Welfare Benefit Changes

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Margaret Greenwood

Wednesday 14th October 2015 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard.

The dynamics of this debate have said a great deal. My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) spoke with huge passion and absolutely from the heart. We could hear the voice of Swansea in what she was saying, and it was important to hear an authentic voice explaining the real effects of these changes to social security and what they mean to real communities and real people. We are not talking rhetoric; we are not talking learned lines that are copied down throughout the Conservative party. We are talking about what happens to people in their homes and communities—people who, as has been pointed out, feel demeaned by what has happened to them. It is difficult for people to discuss it and, as my hon. Friend said, she wanted this to be an opportunity for the voices of victims of the benefit changes to be heard. I congratulate all hon. Members who have had the opportunity to be heard and who have spoken authentically on behalf of their communities.

We heard the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) saying that we are punishing workers on the lowest wages and that that is unbearable for many families. We then heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), and the voice from Birmingham said that the people who are using our food banks are in work. We heard from the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), who said we need regionalised figures to explain the impact of the changes on our communities. Then we heard from the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry), who gave many examples of people who had been assessed as being fit for work, including a man who had had a second stroke. He discussed those constituents’ pain and suffering and how degrading Atos assessments have been—they are degrading, inhuman and disgraceful. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on that, because he spoke not only for people in Inverness, but for those across the country who have been assessed by Atos and feel the same.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing this important debate. The Government’s study identified that more than 330,000 children from low-income families in England will be hit by the benefits cap and that a couple with two children will be priced out of being able to rent a two-bedroom property in almost all areas of the south of England and across much of the midlands too. Does my hon. Friend agree that this state of affairs will have a potentially devastating effect on the lives of hundreds of thousands of children, who may be forced out of their homes and away from their communities, and that it is likely to have a particularly severe impact on single parents, who rely strongly on the local communities around them for support in bringing up their children?

[Emily Thornberry]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Many communities, particularly in inner London, have already been affected by the first benefit cap. We have already seen young children ripped out of primary schools and moved out of London, as families try desperately to find somewhere they will be able to afford under the benefit cap.

Introducing a benefit cap makes a profound change to the way we pay benefits. The social security system used to be, and had always been, a safety net available to everyone, but introducing a benefit cap disconnects need from the amount that we are prepared to pay. Larger families, which are in most need, will be affected most. It is not their fault that they live in inner London or that they cannot live in public rented housing because there is not enough affordable public rented housing so they must live in the private sector. The Government have introduced an arbitrary, politically motivated cap that will have a devastating effect on communities.