to what the Minister says in response to the debate before we have the opportunity to divide the Committee on the amendment.

[Toby Perkins]

It is a great pleasure to follow the thoughtful and useful contribution of the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) and the contributions of other hon. Members.

One thing that has come across in the speeches of Members on both sides of the Chamber is the economic illiteracy of the Government’s policy as part of a strategy for reducing the deficit. As other Members have said, one of the great things about welfare payments is that when people are living on the bread line, the money that they receive is spent in the local economy, often within their own community or on their own estate. They spend it at their local convenience store. They tend to spend it the minute they get it, rather than put it in trust funds, because they are attempting to sustain their life on the bread line.

When money is taken from the poorest in our society and at the same time given to the very wealthiest in our society, as was mentioned earlier, we are taking money away from people who will spend it in the real economy and giving it to people who are much more likely to take it out of the real economy and not spend it. It makes no economic sense, even on the basis that the Government are introducing this measure to reduce the deficit.

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[Steve Webb]

If it were trivial to raise £100 billion from the filthy rich, I suspect that most Governments would have been there by now.

The most credible, coherent amendment in this group is amendment 10, which was moved by my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George). He was so nice about me that I was almost tempted to accept the amendment, but not quite. Let me explain the reasons why not.

The first relates to the specifics of the amendment, which links benefit increases in 2014-15 and 2015-16 to whatever amount average earnings grow by. Based on the forecasts—I accept that that is what they are—that would mean an above inflation increase in the second of those two years, because we think that average earnings in a couple of years’ time will be more than CPI, as is the case in many normal years. At a time when we all agree that money will be tight, my hon. Friend is suggesting that an above inflation benefit increase in the second of those two years should be a priority. I do not think that it should be. At a time when we will have to make other difficult decisions about saving, the first consequence of his amendment—I do not imagine that he meant this—would be to lock in what we expect to be an above inflation increase in benefits in 2015-16. I do not believe that that will be our priority at that point.

Had we been in Committee upstairs and the Bill had further stages to go through, my hon. Friend may well have said that this was a probing amendment and we could have had a chat about it, but if we were to agree to the amendment tonight it would become part of the Bill that will go to the other place. It is a serious amendment that would have an unintended consequence.

Secondly, this is not intended as a wrecking amendment, but it would have that effect. We estimate that it would wipe out virtually all the Bill’s savings. Although I understand that my hon. Friend shares my concern about the impact on people on low incomes, that money would have to be found somewhere else. I do not believe that there is a painless way of finding that money or that the social security budget would be exempted from finding it.

We have already had to do some very difficult things on welfare spending in the Parliament whereby we have targeted particular benefits and identified particular issues, and a relatively small number of people have faced large cash losses. This is a different approach. It is a gradual approach that will create much smaller losses, but for much larger numbers of people. At a time when we are trying to find savings from this budget, I believe that spreading the pain relatively thinly across a larger group, rather than focusing on a smaller one, is the way to go.

[Andrew George]

Leaving aside the wisdom or otherwise of committing ourselves to the Government’s proposed uprating level of 1% for 2015-16, my hon. Friend is right, according to the Government’s figures, that there is a funding gap of about £2.5 billion for 2015-16. He has to accept, however, that two fifths of cash benefits go to those with above average incomes. Indeed, a former constituent of mine has said how laughable it is that he now lives in Greece yet still receives a winter fuel allowance. Surely we can find savings that are less painful than those proposed.

[Steve Webb]

I can tell my hon. Friend that we have his ex-constituent in Greece in our sights. All I can say is that I hope he enjoyed his last payment. Joking aside, even if we took away all winter fuel payments to overseas pensioners, we would be talking about tens of millions of pounds, not savings on the scale that we need.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I understand the hon. Lady’s frustration, but the amount of time given was agreed by the House on 8 January, and unfortunately the time allowed today has been squeezed on that basis. We are now eating into Third Reading time, which we would have lost completely had more Divisions been allowed.

[Andrew George]

Further to the point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. As the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) has pointed out, there is some disappointment among those who wished to test the temperature of the Committee. We were readily allowed to engage in the two-dimensional tribalism represented by previous Divisions, but we had no opportunity to ensure that the more nuanced and considered debate on other issues was brought to a proper conclusion, because those who wished to express a view had no opportunity to do so in the Lobbies.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

That was, in fact, the same point of order. Again, I understand the frustration that is felt, but—quite rightly—it is not for the Chair to decide the amount of time that is allocated for a debate. It is for the House to make that decision, and it did so on 8 January. No doubt the hon. Gentleman will wish to take the matter up with the Whips in future.

Bill reported.

Third Reading