Welfare Reform

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Kwasi Kwarteng

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Charlie Elphicke]

Yes, I would. It is about fairness to hard-working people and their families. They pay their taxes and want to see those taxes used to help people escape poverty, rather than to enchain them within it. They want their taxes to fund doctors, teachers and nurses, rather than those on welfare. It is also about fairness to people on welfare and their having a greater sense of independence, rather than being locked into a cycle of dependence. I hope that the Northern Ireland Executive will think more carefully about the future, and fairness for working people and those not in work.

In the absence of any positive ideas from the Labour party, I hope the Government will consider new reforms like the one I am suggesting. It would promote the role of women in the workplace, increase simplicity and security, treat employed and self-employed alike, and ensure that maternity and parental leave is paid fairly and that the system is funded by the workplaces of the nation on a long-term sustainable basis.

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

rose—

[Jim Sheridan (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr Kwarteng, I notice that you have not registered to speak in today’s debate. Protocol suggests that, with the agreement of the hon. Gentleman who introduced the debate and the Minister, you can speak. Do you have permission?

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Kwasi Kwarteng

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

In my opening remarks, I made a wider point about the eurozone. This is exactly what goes to the heart of the issue. What those countries have done to deal with their fiscal crisis—I am not saying we should follow it, but we have to remember that their deficits are better than ours at the moment—is to make swingeing cuts to public spending in the form of benefits. We have not done that. We have spared our people that measure of severity, but we have to recognise that a large portion of spending goes in this direction and that the savings we are making are in the region of £3.7 billion a year.

Our coalition colleagues, the Liberal Democrats have said that the time frame is arbitrary. Some people have talked about 1912—more than 100 years ago—and some have talked about the last 30 years. I am not interested in the last 30 years. I am interested in what has happened since the financial crisis. I am interested in what has happened since Labour got us into the mess we are in. I accept that it is an international mess and that there is a world crisis, but the fact remains that, at £170 billion, this was a much larger deficit than that of any of our competitor or partner countries in the OECD. In that context, something had to give. We had to make some very tough choices about spending.

Let me consider some of the provisions. There is clearly a measure of disagreement over how we should approach this aspect of welfare spending. I have yet to hear from Opposition Members by how much they think benefits should rise. We have heard one suggestion, although admittedly it came from the only member of the Green party in the House. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) seemed to be saying that she would have raised the rate in line with the retail prices index. When asked how much that would cost, she blithely replied “£7.4 billion”—I am sorry, it was £7.6 billion—as if that were a snip. It is to her credit that she at least had the honesty to spell out what are, in my view, the disastrous fiscal implications of her policy. Labour members have given no such undertakings. They have made no such statements about what their policies would actually cost. They have simply wailed and moaned about the harshness of the Government, without in any way recognising the severity of the crisis that we face.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a question not just of welfare policies, but of employment or, in the case of the Labour party, unemployment policies? In my constituency youth unemployment rose by 52% under the last Labour Government, and rose by 36% in the constituency of the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain). Under the present Government, it has fallen by 11% in Glasgow North East. Does that not show that our war on unemployment is beginning to work, and the economy is beginning to heal?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I could not have put it better myself. My hon. Friend has made an important point about employment, which touches on a wider point about the division between Government and Opposition. The Labour attempt to create a socialist state by means of Government spending led to absolute disaster, as it always does. We will not be able to create jobs simply by expanding the public sector ad infinitum; logic tells us that that is not going to work.

The Economy

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Kwasi Kwarteng

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I can answer the hon. Gentleman very directly. With reference to our public finances, we have been borrowing money every year—every single year. It is likely that even if we are able to eliminate the structural deficit by 2018, this country will have seen nearly 20 years of continual deficits. This is an appalling legacy that Labour has left the country. Since the end of the second world war, we have never run 20 years of continual deficits, which we will do as a consequence of Labour mismanagement and old-fashioned incompetence.

[Charlie Elphicke]

In his praise for the former Chancellor, has my hon. Friend noticed that the right hon. Gentleman said in his memoirs not only that the Labour Government overspent, but that they ran a parallel Treasury operation while he was Chancellor trying to sort it all out as a night-watchman, undermining his work while he was trying to stabilise the ship?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

That is right. Many historians will be needed fully to plumb the depths of the goings-on of that Administration—the level of incompetence, the level of secrecy, the high spending, the culture of fear that prevailed in the Treasury for much of that time. It will need many people to investigate that.

It was always the function of the British Treasury, as my hon. Friend well knows, to have a very conservative approach to public finances. It was always the tradition that we in the British Treasury tried to match expenditure to income.