Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is one thing to get a job; it is quite another to get a job that pays enough to put food on the table. That is why the majority of people who use the food bank in the Rhondda are in work, which is surely a Dickensian-style disgrace. Is it not a particularly bitter irony that the Conservative club in Tylorstown in the Rhondda closed and is now a food bank?

[Esther McVey]

What we know is that we provide £94 billion in working age benefits. We also know that, for the extra people we have got into work, in-work poverty has actually fallen by 300,000 since the election. The Government are getting more people into work so that they can have a job, a career and a progression—they can move forward. The hon. Gentleman does not want to hear independent statistics, but that is the case. We have more people in jobs than ever before.