Oral Answers to Questions
Anne Main Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Mike Penning
We are monitoring the work of both Capita and Atos, and we will have the figures as soon as we can. Under the previous Administration’s scheme, fewer than 6% of people claiming this or a similar benefit were ever assessed. It must be right and proper that there is not self-assessment; it is done by the experts.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
Will the Minister look into the fact that personal independence payments seem to get stuck in the system and are not passed on to the Department for Work and Pensions? My constituent waited three months for an assessment. Three more months later, it is still stuck in the system. The Department wants to sort it out. What more can he do to ensure that they liaise with each other?
Mike Penning
The Department’s officials and the contractors, Atos and Capita, are working closely every single day. We need to ensure that we get the decisions right. In such situations as the one brought to the House’s attention by my hon. Friend, we will work closely. If my hon. Friend contacts me later, we will look exactly at that point.
Housing Benefit
Anne Main Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House regrets the pernicious effect on vulnerable and in many cases disabled people of deductions being made from housing benefit paid to working age tenants in the social housing sector deemed to have an excess number of bedrooms in their homes; calls on the Government to end these deductions with immediate effect; furthermore calls for any cost of ending them to be covered by reversing tax cuts which will benefit the wealthiest and promote avoidance, and addressing the tax loss from disguised employment in construction; and further calls on the Government to use the funding set aside for discretionary housing payments to deal with under-occupation by funding local authorities so that they are better able to help people with the cost of moving to suitable accommodation.
This is an important debate, which is why it is so good to see so many Opposition Members on the Benches behind me and so disappointing to see so few Government Members on the Benches opposite. I am also sorry that we will not be joined today by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who apparently has more urgent and important business at an intergovernmental conference in Paris. Some might welcome the fact that one of Parliament’s more dedicated Eurosceptics has suddenly developed such a passion for discussing his problems with our European partners—perhaps he has had a second epiphany—but those affected by his policy will be disappointed that he has chosen not to be here today to answer for the distress and disruption his policy is causing up and down the country and to explain himself to his victims, the more than 400,000 disabled people, as well as their families and carers, as many as 375,000 children forced out of their homes or pushed deeper into poverty and debt, and the foster carers and families of those serving in our armed forces who have also been hit. Those people are at the sharp end of the Prime Minister’s cost of living crisis. They are already struggling to survive and to do their best for their loved ones, yet they have been treated with callous disregard by this out-of-touch Government.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
Before the hon. Lady moves on from her remarks about the Secretary of State, is she really suggesting that he should not be discussing youth unemployment with other Heads of State? Is that what she will say the next time we discuss youth unemployment?
Rachel Reeves
Rather than going to a conference to discuss youth unemployment, he should be doing something about it in this country.
I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House will have a chance to meet some of the people who have come to Parliament today, many of whom have travelled across the country, to tell their story and hear the debate. But even as they got off their trains and coaches in London this morning, the Secretary of State was already scuttling across the channel on the Eurostar.
Steve Webb
My hon. Friend is right. The level of new housing association properties built was well below 25,000 in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. The Government are already building well over 25,000 social houses a year, and have further plans for expansion.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
Before I make my speech, let me say that I listened to the passionate remarks made by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), who was really unhappy about the impact of the benefit changes. However, perhaps he would like to speak to his Labour-run Liverpool council and ask why, when it received £892,000 in discretionary housing payments last year, it actually sent back £337,000. Perhaps he could take that up when he leaves the Chamber—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order—[Interruption.] Order. That means you, too, Mr Rotheram. Let us calm down. The hon. Lady has made a statement and I think Mr Twigg would like to have caught her eye, but it is up to the Member who has the Floor whether they want to take an intervention.
Stephen Twigg
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The hon. Lady did not show me or the House the courtesy of allowing me to intervene after she referred to something that I had said. Does she accept that the figures that she has given are from before the bedroom tax was introduced? This year, Liverpool city council will certainly spend the entire discretionary housing pot.
Mr Deputy Speaker
That is not a point of order, but it was certainly a point of clarification.
Mrs Main
As I was about to say, unicorns do not exist, fairies do not exist and—it does not matter how often Opposition Members say it—a bedroom tax does not exist. I found it very interesting when we all looked at our Order Papers yesterday and there it was: we were going to discuss a bedroom tax. Funnily enough, however, we are not discussing a bedroom tax, because it does not exist and it would be procedurally out of order for us to debate it. The mishmash of today’s debate has been rushed through because the Opposition realise that by closing their eyes and saying the wishful words “bedroom tax” they cannot conjure one up—it does not exist. If they consult Tolley’s tax guide, they will see that they are being financially illiterate—
Mrs Main
No, I will not give way. The hon. Lady can make her own remarks.
It appears that in trying to garner support for the incoherent policy that tried to level the playing field with the private rented sector—I thought that was a good idea as a Labour party policy—Labour started the process that should have been continued by ensuring that people paid for the accommodation that they were using. I have not heard from Opposition Members—perhaps they can illuminate the House and the public on this point during their speeches—what, if they choose to get rid of the inequality of a bedroom tax, which obviously does not exist, but let us go with the fantasy for a moment, they will do when they are in power. Will they allow the anomaly, or will they pledge, at goodness knows what expense, to reverse the proposals that they introduced in 2008?
Mrs Main
No, the hon. Lady will have her time at the end.
Mr Copley said:
“As a Labour politician one of the things that really galls me is that there’s this statistic that more council homes were built in the last year of Thatcher’s government than were built in the 13 years of Labour government, and that’s something I think as a Labour Party we need to apologise for.”
The apology needs to be made because the dearth of social housing that we inherited was a direct result of Labour’s inability in the good times to deliver sufficient adequate social housing. The Labour party should be ashamed of itself and it should apologise.
I do not think that the Opposition has a coherent policy. They want to penalise people in the private rented sector. They are not making any commitment to redress the imbalance, yet they wish to have what they see as a core vote that might be deserting them in droves. We helped the aspirational working class during Thatcher’s era under the right to buy, but unlike us, they introduced a policy to penalise only the private sector. Labour is the party of inequality, not the party of equality. I congratulate the coalition Government on all their efforts to level the playing field for more people both in social and private rented housing.
Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)
I invite the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) to come to my constituency and ask my constituents whether the bedroom tax exists or whether they are away with the fairies.
Mrs Main
I am delighted that the hon. Lady wishes to give herself another minute, although her colleagues might object. Would she like to explain how Labour was prepared to level a tax on the private rented sector and why they believe another tax is being introduced in the social rented sector when no such tax exists? Why are they shroud waving?
Sandra Osborne
The hon. Lady’s question has been answered by colleagues on numerous occasions today and it is an absolute red herring.
We can all accept that welfare reform is necessary, but it must be based on what is fair and what best protects the most vulnerable. In other words, it must provide a secure safety net. Plenty of people are plummeting to the ground right now in my constituency. The Government’s reform is based on pure populism; they are picking on the poor and turning one section of the community against the least well-off, many of them disabled, while having the bare-faced cheek to say that we are all in it together.
When was it decided that only those with means have the right to a stable and loving home environment, never mind the fact that smaller social rented homes are not available? I am tempted to ask, “Hands up all hon. Members who have at least one extra bedroom in their home,” or perhaps even, “Hands up those who have one extra house.”
The cost of living is the main concern in my constituency, and we all know that the use of food banks is rocketing. The local citizens advice bureau tells me that the number of people coming to it with problems connected to payday loans is increasing. I am worried about tenants getting into debt as a result of the bedroom tax, but, in some ways, I am more worried about the people who pay the bedroom tax. Where do they find the money, as they cannot possibly afford it? How many of them are sitting silently at home, feeling that there is nowhere to turn? It may come as a surprise to some Members who do not understand working-class values, but getting into debt or seeking discretionary housing payment, even if people are entitled to it, is anathema to many of them.
I challenge the Government to have the courage and honesty to admit that the measure is not about under-occupancy at all. It is part of a regime of sanctions on those who dare to be poor. The Government should also have the courage and honesty to admit that this is an attempt to shift responsibility for this shambles on to underfunded local councils and housing associations, which have been left to pick up the pieces.
Oral Answers to Questions
Anne Main Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Hoban
It is important to ensure that we get the right support in place for people. Not long after ESA was introduced under the previous Government, 33% of people with a mental health condition received the support allowance, but under this Government the figure has increased to 43%, so more people are getting the right support as a consequence of this assessment.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
Will the Minister encourage a scheme that Mind had—the “way to work” campaign—under which people with spasmodic mental health illnesses could work flexibly? It was not taken up as well as it could have been by employers, and it would help people who are assessed as having periods of good health as well as ill health.
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend rightly says that we need to find ways to help people with mental health conditions, and other conditions, back into employment—the work we do under the Work programme is part of that, but other interventions are also being made—because there is a strong link between work and good health outcomes.
Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Anne Main Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
The Bill moves into its Third Reading with—I believe—its fundamental principles intact. I thought that my hon. Friend the Minister of State’s closing speech before the votes answered, in detail, many of the questions that remained after the debate on the amendments, but now, on Third Reading, I think it important to make further progress.
The arguments that we advanced when we presented the Bill were first and foremost about affordability. Our main argument concerned the need to reduce the historic deficit left by Labour. As I have said to my colleagues throughout the coalition, at no stage have we made our decisions lightly. This is not something that, at the start, we would have wanted to do, and I want to come back to that point in a moment. We were left a legacy of disaster and spending that was out of control, and our priority must be to get that back under control. If we do not do that, the poorest in society will fare the worst—that is the main point to make.
Let me give an illustration of the point I was making. Under the previous Government public spending ran to excess, while the cost of working age welfare increased by some 60% in real terms, as has been said on a number of occasions. Money was poured into what became an over-inflated system; as my hon. Friend the Minister of State, has said, for every £3 taken in tax £4 was actually borrowed, with the result that we had a growing deficit. It was one of the worst deficits in Europe, if not the worst in the western world. We spent £170 billion on tax credits alone between 2003 and 2010. For all the talk about this being absolutely about people in work, 70% of that money went on child tax credits, chasing a target that Labour never hit, and that was payable regardless of whether parents were in work or not.
Mr Duncan Smith
No, I am going to make a little progress now, although I will give way later. I recognise that some who did not get a chance to speak earlier may wish to say a few words, and I want to give them a little time to do so.
The previous Government appeared to have no care or concern for the fact that more than £10 billion was wasted and lost eventually through fraud, error and overpayments, nor that the rest of the money altogether failed to meet its aim. There was already a problem with fraud and error on tax credits, but, worse still, the previous Government did not even record overpayments, so we have no idea to what degree that system was damaged. However, we do know—
Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Anne Main Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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David T. C. Davies
Put simply, the total amount of tax that we are taking from the rich has increased, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, and that has not been denied by any Opposition Member. The total amount of money that we are taking from the rich has increased, which means that the total amount that we have to take from those who are not so rich has gone down somewhat. That is how I would justify it.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
It might be worth reminding Opposition Members about the 10p tax fiasco that they imposed on some of the poorest members of my community. They have not been forgiven for it.
David T. C. Davies
I should also like Opposition Members to recognise the economic truism of the Laffer curve, which has proved that the more we try to tax the rich, the less we get off them. That is why so many people are queuing up to come over here from France at the moment, and good luck to them. We will have their money and spend it on less well-off people here.
I have listened carefully today to Opposition Members and I have not heard any of them explain how they would manage to maintain benefits at their current level or fund the increases that they want to impose. What would they cut in order to fill that gap? What extra taxes would they impose on people? Would they simply continue to do what Labour Governments have done since the time of Attlee, which is just to borrow the money they need in order to pay for projects that they cannot afford?
Opposition Members simply have no credibility left. Government Members are going to take a difficult decision, but with absolutely no pleasure whatsoever. We are doing so because what happened in 2008 was bad, but it was nothing compared with the financial catastrophe that would engulf us if we continued to spend £120 billion a year that we do not have.
Opposition Members and their many supporters outside in the unions and the pressure groups have complained about the bankers. I could complain about bankers as well. Why is it that these people want to put more money into the hands of the bankers by borrowing money from bankers, getting us more into debt and giving them greater amounts of interest? Who are the true friends of the bankers—the people who are trying to keep down their interest payments or the people who want us to be in hock to them?
I do not want to be a Member of Parliament who presides over Britain being turned into Greece, but without the sunshine. That is why I will vote for the Bill today.
Jessica Lee
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and he takes up the case on behalf of his constituent in this House. However, I put the responsibility squarely on his Government, the previous Government, who expanded the welfare state with tax credits and left people on incapacity benefit who for too long were never reassessed. That is unfair to those people and we need to recreate the entire welfare system to improve it.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
It is always worth saying that there is no Government money, only taxpayers’ money. It behoves us to ensure that taxpayers’ money is used as well as it possibly can be.
Jessica Lee
I agree with my hon. Friend and thank her for her intervention.
The welfare budget has increased considerably over many years. The Department for Work and Pensions already spends more than £90 billion a year on welfare for working-age people—£1 in every £8 that the Government spend. Limiting certain social security benefits to the 1% that is before the House today, and tax credits is a proportionate approach to funding welfare in the longer term.
My constituents in Erewash often say to me that fairness works both ways. One gentleman said to me that he is working around the clock and his wife has two part-time cleaning jobs, and that they are trying their best to keep things going. Like me, he wants to support people in this society who, for whatever reason, will never be able to stand on their own two feet and get work, but that was not his point. His point was about the standard of living of other people in the area on full benefits. He did not think it right that they should have a higher percentage increase than his family’s budget.
The financial mismanagement of the welfare budget by the last Government—increasing and increasing tax credits without the financial means to pay for it in the long term—has created an imbalance between families, and it is not the fault of those families; it is the responsibility of those in government at the time. The books have to be balanced and accountability is required. Between 2003 and 2010, Labour spent £171 billion on tax credits— more than 60% of the welfare budget increases. How on earth it expected to make that financially viable I simply do not know. At the same time, the number of the most vulnerable and of children living in poverty increased, heading up to between 2 million and 3 million. The last Government failed to tackle the cause of worklessness, and that is why we are in this difficulty.
I take full responsibility for every vote I cast and everything I say in the House—I am happy to do so —but I can reassure my constituents that I do not think anyone in the House takes these decisions on welfare lightly. In the wider picture, however, of maintaining the safety net of the welfare state, preparing people for work and setting them free from welfare dependency, today’s proposals are proportionate and necessary, and I will support the Government.
Universal Credit and Welfare Reform
Anne Main Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Byrne
My right hon. Friend is precisely right. That is why we are here to help the Secretary of State this afternoon by setting out some of the questions on which, if he was only a little clearer with the House, we would be happy to engage and help. One of the issues in which we share an interest is the way we support the enterprise spirit in this country. The CBI and the Chartered Institute of Taxation have flagged up their worry that universal credit will be a car crash for Britain’s entrepreneurs. The number of self-employed people in this country increased by 280,000 over the past couple of years and many people must now look to their own resources for work, but what is being prepared for self-employed people is frankly chaotic.
Mr Byrne
I will in a moment.
We have heard from the Chartered Institute of Taxation that the system proposed for entrepreneurs will require self-employed claimants to report their transactions each month and that they will have only seven days after the end of the month to file them. They will have to put all that information into a great big IT system and calculate their earnings using a system that is different from the one they use to calculate their tax bill. How on earth does the Secretary of State think Britain’s entrepreneurs, who are busy doing other things day to day, will deal with the new system? I thought that the Government were committed to cutting red tape, not swaddling entrepreneurs with it if they want any chance of help with tax credits. Perhaps the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) can explain a way through it.
Mrs Main
The right hon. Gentleman should take a little while to consider that not everybody who is self-employed is the entrepreneur he is talking about. The reason that degree of scrutiny is needed is that people who sell The Big Issue for a certain period of time can suddenly declare themselves to be self-employed, so the scrutiny is not something he should want to remove; it is a question of whether it is reasonable. If he wishes to help my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, he might like to propose a constructive way forward for how we can stop people abusing the system by declaring themselves to be self-employed when all they are doing is a minimal amount.
Mr Byrne
Members on both sides of the House want this to work, but if the hon. Lady looks at the evidence submitted by the CBI and the Chartered Institute for Taxation to the Work and Pensions Committee on Friday, she will see that there is now a real worry that this is going to be a catastrophe for the many entrepreneurs who rely on tax credits for help to balance the books at the end of the month. What I want from the Secretary of State is clarity about how this is going to work in practice.
This is the start of a whole series of risks that have been brought to the attention of hon. Members here and in the Select Committee. Flagged up in the evidence submitted on Friday was the decision to deny people a choice about who receives the money. I hope that the Secretary of State will reform this before implementation of universal credit, because many people who run women’s refuges say that the system is so badly thought through that refuges for women fleeing from domestic violence will have to close. In fact, Refuge tells us—[Interruption.] This is not scaremongering by me; it is evidence submitted to the Select Committee by Refuge, which says that the idea is so badly thought through that unless changes are made, 297 refuges will have to close. This is not scaremongering; it is bringing to the House’s attention information and arguments provided by one of the most important charities in the country.
Unemployment
Anne Main Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Byrne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and he has been a long-standing champion of the need to get young people into work and, crucially, equip them with the skills to succeed in the workplace, but I am afraid that we have a deficit of that from the Government. It is an embarrassment for the Minister that he is unable to tell the House how many people his schemes are getting into work. The Secretary of State appears to have so much confidence in the schemes that he cannot be bothered to turn up this afternoon. However, I want to make a more substantive point about the Minister’s flagship scheme.
Mr Byrne
I will in a moment, but first I want to make one point about the Work programme.
The Work programme is a new scheme that builds on the flexible new deal. We have said that if it works and delivers value for money we will keep it in place, but the Minister must accept that worries about the programme are growing. [Interruption.] I am delighted that the Secretary of State has been able to join us to hear this important point. The Minister for unemployment has repeatedly told the House that he cannot produce statistics on how well the Work programme is doing, and I completely understand his caution. I think that he is the only Minister who has been formally warned by the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, who last year said that the Minister’s use of figures was
“likely to damage public trust in official statistics”.
No doubt he has repented for that sin and is seeking redemption, and I understand that he apologised and is certain not to repeat the offence. If the Work programme was working, surely the Department’s statistics would show that more and more people were flowing off benefits and into work. That is a simple test we can apply, but the problem is that the figures do not show that.
Mr Byrne
Let me repeat that when Labour was elected in 1997, youth unemployment was about 14%. It came down to about 12% before the recession and then, yes, of course it went up during the recession, as all unemployment did. But rather than sit there doing nothing, as this Government have over the past year and a half, we chose to act. That is why youth unemployment was coming down before the election and why, since this Government were elected, it has gone up to record highs and has done so again this morning. That is surely not a record of which the hon. Gentleman can be proud.
Mrs Main
If the right hon. Gentleman wishes young people to be near the labour market, does he regret presiding over the lowest number of social housing units ever developed under a prosperous Government? That means that young people cannot have social housing at an affordable level and are therefore unable to access jobs in areas where there are high house values.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
I shall take no interventions, given the need for brevity. I share the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Oliver Heald) that Labour Members seem to have collective amnesia about exactly how much they frittered away during the prosperous times for this nation and that they now claim that only they know how to fix it.
I am amazed that that flexible old chestnut, the bankers’ bonus, has been wheeled out yet again as a way of solving all the ills. This is from a party that did not tackle bankers’ bonuses in the good times, when there were plenty to tackle, and seems to have found them now as a cash cow that can be used many times—this is the sixth or seventh time the Opposition have proposed using that source of finance. They did not tackle bonuses then, yet they did abolish the 10% tax rate, which they seem to have forgotten about. Many women and low-paid workers were on that tax rate. Indeed, when I was knocking on doors during the 2010 election, many people told me that after that rate was removed it was hardly worth them working. There are still people caught in that trap, which the Opposition have collectively forgotten about.
The Labour party has also collectively forgotten that companies have been disadvantaged by the regulations it put in place. For example, Bombardier could not competitively tender because of the regulations that Labour put in print, which resulted in job losses. Unfortunately, it also presided over the lowest number of social house starts for decades. I read with interest that it now proposes building 25,000 affordable homes—again using the bankers’ bonuses—but with no new funding of the sort that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government has rolled out. At least this Government are making new funding available, rather than relying on the ever-flexible bankers’ bonus.
Mrs Main
No, I shall not give way.
I am also amazed that the Labour party, while talking about wanting to attack bankers’ bonuses, was so lacking in its support for what our Prime Minister had to do last week, which was to defend London against being raided by the European Union. They do not seem to want to do that either. I can tell Opposition Members that many bankers and wealth generators in the City would otherwise have upped sticks and gone, and there would be no bonuses for them to use in this flexible way.
Labour Members are asking us today to believe their statistics—this from a party that spectacularly underestimated the number of people who would come to the UK through its failed immigration policy at only 5,000. If they looked back at the figures, they would see that they completely underestimated the number of people who chose to come to Britain to work, so I have little faith in the statistics they regularly wheel out. They left us with the highest number of workless households in Europe and only now are coming up with ideas on how to fix that. It bears no credibility. They propose spending bankers’ bonuses multiple times and have few other ideas on how to fix the failed and broken economy that we inherited. They left this Government the note stating that they had spent all the money, but they had in fact mortgaged it. They mortgaged the future of many young people in this country.
I have only a few seconds remaining. If the Government were not taking these tough choices, more and more young people would be looking forward to a fruitless future without hope of social housing or affordable housing, because, unlike this Government, the Opposition had no appetite when in government to tackle the problems, and now they carp from the sidelines and apparently come up with solutions to fix the problems they created.
Fiona O’Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)
I want to begin by answering some of the accusations made by the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke). I do not think that it is a price worth paying to see the failure of this Government just so that we can get any kind of political advantage. He should have withdrawn his remarks—Members were not laughing, we were saying that the Government’s plan is not working.
Jobs and employment are the biggest issue in my constituency and the latest figures now show that just under 2,000 people are claiming jobseeker’s allowance and chasing 191 vacancies in East Lothian. That means that if every Member sitting on the Government Benches went for a job, only one would stand a chance of getting one.
I also want to address the comments made by the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott). She spoke about the voluntary sector and her contribution contained a lot of sense and value. I concede that Government Members care about unemployment. I have no doubt that when the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions went to Glasgow East and saw what poverty and deprivation did that he was genuinely moved, but I think there is a real gap when it comes to introducing policies and systems that help and support people in getting out of poverty and long-term unemployment. The Government talk about the voluntary sector playing a role when they are cutting the public sector, but the voluntary sector, which played such an important role in the future jobs fund, is now less able to respond to people’s needs.
The hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) made the most unhelpful remark in the entire debate when she said that the Prime Minister went to Europe to stand up for London. I remind her—even the Prime Minister knew this—that there are financial services sector jobs across the United Kingdom, not only in London.
Fiona O’Donnell
I will give way, but I am going to try to be disciplined and not take the extra time.
Fiona O’Donnell
What I had really hoped for was a little humility. We have been preached to about humility, but the hon. Lady completely failed to recognise that there are financial services sector jobs in other parts of the country. My constituency is heavily dependent on the financial services sector in Edinburgh, and we will see what happens. The signs since this Government came into office have not been good.
The Government offer us the Work programme. I have been to visit the providers in my constituency. A woman opened up a spreadsheet and said she was not sure whether she was meant to show me it. It was, in effect, a profit and loss account showing at each quarter how many people the providers need to help into work to get a return on the payments from the Government. The most depressing thing was seeing the percentage they expected not to find their way in to work at the end of the two years.
My fear is that providers will not invest the resources in supporting that percentage, whom we could probably all identify when they walk in the door, when they are the very people who need more help and support to take them back into work. This is where the Government do not get it.
I remember during the 1997 general election knocking on a door and meeting a woman who was still in her pyjamas in the early afternoon and trying to convince her that she could get out, vote Labour and make a difference. She did not even have a reason to get dressed. When Government Members hear of a case like that, they think in terms of a drain on resources, and resentment and a grudging feeling come over them. They do not think about how to support someone like that and what it might mean for someone to have reached that low point in their life when they do not think that they have any contribution to make to society.
I am also particularly concerned about the increase of 55% in the number of young people in my constituency who have faced no prospect of finding work since this Government came into power. The future jobs fund gave them hope. Government Members keep yelling that it did not lead to real jobs, but the hon. Member for Cardiff Central, to give her credit again for bringing some reason into the debate, talked about the elements of the fund. She described eloquently how it helped young people to break the habit of not getting up in the morning, to gain self-esteem and to feel not only supported but understood.
We take no joy in the Government’s failure to address the needs of people who are seeking work, or to create the jobs that could lift them out of poverty. It is not a price worth paying for the political advantage that we are benefiting from.
Benefits Uprating
Anne Main Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Steve Webb
I am grateful for the bits of the hon. Gentleman’s speech that actually responded to my statement, because he appeared to agree with us entirely. I am grateful for his support for our increase in the basic state pension, our announcement on the state pension age and our changes on the mobility component of DLA. I also agree that we see the true colour of a Government when their back is against the wall. Notwithstanding the huge pressure on the public finances, for reasons he might understand, we took the view that protecting the most vulnerable was a priority. That is the true colour of this Government.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the distributional impact of the measures we have taken. I refer him to Chart 1.C of the distribution analysis published by the Treasury last week to accompany the autumn statement, which takes account of not only the measure set out in that statement, but the cumulative impact of all that we are doing. I am sure that he will not want to be selective and will look at the whole picture. Page 4 of the analysis includes a chart ranking people by what they spend, which shows that the proportion lost rises with income. In other words, the smallest amounts lost are for the lowest households and the largest cash amounts lost are for the highest households [Interruption.] Yes, cash is what matters to people.
The hon. Gentleman asked about work incentives, and I am pleased to say that with his support the universal credit that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wants to introduce will be the biggest boost to work incentives for many generations. Starting in 2013, we will be rewarding work instead of penalising it, and the best thing that we can do for low-income households is to enable them to work and to support them in that.
The hon. Gentleman did not mention the many things that we are doing for low-paid working households, such as the personal income tax allowance increases, the council tax freeze, the cuts in fuel duty and, above all, the low-interest-rate environment, which for households with mortgages is crucial to their living standards. I am grateful to him for the measures that he did welcome, but there was a lot more that he should have welcomed.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
I am sure that the £6.6 billion that the Minister has announced today will be welcome to many families in the UK, but I am extremely concerned that the European Commission is seeking to open that benefit pot to European benefit tourists who seek to avail themselves of it. That £6.6 billion will be in no way enough if we are to encompass benefits for European benefit tourists.
Steve Webb
I can assure my hon. Friend that my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), the employment Minister, has quite categorically stated that Britain does not believe in benefit tourism, and that we will do all we can to prevent it.
Pensions Bill [Lords]
Anne Main Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Glenda Jackson
Regrettably, I was not here for the opening remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore), but we are clearly of one mind. I share with her the total refusal to accept the Government’s interpretation of the situation in which we find ourselves. The Secretary of State made a passionate plea that the debt should not lay a burden on our children and grandchildren, but that plea would have played rather more resonantly with me were it not for the fact that his Government are punishing our children and grandchildren even as we speak.
My parents and grandparents had absolutely no qualms whatever about laying on my generation the burden of debt incurred by fighting and winning a second world war, and I have to say that I am extremely grateful to them for that. I also point out to the Secretary of State that in the intervening decades, the opportunities that were presented to me and millions like me in this country by, as my hon. Friend said, the introduction of the welfare state, had been not only unheard of but undreamt of by people from the social and economic background from which I came. Therefore I, like her, simply refuse to accept that the choices the Government are making in every single area of our national economic life will promote growth, provide a way forward or benefit this country.
I would be more prepared to believe that the changes to the pension system that the Government have introduced—which, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) said, are grossly unfair to women—were driven by the harsh economic climate, which the Government constantly pray in aid, were it not for the fact that that measly six months will save only £1.1 billion. The Government borrow something like 10 times that amount every week. I simply cannot make the figures match—but then neither can they.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
I struggle to see the hon. Lady’s logic in comparing a debt carried over on behalf of the nation for the second world war with a pension debt that results from the demographic fact of an ageing population for whom we must pay. Is she saying that £1.2 billion is a measly amount? If so, where would she find the other £10 billion that the Labour party are committed to spending by not voting for the Bill?
Glenda Jackson
I trust that the hon. Lady would allow me to use my own adjectives—“measly” is not a word that would immediately spring to my mind to describe £1.1 billion. The fact is that the six-month “pause”, which might be a better word to use as far as the hon. Lady’s view of the economy is concerned, will apparently save the nation £1.1 billion. That saving will not come in until next year, and it is doing nothing to fill the current hole. That sum is a fraction of what the Government are borrowing week in, week out, because they have markedly failed to do anything to create growth in this country. They have done little or nothing to stimulate our economy. The hon. Lady may smile and shake her head, but I was taught that the only way to get something is by earning it. That is the only way to settle debt.
Glenda Jackson
The hon. Lady is plucking fantasies out of the air—fantasies that the Government have been running for months. The money is certainly not paying to ensure that every child in my constituency has a school place, or that every elderly person in my constituency has secure meals on wheels, or that day centres for the elderly remain open. The Government have done nothing to encourage young people to believe that they have a future. Whatever they are doing with the money, they are certainly not stimulating growth in the country.
I must return to the issues that we are supposedly debating. The Government have imposed a gross unfairness on one half of our people: women. That unfairness is absolutely unacceptable. As I had occasion to say to the Secretary of State in an intervention, for many women in my constituency, the changes to the Bill are nothing more than a cynical attempt by the Government to re-attract the female vote, which, as they read every day in the papers, they are losing.
On the one hand, the Government have introduced this Bill, but on the other, they protest that one of their central planks is ensuring greater equality for women. They say that they want more women in the boardroom, and greater wage equality and equality of opportunity, but then they decide that when a woman has worked all her life—as has been said, she will probably have been in low-paid work, doing two or three jobs at the same time, not least looking after her family, including both children and parents—and when her employment potential is nil, she must struggle on until the state pension comes in.
I strongly and heartily endorse many aspects of auto-enrolment. I do have concerns that the Government will not introduce sufficient teeth to ensure that, if the existing pensions industry does regard auto-enrolment as a business that they would wish to enter, the proper safeguards would be in place to ensure that it remains genuinely competitive, open and transparent, so that people who have never before considered having a pension will not find—as most of us do at the moment—the pension papers to be totally obfuscating so that we are no wiser about where our money is going or what the charges are after reading them.
It will not be possible for me to vote for this Bill, but I strongly endorse auto-enrolment. I urge the Government to think again, even at this late stage, about trying to eradicate this gross unfairness from the Bill.
Benefits (EU Nationals)
Anne Main Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
It is delightful to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mrs Riordan. This is an important debate. I have a brief time in which to speak—I wish that it were longer—but I will allow my colleagues to make brief interventions, if they need to make a particular point.
Can British taxpayers, with a massive budget deficit of £143.2 billion, afford to be so generous with their benefits payment system to everyone who tries to claim? Are we the benefit pot for the EU or the UK? Do we, through our lax approach, encourage benefit tourism?
Under EU rules governing non-discrimination against other EU member citizens, many of our benefits are ultimately available to many of the citizens who have decided to join us from other EU member states with only a few exceptions for some accession countries. The amount of benefits being paid has risen enormously, and our own Chancellor, in his spending review, is looking at ways in which to bring down the welfare bill. I suggest that we start with EU benefit tourists and by closing some of the loopholes that have been exploited by the canny.
My colleagues will not be surprised to hear that I am no fan of the bloated, greedy, meddling Euro-state. I did not vote for it, and the power-creep that has gone on over the years is abhorrent to many older citizens who voted for a common market based on trade. In 2004, 10 countries joined the EU, and their citizens are afforded the same rights as those of other EU member states. Transitional measures for up to seven years restricted the right of freedom of movement for labour for eight of the 10 new accession states. Often called the A8 countries, they are the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Ireland, Sweden and the UK were the only EU member states to grant full labour market access to the A8 nationals. Other member states maintained their existing work permit arrangements or implemented a modified work permit regime.
At that time, we foolishly implemented a transitional set of arrangements covering a workers’ registration scheme. These arrangements have lapsed for the A8 group as of this year. That category of EU migrant worker will be able to claim jobseekers’ allowance, council tax benefit and housing benefit on top of other benefits such as child benefit. If the Migration Advisory Committee’s report of 2009 is anything to go by, we can expect an even greater call on our benefits now that the transitional arrangements have lapsed. The MAC report looked into extending the transitional arrangements for EU migrant workers until April 2011.
In 2008, the MAC reviewed the evidence on drivers for migration. Relative income levels—GDP per capita expressed in purchasing power standard—in A8 countries demonstrated the strongest relationship to immigration rates. We must learn from history. If there is a direct link, as outlined by the MAC in 2009, that people from poorer countries are more likely to come to work and claim benefits in Britain, then we must expect that when the current transitional arrangements for Bulgaria and Romania lapse this year, or in 2013 if we achieve an extension, many thousands of them will come over, too. We cannot walk into a potentially burgeoning welfare commitment with our eyes closed, and we must act to protect our public finances. We cannot castigate the previous Labour Government for massively underestimating the number of Polish migrant workers who would come to the UK and then put the blinkers on our own eyes when it comes to the A2 countries.
The MAC report showed that, relative to other A8 countries, Poland had a much lower GDP per capita than Britain, and so many Poles came to the UK to seek work. As the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), in his capacity as poverty tsar, has been advising the Government, it is no secret that nearly 90% of the newly created jobs have been filled by migrant workers, many of whom have dependent families back home. With an even worse GDP per capita for both Bulgaria and Romania, we must expect them to react to their circumstances in the same way and to seek a more affluent lifestyle on our doorstep.
We should have learned a lot from the failure of the previous Government to protect the coffers of the UK from EU migrants seeking, very understandably, to better their economic lot and that of their families, many of whom will have stayed behind in their mother country. I do not blame them; they are simply working within a set of rules that we have stupidly put in place.
Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)
This is an important subject, and I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. Does she not accept that in judging this in the round, we also have to take into account the benefits to our economy and to other economies of freedom of movement? Should we also not take account of the benefits that accrue to British citizens through having rights of movement to other EU countries?
Mrs Main
There are undoubtedly benefits, but we are talking about countries with different levels of affluence. Although we benefit from some hardworking migrants, we also have to open up our benefit pot. It is no good expecting our country to withstand massive cuts in benefits and services to try to tackle a budget deficit while, at the same time, handing out largesse elsewhere. I want to examine those failures and learn from them, especially as Romania and Bulgaria will soon enjoy full accession rights.
There is no point in any of us wringing our hands, berating the shortcomings of the previous Government and moaning that our hard-earned taxes are being sent abroad if we are not prepared to tackle this. I urge the Minister to take note and, hopefully, take action.
Child benefit is a notable example that has caught the eye of hon. Members in all parts of the House. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) for her sterling work in uncovering recent data that show how our child benefit is being transferred by EU migrants and their families.
In 2007, the Secretary of State for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond), who was then shadow Treasury spokesperson, said:
“There are 200,000 more British children living in poverty than a year ago. Child benefit is a vital weapon in the fight against child poverty. So why is Gordon Brown sending thousands of pounds of benefits every week to children who do not live here and who may never have even visited the UK.”
I totally agree, so why are we still doing it and why will we keep on doing it in ever greater amounts when the new A2 countries will equally want a slice of our benefit pie? We cannot just hope that other countries may not know about the apparent advantages of seeking benefits in our country.
At the time my right hon. Friend made his comments, the biggest Polish newspaper in Britain, The Polish Express, ran a story headlined “Benefit Hunters”, which claimed:
“The longer we are in Britain, the more rights to social security we are given and the better we are taking advantage of them.”
It gave advice on how to claim and described the case of one Polish migrant who was given a two-bedroom house shortly after applying to a housing association without any need to join a waiting list. The paper said:
“The formalities concerning an application for social security are extremely simple. Do not delay in submitting an application.”
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the NHS should also do more to reclaim the costs of treating EU nationals? Those costs can be a very great burden on hospitals such as mine in Treliske.
Mrs Main
My hon. Friend makes a valid point. I will touch only on some of the benefits, but the actual list is almost endless. We cannot delude ourselves and think that people will not know about the loopholes or the benefit pots. According to Martin Beckford and Matthew Day, writing in The Daily Telegraph in November 2008, jobcentre staff in Poland encouraged returning migrants in Poland to continue to claim jobseeker's allowance from Britain, rather than sign on for Polish unemployment benefit, which pays much lower amounts. A quick trawl on the internet shows how EU migrants can get a myriad of advice on how to claim a range of our benefits. We must be under no illusions. We are seen as a soft touch, and we will be exploited by those who have the full might of EU law behind them.
Perversely, we are expecting our own citizens to bite the bullet on cuts in order to help slash the massive budget deficit, yet at the same time we are widening the pool of foreign EU families who are eligible to make a claim from the UK benefit pot. What we save in one corner we pay out in another. Benefit payments to newcomers from eastern Europe and other parts of the EU are not specifically recorded by the Department for Work and Pensions, but unofficial estimates put the bill at a very conservative £200 million a year—that probably does not include the NHS—and growing. Teasing out firm data on this has been difficult. In a series of questions, I have been told by the DWP that the data are not recorded or are not available due to cost. However, I was pleased to be assured by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on 20 June that he has commissioned his officials to look at alternative ways of making the information available.
The child benefit bombshell has been widely covered in the media from The Daily Telegraph to the tabloids. I find it hard to look ordinary middle-class families in the eye, particularly families with a mum who stays at home, and say, “Apparently, you are so wealthy with one of you earning just more than £44,000, you must give up your child benefit so that a family in Poland, and ultimately Bulgaria, Romania or wherever within the EU, can claim it for children who do not even live here.” They are furious and so am I. It is estimated that 1.2 million British families will lose out under the new benefit rules. I am not happy that we are looking at this issue in this way.
Although in theory there is reciprocation, other EU countries have far lower benefit rates, and many EU countries also have tougher qualification rules. All those EU countries have some form of family allowance. If children qualify for benefits in their own country, why should our taxpayers be expected to support them? If we could afford it, I would rather that every family in Britain had child benefit as a right that was not means-tested—as used to be the case—instead of rationing it, especially since it now appears that any money that is saved is then swallowed up in our burgeoning welfare bill, which must include payments for EU children and families who do not even live here. If we are expected to make cuts, I want to cut back on this scam, which takes the UK taxpayer for a fool.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on her excellent speech. I do not believe in the free movement of labour across the EU. However, if we are to have this system and if we are to have reciprocity between nations, would it not make sense that, when someone moves from Poland to this country, they should be entitled to receive the same child benefit that they would get in Poland? In other words, they should receive the rate of benefit that they would receive in their home country. That way, we would have reciprocity across the EU, but we would not have to shell out billions to other EU nationals.
Mrs Main
My hon. Friend has anticipated my next point, but I think that he will be shocked at what he will hear. The figures speak for themselves. I have taken the case of one three-year-old child, because I know that there are various rules and regulations, depending on whether a child has a disability and so on. In the UK, child benefit for one three-year-old child is £87.97; in Poland, it is £14.99; in Bulgaria, it is £15.87; and in Romania, it is £8.67. Those are the equivalent figures for euros at today’s rate. We should ask ourselves, “If you could claim at a higher UK level, why wouldn’t you?”
Hon. Members might be surprised to learn that we are not only paying child benefit here, at our rate, if an EU worker is eligible to claim it, but apparently we are also topping up dependants in countries whose largesse does not meet the standards of our own largesse. We should be asking ourselves, “Why are we paying top-ups to less generous countries where the level of child benefit has obviously been set at one that the country deems acceptable?” When conducting research for this debate, I was staggered to be told only yesterday by the international child benefit team, which is part of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, that the rules allow for top-ups to be claimed to top up lower rates elsewhere. So, when one EU migrant worker is in the UK with a spouse working in their country of origin, such as Poland, and with their children receiving that country’s child benefit, we will top it up to the level of UK child benefit. That is madness.
Loopholes exist in the current benefits system to such an extent that EU migrants can always find a way around the system, if they are resourceful. As has been reported widely in the Daily Express and other newspapers, by declaring themselves self-employed Bulgarians and Romanians get around our weak transitional arrangements on restricting access to the labour market simply by selling The Big Issue and paying a nominal contribution of £2.50 in national insurance per week, which then opens up a lucrative stream of other benefits. The TaxPayers Alliance has described that system as a scam, and it is right to do so. We are the politicians; what are we going to do about this situation? It is a ridiculous state of affairs that I believe will foster social unrest, discrimination and most importantly resentment.
I know that fairness works both ways. The fact that so many newspaper editorials are addressing this thorny issue shows the depth of public concern, and I pay tribute to those newspapers and urge them to keep up the pressure. With their help, we can hopefully give Britain a strong voice when we stand up to this nonsense.
Let us not forget that we have the poor, the young and the elderly living in increasing poverty in our own country. According to the Poverty Site, some 13.5 million people in the UK—around a fifth of the population—exist on or below the poverty line, and yet we are rationing money to send it to even poorer citizens elsewhere in the EU. Sadly, poverty is always relative, and so our citizens will lose out.
A staggering case of opportunistic lifestyle enhancement was recently reported in The Economist under the headline, “Keeping the coffers shut”. The Economist reported how Galina Patmalniece came to Britain after 40 years working in Latvia’s factories and kitchens with only her Latvian state pension to support her, which was as little as £50 a month. She applied in the UK for a means-tested pension top-up of £133 for a single person. She was denied that top-up, but meanwhile she got council housing. To cut a long story short, she appealed to the Court of Appeal, which said that the Government were entitled to withhold benefit. The basic issue at stake was whether the conditions that Britain imposes for giving out pensions were compatible with the rule of EU law, which prevents discrimination on grounds of nationality. Broadly speaking, an EU national must be able to support themselves, so with no family or work and only her Latvian pension to support her, Ms Patmalniece had no right to reside here, although we made no effort to deport her. It is a common theme that Britain does not remove EU migrants who cannot support themselves, even though we are allowed to do so.
On 8 March this year, the Supreme Court found in the case of Ms Patmalniece that the British requirements amounted only to indirect discrimination. A majority of the Supreme Court judges agreed that our approach was reasonable. However, the European Commission might decide that it wishes to challenge that ruling and bring an infringement action against Britain in the European Court of Justice. The Commission has already written to our Government expressing unhappiness about our approach in this case as well as about other restrictions on the access of EU nationals to benefits. I believe that that letter has been described as being of quite a threatening nature. Will the Minister update us on that case? I believe that Britain will be firmly behind him in resisting dishing out benefit payments to EU migrants such as Ms Patmalniece.
I am sure that my constituents and hon. Members here in Westminster Hall today have read with interest articles in the Daily Mail and other newspapers covering the Dutch approach to pulling up the drawbridge on workless and benefit migrants amid angry allegations that labour migrants in the Netherlands are abusing the benefits system. In many countries, there is a rising tide of disquiet over EU migrant tourism. I hope that the Minister takes note and joins Holland in saying no to this sloppy and misplaced altruism. If that sentiment catches on across Europe, perhaps a bit of collective common sense will prevail.
Our national autonomy is being eroded by the EU, which must stop. There is an old adage that good fences make for good neighbours. How much more important is it for us to reclaim our boundaries and our borders? Tackling this benefits time bomb must now be a priority for the Government. There is no Government money, only taxpayers’ money, so give us back our say over how we spend taxpayers’ money, whom we can help and how we can do it. I am sick of having to find wriggle room within regulations that we find incomprehensible and that disadvantage ordinary hard-working families in the UK, who pay their taxes to fund services in this country and not to dish out benefits to some cash-strapped EU member country that has its hand out.
I know that I have given the Minister a lot to think about today and I am happy for him to write to me about any of the issues that I have raised. However, I want to hear that the Government are stiffening their resolve to tackle this problem, which I believe will only get worse and worse.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
I congratulate the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) on securing this debate on what she rightly says is an important issue, which I know is of concern to the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). He has responsibility for employment issues and ordinarily, he would have responded to this debate, but unfortunately he is unable to do so. As I shall explain, he is already taking steps to address some of the issues the hon. Lady raised today. As she knows, as things stand the Department for Work and Pensions’ benefit payment systems do not record the nationality of people receiving benefits. The reason for that is that nationality per se is not a condition of entitlement, and the system records conditions of entitlement such as being available for and actively seeking work, in the case of jobseeker’s allowance, or meeting contribution conditions for contributory benefits such as the state pension. So a person’s nationality is not, of itself, an entitlement condition.
The hon. Lady gave a figure—I think it was £200 million —but the truth is that we do not know what the figure is, which is a matter of concern. I assure her that Ministers are concerned about the lack of data, and we know that other Members share that concern. We consider it right that we should know the extent to which people from other countries are claiming benefits in the UK. I am therefore sure she will be pleased that the Minister with responsibility for employment announced at oral questions last month that he has commissioned work to find means of making information available about the nationality of benefit claimants. That information would help to inform debate on this subject.
To provide some context, I will discuss immigration more generally. The right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith), who is himself a former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, talked about the positive impact that inward migrants can have. We fully recognise that positive impact, and we will continue to encourage the brightest and the best to come to the UK to promote growth and enterprise here. However, we will reduce the degree to which we currently rely on migrant workers through a radical shake-up of the welfare system and by improving the skills of the British work force. Our goal as a Department is to ensure that people are better prepared, have more incentive and face more requirements to take up work in the UK, which will mean that demand for migrant workers can be reduced. Clearly, although immigration has enriched our culture and strengthened our economy, it must be properly managed.
Mrs Main
The Minister is making a valid point. However, when I looked at the statistics on this issue, I was shocked to realise that some of these migrant workers are hugely overqualified for the jobs they come here to do. I am not disputing that we are attracting well qualified people, but they are not qualified to do the jobs they are doing; if anything, they are overqualified for them. We have a problem, in that we have a dearth of people who want to do those low-skilled jobs, so we have qualified people coming in to do them. That is the problem and I do not see how we will solve it.
Steve Webb
No, I do not see how we can solve that, in the sense that, if we have a single labour market we cannot constrain individuals who bring particular skills and prevent them from doing jobs that are, as it were, less demanding than the skills they bring in. That is correct.
The hon. Lady raised the question of benefits claimed by the nationals of other EU member states working in the UK. I shall explain what they are. In preparing for the debate, I had to find out how the system works and was surprised by some of what I learned.
Under the freedom of movement rules, as we have just heard, many UK nationals are living and working in other EU countries and have reciprocal rights. Free movement of persons is fundamental to Community law; indeed, it is an essential element of European citizenship. However, the rights are not unlimited. Those who wish to live in the UK for longer than three months must be exercising a treaty right as a worker, a workseeker, a self-employed person, someone of their own means and self-sufficient, or a student. If EU citizens do not meet one of those requirements, they will not have a right to reside in the UK, and may be liable to removal. The Government are clear that EU citizens who benefit from the right to free movement must adhere to the responsibilities it brings and abide by our laws.
Mrs Main
The problem is that that list covers just about everything. As I have said, anybody who cannot do a particular thing can declare themselves self-employed by doing a menial job such as selling The Big Issue or another such publication. That is the problem: the list does not seem to prohibit anybody.
Steve Webb
When I looked at the list I wondered whether someone could say, “Oh, I am looking for a job.” That is not sufficient. The definition of a workseeker would be similar to the requirements placed on someone claiming jobseeker’s allowance, for example. I take the hon. Lady’s point that there may be loopholes that need to be looked at. However, if someone says they have come here to look for a job, it not enough merely to assert it; they have to provide evidence that they are actively doing so. Let me now make a bit of progress, as I am keen to respond to the points the hon. Lady has raised.
The failure of past policies has left many people continuously on out-of-work benefits for more than a decade, 90% of them on incapacity benefits. Many of our fellow citizens want to work but have not been provided with the help and support they need. The crucial point is that one reason why employers take on EU migrants is that many of our fellow citizens have not been effective participants in the labour market. The Secretary of State is determined to change that through the Work programme and universal credit, to try to ensure that when employers are looking at a list of potential employees, the UK citizen—the domestic worker—is a credible alternative to the EU migrant. We believe that the success of those policies will reduce the demand for EU migrants in the situation described by the hon. Lady.
On access to benefits, EU nationals have rights under the European treaties to enter and remain in the UK, including the right to seek and take up work. Where EU nationals are here in exercise of a treaty right, the UK, through its obligations under both European and international law, allows them access to income-related benefits. As the hon. Lady says, EU nationals who are working here have access to in-work benefits, such as housing benefit, council tax benefit and child tax credits. If they are unemployed and looking for employment, they may also claim income-based jobseeker’s allowance. There will, however, be some who have no intention of seeking work—benefit tourists, as the hon. Lady says—and they may try to access benefits. We do not believe, on the whole, that that is the main reason why people come here, but we accept it is a danger and it is one of our concerns.
That is why we have rules in place to prevent the abuse of the benefits system and benefit tourism. The principal measure is the habitual residence test, which ensures that income-related benefits are paid to people with reasonably close ties to the UK and who intend to settle here. Its underlying principle is that the taxpayer should not have to subsidise people with very tenuous links to this country.
Steve Webb
Will the hon. Lady allow me to make a bit more progress, as she has raised a lot of points and I have got only seven minutes to respond?
To be eligible for an income-related benefit of the sort listed, claimants must satisfy the two-part habitual residence test—I may be coming to the point the hon. Lady was going to raise. That requires the individual first to demonstrate that they have a right to reside here and, secondly, to show that they are habitually resident. Anyone who does not have a right to reside is not habitually resident, and is not entitled to any income-related benefits.
To clarify, the term “habitual residence” is not defined specifically in UK social security legislation. To determine actual habitual residence, decision makers look at a range of things that we think should rightly be taken into account, such as whether the person is returning to resume past habitual residence; attachment to and intentions in the UK; reasons for coming; employment record; and length and continuity of residence in another country. The information is gathered by interviewing the claimant, and decision makers must be satisfied on objective grounds that a person who claims income-related benefits after arriving in the country has genuinely adopted the UK as his or her place of habitual residence.
Steve Webb
Although the hon. Lady is right to say that a month enables someone to be considered, I have listed the criteria that the decision makers have to apply, and I suspect a lot of those would be hard to satisfy after a month. So, although that is technically true, I suspect that in many cases people have been here for a lot longer.
Child benefit, which has been mentioned, is clearly quite cyclical in terms of foreign nationals coming to the UK. The hon. Lady was right to praise the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who established through a written question that the number of families getting child benefit for children in Poland was, in October 2009, just under 23,000. However, the answer to that question showed that that figure fell to 17,000 in July 2010. I can provide an update today—the figure fell again to just over 16,000 in June 2011. There has been a 29% fall in the number of Polish people working here and claiming child benefit for children at home. I am sure the hon. Member for St Albans would say that that is 16,000 too many.
However, it is worth stressing that such situations are not static. They change, and in this case there has been a fall of more than a quarter. The reason for the payment is that it is only made in respect of UK national insurance contributions. That is an important part of the mix. We are paying the benefit to somebody who is putting money into the UK Exchequer through national insurance. We have a legal duty to pay at the higher rate. In his intervention, the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) asked whether we should pay at the Polish, rather than the British rate. The courts have determined that we have to pay at the higher rate. The logic is that the entitlement is based on UK national insurance contributions, which will be based on UK wages and taxes. Therefore, the parallel entitlement is to a UK benefit. I understand the emotional reaction that we probably all have when we hear that.
In the few minutes remaining I should move on to the question of EU citizenship and access to benefits—what is called benefit exportability. Since the UK joined the EEC in 1973, it has been part of the system for co-ordinating social security for people who move between member states. The rules protect UK citizens abroad as well as EU citizens who come to the UK. Every EU member state has exclusive responsibility for organising and financing its national social security schemes, and for setting out the conditions governing entitlement, provided that they comply with the principles of equal treatment and non-discrimination on grounds of nationality. However, there are EU regulations on the co-ordination of social security to ensure that, where someone has earned an entitlement, they do not lose it because they have moved between member states. That is to remove one of the barriers to the free movement of workers, which is one of the basic tenets of the EU’s internal market.
The rules set out under what circumstances a person retains, or can claim, social security benefits when they move between member states. In particular, the rules protect workers who live in one member state and work in another. On the question of adding things together, people coming into the UK may be entitled to benefits on the basis of their social insurance payments in another member state; and people going from the UK can be entitled to benefits in another member state on the basis of their UK national insurance. That is known as aggregation—where a person’s contributions are added together to give them entitlement. The country that pays, however, is still usually the country where the person is working or last worked. Again, that makes the point that the payment that is made is not necessarily something for nothing; it may well be something for something. In the case of a British worker, the contribution may have been made in the UK before they left, or, in the case of a foreign worker, in their home country before they came here. There is a reciprocal arrangement.
I turn to the question of topping up child benefit and child tax credits paid, for example, in Poland. Let us take the example of a family in which dad is in the UK and mum is at home with the children. If dad is paying national insurance and mum is at home, we would pay full UK child benefit to the family, in return for his national insurance. That is what he is paying for. However, if mum was working and therefore earning some Polish benefits, we would top up. Funnily enough, although people say it is strange that we are topping up Polish benefits, when we do so we are paying less money than when we are not topping up but paying the full amount.
These are clearly complex and difficult issues. Once there is a single labour market with free movement, a lot of things follow that are difficult to disentangle. However, I can reassure the hon. Lady that the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell is seized of the importance of the issues and, I hope, will be able to make progress on them in due course.
Question put and agreed to.