Fiona Bruce
Main Page: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)Department Debates - View all Fiona Bruce's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
I had been looking at those sheets of paper and assumed there was a bit more to come! I welcome the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) to his post. I agree that there is always more to be done. We want to eradicate poverty and child poverty. I think the figures show that we have made good progress, but I am not complacent.
The Scottish nationalists have campaigned, obviously, for independence, but they have many of the levers in their hands, and if the hon. Gentleman complains about poverty and child poverty in Scotland, my question would be: to what degree have the Scottish Government acted to make some of the changes that he wants? He made a couple of points, but my point would be that employment in Scotland is at a record high, which has not been the case in the past after a recession. The work that we have done to get people back into work, including those in workless households and in social housing, has been a huge success. It is worth reminding the hon. Gentleman that across the board in the UK, some 800,000 fewer people are in relative low income before housing costs, and 300,000 fewer children are in relative low-income households.
The hon. Gentleman spoke about reforming the benefit system so that it has a connection with the tax system; I can tell him that universal credit is exactly what he is hoping for. So far, we have had a bit of resistance from his Government. I hope he will now go back and say, “Let’s go for this full time.”
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree that working to support families to prevent family breakdown is critical to improving children’s life chances, especially as family breakdown hits the poorest hardest? Does he also agree that Labour singularly failed to address that when they were in government?