Tax Credits

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is not alone. In my constituency, 4,000 working parents will be affected by the working tax credit cuts, as will 6,700 children. This is, in effect, a work penalty. I ask her to support me in telling Conservative Members, “You are not the party of working people, and shame on you.”

[Paula Sherriff]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I absolutely agree that this is clearly a work penalty— to think that the Conservatives wanted to rebrand themselves as the party of working people, but instead we have this penalty.

A cleaner in my constituency with one child earning just over £13,000 a year will now lose nearly £2,000 of it. That, quite simply, is the reality of these cuts. As for the so-called national living wage, there is one simple problem: it is not actually enough to live on. That is why we had tax credits in the first place, and why the Living Wage Foundation takes account of them when it calculates the real living wage.

If the Conservatives were serious about an economy based on fair pay for decent work, they would be doing the opposite of what they propose in the Trade Union Bill and making sure that working people genuinely get their share of the wealth they create. The real winners will be the Tories’ paymasters in big businesses, because the most profitable companies in Britain will get the cut in corporation tax—not to mention the millionaires. We know what they really think of ordinary working people in Britain because the Minister for Employment said it herself in a book called “Britannia Unchained”:

“the British are among the worst idlers in the world”

who

“prefer a lie-in to hard work.”

If they thought that these cuts were so necessary and so reasonable, why did they not mention them before the election? Instead, we saw exactly the opposite, with the Prime Minister categorically denying on national television that any such changes would be made. We used to say, “You can’t trust the Tories with the NHS”; now we know that you cannot trust them, full stop.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

We have already heard from our hon. Friends and colleagues about the impact of these misguided cuts to tax credits. It is right that we repeat the figures—4 million families, 7.5 million children. That is the math of who will be affected by this policy, and we must never lose sight of that.

[Clive Lewis]

Has my hon. Friend any idea of the extra number of children who will be pushed into poverty because of this Government’s proposed work penalty?

[Carolyn Harris]

I shall mention it later in my speech, but I believe that there will be more than 200,000 by 2016, with the potential to rise to more than 600,000 with the culmination of the benefit and tax changes.

Both Barnardo’s and the Child Poverty Action Group believe that 3.2 million low-paid workers will lose, on average, £1,350 next year. Those being hit are the ones who are in work. This Government are forever telling us that work is the route out of poverty and that they will support those who do the right thing. Ministers tell us in the media, ad infinitum, that they will stand up for “hard-working families”. Well, they are not standing up for those families. According to the House of Commons Library’s analysis of the cuts, more than 580,000 of Britain’s poorest working families, earning between £3,850 and £6,420 a year, face losing 48p for every £1 that they earn as a result of the removal of tax credits.

I urge the Government to think again. It is not too late to do a turnaround. In fact, it would be the morally right thing to do.