Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

That is correct. That is exactly what this Bill sets out. That will also be the case this year.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I wish to take the Secretary of State back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) about disabled people. We have now gone from the Secretary of State saying that there is a blanket protection for disabled people to him acknowledging in the impact assessment that some disabled people will be affected by these changes. Given that recognition in the impact assessment, can he tell the House how many disabled people his Department estimates will be affected by these changes?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I stand by what we said originally, and I say it again: in this Bill we have protected people on disability living allowance, as well as people in the support group on ESA. All the disabled premiums in JSA and so on are also protected. I do not know where Labour Members think they are going with all these points, because the reality is that they are basically opposed to absolutely everything. They would spend more money, they would tax more and they would borrow more, and the people who would suffer would be the British people who would have to pick up the bill. That is the reality.

I was making an important point about fraud and error. In essence, more than £10 billion was lost, and we do not even know how much was overspent, because Labour would not collect the figures. Writing off those debts wastes taxpayers’ money. To put this in perspective, the Bill sets out what we are doing at the moment to raise £1.9 billion, but that money could have been raised without difficulty had Labour’s system been better and more efficient.

It is also worth pointing out that, for many of the people Labour Members talk about, universal credit will improve their income dramatically. I have some very good examples of that. Under universal credit, a typical one-earner couple who have two children and rent their home will be £61 better off—including the changes today. A one-earner family with an income of £20,000 and two children will see a net gain of at least £34 a week. That will be a big boost for them and was not taken into consideration in the IFS figures.

The reality is that there is an issue about fairness, which we touched on just now. We should bear in mind that 70% of all households will not be affected by this legislation. Many of our constituents are taxpayers picking up the bill for all these costs, including the deficit and borrowing that the last Government left us. Over the last five years, following the recession, the gap has grown between what people in employment have been earning and what those on welfare have been getting. Those in work have seen their incomes rise half as quickly as those on out-of-work benefits—10% compared with 20%. That is not fair to taxpayers. Returning fairness to the system is critical, and it is one area that Labour refuses to acknowledge. Under the previous Government, taxes rose, borrowing rose and the deficit rose—and they left those bills for the next generation to pay. It is our job to get that under control. These are not decisions taken lightly or easily, but we have to take them and they are in denial.

The shadow Chancellor likes to sound off from a sedentary position. He likes to give it out but does not like to take it. I remember only a few weeks ago that he went around the studios complaining that we were too mean to him. If he does not like it, then he should stop making sedentary interventions.