Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

One moment, please. The cap has been a huge success in getting people back to work and reintroducing fairness to the welfare system. Capped households are more than 40% more likely to go into work after a year than similar uncapped households. It is right to keep the level of the cap under review to ensure that it continues to be fair and that it provides the right incentives for people to move into work.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

No, I will give way to the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) in a second, but I wish to make a bit of progress.

We know that around four in 10 households outside London earn less than £20,000, and the same proportion of households in London earn less than £23,000. To ensure that the cap better reflects the circumstances of hard-working families, the Bill lowers the current cap to £20,000 for households outside Greater London, and the Greater London cap will be set at £23,000. The exemptions will continue to apply to the most vulnerable, which includes people on disability living allowance and personal independence payment, those in an employment and support allowance support group and those moving into work who are entitled to working tax credits.

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[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will make some progress, and then I will give way, but many Members wish to speak and make their own points.



We are committed to helping people who have health difficulties and who are capable of taking steps into work to do so, which is why we are putting greater support into jobcentres. For new claims, the Bill will end the disparity between what people receive on the work-related activity component of ESA and on jobseeker’s allowance. We know that the majority of people receiving work-related activity ESA payments want to work, but the current system discourages claimants from making the transition into work. People on ESA receive £30 a week more than those with a health condition on JSA, but they receive far less support in finding work: people on JSA can expect about 11 hours of work coach time per year, whereas those on ESA typically receive only about two hours per year. The Bill will help people to achieve their ambitions. Current claimants will not be affected, and new funding will be provided for additional support to help claimants to move into work.

[Emily Thornberry]

I was interested to hear the Secretary of State talk about the benefits cap and fairness. Is he aware that his right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) also talked about fairness and the benefits cap, saying that it was only fair that people’s benefits were capped at the level of the average that someone would expect to earn by working? At that point, the cap was £26,000; now, it seems that average earnings are £23,000 and £20,000. What is the reason for the difference?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I just explained, I think, that there are differences between gross and net figures. Now, we are looking at lowering the cap from the original £26,000, as the hon. Lady will know if she uses her intelligence—

[Emily Thornberry]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

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[Mr Duncan Smith]

I do not agree. If the hon. Gentleman looks at our record over the past five years, he will see that we have increased the number of jobs and that wages are now rising much faster than inflation. The last set of jobs statistics showed that every single one of those jobs was full time. All this nonsense about them being low-earning, part-time jobs is just complete and utter fabricated idiocy.

[Emily Thornberry]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The impact assessment for the Bill has only just arrived in the Vote Office; it was not here for the beginning of the debate. Surely we ought to be given the statistics in order to have an informed debate, rather than having to rely on what comes out of the Secretary of State’s mouth.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

We will investigate the matter. I would have thought that the hon. Lady would give me a little more warning of her point of order, but there we are.

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[Stephen Timms]

I am glad to be able to reassure the hon. Gentleman that he will be pleased with what happens when the House divides at 10 o’clock tonight.

The Bill seeks to restrict support provided through tax credits and universal credit to families with more than two children. We will aim to amend the Bill in Committee, for example to protect families with multiple births or those whose claim arises because of exceptional circumstances. We do not support locking in a cash freeze for four years for tax credits and benefits. We recognise that reducing the deficit will require savings on indexation, but those decisions should be made annually so that actual inflation can be taken into account. We do not support the accompanying sharp reductions in income thresholds for tax credits and the corresponding cuts to work allowances announced in the Budget, which will be legislated for outside this Bill. They will be a huge setback to work incentives. The whole point of universal credit was supposed to be to improve work incentives; now it is being hobbled even before it has properly got started.

We want progress towards full employment. We want demanding targets for apprenticeships and help for troubled families. We want a household benefit cap, and to make sure that families are always better off in work. We want support for mortgage interest and reductions in social rents that will deliver savings to the taxpayer. We want better economic opportunities, and we want social security to be fairer and more affordable.

However, children who are growing up in poverty—as we have heard, the growing majority of them are in working households—need a Government committed to improving their position. People who because of illness and disability are found by the Government’s own tests to be not fit to work, as can happen to anybody, need social security to assure them of a decent basic standard of living. Families who are doing the right thing and going out to work, often when they are already struggling with low or stagnant wages and increasing insecurity and uncertainty about their future, need a Government who are on their side, not one who will pull the rug out from under them, as the tax credits announcements in the Budget will do.

These are not just matters of morality and social justice, although they most certainly are; this is also about how we secure our future prosperity and stability, ensuring that everybody in Britain can play their part, make the most of their talents and make the most of the ambitions of all.

[Emily Thornberry]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I made a point of order earlier about when the impact assessments were published, and I understand that there is an inquiry. When we heard the Secretary of State announce that they had been published, my researcher went to the Vote Office and found that they were not available. A phone call was made to the Vote Office in Members Lobby, which said that they had just arrived. This is not right, and I would like your advice about how we can hold the Government to account when they do not publish impact assessments until after the Secretary of State has got to his feet.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order. If a mistake has been made by the Vote Office, I am quite sure that Mr Speaker will be annoyed on behalf of the House.

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[Emily Thornberry]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance as to whether Members can be given sufficient information even if papers are provided some 10 minutes before a debate, given the nature of the impact assessments. If we are to read them properly and understand them, surely Members, if at all possible, should be given more than a few minutes’ notice.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I simply observe that the debate started at 5.34 pm and it is now 6.36 pm, so it has been under way for an hour. I appreciate that the Chair insists that Members of Parliament should take part in the debate and concentrate on the speech being made at any particular moment, but I am sure it is not beyond the ingenuity of intelligent Members to be able to participate in the debate while also looking at the papers that are now available to them. It would have been better had the papers been here earlier, but I am quite certain that this debate will go on for another three hours and 23 minutes and, if they now have the papers, Members ought to be able to multitask to the extent of listening to the debate and reading the papers at the same time. That does not mean, if a mistake has happened, that I condone it; if there has been one, it will be thoroughly investigated.