Vulnerable People (CSR)

Debate between Andrew George and Chris Leslie

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Chris Leslie]

Nobody disagrees that we need a level of welfare reform, but the question of how we do that is at the centre of the debate. We could shut down the Department for Work and Pensions tomorrow and not spend an extra penny. That would be a degree of welfare reform, but it would be so ridiculous that it would be off this planet. We could have a level of reform that was too slow and did not really bite. I believe that the trajectory of reforms pursued by the previous Administration sought to strike a fair balance.

The extent to which Ministers are reducing what is known as “annually managed expenditure” within the welfare budget has been designed around a political strategy. By taking that amount from the welfare budget, the Chancellor tried to come within spitting distance, as he saw it, of Labour’s plans for deficit reduction within the departmental expenditure limits. That political strategy rapidly fell apart, particularly because the Opposition accepted the need for a certain level of welfare change.

Let us look at the points raised by the hon. Member for St Ives. If the welfare changes are not handled sensitively and their implementation is blind to the human costs involved, some of them will affect the real lives of real people. Such people will be increasingly frightened and unable to cope with some of the changes, and that will create great harm. That harm might not have the quantifiable economic or econometric measurements that we traditionally look at when monitoring fiscal and monitory policy, but it is real and will have an indirect effect on our economy.

[Andrew George]

I am following the hon. Gentleman’s narrative, but before he strays too far from his point about the intentionality—or otherwise—of the possible consequences of the reform package, let me make it clear that I do not associate myself with his analysis. I do not believe that it is the intention of the Government or the Minister to impoverish people deliberately.

The point that I was building towards concerns the balance of risk. Taking a risk with the poor needs to be balanced by taking a risk with the banking sector, which I do not think that we are doing at the moment. If we are to probe policy so as to get the balance right between those with broad shoulders and more vulnerable people, we must put pressure on the top end just as much, if not more.

[Chris Leslie]

As I said, the hon. Gentleman is being more than fair—perhaps a little too fair—in his analysis of the Government’s intentions. I hope that I am wrong in saying that a measure of deliberate choice is involved. However, the weekends at Chequers during which the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister pored over the political stratagems that they could devise, having linked some of the measures in the spending review together, suggest that a balancing act was going on in the Government to think about who they could hit and get away with it, rather than the human consequences. That is a difference of opinion that we will have to accept.