In-work Poverty

Debate between Christina Rees and Carolyn Harris

Thursday 28th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered in-work poverty.

It is a pleasure to serve under your excellent chairmanship, Mr Turner. This Government are failing to make work pay, and their cuts to in-work support risk increasing the number of working families in poverty even further. Over the previous Parliament, average real wages fell by more than £1,000 a year. Furthermore, 2010 to 2020 will be the worst decade for pay growth in almost a century and the third worst since 1860.

Cuts to universal credit that begin in April will make 2.6 million working families £1,600 a year worse off by 2020, making it almost impossible for families to work their way out of poverty. The Government’s advice to working families set to be hit by those cuts is to work an additional 200 hours a year to recoup the losses. That is neither fair nor practical for millions of low-paid families who are already working full time. I am delighted to have secured this debate, so that we in the Opposition can bring forward the reality of those in our constituencies who are experiencing high levels of in-work poverty and to call on the Government to scrap their cuts to universal credit before the cuts take hold in April.

We know from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission that 1.5 million children are in poverty because their working parents do not earn enough to secure a basic standard of living. Four out of 10 children in working poor households live in families where parents might be expected to enter work or work more hours. Owing to high levels of in-work poverty, the commission has warned that the cuts to universal credit will—in its words, not mine—

“make many working families significantly worse off.”

The commission has recommended that the Government reverse their cuts to universal credit, saying:

“These changes would have resulted in millions of families in low-paid work who are ‘doing the right thing’ and working as much as society expects them to, seeing their annual income fall by thousands of pounds on 1 April 2016.”

Despite the fears, the cuts to universal credit are still going ahead. It will be very difficult for many affected families to increase their hours of work and hourly pay to avoid big cuts to their incomes.

[Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend know that 167,400 working families in Wales will be impacted by these cuts and that 134,600 of them are families with children?

[Carolyn Harris]

I do, and not only Wales is affected; this affects every constituency in the country.