Oral Answers to Questions
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
None of that should actually happen. There are now loans available immediately, so if someone has been sanctioned they are immediately told about hardship loans, which are advertised inside jobcentres. Delay times have fallen to their lowest level ever; they are far lower than they were under the previous Government. If the hon. Gentleman has an individual case in mind, he should write to us immediately or give us a call and we will help to solve the matter straight away.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
T6. Will my right hon. Friend congratulate Tame Plastics and other manufacturing firms in Tamworth that are creating new jobs and apprenticeships? What can he do in areas of low unemployment to turn jobcentres into recruitment agencies for more and better-skilled roles?
Priti Patel
My hon. Friend is absolutely right in what he says. There is no doubt that a great deal of work is being done with Jobcentre Plus to support local firms such as Tame Plastics, not only in recruiting new employees but in supporting the skills base that important companies such as this need in his constituency.
Amendment of the Law
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend speaks powerfully about something she knows a lot about. The number of zero-hours contracts in the social care sector, and more widely across the economy, has grown. It is incredibly difficult to plan from week to week if someone does not know how much money they will take home or whether they can afford to pay the rent and bills and put food on the table. That is why more people in work are having to rely on food banks to make ends meet.
I move now to key reforms that have spun out of control under the Government. Universal credit was supposed to cut fraud and make work pay, but after five wasted years of this Government and more than half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money spent, it is being paid to just 41,000 of the 1 million people who were supposed to be receiving it last April. The National Audit Office has identified a fortress mentality and a “good news” reporting culture in the Department as key factors behind this fiasco. Last summer, the Secretary of State promised an accelerated roll-out plan, but we have yet to see much evidence of it—things could not be going much slower.
The Work programme—another failed programme—was the Government’s belated and inadequate replacement for the future jobs fund they scrapped, but it has failed to tackle long-term unemployment. Indeed, the number of long-term unemployed people has risen by a staggering 49% since 2010. It still sends more people back to sign on at the jobcentre after two years than it places in a job and has made no impact on the disadvantaged and high-risk unemployment faced by over-50s and disabled people. The introduction of personal independence payments has also been a complete and utter shambles, leaving sick and disabled people waiting months on end for support, while total spending has gone over budget by more than £2 billion. The roll-out of employment and support allowance was supposed to deliver big savings by helping more disabled people into work, but just 8% of people on ESA have been helped into work by the Work programme. Furthermore, analysis by the House of Commons Library shows that the Secretary of State has spent £8.6 billion more than he said he would on ESA. What a mess and what a waste—five years of Tory welfare waste we needed this Budget to put an end to.
The Budget was a wasted opportunity. We needed a better plan to make work pay and get social security spending under control, but instead the report of the independent OBR confirmed that all we could expect from the Government in the future was more of the same: more unplanned spending on social security and more failure to deliver promised savings on disability and sickness benefits, with the OBR noting on page 143 that
“projected spending on incapacity benefits, DLA and PIP is up by £0.2 billion a year on average between 2014-15 and 2019-20”;
more failure to deliver promised savings on fraud, with the OBR reporting on page 191 that it had
“revised down the savings associated with tax credits operational measures. These increase spending by £0.2 billion a year between 2015-16 and 2019-20”;
and more of the “good news” culture on welfare reform, with the OBR noting on page 192 that
“we have noted a history of optimism bias relating to reforms to incapacity benefits, disability benefits and universal credit.”
“Optimism bias” is a polite way of saying that we cannot trust a word the Government say.
In a moment of optimism bias, the Secretary of State promised that 1 million people would be on universal credit by April 2014, but one year on, fewer than 41,000 people are claiming it. In another moment of optimism bias, he promised that universal credit would be on time and on budget, but with delay after delay and millions of pounds written off, everyone knows that it is neither on time nor on budget. In yet another case of the Government’s optimism bias, they promised to back carers but then forced 60,000 households with carers to pay the bedroom tax, as my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) mentioned. Was it not optimism bias that led the Chancellor to promise to reduce the benefit bill, only for the Government to spend £25 billion more on social security than they set out to spend? And perhaps optimism bias is why the Chancellor broke his promise to clear the deficit by the end of this Parliament.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
Is the hon. Lady’s muddled jobs guarantee an example of optimism bias?
Rachel Reeves
Labour’s jobs guarantee would help 150,000 people get into work in the first year of a Labour Government. I am optimistic that we can transform the lives of young people and the long-term unemployed, unlike this Government, who have left them on benefits. Funded by a repeat of the bank bonus tax they abolished and by restricting pensions tax relief to 20% for people earning more than £150,000 a year, our compulsory jobs guarantee will help young people who have been unemployed for a year and older people out of work for two years. Should that not be our priority, rather than tax cuts for bankers?
The Budget also reforms the rules governing pensions and annuities. The Opposition have long called on the Government to sort out the failing pensions and annuities markets, which result in too many hard-working savers finding their retirement pots eroded by excessive fees and poor-value products. So we welcome more freedom for savers to choose how to access their money and plan their retirement. Just as with last year’s announcement, we find the same failure to ensure that savers and pensioners have the support and protection they need to secure a decent and reliable income and to avoid the rip-offs that are already threatening to create another mis-selling crisis.
Just this weekend, we learned that with fewer than two weeks before the reforms announced in last year’s Budget come into effect, there is still no telephone number for the promised advice service, Pension Wise, leaving hundreds of thousands of savers exposed to scams that could have a devastating effect on their retirement plans. Instead, we have the ridiculous spectacle of the Pensions Minister trying to wash his hands of the responsibility by warning of the rip-offs that will result—without doing a single thing properly to protect people from those risks.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
During most of her speech, the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) spoke of optimism, a word that might have been coined for her. She is never knowingly under-optimistic, and we will certainly miss her sunny disposition.
Five years ago, like the right hon. Lady, I was canvassing for election. At that time, Tamworth was a town in trouble. Unemployment was climbing to 6%, businesses, including well-known names such as Woolworths, were going to the wall and people were losing hope. If you walked from the great city of Worcester to Tamworth, and then down Glascote road, you would see in window after window repossession notices as banks took possession of people’s homes. The grisly legacy of the previous Labour Government was that people were not just losing their jobs or their shops, but losing their homes as well. Walk around Tamworth today and you will see a town that is rebuilding. Just 427 people in the working-age population—fewer than 1%—are claiming jobseeker’s allowance. Unemployment is falling faster in Tamworth than anywhere else in the country: the BBC tells us so. It also tells us that wages are outstripping inflation. Since 2010, 105 new businesses have been created in the town. New jobs and new skills are being created, and with those new jobs and new skills comes new hope. Jobs are transforming people’s lives, and this Budget was a Budget for jobs.
I should like to speak about some of the more detailed elements of the Red Book that will help people and their jobs in Tamworth. Every year, I hold an export conference at Drayton Manor to help small and medium-sized enterprises in my constituency to build the knowledge and confidence to export their goods and services. I am especially pleased that the Chancellor announced £3.5 million of new funding to help our trade with that great, unfathomable market—China. I mention that particularly because Birmingham airport has just extended its runway and it is now possible to travel long-haul directly to China, sending business folk to that place to do better business with it.
I hope that when the Chancellor considers that investment, he also remembers the £7.5 million that he has given to the northern powerhouse to aid its overseas trade delegations. In his next Budget, I hope that he will consider matching that funding to create a midlands powerhouse. Although we have in this Budget the £60 million invested in the Energy Research Accelerator in the midlands, Birmingham and surrounding areas could benefit from a midlands powerhouse strategy to help our economy to grow and prosper. I trust that the Chancellor will take that on board.
Also buried deeply in the Red Book is the determination to build up a study of regeneration on our larger estates in the midlands. That is welcome, but I hope that the Government, in their determination to look at the challenges that we face on big estates in Birmingham and Coventry, will also recognise that smaller towns in Staffordshire, such as Tamworth, Burton and Cannock, have smaller estates that face challenges and also require study and investment. I hope that the study that the Chancellor is considering will look at those smaller estates as well.
I end with a plea for a business in my constituency that benefits from the Budget. It is called Invotec, and it exports electronic circuit boards around the world—very successfully so. It employs 250 people in Tamworth and in Telford in Shropshire. However, while this Government and this Budget tear up more and more red tape, there is still a problem with exporting those circuit boards because they are used for defence purposes. No other country in the EU applies a licence regime for every circuit board that is exported. As a result, Invotec faces difficulty in selling to its clients. BIS undertook to review the situation, but the report that was due to resolve it has not been published. I encourage those on the Treasury Bench to find the time to encourage BIS to publish that report and that resolution so that Invotec can export its wares around the world and compete with our European competitors.
This Budget will be welcomed in the boardrooms and in the living rooms of Tamworth. It is a Budget for jobs—jobs that pay the mortgage, pay for the foreign holiday, and pay the taxes that pay for the schools and hospitals that we all want and need, and that must be fit for purpose in the 21st century.
DWP: Performance
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this Opposition day debate on the performance of the Department for Work and Pensions. I have to say that for a while I thought it would be a debate on the shadow Secretary of State, who is in her place. Although I have the highest regard for her intelligence and abilities, which will carry her a long way, hers was a truly lamentable performance today. It focused on who did or did not write letters to her and whether she did or did not make some incendiary remarks to the Christian left. But her speech was important, as is the motion, because they shine a light not so much on the state of welfare and work in this country, but on the state of mind of the Labour party.
Nowhere in the motion does it mention work, the engine of growth in our country. It is also the best mechanism to raise people up out of dependency and despair, on to the road to achieving their aspirations. In 2005, when Labour last won a general election in Tamworth, my constituency was bedevilled by dependency. Because the Labour Government failed to reform welfare and relied too much on public sector work and the financial services industry—and because they spent more than they earned—unemployment was twice the rate that it is today. Those were meant to be Labour’s good times. Fast forward a couple of years to the bad times and unemployment had risen to 8%. Firms were going to the wall, jobs were being lost and down the Tamworth road or the Glascote road, house after house bore repossession notices. Under Labour, people were not simply losing their jobs: they were losing their homes as well. That is the grisly welfare and work legacy that Labour bequeathed to us in 2010.
Because of the changes made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, my constituency has just 755 unemployed people today—1.6% of the working population. Marston’s, Jaguar Land Rover and John Lewis have come to town and Spline Gauges is employing skilled professional workers. When I held a jobs fair at the end of last year, 300 to 400 jobs were available and 276 people came along. There were more jobs available than people looking for jobs. BMW is now in town and Tamworth has become the automotive hub of Staffordshire, with an automotive centre at the Torc vocational centre. Thanks to this Government, hope is returning.
When I talk to businesses in my constituency, 75% say that they will expand and take on workers. They say that they are looking forward to the future and 80% say that they will stay in Tamworth. The one caveat they have is the worry that younger people are not sufficiently infused with the work ethic. That is a challenge for the education system, but it is all the more reason why we need to get the Work programme and universal credit going—so that it always pays to work. Young people will be enthused about work and businesses will feel able to take them on.
I urge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State not to listen to the siren voices of the Opposition—those serried ranks of overfed Bourbons who have remembered nothing from their history. Press on, because we are behind you and so is the country.
Jobs and Work
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Umunna
I will just make a little progress and I will give way in a bit.
As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said last week, under this Government the shocking fact is that for the first time on record more people who are in poverty are now in work than ever before. The minimum wage is important. It is set with an eye to the impact on jobs, but we want employers to pay a living wage. Record numbers are currently paid less than the living wage—I have talked about the 22% in Dover, for example. It is estimated that we have 5.2 million people earning less than the living wage, which is costing the Treasury, at the very least, £750 million in tax credits and £370 million in means-tested benefits. We want to do all we can to ensure that anyone who puts in a hard day’s work gets a decent reward for doing so. That is why it is disappointing to see nothing, not just in this Queen’s Speech but in all four to date, to incentivise employers to pay a living wage.
Mr Umunna
I thought that would rile them. I am going to get on, because I want to ensure that we get other people into this debate.
If elected next year, we would introduce “make work pay” contracts to encourage employers to pay a living wage and help businesses to raise the wages of millions of low-paid workers. This is fully costed and will be entirely funded from the increased tax and national insurance revenue that the Treasury would receive. Again, I encourage the hon. Member for City of Chester to encourage those on his Front Bench to adopt that proposal. If they do, we will support it. However, the silence we have heard from those on the Government Benches when it comes to doing anything on the living wage is quite extraordinary. People will remember the Prime Minister’s speech to London citizens back in 2010. In the last week of that campaign, he said he would do all these things to promote the payment of the living wage and he has done next to nothing—nothing—in office.
However, wages are one thing; insecurity at work is another, and never in recent times has it been so resonant an issue, as my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) said. I am not at all surprised by that, because since they came to office this Government have mounted a full-frontal attack on people’s rights at work. This is often talked about by Government Members as though it were a trade union issue, but it is an every person issue. Every single person in this country who works has had their rights at work attacked by this Government. They have increased the service requirement to claim for unfair dismissal from one to two years, depriving people of the right to seek justice when they have been wronged in the workplace; they have reduced compensatory awards for unfair dismissal; they have reduced the consultation period for collective redundancy; and they have watered down TUPE protections for people. I could go on. Most starkly, this Government have erected a barrier in the way of those seeking redress with the introduction of tribunal fees.
But perhaps the biggest symbol of insecurity is the extensive use of zero-hours contracts in 2014. The Office for National Statistics estimates that there are 1.4 million zero-hours contracts in use right now.
Christopher Pincher
I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Just in case his Front-Bench team want to prompt him with statistics, my constituency is Tamworth.
The hon. Gentleman talked about the importance of having a job instead of no job. Has he had correspondence with Labour-run Liverpool council or Labour-run Newham council, which make extensive use of zero-hours contracts?
Mr Umunna
What I have said time and time again in this House when we have debated zero-hours contracts—I will come to this point in a moment—is that the Opposition are not opposed in principle to any use of zero-hours contracts. The question is: what are the Government going to do about their exploitative use? What they have announced so far comes nowhere near close to what we have proposed to deal with the exploitative use of such contracts.
Zero-hours contracts do not oblige employers to offer guaranteed hours of work to their workers. Sure, some workers—it is for this reason that we do not oppose zero-hours contracts in principle—choose the arrangement because they like the flexibility, but for many it leaves them subject to the whim and demands of their employer to work at short notice, promoting insecurity. These arrangements make it almost impossible to own a home, save for a pension or plan family life.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow a fellow Staffordshire Member to speak in the Queen’s Speech debate on jobs, particularly on what is, of course, a great day for jobs and for the job prospects of millions. It may not be such a good day for the job prospects of the Opposition Front-Bench team, which may be why they have spent rather less time than they might have done talking about today’s good news.
Today is good news for my town, and this Queen’s Speech is good news for Tamworth. The situation in which we now find ourselves compared with the situation in 2010 when we had our first Queen’s Speech could not be starker. In 2010, at the end of the last Labour Government, the unemployment rate in Tamworth was running into double digits; today, we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country. In 2010, at the end of the last Labour Government, one could walk down the Glascote road and see repossession notices on window after window as mortgage companies foreclosed on properties. Under the last Labour Government, people were losing not just their jobs, but their family homes. Those notices are now gone; growth is returning; hope is being restored. In my town, Jaguar Land Rover is recruiting; BMW is recruiting; John Lewis is recruiting. They are recruiting skilled workers because our educational outcomes are improving, with GCSE results going up, and the Torc centre has been named the automotive hub for Staffordshire.
I want to speak about this Queen’s Speech in relation to jobs, and I shall make three particular points. I am glad that Her Majesty made it clear that her Government will continue to cut taxes in order to increase people’s financial security. I hope that those tax cuts will also include business tax cuts—cuts in corporation tax and cuts in national insurance contributions. Small businesses are the engines of growth in this country—not Governments, not multinationals, but small businesses up and down the country. We need to reduce the burden of taxation on them so that they can expand, invest and create more jobs.
I was also pleased to hear the Secretary of State talk about deregulation and cutting red tape. We have to get on and go even further. I rather hope that the Government will look at regulation as if it were a tax. A small business man may have to juggle the responsibilities of being IT director, finance director and HR director with the all-important task of being sales director. Any Government activity that detracts from the ability to focus on selling or any Government activity that is a tax on time is a tax on business—and it is in those terms that we should think of regulation. I am astonished that we still have so many regulations. There is even a regulation on how to build a staircase. It seems to me that if we were to get rid of that regulation, carpenters up and down the country would not be left helpless. We do not need many of the regulations under which businesses still appear to labour, so I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will continue his work on that.
I was pleased to see further help being given to the exploitation of our shale gas opportunities. It is unfortunate that the Labour Opposition seem to blow hot and cold on shale gas. In the Finance Bill Committee, the Front-Bench team did not seem to know quite what they wanted with respect to shale gas. I believe that shale gas opportunities in our country could create between 60,000 and 70,000 new jobs. It could create billions of pounds of extra revenue to the Exchequer, which could be invested in infrastructure, creating even more jobs. If the Opposition are serious about the cost of living challenges facing our country, they should surely embrace a resource that will help to even out the cost of our energy. The fact that they seem to refuse to do so seems to make their position illogical.
Christopher Pincher
I will not. If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, many Members want to speak: they have things to say—or think they have things to say—and they should be allowed to say them.
In conclusion, this Queen’s Speech helps my town. It drives growth, it drives opportunity and it drives forward our long-term economic plan—and we are the only Government, the only party, who seem to have one.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
I support the Queen’s Speech and, in particular, the work of the Department for Work and Pensions, which is engaged in nothing less than a moral crusade, a war on unemployment, a war for work and a war to defeat poverty. We all know that the best way to cure deprivation is a job and the best way to reduce poverty is work. Today, I have heard so much from the Labour party about how the Government do not care enough about the least well-off. As Labour Members talk about the ills of everything, they remind me of Jack Frost denying the coming of spring, yet each day the sun rises that bit higher and shadows are thrown back that bit further as the economy and employment continue to improve and as unemployment continues to fall.
The numbers on poverty are encouraging, too. Let us be honest. In the previous Parliament, under the last Labour Government, poverty rose. It is falling under the Conservatives. Under Labour, child poverty rose. It is falling under the Conservatives. Under Labour, inequality rose and it has been falling under the Conservatives. Before the crash, under Labour, 9.8% of people were reporting that they did not have enough money to buy food, according to OECD figures. Today, the figure is 8.1%. That is still too high but it is moving in the right direction. I hope that food poverty will continue to fall under this Government, who are engaged in a crusade against poverty, want and need because they believe in the power, importance and value of work, and the poverty-fighting aspects and dignity that work can bring.
Under Labour, youth unemployment rose and it has been falling under the Conservatives. Under Labour, economic inactivity—people doing nothing—rose and it has been falling under the Conservatives. Under Labour, long-term unemployment rose and it has been falling under the Conservatives. However, it is not enough. I have a vision of the future that we can build under a Conservative Government after 2015: a Britain moving further towards economic success and a work revolution, particularly through the promotion and fostering of small businesses, and through making it easier to have a light-touch regulatory system where one can set up an enterprise at no cost. I hope that the small business Bill will deal with that.
It is important that we give young people a better future. Under Labour, nearly 2 million more people went into renting. Young people’s futures were stolen by Labour’s buy-to-let policy and its promotion of buy-to-let landlords. That was a disgrace. It was wrong that, in 2000, 2 million households were in rent and that, by the time Labour left office, about 3.4 million were in rent. That took away the futures of our young people. We should give them their futures back, so I want more action to disincentivise buy-to-letting—it is too incentivised today through the tax system—and to incentivise owner-occupation. We should give back to our young people the chance, hope and aspiration that owning one’s home brings, which the previous Government took away. It was wrong. It was a shame for Labour to do that. We need to promote work for our young people. We need to promote home ownership and owner-occupation for our young people to give them those things. We need to build a society that is fairer and more just.
I have powerfully made the case for tackling tax avoidance. We must tackle want through welfare reform. We must tackle welfare tourism, too. It is important that we make our borders secure to give our young people a greater chance. For the Labour party, borders and immigration are just issues to be discussed at a coffee morning. Those issues involve the hopes, security and futures of our young people, a generation who were sold the pass by the previous Government. This Government are looking after them.
We need to reform zero-hours contracts, which the previous Government did nothing about.
Christopher Pincher
Does my hon. Friend agree that, although we do need to reform zero-hours contracts, only very few people on them say they do not get enough hours of work?
Charlie Elphicke
I agree. For me, this is about fairness and justice and ensuring there is flexibility while also protecting people. Labour did not do that, but this Government are doing it. That is very important, and social justice lies at the heart of so much of what we are doing.
We need to look after savers. There are too many zombie accounts—too many zombie ISAs, too many savers being taken advantage of. That was allowed under the previous Government. I say we should give consumers and savers a fair and just deal.
There should be more competition in the power markets, and our water bills should be fairer. I have made that case before, and I am glad to see that Ofwat has been listening and has made a stronger settlement for consumers in the 2015-20 period.
There must also be fairness and justice to our way of life. We need to make our Supreme Court supreme. We need to reform human rights legislation, which has too often gone wrong and too often promotes unfairness and injustice. That is the kind of vision a Conservative Government could build after 2015, and it is one I look forward to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mrs Helen Grant)
We do not have any plans to introduce legislation, which is what I am constantly asked about. We want all the various organisations and events as well as everyone else connected with ticketing to look at the facilities that are available and I am confident that that will happen so that people can enjoy events in the right way and access tickets at a fair and reasonable price.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
T4. In a few weekends’ time, Tamworth council will hold its 10th St George’s day festival, which is a great day out for all the family and a boon to local businesses. Feel free to come along, Mr Speaker, if you wish. Will my hon. Friend support that initiative and encourage other local authorities to follow Tamworth’s lead, which makes the best use of our heritage assets and encourages local people to take a greater interest in the local history and traditions?
Food Banks
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Esther McVey
Tomorrow, when Hansard comes out, we can read the full explanation, because hon. Members probably do not want me to go through it again. Actually, it was because of the crash, the overspend, the personal debt and the public debt left to us by those on the Opposition Benches.
Another issue that has been raised is zero-hours contracts. They happened under Labour: the numbers in 2013 are the same as the numbers in 2000. In fact, the number of zero-hours contracts went up by 75% from 2005 to 2009, something that those on the Opposition Benches did absolutely zero about. It is the Leader of the Opposition’s Doncaster council that presides over the biggest number, within his council. Again, there is a lot of fluster and a lot of bluster. The Opposition did nothing in government and they are doing nothing to control their Labour councils, yet we are now picking up the pieces.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has spoken eloquently about the price of Labour. Is she aware that in 2009 one could walk down Glascote road, where my food bank is situated, and see repossession notices in window after window as house after house was taken away by banks that foreclosed on them? The grisly legacy of that lot was not just a loss of jobs but the loss of homes too.
Esther McVey
The Opposition like to forget all about that. The industry I know most about is probably the construction industry, which was brought to its knees in 2007 under the guidance of those on the Opposition Benches. Many industries had a tough time pre-2010. That is when it all happened. Equally, the Opposition are so bad with numbers they do not understand that there needs to be a change of gear to rebalance an economy and change things to get back on track. It does not happen overnight; it happens over a long period of time. Something to ponder on for a second is that it was the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), who said that the Opposition want to be tougher on benefits and do more than we are doing. I wonder how Opposition Members feel about that and whether they believe that use of the Trussell Trust would be higher or lower were that to happen.
I will come to a close now. [Interruption.] Sadly, there is chanting from the Opposition. I find how the Opposition left this country—in a vulnerable position—a really sad moment. [Interruption.]
Jobs and Business
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
It is a great honour to speak in this Gracious Speech debate on jobs, and a particular honour and pleasure to be called first after the dazzling performances on both Front Benches. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), the shadow Secretary of State, who made a typically assured and polished speech—as I am sure his Wikipedia page will shortly remind us.
I shall bear in mind your words of wisdom, Mr Deputy Speaker, and not speak for too long. I am heartened by the fact that you have not set a time limit, because on the last three occasions when I have spoken in the Chamber, I have been given just three minutes in which to do so. That certainly focuses the mind, but I assure you and the House that I shall not be speaking for three minutes or, indeed, for three hours.
I want to speak about the issue of jobs, which is important to my constituents in Tamworth. Notwithstanding the rather gloomy words of the shadow Secretary of State, and the collapse last December of a company called Drive Assist, we in Tamworth have been heartened by a downward trajectory in joblessness. I think that that will be enhanced and encouraged by the measures announced in the Gracious Speech, particularly the proposal to offer an employment allowance towards national insurance, which I am pleased to note that the shadow Secretary of State seems to support. It means that small businesses up and down the country, from Redruth to Redcar—including, importantly, businesses in Tamworth, Fazeley and the district of Lichfield—will be exempt from national insurance, which will enable them to grow and employ more people. I think that the measure will also help us to rebalance our economy, moving back from the over-reliance on the financial services sector and the public sector that was so beloved of the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) towards a more sustainable, broad-based private sector—a sector that contracted by some 730,000 places under the last Labour Government.
I was also heartened by the announcement of a deregulation Bill, because regulation is, after all, a form of tax. A small business man must be not just his firm’s managing director and sales director, but its human resources director, logistics director, financial director and IT director. Any piece of bureaucracy and administration, even a small piece, can add to the distraction and detraction from the time when he should be growing his business and selling.
Mr Kevan Jones
One example of deregulation in the Queen’s Speech is the removal of health and safety legislation relating to sole traders. Can the hon. Gentleman explain how the economy will be boosted by the exclusion of sole traders from such legislation? Will that make the workplace safer for them?
Christopher Pincher
A sole trader will be able to spend more time finding and doing work and making money, on which he will then pay tax to the Exchequer. I think that this is a very worthwhile regulatory change. I am sure that, as an old hand in the House, the hon. Gentleman will have heard many Governments down the years say that they will deregulate. I only hope that this particular Bill will have real teeth, will do what it says on the tin, and will enable business men to spend more time doing business rather than administrating.
Mr Jones
Would the hon. Gentleman be happy for a sole trader such as a plumber or even an electrician who had been allowed to have no regard for health and safety legislation to come into his home? Will this really make any difference to economic growth, and will it make the safety of the public and that individual any greater?
Christopher Pincher
I hope that it will. We shall see. However, there is certainly an argument for deregulating, and as the hon. Gentleman surely knows, the Bill will need to do what it says on the tin.
The Queen’s Speech also refers to measures to support intellectual property. If we are to focus on and support the extremely important design businesses in our country, we need to help them to protect their intellectual property from countries and businesses that would rather borrow, steal and copy knowhow than buy it.
I hope that the measures will help my constituent Mr Ken Clayton, a photographer who fears that changes proposed, he says, by civil servants will mean that photographs on Facebook and on BBC websites will be automatically stripped of their metadata and will become “orphan works”. As a result, he says,
“individuals and companies will be free to use such photographs with no reference to the person who took the photographs and will be able to license them without any payment to the photographer.”
I hope that when we come to debate the Bill, Mr Clayton will be reassured by it.
The Secretary of State, who is no longer in the Chamber, made a very balanced speech about immigration and the role that it plays in relation to jobs. Although the last Government created many jobs—some 1.5 million, I believe—a staggering 98.5% were soaked up by migrant labour. If we are to get the many people in the country who are trapped in dependency back into work, or in many instances into work for the first time, we must not only reform welfare so that it will always pay to work, but deter those who may wish to come to this country and provide a low-cost alternative, which would be a cost to our work force, and would put a strain on our infrastructure, services and housing, which would be a cost to the taxpayer.
I hope that, while the Opposition may ask some searching questions when the immigration Bill is debated—as they have tried to do this morning—they will support it in the end. I think that if they do not, they will find themselves on what the broad mass of the British people consider the wrong side of the argument.
The Secretary of State referred to the importance of infrastructure. I am pleased to note that the Energy Bill is to be carried over. After a decade of neglect, it is essential for us to invest in our energy infrastructure—in power stations, especially nuclear stations, and in the transmission infrastructure that conveys energy around the country. It is important for investors to see that both major parties in the House, and indeed our Liberal Democrat coalition colleagues, support the regulatory system.
Meg Hillier
The hon. Gentleman has made a good point, but does he not agree that the withdrawal of some of the potential funders of our future nuclear provision was partly caused by wobbles in the coalition Government on this issue? Has he any stronger messages for his coalition partners?
Christopher Pincher
That is rather rich coming from the hon. Lady, given that for years there was no proper investment in our energy infrastructure and a moratorium on the building of a fleet of new nuclear stations. I hope that the time that it has taken to get the Energy Bill into this House and then into the other place is symptomatic of a desire on both sides of the House to build a robust Bill that will stand the test of time. We need it to make clear to investors that the regulatory changes we have made and the framework we have established will not change, and that they can put their money behind it.
I also hope that the Bill will help the shale gas industry and bust the myths surrounding it, because shale gas is capable of creating create new jobs in our country. Providers such as Cuadrilla say that they want more than an end to the moratorium, which has in fact now ended, and a new licensing round, which is to take place. They also want the Government to support their reasonable planning applications. That will mean we do not have so much wrangling about planning, so that exploratory drilling can be done to find out whether we have beneath our feet 200 trillion cubic feet of shale gas—perhaps there is more—which will be enough to cater for our needs for a century. That would help reduce our exposure to the volatility in international hydrocarbon markets, and would mean we had stable energy prices for domestic consumers and businesses, which would be good for jobs.
I will not end my speech without mentioning High Speed 2, to which the shadow Secretary of State referred, calling for the project to be implemented more swiftly. There will be time enough to discuss the hybrid Bill and its provisions. There is no doubt that the development of HS2 as a major infrastructure project will create jobs—if we shift concrete up and down the country, we will create jobs—but I trust the Government will also recognise the jobs and businesses that may be damaged by HS2: those that are in its direct route. In my constituency there are many such companies and businesses, including Joy McMahon’s racing stables, Packington hall farm and manor, which has been managed by the Barnes family for generations, and Jonathan Loescher’s accounting businesses. These are all small businesses, and they are all now blighted by the proposals to build that railway line. I therefore hope the Government will introduce their HS2 paving Bill swiftly and ensure that it contains clear, quick and commensurately generous compensation measures so that such businesses in my constituency—and in that of my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), who spoke eloquently and passionately about HS2 yesterday—are properly compensated.
With that caveat, I shall conclude by saying I welcome the job provisions in the Gracious Speech. They will contribute to the development of a more modern and flexible work force in this country. They will ensure that we have the skills for work and the right attitude to work, and I trust they will bring forward another army of entrepreneurs who want to work for themselves.
Mr Byrne
Apprenticeships quadrupled during our time in office. In the decade before the crash, we achieved rising productivity and rising wage growth. That is why wages were so much higher when we left office than when we began. Because we invested in skills, our record on rising wages was beaten only by Ireland and Australia. The Government should be building on that record, not watering it down.
Mr Byrne
I am going to move on quickly because I need to refer to some contributions to the debate.
The price that is being paid by our constituents, including our young people, has been well set out. My hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) spoke eloquently, with force and power, about the price being paid by young people and the long-term damage that is being confronted. Some of my colleagues, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), face very high levels of youth unemployment in their constituencies. To echo the substance of the argument made by my hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mark Hendrick), we need more apprenticeships, not least because in many parts of our country right now—in Yorkshire, the north-east and the north-west—employers are saying that they cannot get skilled workers at a time when unemployment is higher than it was at the last election. That shows that the system put in place by this Government is not working.
We need to do more for the long-term unemployed. We also need to do more to support women back into work. In a brilliant speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) argued powerfully that women are not being supported into work at the rate we would like. The shambles that we saw in the House yesterday on child care policy did not give us much confidence that things are going to change. The price of failure is being paid by families and the 2.5 million people denied the chance to work. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling). As we heard in the powerful speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), very many families are contending with falling wages and rising living costs because there is simply not enough work to go round.
Perhaps worst of all for the long term is the price being paid through rising levels of child poverty, about which my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow spoke eloquently. We lifted 1 million children out of poverty during our time in office, and now most commentators agree that all that progress will be wiped out by the decisions of this Government. It is record of shame that we will hang around their neck at the next election. That is why it is such a tragedy that at a time when so many people are paying so much, the Government singled out as their chief priority giving a £2,000-a-week tax cut to millionaires.
We will look carefully at some of the Bills in the Queen’s Speech. We will study with close attention the proposals on mesothelioma. I will heed the words and sentiments expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham. The consultation that we undertook in February 2010 is the benchmark against which we will judge the Bill, and if we find it wanting we will oppose it.
We will look closely at the plans for flat-rate pensions. We support the principle of a flat-rate pension, which locks in the changes we made in office that lifted so many pensioners out of poverty. We hope, however, that the Government will acknowledge that many people’s income replacement rate will fall very low under these proposals. Unless there is reform of the private pensions industry that frees the fetters on the National Employment Savings Trust, caps charges and ensures that there is real transparency, we do not believe that plans are yet in place for a low-cost, low-risk private alternative to help people to save for the long term. That will be the thrust of our opposition to and constructive engagement with the Bill when it comes to this place.
As many colleagues have said, the tragedy of this Queen’s Speech debate is that there was an alternative. We proposed a jobs Bill that would have given the chance of work to young people unemployed for more than a year and to the long-term unemployed out of work for more than two years. We would have used an injection of capital into the construction industry to get our country back to work.
Mr Byrne
I am going to spare my time for the Secretary of State, I am afraid.
Those were the kinds of measures that we should have seen in this Queen’s Speech. They are simple, costable and easily affordable, and they would have helped to get our country back to work. To conclude, the struggle for jobs has always been at the heart of the struggle of our movement. When Keir Hardie rose on the Benches behind me to make the first speech of a Labour MP in this House, he insisted on the principle of work or maintenance. In our first election address, “Useful Work for the Unemployed” was our rallying cry. Next year marks an important anniversary in that long struggle for jobs. It is the 70th anniversary of the White Paper on employment policy, which accepted for the first time that the Government had a responsibility to ensure that everybody who wanted to work and could work had a job.
Once upon a time, the Conservative party agreed with that principle. When Rab Butler spoke to the 1953 Conservative party conference he said that anyone who believes in
“creating pools of unemployment should be thrown into them and made to swim”.
It is 40 years since the Conservative party backed away from those principles, starting with Sir Keith Joseph’s speech in Preston.
We could pay down our national debt faster if we got our country back to work. That is why the one idea that should have been at the heart of this Queen’s Speech was a plan for jobs and full employment. That is how we rebuilt our country after the second world war and how we rebuilt public services in 1997. Those are the ideas that we needed in the Queen’s Speech. Instead, we have a Government who are out of ideas. The day is fast approaching when we will run them out of office.
Romanians and Bulgarians (Benefits)
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The reality is that it is issues such as this that drive people away from the concept of the success of the European Union, if that is what they had believed. The more the Commission decides to interfere in areas such as this, the more damage it does to those who are pro-European. I personally have been quite sceptical about the process for a considerable period, but even I can recognise that this damages the concept of a European Union that works for all its members and that is about trade and co-operation and ensuring that the people who live in the European Union get benefits according to what they have contributed.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
My constituents will be appalled to learn that the last Government failed to collect any data on the benefits being paid to migrants. Will my right hon. Friend give me a rough assessment of the cost to the Exchequer of the benefits being paid out, so that the British taxpayer can have some idea of the costs that were being imposed on them by the last Government?
Mr Duncan Smith
I am dying to do that. We want to know who has actually been claiming benefits, but we really do not know that from the figures. The last Government did not want to know. It was almost a deliberate policy not to have the figures available so that people would not know how many were coming in and claiming benefits. That will change. We are an open Government and we will publish the figures. We will be very clear and we will see the size of the problem that we have to resolve.
Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Bain
Yes indeed, I have seen that report, and it was scandalous. I was somewhat perplexed by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) when he said that people who were in part-time work were satisfied with that situation. The truth is that, as the TUC has established, 3.2 million people in this country are stuck in involuntary part-time work because of weak demand, low growth and low investment in the low-productivity economy that is being presided over by this Government.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is making a thoughtful contribution, as ever. He talks about fairness. Does he think it fair for a Government to spend £25 billion over 10 years only to see the number of those in fuel poverty increase by 2.8 million? Does he think it fair to add 75p to a pensioner’s pension? Does he think it fair to add 10p to fuel duty? And does he think it fair that 1,610 people in his constituency were lifted out of tax last December?
Mr Bain
What I would certainly define as unfair is introducing a clause whose impact on the poorest 10% of people on the income scale will be 14 times harder than on the richest 10%. I hope that he has read the impact assessment as closely as I have. If he has, he will know that 1.4 million people in the lowest 10% will be affected by this measure, but only 100,000 in the top 10% will be similarly affected. That cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered fair.
Mr Bain
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to make his own contribution later, and that he will recognise that I have been generous in giving way to him once already.
Long-term unemployment in Scotland has risen by 385% since 2008. I welcomed the presence of Scottish National party Members in the Division Lobby with Labour Members the other week, voting for our reasoned amendment to the Bill relating to the jobs guarantee, and I hope that it will not be too much longer before the Scottish Government follow Labour’s lead and introduce a jobs guarantee for those most in need of work in Scotland. They could easily do that. I hope that they will look at the example set by Glasgow city council in introducing a successful jobs fund for the young jobless, because such a measure would supersede the measures in clause 1. Countries such as Sweden, which many in the Scottish Government often ask people in Scotland to emulate, have used jobs guarantee policies very successfully indeed for nearly two decades, while reducing their deficit at the same time.
Kwasi Kwarteng
This is anecdotal evidence, but I was reliably informed that a couple of Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament were claiming tax credits on the basis that they were entitled to them. That is the sort of barmy universe that was constructed under the last Administration, and it is something that we have had to redress. When we consider matters such as those that we are considering today, we must always bear in mind that, given a budget deficit of £170 billion—more than 12% of GDP—it is very difficult to curb public spending sufficiently to enable the country to pay its way on a sustainable basis.
Christopher Pincher
I am obliged to my hon. Friend for reminding the House that it is the historic mission of the Conservative party to clear up the mess left behind by successive Labour Governments. Does he agree that it is unfair for people earning more than £70,000 a year to be paid tax credits, but very fair that people earning just £10,000 a year—who paid £1,160 in tax and national insurance in 2010—will now pay only £670, and even fairer that next year they will pay only £360? Is that not an example of Conservative fairness?
Kwasi Kwarteng
It is not only fair, but common sense. The Labour cash merry-go-round, when Labour was taxing people with very low earnings and then handing back the money in the form of benefits, did not provide a sustainable model. The measures that we have introduced have been far more effective in reducing—[Interruption.] I wish I could share the joke, but I have more important matters with which to deal.
Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Christopher Pincher Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
Thank you for calling me to speak in this important debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have been here since the start and have heard a lot of rhetoric, particularly from Opposition Members. For me, this Bill and this debate are about striking a balance between the state providing a safety net for those who need that support and not putting the burden of any changes on to those least able to react to reductions in income, and taking into account the hard-pressed taxpayer.
I fully support the decision to retain the uprating of long-term disability benefits at the rate of inflation, as I support the triple-lock guarantee for the basic state pension. Those benefits are paid to groups that in general would find it impossible to increase their income, and it is right and proper that we fully protect them. That brings me to the people who will be mainly affected by the Bill. They broadly represent two groups in our community: those on out-of-work benefits and those receiving benefits in work.
I shall take the former first. No doubt, it is a terribly difficult decision to limit the increase to 1%, but, that said, unemployment benefits, by definition, should be a short-term safety net. The Government and Parliament should do all they can to get people back into work as quickly as possible. I know from my constituency that things are starting to work in that regard, and I am delighted now to see more bespoke help through Jobcentre Plus and the Work programme, and measures such as the enterprise allowance, the work experience programme, the Youth Contract and the push on apprenticeships are all starting to make a difference. Couple that with the universal credit, and 3.1 million people will benefit from increased support for getting into work. That will make a huge difference.
I turn to those affected who are in work. Again, in an ideal world it would be fantastic to uprate working benefits in line with inflation, but in the world of inevitable reality we all know that that is unsustainable. The creation of the tax credit system unleashed a bureaucratic leviathan on the country, and billions have now been spent on bureaucracy: £4 billion has been written off in errors and bad debts already and, as we heard today, another £4 million is likely to go the same way. It is far simpler to put people in a position where they pay less income tax, and I am glad and proud that the Government are doing that. Personally, I would like to see that extended, so that we can continue to move away from that bureaucracy.
The deficit, which is the most important issue facing the country, has to be dealt with in a way that is fair to the taxpayer. There is no doubt that difficult decisions have to be made to deal with it, and I am mindful that many people’s wages have been frozen, uprated at below inflation or even cut. We need to acknowledge that the taxpayer cannot bear the burden indefinitely.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
My hon. Friend is right to say that taxpayers cannot continue to bear the burden. Does he agree that the 258% increase in tax credit spend between 2003 and 2010 was unsustainable?
Mr Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for his comment. He is absolutely right that we are in a difficult position that we can no longer sustain.
That brings me on to another point. This afternoon, I have observed a certain mood among the Opposition. Far from being pragmatic, they have been completely ideological. What puzzles me is that before the last general election Labour pledged to cut spending roughly in line with the coalition’s current rate of deficit reduction, but since then they have opposed virtually all the cuts, including £80 billion of savings proposed to welfare. The question for the Opposition, therefore, is: if all those changes are unacceptable, what do you propose to do? Do you want to cut the NHS? Do you want to make more cuts to policing? Do you want to cut local government? Do you want to cut education?
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
I do not criticise Labour Members for their aspirations. There is nothing ignoble in the positions that they are taking; I just happen to believe that they are wrong. They know that the picture of despair and hopelessness that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State saw in Easterhouse in 2002 was the same picture that the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) saw in 1997, when there was an historic opportunity for the then Labour Government to tackle welfare dependency and rebalance work and welfare. Unfortunately, they did not take that action.
People out there are decent; they care and their attitude is, “There but for the grace of God go I.” They do not want to stigmatise people, and nor do Government Members. I accept that there has been some rhetoric on both sides of the House, but people do care. They also care about the dependency culture, and about fairness. In all honesty, they feel that the previous Labour Government tested their patience on this issue.
It is disingenuous to talk about cruelty. I think that it was cruel to park 1,000 of my constituents on invalidity or incapacity benefit for more than 10 years without the opportunity—[Interruption.] I should remind Labour Members that this was in 2010. Those people were given no opportunity to inform anyone of their needs. People suffering from depression or other mental health problems, and people with physical afflictions, were simply parked and forgotten. I am not saying that the Labour Government did that because they were cruel or heartless; they did it because they were incompetent. We are taking the tough decisions that will make work pay, through the Work programme and through apprenticeships that will tackle youth unemployment, which the previous Government doubled. Work is the No. 1 determinant in taking people out of poverty and breaking the cycle of children seeing their parents unemployed, living in a half-life of hopelessness and poverty and lacking ambition. That has been demonstrated across the world.
Christopher Pincher
My hon. Friend is quite right to say that work provides the best way out of poverty. Does he agree that the 5.2 million people who were trapped in dependency when the economy was growing in the boom years under Labour are evidence of the previous Government’s structural failure to deal with poverty?
Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)
I am sorry that we are so pressed for time, because these are issues of real public interest, and I think that they deserve more scrutiny than we are able to give them this evening.
I believe that the 1% cap on the uprating of working-age benefits is an inherently regressive measure. It will make people on low incomes even poorer, will increase deprivation, and will widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots in our communities. It will particularly hit parents in low-paid or part-time work who are already struggling to make ends meet because of the wider economic climate.
I shall oppose the Bill’s Second Reading. Labour’s amendment proposes that the House should decline it a Second Reading, and posits a guaranteed job offer for those who have been out of work for a long time. On the basis that that is a laudable aim, I am prepared to support it, albeit with a caveat. I have listened carefully to the debate, but I have heard no details of how such a proposal could be put into effect in any realistic way. I would not want to endorse any particular scheme until I had seen whether it was workable and fundable in practice.
The Bill will hit those who are working, especially those who are supporting and bringing up children, especially hard. Many people in lower-paid private sector jobs have seen their hours cut recently, and many who are working part-time want to work full-time but cannot find full-time jobs or pick up extra hours. Meanwhile, they are struggling to juggle work with child care.
As others have said, notably the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), we all need to take responsibility for the way in which we portray people who are unemployed. We need to recognise that those who are jobless should not necessarily be blamed for their joblessness, and that the rises and falls in unemployment are caused by wider economic factors more than by individuals’ aspirations. We also need to recognise that the greater part of the savings made here will be taken from people who are working, often in very physically demanding and fairly unrewarding jobs.
Like the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron), I was struck by the comments of the Citizens Advice Bureau on the impact assessment. We had seen no impact assessment until this afternoon, and we have still seen no equality impact assessment. According to the CAB’s calculations, a family consisting of two full-time workers earning the minimum wage with two children, living in private rented accommodation, will be losing £12 a week by 2015. Disabled lone parents will suffer, as will families with a single earner. What those examples mask, however, is the disproportionate impact of the rising cost of living on households with very low incomes. The worst of the cold winter weather is probably still ahead of us, but the rises in domestic fuel bills will cause a very nasty hangover in the spring.
Christopher Pincher
The hon. Lady talks of the impact on low-income families. Is she aware that, as a result of the Chancellor’s autumn statement last year, some 1,400 people in her constituency are being taken out of tax, and 30,000-odd are better off in tax?
Dr Whiteford
I am delighted to be able to respond to that point. What has been shown by the monitoring of the Citizens Advice Bureau and the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and by the Government’s own impact assessment—which we received very belatedly—is that the combination of the tax and benefit changes will hit the lowest deciles of the income spectrum much harder than the middle and upper deciles. The lowest five deciles are hit hardest, and within that the lowest three are hit worst of all. Many of those are hard-working people and they deserve more. We have heard much criticism of the tax credit system this afternoon, but the Government have failed to address the reason why we need a tax system when people who are working full-time in demanding jobs cannot afford to bring up their children without depending on extra support from the state. That is the underlying issue, and until we have heard how the Government plan to address poverty for working people, we should not even be talking about a below-inflation rise in benefits.
The other issue that should be taken into account, which has been raised by other Members, is that food prices are rising. That is to do with the bad harvest that we have had here due to the very wet summer but, more importantly at a global level, bad harvests in the US and Russia have put the prices of basic commodities way up. In the past year potatoes, probably the great staple of our own food economy, have gone up in price by more than 40%. That is having a disproportionate impact on very poor people, compared to people like us. A 1% increase in an MP’s salary would give us an extra £600 a year. The increase of 71p or 72p for a jobseeker does not compare. There is a quantitative, material difference.
The cap means that there would be a 4% cumulative cut in support to low and middle income families, which will increase material deprivation. The Government have got their priorities all wrong. Asking low and middle income families to bear the brunt of cuts while insulating the very richest is the wrong choice to make, and I look forward to the day when in Scotland we can make these decisions for ourselves.