Benefit Entitlement (Restriction) Bill

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Friday 5th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

May I associate myself with the remarks that have been made about my former colleague, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough, Harry Harpham? I did not know him well, but at the engagements we did have, he was an absolutely delightful man. I pass my condolences to his family. He will be missed.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). I believe this is the third time he and his supporters have managed to get the Bill, in its various forms, read on the Floor of the House. He will have to give me his secret, because I have had no success with private Members’ Bills. I think we can say it is congratulations to the tenacious sextet—not Tenacious D, but Tenacious S.

On more serious matters, the hon. Gentleman alluded to the fact that his timing with the Bill was perhaps a little surprising, given the state of the EU negotiations and the draft settlement that has been produced. I appreciate that the negotiations are tentative and that there are varying interpretations of how successful the Government are being, but hon. Members surely want to wait until the final settlement is known. After all, Mr Tusk has hardly digested the apple crumble and custard he had courtesy of No. 10.

The hon. Gentleman has not yet produced an impact assessment of the Bill’s potential effects, which he also failed to do on the previous occasions. I am deeply concerned about the apparent lack of an evidence base to support the measures in the Bill. We must all strive for better, evidence-based policy.

[Mr Chope]

I welcome the hon. Lady’s desire to have evidence-based policy. Surely she will recognise that it must be the first duty of the Government to let us know how many non-UK nationals are currently accessing these benefits. I have put down parliamentary questions on the issue and received answers to the effect that the information is not available.

[Debbie Abrahams]

The hon. Gentleman makes a relevant point, but all of us, as Members of this House, must make sure that whatever speeches we make, and whatever proposals or Bills we bring forward, they are evidence based. I would encourage him to do that.

I am incredibly proud to be British, but I am also an internationalist and an unabashed Europhile. Part of that is due to my personal experience. My great-grandparents were migrants from Poland and Germany. My grandmothers were French and Irish. My dad’s wife is Dutch, and she and my dad have retired to Spain. My brother’s wife is American, and she and my brother live in the US. My husband was born in South Africa. Before I became an MP, my work as a public health consultant took me across the world, and predominantly across Europe. I have seen the immense benefits of that cultural diversity and those employment opportunities, not only in my own personal life but in the economic benefits to the country as a whole.

The EU is our biggest trading partner, alone contributing £227 billion to the economy last year, with £26.5 billion in investment coming from Europe every year. There are 3.5 million associated jobs, of which 14,000 are in my area of Oldham. Britain’s EU membership makes us a major player in world trade. As an EU member, we are part of a market of 500 million consumers that other countries want to do business with. The UK is stronger in negotiating deals with countries such as China and the US as part of the EU group of 28 nations than we would be on our own.

It is not just Britain’s prosperity that depends on our EU membership. After the horrors of two world wars in the previous century, the EU fosters greater ties and supports struggling regions. I was working on Merseyside in the 1990s when European objective 1 funding was made available to that area. Our working together across Europe with our member state partners has ensured 70 years of peace between European states. Cross-border co-operation is essential for Britain’s future safety and wellbeing. Viruses such as Zika and Ebola do not recognise borders, nor do organised crime gangs and tax evaders, or carbon particulates and nitrous dioxide emissions. All those issues require our working closely with EU and other international countries, and the best way to achieve that is by being part of Europe, not on the fringes. That does not mean that we should not be striving for reform within all the EU institutions in strengthening governance, democratic accountability and sovereignty, but if you are going to change the rules, you need to be part of the club.

[Mr Chope]

But surely we, in our country, should be able to decide for ourselves how our taxpayers’ money is spent on benefits. If we choose not to allow that money to be given to people from outside the United Kingdom, we should be able to decide that for ourselves.

[Debbie Abrahams]

I think the hon. Gentleman is waving a red herring.

Let me move on to the specifics of the Bill. I regret that the same effort that is rightly being put into ensuring that our social security system remains contribution-based is not being put into preventing the exploitation of workers and stopping UK-based employment agencies recruiting solely from abroad, undercutting wages for British workers. Why is that not a focus of the Government and of the hon. Gentleman’s Bill? Although there are many benefits associated with migration and migrants, not least the net positive contribution to the Exchequer—as shown in recognised evidence—we must also recognise that there are associated costs for areas with higher levels of migration, which puts pressure on local services and local communities. That has to be recognised and addressed, and local authorities must be provided with financial support to enable effective migration management and to maintain social cohesion. That was a focus of our manifesto offer at the last election. Again, could it not have been a focus of the hon. Gentleman’s Bill?

I object to the tenet underpinning this Bill, which is a failure to consider the evidence that the number of migrants who have been claiming tax credits while working is small. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the data. He will be aware that because of a freedom of information request, HMRC has had to publish the number of migrants who are in receipt of tax credits. It has been shown that in the past year only 84,000 have been involved—just over 16%, not the 40% claimed by the Prime Minister on Wednesday. I look forward to his correcting the record, although I think I could be waiting some time. That does not even take into account the fact that one in 10 couples defined as “migrant couples” include a UK national. The UK Statistics Authority has said that the DWP data the Prime Minister used were “unsatisfactory”, and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has called the figures “selective and misleading”.

The evidence is that social security is not a pull factor—jobs are. We need to protect and secure our contribution-based social security system. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about that. It is there to provide basic support if someone is living in and contributing to this country’s endeavours.

The Bill has little evidence base—that is being kind—and represents a bad case of scaremongering. The Conservative party must be more responsible in its approach to maximising our association with Europe and the economic benefits it brings. It should not deploy the negative divide and rule narrative that is unfortunately prevalent at present. That should not be the language of or the tenet underpinning the Bill. We must respect migrants and social security claimants, so I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the Bill.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on his persistence, as the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) put it. I am very proud to be one of the Bill’s supporters. Although this is, regrettably, going to be a very short debate, it has been a useful one. My hon. Friend has set out a case that will strike a chord with many people around the country, and certainly with many people in the Shipley constituency. It has also been helpful to hear the hon. Lady entrench the Labour party as the party of welfare and keep up its 100% record of opposing any attempt to restrict this country’s welfare system. At least the Labour party has always been consistent on that matter.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Could the hon. Gentleman give a specific example of where I did that in my speech?

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Lady said she was against the Bill, which is about restricting benefits for foreign nationals. I presume that means that she wants to continue to give benefits to foreign nationals, which means that she is against welfare reform. If I have misunderstood her, I apologise, but I do not think that is a controversial interpretation of her remarks, which were of no great surprise to any of us who have known her for a number of years.

I want to make a few points. The hon. Lady said that she opposed the Bill because it is not evidence-based. The whole point about the Bill is that it is about principle. It is about the principle of who should be entitled to claim benefits in the UK. Should foreign nationals who come here without having made any contribution to the UK economy be able to claim benefits straight away?

[Debbie Abrahams]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

I will press on, if the hon. Lady does not mind; time is short, and she made her case earlier.

We do not need evidence to discuss matters of principle. In principle, surely it cannot be right that foreign nationals come to the UK and start claiming benefits straight away. We do not need any evidence about that. I am not even interested in how many people do that. I am arguing that, as a matter of principle, that should not be allowed to happen.

[Debbie Abrahams]

I specifically said that we should protect and secure our contribution-based system and that those people who contribute should be supported.

[Philip Davies]

But this country does not really have a contributory system in the same way as other EU countries. That is part of the problem. It is no good the hon. Lady wanting to protect something that does not exist and opposing something that would actually do what she claims she wants to achieve. Her actions on this issue are more important than her words, and if she opposes the Bill, her actions clearly do not follow on from her words. I do not see the need for evidence. This is a Bill about a principle that is important to many people. It is about fairness, not evidence.

I would have some sympathy with the hon. Lady’s opinion if we had to give all these benefits away to secure a free trade agreement with the European Union, and that had a net benefit for our economy. If we had to give away something in order to achieve that, it might be worth doing. Given that we had a £62 billion trade deficit with the European Union last year, and that if we were to leave the EU we would be its single biggest export market, it is perfectly clear that we could have a free trade agreement with the EU for nothing. We do not have to give it access to our benefit system, and we do not need to give it a £19 billion a year membership fee. We can have what we want from the EU—free trade—for nothing. That is the deal that we should be seeking to secure. I do not think anybody can sustain the argument that if we were to leave the EU and stop giving benefits to EU citizens when they came to the UK, Germany would want to stop selling Mercedes, BMV and Volkswagen cars to people in this country. Of course they would not; it is complete nonsense for anybody to suggest that.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People (Justin Tomlinson)]

May I, too, echo the tributes to Harry Harpham, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough? He was a long-standing servant of his community, including as a councillor for 15 years. I know that he will be greatly missed by all.

It is a privilege to serve in the House today as the duty Work and Pensions Minister, and to respond to my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and for Shipley (Philip Davies). Their forensic, constructive and diligent work has certainly kept the focus of attention on this area. The British public have sent a clear message that they are concerned that migrants are incentivised to come to the UK because of the attractiveness of our welfare system. That was clearly set out in the speeches of both my hon. Friends.

The Government share those concerns. That is why, during the past two years, we have introduced several far-reaching measures to restrict or remove access to a range of benefits for migrants who come to the UK without a job and who have not contributed to our economy. For example, EEA jobseekers can no longer access housing benefit at all. Their access to income-based jobseeker’s allowance is limited to the minimum we argue is allowable under EU law—just 91 days, in most circumstances—and even then only after they have waited for three months. We have also made similar changes to child benefit and child tax credit. On the specific point about declaring a national insurance number, it is the case that the number must be declared when making a benefit claim. It cannot yet be collected through the payment system, but that will be corrected with the introduction of universal credit. As universal credit rolls out, we will remove even such elements, meaning that EEA jobseekers have no entitlement to means-tested benefits whatever.

The Bill goes even further by proposing restrictions that would apply to EEA migrants who are working and contributing in the UK. The current framework of EU law would not allow us to deliver that, since clear European rules compel us to treat EEA nationals working in the UK no less favourably than UK nationals. However, the Prime Minister is renegotiating in Europe so that we get a better deal for Britain. That includes cutting the benefits EU migrants get to prevent our welfare system from acting as a magnet and to create a fairer system for people who work here and play by the rules. That is just part of our ongoing work to make changes.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Will the Minister give way?