Social Security

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

As much as on one level I would love to say otherwise, with some reluctance I say that we will not oppose this statutory instrument this evening. However, just because we do not seek to block these paltry, parsimonious increases to some social security benefits, Government Members should not think for one moment that we think that these miserable, inflation-linked rises are in any way adequate or go far enough to assist those in our society who are in most need of help.

[Alison Thewliss]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the WASPI women are one such group who deserve a pay rise and deserve the money that they have paid in but have not received? Does he pay credit to the women who came to march in Govan a couple of weeks ago not just from Scotland, but from other parts of these islands?

[Brendan O’Hara]

I absolutely do. My hon. Friend and many other Opposition Members have been fantastic champions of the WASPI women. I pay tribute to the WASPI women—in my time as a Member of Parliament, I do not think that I have come across a more co-ordinated, invigorated group. Those who attended in Govan should be left in no doubt that we know that they have not gone away and that they will not go away until justice is done.

As far as the Scottish National party is concerned, the Government stand accused of deliberately widening the gaps in the social safety net. If they push on with the final year of the benefit freeze, they will do so in the full and certain knowledge that those gaps will get wider. As they widen, low-income families, children, the sick, the working poor, the unemployed, the vulnerable and disabled people will continue to fall through that net—the collateral damage in the Government’s ideological crusade to seek to balance their books on the backs of the weakest in our society. I believe that, along with the catastrophic Brexit that we are about to face, entrenching poverty across the UK will be this Government’s legacy. I reiterate that these cuts are not a necessity. This is a political choice. These cuts are simply ideological.

Almost two years ago, the Prime Minister said famously, in response to a nurse who asked why she and her colleagues had not been given a pay rise, that

“there isn’t a magic money tree that we can shake that suddenly provides for everything that people want”.

Really? No magic money tree? You could have fooled me, because as far as I can see, there always seems to be a magic money tree handy when the Prime Minister needs £1.6 billion to bribe English MPs to back her appalling Brexit deal. There always seems to be one when her Government need to find £1 billion to buy off the Democratic Unionist party in order to keep themselves in power. Of course, there is always a magic money tree around when the historically hopeless Transport Secretary needs to be bailed out when he—as we know he will—messes things up again. Perhaps a more accurate answer to that nurse would have been, “Of course there’s magic money tree but not for the likes of you and those others who need it most.” Perhaps an even more honest answer would have been, “Of course there’s a magic money true, and you and the millions of people across the UK hammered by this Government for almost a decade are that money magic tree,” because the billions of pounds taken from the poorest and most vulnerable in our society have gone to bankroll much of the Government’s programme, and it has left deep wounds across many communities in the United Kingdom.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

As usual, the hon. Gentleman makes an impassioned speech—I admire the passion he brings to this debate—but the SNP are running away from their responsibilities for certain social security payments that it is within their power to take responsibility for. They cannot even begin to put their arms around the administration of those devolved responsibilities until 2024. When they talk in such impassioned terms, we have to match their words, sentiment and passion with the reality of the actions of the SNP Scottish Government, which are lacking in this significant area.

[Brendan O'Hara]

That is the sort of patent nonsense I have come to expect from Conservative Members. The Scottish Government have spent hundreds of millions of pounds in mitigating the worst excesses of this callous UK Government. The bedroom tax, universal credit and carer’s allowance have all been mitigated by the Scottish Government. However, I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree that the Scottish Parliament is not a mitigation Chamber for this Government. As long as we are to be in this place and this Government control the vast majority of welfare legislation, this is the source of the problem. As responsibility for benefits gets to the Scottish Parliament, we will use it properly and in time, but my goodness I will take no lectures from the Conservative party about universal credit and welfare.

I reiterate the oft-made calls from the SNP Benches for the UK Government to end their deeply damaging and socially divisive benefits freeze. In the last three years alone, the value of benefits affected by the freeze has fallen by more than 6%, meaning that those who can afford it the least have been hardest hit. This is seen as one of the key drivers in pushing up the number of children living in poverty across the UK. Data from the Office for National Statistics shows the reality of the benefits freeze on something as simple as the cost of basic foodstuffs. In the past three years, when working age benefits have not increased at all, the reality facing families on benefits is that bread is now 11% dearer, sugar is 17% more expensive, whole milk is up 12%, tea and coffee are up 7% and butter is up an incredible 23%. That is the price increase since 2016.

It goes without saying—or it should—that poorer families are hit hardest by economic shocks. The poverty premium means that what middle-income families may consider to be a small economic shock, such as a rise in the cost of bread or milk, has a much greater impact on those with smaller incomes who have less disposable income. The Social Metrics Commission report on poverty in the UK published last year found that 2.5 million people were living less than 10% above the poverty line. Relatively small changes in their circumstances could mean they easily fall below it.

[Alison Thewliss]

My hon. Friend is making some very good points about the cost of living. Is he aware that the UK Government’s cuts and their restricting of the child element of universal credit to the first two children in a family mean that a single mum with three kids working 16 hours on the Government’s pretendy living wage will have to work 45 hours to make up the difference from the cuts?

[Brendan O'Hara]

I was aware of that. The statistics are shocking, as I will come on to shortly.

In this, its final and most punishing year, the benefits freeze will claw back nearly £4.5 billion. That is nearly £1 billion more than the amount for which the Government budgeted. Late last year, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that, by lifting the freeze a year early, the Government could take 200,000 out of poverty. Given the economic turmoil that is expected as a result of Brexit, the Government know that the quickest way in which they could get money to those who need it most would be simply to lift the freeze. It is not too late to do that. As we heard from the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), they could introduce primary legislation as soon as they wanted in order to remove the four-year freeze section from the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, and they could introduce a statutory instrument to uprate benefits ahead of April. Like the hon. Lady, I can guarantee the support of my right hon. and hon. Friends if the Government were to take that bold and imaginative step.

We said at the outset, back in 2015, that the imposition of a benefits freeze was morally reprehensible, but to continue that freeze in the face of the almost unprecedented economic uncertainty caused by Brexit would, in my opinion, be an unforgivable abuse of the weakest and the most vulnerable in our society. In his report of November 2018, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights wrote:

“Given the vast number of policies, programs and spending priorities that will need to be addressed over the next few years, and the major changes that will inevitably accompany them, it is the most vulnerable and disadvantaged members of society who will be least able to cope and will take the biggest hit.”

Worryingly, he also wrote that, on the basis of his meeting with UK Government officials,

“it was clear…that the impact of Brexit on people in poverty is an afterthought”.

If, back in 2015, the Government intended those receiving benefits to suffer the effects of austerity more than most, they have certainly succeeded. Recently published statistics from the Resolution Foundation make sobering reading. According to the foundation, basic support for jobseekers will be equivalent to 14.5% of average earnings in 2019-20, its lowest ever level. Only once since its introduction in 1979 has child benefit for a first child been lower, and for a family with two children, its value has never been lower.

We all know that the 2015 Budget contained some of the most punitive cuts in social security that this country has ever seen, which are now beginning to actively reverse previous reductions in child poverty. Today, in some of the poorest areas of the United Kingdom, child poverty rates are running at 50%. That is an unbelievable figure in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, although, sadly, it is all too believable in one of the most unequal countries in the developed world. According to Oxfam’s analysis of the 2016 Credit Suisse report, just 600,000 of the UK’s richest people are worth 20 times as much as the poorest 13 million combined.

It is predicted that, if the Government continue on the same path, 200,000 more children will be growing up in poverty by 2020. The Resolution Foundation has said that child poverty is projected to rise by a further 6% by 2024, which would mark a record high. I understand that the Government will soon publish some very damning child poverty statistics, but must we wait for those figures to come out before the Government start to listen to calls for them to change direction? According to the Child Poverty Action Group and the Institute for Public Policy Research, Government policy, particularly the two-child policy, will be responsible for pushing hundreds of thousands of children into poverty. When giving evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee in December 2018, CPAG said of the two-child policy:

“You could not design a better policy to increase child poverty than this one”.

[Alison Thewliss]

That is absolutely right. It is welcome that the Secretary of State rowed back on making the policy retrospective, but it will still have a huge impact on child poverty in the future. If it is unfair to some families, it should be deemed to be unfair to all of them, and the policy should go altogether.

[Brendan O’Hara]

Absolutely. I could not have put it better myself.

What the Government have created is a social security system that believes people can be punished out of poverty. They have created a system where benefits are fraught with the threat of sanctions, and where disability assessments are psychologically and physically distressing and involve an appeals system so complex and drawn out that they actively discourage claimants from accessing the support they are due.

This is not a system based on dignity or respect; it is a system where all too often compassion is the exception. This is a system deliberately designed to afford the individual claimant as little personal respect as possible, and a system deliberately designed to make the poorest and most vulnerable in our society pick up the tab for an increasingly incompetent Government as they desperately cling to power.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Tomlinson]

It is delivering record employment in every single region. Increased corporation tax receipts are the folly of the hard-left failed economic policies that deliver higher unemployment every single time, which is why voters repeatedly reject failing Labour Governments.

[Brendan O'Hara]

rose—

[Justin Tomlinson]

I will just make some progress.

Many speakers talked about poverty. Income inequality has fallen—it increased under the previous Labour Government. Rates of low income and material deprivation for children and pensioners have never been lower. There are 300,000 fewer children in absolute poverty and 200,000 fewer pensioners in absolute poverty. In the past five years food affordability has almost halved and is well below the EU average.