Work and Pensions (CSR)

Anne Begg Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Miss Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

I am delighted to have been given the opportunity, as Chair of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, to open the debate, but I should thank the Backbench Business Committee, because this is one of the first Westminster Hall debates whose subjects have been chosen by that Committee. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) and to my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green). They did not quite suggest the subject of this afternoon’s debate, but they put in suggestions relating to this subject, and I think that the Backbench Business Committee decided that the impact of the comprehensive spending review on the Department for Work and Pensions would be a worthy subject for debate. I agree, because that Department is to suffer some of the largest cuts of all the Departments, in terms of both the percentage of its budget to be cut and the money to be saved.

The Department is to face a budget cut of £18 billion per annum by 2014-15. That is made up of the £11 billion announced in the Budget and a further £7 billion announced as part of the CSR proposals. However, the Department for Work and Pensions is different from other Departments, as most of its budget is in the form of money paid straight to people who qualify for one benefit or another. It is not managing budgets or delivering services as other Departments are. Much of its money ends up in the hands of real people, who spend it in their communities. The Department’s annually managed expenditure depends on how much money is paid out in benefits, which is where the large cuts are to be made.

It is quite easy, if we say it quickly, to cut benefits. We just do not give people any money. That can be a tempting thing for Governments to do, but of course the people do not go away; they still need the money to live. By my reckoning, there are four ways in which it is possible for the Department to cut the annually managed expenditure. It can reduce the amount that is paid out for certain benefits. It can change the criteria to narrow the number of people who qualify for a particular benefit. It can time-limit how long a person can qualify for a benefit. It can abolish a benefit completely. If we look at the proposals in the Budget and in the CSR, we see that the Government are doing a bit of all four of those things.

It is worth remembering that the cuts are being made against a backdrop of rising unemployment as other cuts in the numbers of people employed in the public sector take effect, and it is during times of high unemployment that the Department for Work and Pensions spending goes up, as more people qualify for benefits—benefits that many feel they have already paid for through national insurance contributions.

More than half the benefit spending of the Department goes to people who are over retirement age. The basic state pension and pension credit, for instance, account for 50% or slightly more of the Department’s budget. Generally, the benefits received by retired people are not being cut, although there will be some cuts in the benefits that they receive, because of the proposed changes in housing benefit and the mobility element of disability living allowance for people in residential care, and possibly the changes in relation to council tax. Perhaps the Minister can explain what those mean in reality, because I have found that quite difficult to grasp.

While I am talking about the council tax proposals, I want to point out that they seem to fly in the face of other things that the Government are doing. I am referring to their plans for a universal credit to make the benefits system much simpler and more straightforward, which I would certainly welcome. To devolve payments in relation to council tax down to local authorities, which will all have their own criteria, seems to go against the principle that I understand the Government are trying to create for the benefits system.

Of course, I never let a chance go by to get in my own gripe with regard to people over 65. Someone who happens to be my age and is a woman may have started her working life assuming that she would receive her basic state pension at 60. Until a few weeks ago, I thought that I would receive my basic state pension at 65. That has now gone up to 66, and I cannot be alone in wondering whether, by the time I approach 66, the age will be 67 or higher and I will never get the chance to retire at all. However, my constituents might make the decision for me sooner than that.

The result of protecting the elderly from the worst of the spending cuts is that the vast bulk of the cuts will fall on those of working age, on families and on people who are disabled or ill. For those groups, the cuts are much harsher and deeper. Where are the Government planning to make those cuts? I said that they could consider four areas, so I shall go through those one by one. First, they could reduce the amount paid out for certain benefits. The clearest example of that is the proposed cap on housing benefit payments. However, all benefits that are currently uprated according to the retail prices index will be cut over time, because they are soon to be linked to the consumer prices index, which is usually below the RPI level. That means that the value of almost all benefits will diminish.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is interesting research in that regard? Conducted for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, it suggests that linking benefits to CPI will reduce by £1 a year the value of the incomes of families on safety-net benefits. For a person on jobseeker’s allowance, for example, that will mean a loss of £10 over 10 years, representing between 15 and 20% of their income.

[Miss Begg]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. Certainly I recognise the 15% figure. We are not talking only about benefits for those of working age. I was briefed this morning that if occupational pensions—both private and public pensions—are to be linked to CPI, the figure of 15% is not unrealistic. In fact, people on an average occupational pension could lose the equivalent of three years’ worth of their pension if they were to live for the average time from retirement, which is 24 years.

The switch from RPI to CPI will, in the long term, mean that the amount of money that people on benefits receive is reduced. Let me explain what I find particularly perverse about the housing benefit changes. The difference between RPI and CPI is that CPI does not take account of housing costs. Again, perhaps the Minister can explain the rationale for why the CPI measure is being used for housing benefit when it does not take into account housing inflation, which runs at a higher level than consumer inflation.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston suggested, the change in uprating will also affect levels of child benefit, income support, jobseeker’s allowance and incapacity benefit, as well as the employment and support allowance and the carer’s allowance. The value of all the benefits in payment will diminish with the changing of the linking rules or the indexation to which they are subject.

There will also be reductions in what can be claimed in such things as the child care element of the working tax credits, as well as changes to the eligibility rules for the working tax credits. Some of those changes would also appear to fly in the face of the perfectly correct cause being espoused by the Government—to ensure that those who can work do work. However, some of the changes might put barriers in the way of getting people into work.

The second way that the Department can reduce spending on benefits is by changing the criteria, to prevent many people who would have previously qualified for the benefit from qualifying in future. We shall see people who have been on jobseeker’s allowance for a year losing 10% of their housing benefit, or people in residential homes no longer qualifying for the mobility component of the disability living allowance. I am glad that it is the Minister responsible for disabled people who will be winding up for the Government, because of a phrase in the CSR attached to the announcement about the mobility component of the DLA for people in residential homes being cut:

“where such costs are already met from public funds”.

Can the Minister explain what that means?

Does that phrase mean that some people in residential homes will keep the mobility DLA, if their costs of travel and transport, presumably, are not being met from public funds? However, I am not aware of any residential homes that have a travel budget. I am not aware that public funds are available. Some people in residential homes might get a taxi card, for instance, but like, I suspect, many others, my local authority is tightening its criteria: Aberdeen has decided that someone on the upper rate mobility DLA does not get a taxi card. Anything that I can think of that might be the provision of travel from public funds does not, I think, apply to people in residential care.

On the issue of residential care, it is worth remembering that, generally, people in residential care who are on the mobility DLA will be a younger cohort, because people do not qualify for a DLA once they are over 65. Many of them might be in work—their care needs might require them to be in a residential home, but they might have work or go out daily to day centres or whatever. Without the DLA, they would not be able to get out of the confines of the residential home. Sometimes there is a perception that someone who lives in a residential home is elderly and not able to lead a fulfilling life, but nothing could be further from the truth. I would welcome some clarification from the Minister on that point.

Probably the best example of the Government’s changing the criteria to exclude previous claimants is the move from incapacity benefit to employment and support allowance. This migration was always on the cards—it was introduced by the previous Government—but I get a sense that some of it is being accelerated. The other thing that is different is the numbers involved. The number of those whom the previous Government thought might lose out as a result of the migration appears to be quite different in reality, certainly in regard to the new benefits. At the moment, we do not know the actual figures for the number of people currently receiving IB who will no longer qualify for the new employment and support allowance. The first trials of the migration are taking place in Aberdeen and Burnley, and it will be at least a couple of months before we have any robust figures and find out how many people are not getting through the new gateway.

The Government expect somewhere between 30% and 40% of IB claimants will not qualify and will therefore end up on jobseeker’s allowance. For those individuals, that is a loss of £20 a week. What makes me doubt whether that is the final figure is that we know that the number of new claimants qualifying for employment and support allowance is much less than the previous Government were projecting. While they thought that 20% might end up on the support element of the ESA, the figure is much lower, at around 4 to 6%, and it looks as though around 60% will not be getting ESA at all, because either they have dropped out of the system or they have been awarded jobseeker’s allowance. As many as 60% of those who are currently on incapacity benefit might not qualify for the new ESA, therefore, but, as I said, the trials are going on in Aberdeen and Burnley, and we will have the figures in a couple of months’ time.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady think that the change in those numbers is as a result of a change of Government or of the experience of having run the pilots?

[Miss Begg]

The original numbers I gave were those projected by the previous Government for new claimants, but they did not work out in practice—even for the previous Government. In other words, the work capability assessment, which is the test acting as the gateway to getting the benefit, is turning out to be much tighter than either the previous Government or, I suspect, this Government were expecting.

The figures are quite different from what the previous Government expected. I do not have any evidence to suggest that the new Government were expecting anything different. However, the reality is that many fewer people than expected are getting through the gateway of the work capability assessment, and they are accessing either the support element or the work-related element of the ESA.

There has been a lot of criticism of, and a lot of research has been done by organisations such as Citizens Advice—nationally and in Scotland—about the operation of the work capability assessment. At the moment, I am not sure that it, as an assessment tool intended to look at employability, is very effective in determining who is fit for work and who is not.

I was not going to go into the issue, because it is probably a debate for another day, but part of the problem is that illness and disability are being mixed up. So, people who are ill at the moment are being declared fully fit for work when, clearly, they cannot work—but that is not to say that they would not be able to work in the future. The assessment also does not take into account the employability of an individual—because the end of the whole process is to get people into work, if they are not employable and employers will not employ them, then the process will have failed.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

rose—

[Kate Green]

rose—

[Miss Begg]

I give way to the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael).

[Neil Carmichael]

Thank you. Will the hon. Lady welcome, when it comes, the report of Professor Malcolm Harrington on the work capability assessment? He was appointed by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in the summer, and he will be reporting shortly. She might find some good news in the report, in the context of what she is saying.

[Miss Begg]

I certainly hope so. I was not intending to go into the WCA and its faults, but the hon. Gentleman tempts me. I am looking forward to seeing the report by Professor Harrington. However, there is concern that by the time he reports, whether at the end of this month or the beginning of next month, the trial in Aberdeen and Burnley will be coming to an end, and there will not be a lot of time to change things. There might be time to change the procedure, but not to put in place any major changes in how the work capability assessments are carried out before the full roll-out begins in March or April next year. The volumes will be quite large and it will be interesting to find out, in Aberdeen in particular, whether Atos Healthcare can manage the volumes that will be coming through. It is a big process, but there are still some fundamental flaws in how the work capability assessment is in operation.

Does my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston want to intervene?

[Kate Green]

No—the hon. Gentleman for Stroud asked the same question.

[Miss Begg]

That leads me to the third way in which the Government are planning to cut the benefits bill: limiting how long a person can be on a particular benefit. Even if a person is successful in being assessed as only partially fit for work, and qualifies for the work-related activity part of the employment support allowance or ESA—it gets no easier to say, but I do not know another way of doing it but to use acronyms or to give the full title—the CSR proposes that they will qualify for the contributory element for only a year. That means that people who have worked all their lives, and paid their national insurance contributions in the hope that they will act as an insurance against ill health, will get the benefit for only one year unless their household income is below the qualifying level for income support.

That poses the question of how much the Government want to continue with the contributory principle. Already, people receive unemployment benefit, or jobseeker’s allowance, for only six months, and the contributory element of ESA is to last only for a year, yet they will have worked all their lives thinking that was why they were paying national insurance.

Lone parents will qualify for income support only if they have a child under the age of five. After that, they will be moved to JSA. If they do not get a job within a year, they will lose 10% of their housing benefit. I have been told by several Ministers that the Work programme will result in people being helped back into work. However, the lone parent whose youngest child has turned five will not go into the Work programme for a year. That is when lone parents are to lose part of their housing benefit.

Here we have an individual who has done everything that the Government have asked of her, or him. Such people will have turned up to all the work-related activities and may have moved house to find somewhere cheaper so that they are at the 30th percentile in the housing benefit changes. They will have done everything that the Government have asked of them, but in these economic times they simply cannot find a job. It is not that they have not tried. They will have been to lots of interviews, but not managed to find a job. Even then, they will still lose their benefits.

That is a fundamental change to our welfare system. Sanctions and taking benefits from people has always been linked to negative behaviour—the individual not doing what the Government ask of them. The worrying message that the Government may be sending out is that even if people do the right thing they could still be in danger of losing part of their benefit.

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct to say that there is confusion, with people doing the right thing but still facing sanctions. Does she agree that it is illogical to sanction one benefit in respect of behaviours that are desired in connection with participation in the labour market but that are covered by other benefits—in this case, the jobseeker’s allowance—and with no suggestion that the individual will necessarily be facing a sanction?

[Miss Begg]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; the issue seems to arise particularly with sanctions on housing benefit. When giving evidence to the Select Committee yesterday, Lord Freud suggested that sanctions on housing benefit would follow people wherever they went. The only way for them to get rid of the sanction would be to find a job, but some might simply not be able to do so. It could depend on where people live, as in some areas it is difficult to find a job.

[Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I am pleased to hear that the hon. Lady will not be retiring. It is good news for our Select Committee, as she is an excellent Chairman. What is her take on the fact that, for the first time, we are to have a really focused Work programme and a universal credit? That will remove many of the problems with withdrawal rates that the Committee highlighted in the past. Of course it is an expensive thing to do, but it is the right thing to do. Is it not right to praise the Government for doing that rather than concentrating on the cost savings that need to be made to make it affordable?

[Miss Begg]

I shall call the hon. Gentleman my hon. Friend, as he is a member of the Select Committee. I shall deal with the universal credit in a moment. However, my hon. Friend is right about the Work programme.

The point is that the Work programme does not kick in until people have been out of work for a year, unless they have come through the incapacity benefit and employment and support allowance route or unless they are young and unemployed, when they will come into the Work programme after six months. The sanction will kick in before the individual has had the very expensive help that we hope the Work programme will rightly provide. It is a combination of there possibly not being a job and there not being any specialist help. Even if the youngest child has just turned five, lone parents might have been out of the workplace for 20 years looking after the older children. They will need extra help, but they will not get it because the Work programme does not kick in until the year is up.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

All Liberal Democrats support the Work programme—it is focused on the need to do things—and everyone understands incentives to get people into work and out of the benefit trap. However, I and many of my colleagues share the hon. Lady’s concern about there being an absolute rule that when people have been out of work for a certain time they will lose a certain part of their income, through no fault of their own and irrespective of the job market in their area. It is too absolute, too draconian and too firm. I hope that the hon. Lady’s measured argument about how it will have more impact on some than on others, together with the arguments put by my colleagues and me, will persuade the Government that this is one area that should be revisited in order to find a different answer.

[Miss Begg]

I echo that point. In many cases, we are not arguing about the principle but the detail.

The last way in which the Government can save money is to do away with some benefits. This aspect has both positives and negatives, as we heard from my hon. Friend, the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Mr Heald). Extra money has been identified in the CSR, and £2 billion will be set aside over the next four years for the introduction of a universal credit. That will get rid of many benefits, and probably almost all working-age benefits, which will be subsumed into the universal credit. That is the right thing to do, and it certainly takes us in the right direction of travel, but as with all these matters the devil is in the detail. I look forward to the White Paper, which I hope will give more detail on how things should work. I hope that, within the next couple of weeks, the Minister will give us some indication of when it will be published. We are all waiting with bated breath, as it will make sense of some of the other things that the Government have been doing.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Given the hon. Lady’s approach to the difficult question of restructuring benefits at a time of economic depression, from which we are slowly emerging, does she accept that for some of us the concept that benefits can only ever increase is philosophically difficult? For instance, in my constituency of Gloucester 10,000 jobs in the private sector were lost during the five or six years between 2004 and 2009, wages went down in many companies and people often worked fewer hours and fewer days to enable companies not to cut jobs. Charities prefer to see housing benefit linked to RPI rather than CPI, but RPI went down sharply in 2008-09. Does the hon. Lady not agree that, in that situation, benefits paid from taxpayer revenue have to be tailored according to how much is available—

[Richard Graham]

I apologise, Mr Turner. Does the hon. Lady agree that in this situation, whichever party was in power, it would be incumbent on the Government to find ways of reducing the ever-increasing benefits bill?

[Miss Begg]

There is no dispute about the fact that we would like to see the benefit bill reduced. The best way of doing that is to get those who can work into jobs so that they do not need benefits on which to live. As for pensioners, the Government, with their triple lock, have taken the decision that they do not want to see them getting less benefit. That is partly why the cuts have fallen so heavily on working-age people. The Government have protected benefits and increases in benefits for those who are on the basic state pension and other related benefits. They have made a value judgment and decided that some people deserve increases in their benefits while others do not.

Let us not forget the bigger economic argument. Poor people will spend their benefits in the local community. Problems can arise if benefits are cut: the money going into the local economy drops, jobs are lost and shops close. Cuts will cause problems in the local economy. Very often it is the benefits’ pound that keeps many things working in some of the poorer communities. There is not an absolute answer as to whether benefits should go up or down depending on the economic wealth of the country, but there is an absolute measure of poverty in which we should not expect people to live. Sometimes, some of our benefits are at a level that keeps an individual living in poverty.

[Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

The hon. Lady said that when benefits are paid to individuals, the money is used in the local economy, and that that can somehow be helpful. I have heard such comments quite often and they are based, I believe, on an economic fallacy. If the Government did not make payments—benefits or otherwise—the money would not be borrowed by them in the first place, and those who had lent the money would have spent it in the economy anyway. Such a point is worth making because we should base our discussions on the known facts.

[Miss Begg]

We live in a welfare state and a civilised society, and we have benefits that are paid to people who are in work as well as to those who are out of work. One reason why we take such decisions is that we believe that it is bad for a society to have an enormous gap between the rich and the poor. That is partly why we have our tax and benefit system.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is quoting a system that she appears to support, but is it not the case that over the past 13 years of the Labour Government, in which this type of policy was actively encouraged and pursued, the gap between rich and poor widened?

[Miss Begg]

The rich have got richer, which I would have thought the hon. Gentleman would welcome. The poor have also got richer, but the gap is wider because of what has happened at the top end. There is no doubt that those who live in poverty have a relatively higher income than they would have done without the measures that the previous Government put in place.

[Richard Graham]

rose—

[Miss Begg]

I had better make some progress. I was going to read out a list of other organisations, but I need to make some progress. I am sure that other Members have lots of concerns to voice from organisations such as Mencap, the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion and so on. However, I have spoken for longer than I meant to. I thought that I had a 10-minute speech, Mr Turner, so I apologise.

In conclusion, the cuts in the DWP budget are not just to bureaucracy. They are far more profound than that. It is the benefits themselves that have been cut. The running costs of the Department are small in comparison to the costs of benefits paid. The DWP has already stripped £2 billion from its daily expenditure, so it is already quite efficiently run, which is why the big cuts have to come from the money paid out to individuals. None the less, behind the figures that I have mentioned are real people leading real lives. Finding £6 a week to make up the shortfall between the amount received in housing benefit and rent costs might not seem a lot to us, but it is a huge amount for someone who only receives £65 on JSA. That £65 has to cover all other living expenses, utilities and food.

Most people would feel the loss of £50 a week towards their transport costs. How much more acute is that loss for people who live in residential homes? Such people are to lose the mobility element of their disability living allowance. When their total income is only £22 a week as a personal allowance, how will they get out and about at all? I have given just two examples of people who will be directly affected by the cuts, but there are many more individuals who will be hit. Whatever Members believe philosophically about what the Government are doing, such individuals will have less income as a result of these decisions. It is beholden on all of us as politicians to recognise that for some of our constituents, life will be very hard as a result of the decisions in the comprehensive spending review. Even if Members believe that the Government are doing everything right, they should please remember that some of their constituents will have a really hard time in the years to come.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heald]

The hon. Lady makes her point. There is some research, which I do not think has been published yet, that looks at the eastern region and London. It comes to the conclusion that the work capability assessments are working far better in the eastern region than in London. Talking to providers about why that might be, they raise the point that about a third of the population in London comes from minority communities. I thought the Minister might want to look at that issue.

My next point is one I mentioned before about getting CVs and help to young people early on. I made the point about going online. I hope that that is something that the Government will look at.

With regard to the movement from incapacity benefit and employment and support allowance on to jobseeker’s allowance, one issue that needs to be looked at is the fitness of our work force and the people who are moving from one benefit to the other. There is no doubt that there are a lot of people who start off with a back condition or possibly stress, and it is not treated quickly enough and becomes a chronic condition. I have made that point in debates such as this for years, and I think it is time that the Department of Health and the DWP looked more carefully at the issue of fitness. About two years ago, Dame Carol Black produced an excellent report about fitness and the work force. I know that she is still involved and I hope that it will be possible to build on her work and try to do more in this area, so that we end up with a work force who are fitter.

[Miss Begg]

Another problem is where employers employ occupational health professionals to assess people, and assess them as not being fit for work, when Atos has assessed them as fit for work for the work capability assessment. That is acting as a barrier very often for employers to accept people into the work force.

[Mr Heald]

That is right. Another point to make is that the Department of Health has a major group working on the issue of fitness, including aspects of fitness at work. I think that is something that the DWP should also be involved in. It should be a joint exercise, and Carol Black’s work should be continued.

I want to make a point about the consumer price index, and then a few general remarks. The consumer prices index is the European measure of inflation. There is no doubt that the retail price index distorts the measure, by including mortgage costs, which are erratic. I believe that in the longer term CPI is the better measure, and I understand that in Europe there are discussions about how to include housing costs in it. Over time CPI will be improved, whereas RPI has been rather erratic over the years, and has often led to poor results.

The overall effect of the changes is to give value for money to the taxpayer. It is an issue of fairness. I know that people say, “Housing and other benefits are being cut, and that is unfair on individuals who may have to move or who will have to negotiate with their landlords for a lower rent.” I understand that argument, but how can we explain to someone who takes home the average wage of £374 a week net that in difficult economic times, when they are hard pressed, it is right to spend more than £20,000 a year housing someone in a better house than they can afford? It is a hard argument to make.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Carmichael]

Thank you. The fact of the matter is that we are reviewing those processes. I have mentioned Professor Harrington and said that our processes must be fair and decent, and that is what the Government are working to ensure.

The saving from the changes to the ESA will be approximately £2 billion, which makes a difference to our target of saving money through the CSR. However, what is critical is helping people to get to work by introducing a Work programme that delivers and encouraging the voluntary sector to help with CVs and so forth. It matters that we help people fulfil their lives by getting work if they want it and can do it; we must recognise that.

The key tool for transferring from incapacity benefit to employment and support allowance is the work capability assessment, which was introduced in 2008. It has some imperfections that we will improve, but it was introduced by the Labour Government for precisely the purpose that we are discussing. That is another important point to make.

The assessment process, as I understand it, takes account of medical conditions, mental problems and so forth and considers carefully how health policy, initiatives and solutions are being advanced. It is a fair and relatively flexible tool—

[Miss Begg]

That is part of the problem; it is not flexible or sensitive to different conditions. It is very mechanistic. Some of the employability criteria from previous assessments for incapacity benefits have been removed, when those are the very issues that need to be assessed. Those of us who have examined it feel that that is a problem. It does not always assess the right things. As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) pointed out, the wrong decisions are being made. People who are clearly not fit to work are being found fit to work and vice versa. That is a problem.

[Neil Carmichael]

I thank the hon. Lady. This might get a bit boring, but I will simply repeat that we look forward to Professor Malcolm Harrington’s report, which I gather is coming soon.

To end on a political point, I note that the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for— [Hon. Members: “Paisley and Renfrewshire South.”] Thank you. He said on “The Andrew Marr Show” that he recognised that the changes were necessary, that the Labour Government would have been interested in that direction of travel and that he did not reject all our proposals out of hand but welcomed a lot of them. That is the point that we should rest on. Labour’s Front-Bench Members recognise the problems that we are dealing with, understand that people should be encouraged and helped to work and recognise the impact that that will undoubtedly have on the CSR. However, as I have stressed throughout my speech, we must give people a fair and decent chance to fulfil their lives. That is our view and, I hope, increasingly the view of the Labour party.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss Begg]

Let me thank the Backbench Business Committee. I have sat in your seat, Mr Turner, on many Thursday afternoons with only three people in the Chamber. Today, however, we have had many contributions from a large number of people, which reflects the importance of this excellent debate. The subject transcends party politics, because the issues discussed today will affect thousands and thousands of our own constituents. I hope that the Government see those of us on the Opposition Benches as critical friends. We want the Government to get this right because it is our constituents who will suffer if they do not. I hope that this debate has been constructive and helpful.

There has been a problem with housing benefit. The debate was skewed by concentrating on the cap. Serious concerns were raised about the 30th percentile and the JSA sanction. I hope that the Minister understands that transitional arrangements will be required on a range of issues. I refer in particular to those issues on which the new Government’s policy is not yet in place and those policies introduced under the previous Government that have already stopped. There is a clear need for transitional arrangements.

All in all, this has been an excellent debate. I look forward to the White Paper, which is to be published shortly. We may be back here having another debate on these issues in a couple of months’ time. If today’s debate is anything to go by, it will also be a good and well-humoured debate. I thank everyone who has turned up this afternoon.

Question put and agreed to.