Equitable Life (Payments) Bill

Anne Begg Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. EMAG today is very angry indeed. When the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Chancellor, every Treasury Minister, and the great majority of Government Members signed that pledge, EMAG thought that they meant it. Over the next couple of months, the Ministers and their hon. Friends behind them are going to find a lot of their constituents saying exactly what my hon. Friend’s constituent said, and wanting to know why Government Members have reneged on their pledge. They will have a great deal of explaining to do.

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

The previous Government made reparations for a number of historical injustices during their time in office, including compensation for the miners and for the fishermen involved in the cod war, and the financial assistance scheme. We hoped that all those processes would be simple and straightforward, but none turned out that way. Indeed, the Government had to revisit a couple of them on more than one occasion. Equitable Life is a far more complex case than any of them, however, and it was always going to be difficult, if not impossible, to come up with a scheme that was simple, transparent and fair. We hope that the Government will be able to do that, but it is going to be very difficult indeed.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is right. This has been a difficult task, and that is why it has taken such a long time to get to this stage. We all hope that the matter will be quickly resolved, but it is now becoming clear that the coalition is not going to deliver. All those nods and smiles before the election, and all those pledges earnestly signed, are not worth the candle. The truth is that both the coalition parties led EMAG up the garden path. They will not deliver what they promised. It is flagrant: EMAG delivered votes at the election, but now that the election is safely over, it can be ditched.

Proposed Public Expenditure Cuts

Anne Begg Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. The plethora of memoirs and interviews from people who were at the top of the Labour party until a few months ago have consistently made clear that it is not credible for the Labour party not to issue its own proposals and come up with its own ideas. As I have said, £44 billion of the cuts with which we are proceeding were pencilled in by the last Government, and they have between now and 20 October to tell us where those £44 billion of cuts would have fallen.

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

On Saturday I attended a conference organised by the Aberdeen branch of the Disability Advisory Group. The people there were genuinely worried about the reassessment for disability living allowance and the medicalisation that has been announced. They were completely baffled, and kept asking, “Why us?” Whoever is to blame for the economic crisis, it is certainly not disabled welfare recipients. May I now ask the Chancellor, “Why them?”?

[Mr Osborne]

I respect the fact that the hon. Lady is the Chair of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, but I must tell her that the number of working-age people who claim disability living allowance has risen by more than 40% in the last decade, which is a substantial increase. When I considered reforms to the allowance, I saw that it would be possible to introduce such reforms as means-testing, but I rejected those. I said that it would be fairer to introduce an up-to-date assessment to help people to receive the benefit and ensure that they were eligible for it in future. I think that that is the fair way in which to proceed with this particular benefit, because I well understand that those who receive it are some of the most vulnerable members of our society.

Government Spending Cuts

Anne Begg Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I am pleased to have support from another Gladstonian Liberal on the Liberal Democrat Benches. I am grateful to him for drawing attention to the additional investment that we are making in social housing. That is a real priority for many Members across the House, including those in the Liberal Democrat party and the Conservative party, and, I suspect, for a lot of Members on the Labour Benches, who have been sad that the previous Government were unable to invest more in social housing. Among the many black holes that we are discovering in the public finances left to us by that Government, we have already found a very big black hole in the funding of the social housing programme. We are determined to do everything we can to ensure that the vulnerable people who depend on social housing—those who are on the waiting lists that built up under the previous Government—will have some hope under this Administration.

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

We have experience of removing ring-fencing in Scotland, because the Scottish National party Government have done that for local government. May I advise the Chief Secretary to take a look at the Lib Dem council in Aberdeen to see the effects of the removal of that ring-fencing? Its priorities are to close schools and day centres for disabled people; instead, it is spending money on grandiose building schemes.

[Mr Laws]

I have already made it clear that our priority is to protect schools, which is precisely what we have done in the spending statement. I am afraid that there is a basic ideological differences between those on the Labour Benches and those on the Government Benches—we believe in devolving power and giving freedom to people. We do not believe that Government know best, and the previous Administration proved that very effectively.