Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Andy Sawford Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I rise to oppose Third Reading. I have not been in the House for as long as the Secretary of State, but never in my years here have I seen so much taken from so many so fast. It is a disgrace that the Government should have rammed the Bill through the House in just two weeks. I hope that the other place will have listened hard to our debates today and seen how little time has been granted to us in the Commons to debate measures that will hurt thousands and thousands of our constituents.

In the fortnight since the Bill was introduced, claim after claim made by the Government has simply fallen apart. Originally, we were told that the Bill would not hurt working people, that the Government would protect disabled people, and that they cared about “family-raisers”, to use the Prime Minister’s term, yet in vote after vote tonight the Government have refused to stand by their word. They have refused to protect working people or to offer safeguards for disabled people, and we have heard nothing remotely credible from them about how child poverty will be tackled. After tonight’s debate, no one will believe that there is such a thing as compassionate conservatism. To be frank, it was always a wild claim and, lo and behold, so it has turned out.

When the Bill was first presented to us, we were invited to believe that it was squarely aimed at those of our neighbours who were “sleeping off a life on benefits”, in supposed contrast with a Budget that allegedly helped working people and gave effect to the Prime Minister’s determination, expressed to the party faithful—their number is dwindling—at his party’s conference. He said:

“They call us the party of the better-off”.

That is true; we do. He continued:

“no: we are the party of the want to be better-off, those who strive to make a better life for themselves and their families.”

How does the Bill help those who are striving to be better off? The Institute for Fiscal Studies could not have been blunter: 7 million working people will be hurt by the Bill. The impact of changes announced in the autumn statement will be, between now and April 2015, to reduce the real income of the one-earner working family by £534 on average, net of any increase in the personal allowance. That is why this is a strivers’ tax, pure and simple, which we will oppose.

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it makes much more sense to uprate by inflation in this Parliament and then take stock, with a proper zero-based budgeting look at this in the next Parliament?

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that it would make sense to uprate in line with inflation for the rest of this Parliament, but frankly we do not know what kind of mess will be inherited in the next Parliament, which is why my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor is right to say that a zero-based review will be needed.

In the seven minutes that remain, I want to make two more points. One is about disabled people, who the Chancellor and Secretary of State said would be protected under the Bill. The Chancellor said that he would “support the vulnerable” and that disability benefits would be

“increased in line with inflation”—[Official Report, 5 December 2012; Vol. 554, c. 879.]

Then we learned the truth: 3.4 million disabled households will be hit by the Bill, admitted the Pensions Minister in a written answer. On average, they will be £156 a year worse off. Hundreds of thousands of people on employment and support allowance—people who the Department says have a disability—will be £87.50 a year worse off.