Welfare Reform and Work Bill (First sitting)
Debate between Emily Thornberry and Stephen Timms(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Q 1 I welcome you all to our Committee.
This is probably a question for Marcus in the first instance. The Bill requires the Government to report on progress towards full employment. How do you think full employment should be defined? What is the right definition for this purpose?
Marcus Mason: I will give that a stab. We all know that full employment can be defined in different ways, with different levels of full employment in different countries. In that sense, we very much think that full employment is a moving target. Our latest economic forecast shows unemployment reaching around 5% by 2017 and flattening out to 5% in Q2 2018. As a result, we feel that a level of unemployment of around maybe 5% to 4.5% is probably the point where, if you went below that, you might start causing inflationary pressures. So that is the sense that we get from the forecast that our chief economist does at the British Chambers of Commerce.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Q 2 I think the important thing, though, is to look beyond the 4% or 5% unemployment as being full employment. Isn’t it important to look at how we define employment? The Office for National Statistics says that someone on a zero-hours contract, perhaps working no more than two or three hours a week, is in employment, but that is hardly a good situation for that individual to be in. If we have a reporting requirement that focuses solely on those sorts of numbers, using that broad definition, how can we really be helping ourselves? Are we not just putting forward an incentive for people to be in insecure and low-paid jobs?
Marcus Mason: Obviously you need the headline unemployment figure, because that is most sensitive to Government policy and has the most impact on inflationary pressures. Of course, you could imagine a situation where a Secretary of State reports using that headline unemployment figure, but other figures could go into that report as well.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Debate between Emily Thornberry and Stephen Timms(9 years, 5 months ago)
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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.