Northern Ireland (Welfare Reform) Bill

Gavin Robinson Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ms Ritchie]

The SDLP never tried to derail the top-ups or mitigations. I well recall meetings that we had in 2012. In February 2012 a delegation, including my hon. Friends the Members for Foyle (Mark Durkan) and for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell), met the then Minister in the other place—Lord Freud—to deal with these issues. We suggested that one top-up could deal with the eradication of the bedroom tax, and it took many months for the then Minister for Social Development to come to that realisation. We had a further meeting in November 2012 with Lord Freud at the DWP, and at that stage we again understood from him that a top-up for the bedroom tax would be one mitigation measure. We had no problem with that because we support those mitigation measures and we want to ensure that they are retained and bring a level of comfort and solace.

Let me emphasise again that nobody chooses to be on benefits. It is not a lifestyle choice; it is due to force of circumstance. For example, people do not necessarily have access to employment in the area where they reside, or the necessary travel arrangements to get to particular places of employment; or sadly, as in the constituency of the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), many people have lost their jobs, and do not find suitable employment that corresponds with their academic, engineering or vocational qualifications. That is a matter of deep regret.

The Government, working with the Northern Ireland Executive and the Assembly, must ensure that resources are invested and projects equitably distributed to afford balanced regional development throughout Northern Ireland in a way that allows job opportunities in the west and the south-east to compare with those in the city of Belfast.

This Bill should not be being discussed in Westminster, and its Second Reading and further stages should have been dealt with by the Northern Ireland Assembly. In that respect, the power of devolution has been removed. We have tabled amendments to curtail the Secretary of State’s power over our welfare system—power that has been handed over by Sinn Féin and the DUP. We have heard much about Sinn Féin and Tory cuts, and they are happy to allow the Tory Government to implement those cuts along with the support of the DUP. Devolution was hard fought for and hard won in Northern Ireland, and the SDLP unquestionably refuse to give it up.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

Rather than reflecting on where we are this evening, would the hon. Lady not do better to spend her time focusing on the SDLP’s failure to promote any consensus on welfare over the past three years in Northern Ireland? If she had focused on those actions, we would not be here tonight.

[Ms Ritchie]

The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised when I say that I disagree with his viewpoint. The SDLP tabled amendments to the Bill in the Assembly, and those revenue-neutral amendments were refused and declined by the DUP and Sinn Féin.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Durkan]

Several of them were. Some would have had cost implications, but many were cost-neutral. That was one of the arguments that the Minister made at the time. We checked whether the British Government were consulted by the Minister or anybody else and asked whether there would be a problem if the amendments were passed, but the British Government made it clear that they were not consulted and that they had not acted against our amendments in any way. They were not saying that our amendments would have threatened to derail the Stormont House agreement or were in any way in breach of it. It was entirely the decision of Sinn Féin and the DUP to veto our amendments by the petition of concern and by voting against them.

You will not want me to anticipate the Committee stage too much, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the fact is that the amendments we have tabled for the Committee stage capture some of those same amendments. I ask people to read those amendments in the light of what my hon. Friend the Member for South Down has said because they would not derail or damage the Bill.

On the wider politics of this matter I can perhaps reach some agreement with the hon. Member for North Antrim, because they involve a strange change of position on the part of Sinn Féin. All along, Sinn Féin said that it was going to oppose welfare reform completely. All along, it said that no claimant—now or in the future—would be a penny worse off as a result of any changes. SDLP Members said that we could not subscribe to that position. We said that could not pretend that we could guarantee by any tactics, in the Assembly or here, that we could protect every last penny of benefit for any existing claimant or any new claimants into the future. We were very clear, honest and honourable about that.

Sinn Féin election posters this year were on the theme of “Stop the Tory cuts”. Some of us said that Sinn Féin was in no position to stop Tory cuts unless it was in a position to stop a Tory Government, and, as a party that does not take up its seats, that was not going to happen. It was nonsense, but that is what Sinn Féin said. We were told by Conor Murphy:

“The Tories have no mandate in the north for their cuts agenda. The local parties need to make it clear that Tory cuts to public services and the welfare state are unacceptable.”

Now, apparently, those Tory cuts to the welfare state are acceptable to Sinn Féin. Martin McGuiness told us:

“I am not prepared to preside over the austerity agenda that the British government are inflicting on our executive. My conscience would not allow me to do it.”

Well, he has got over his conscience now, and he is quite happy; perhaps he is pretending to himself that he is not presiding over it by virtue of having handed the power to Westminster. I may now receive a voice-activated intervention from the Minister, who will tell us that the power has not been handed over and that Westminster will have a parallel, or concurrent, legislative power, which Stormont will also have. There will be a power switch on both walls, but only the power switch on the Westminster wall will be activated and used for the next 13 months during which, after the Bill is passed, a series of orders and regulations will be made.

We have been told about the sunset clause. Sinn Féin seems to be allowing some people to suggest, in social media, that it is a very clever thing, and that a big line is to be drawn in the sand at the end of 2016, because many of the more nefarious and controversial aspects of the current Welfare Reform and Work Bill are meant to kick in in 2017. The sunset clause, however, will apply only to the decision-making powers that are now being taken by the Secretary of State. It will not apply to the content or effect of any of the decisions that are made by him or her. All the changes that are made in direct rule legislation here, in Orders in Council and in other instruments, will still apply in 2017 and beyond.

We have heard many references to the Assembly’s legislative consent motion. We should bear in mind that it includes the words

“approves the welfare clauses of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill as initially introduced at Westminster”.

Some of us did not approve those clauses as they were initially introduced; we argued against them, and voted against them. I recall members of the DUP expressing concerns about some of those clauses, voting against them, and voting for amendments. Unusually, the legislative consent motion did not even make provision for amendments. Other such motions have not just allowed Westminster to pass a Bill, but allowed amendments to be tabled. For some reason, this motion precluded that.

Many of us are in difficulty because we are being asked, on Second Reading, to approve matters on which we have already voiced and recorded our disapproval. That applies not just to the SDLP, but to a number of other parties. We are being told to do that because it will be the great deal that will move everything forward. Members have touched on other aspects of the deal, but my concern relates directly to the Bill.

I am certainly not saying that we should set aside the mitigations and the other measures that have been so carefully agreed to. Indeed, I think that we should have done more work on those. I also think—I raised this at Stormont House in 2014—that we need to think, collectively, about whether there is the proper demarcation between Westminster and the Assembly in relation to welfare reform.

Perhaps we should look at what has been happening in Scotland. I am not suggesting that we should adopt an exact model of the Scotland Bill, but I think we should take account of some of the issues and ideas that have flowed from those debates. I think we should look to the longer term, and ensure that we do not fall into the trap of either allowing karaoke legislation to be pushed through the Assembly as a result of “budget bullying”, or creating the potential for political crises. There is a different delineation in the scope of the devolution of welfare in Scotland. I think that we may need to examine what is happening there, given the emphasis that many Members here have placed on some of the most sensitive benefits in Northern Ireland, relating to disabilities and other long-term conditions including mental ill health.

It was part of the original Stormont House deal in 2014 that parties would be prepared to look at how wider issues of devolution—not just tax, but benefits—were being handled elsewhere, with the aim of securing a more sustainable adjustment for the future. If we want to avoid the spasmodic crises in which parties end up trying to find a brink on which to teeter every time there is disagreement about important issues such as these, we may need to do something else.

When I raised the need to ensure that we were in a better position in the future and suggested ways of dealing with the medium to longer-term issues, I did not receive much support from members of other parties. The First Minister merely said that my problem was seeing around too many corners too early, and that perhaps we should just let some things go and they would be all right when we got to them. The fact is, however, that we anticipated a great deal of difficulty with welfare reform, which is why we argued for a different approach in the Assembly all those years ago, as well as here. We have been proved right, to the extent that, if we had all taken a different course together, we might be in a better position.

The Bill gives the Secretary of State power not just to translate the rules in relation to benefits from the 2012 Act, but, as the Minister has indicated, to prepare an Order in Council to translate proposals in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. The legislative consent motion refers to “the welfare clauses”. I note that the shadow Secretary of State did not receive an answer to his very fair question, which my party colleagues also asked in the Assembly last week: what exactly is meant by “the welfare clauses”? Some Members seem to believe that they do not include tax credits, but the Treasury now counts tax credits as welfare for many purposes, including the welfare cap. We have different notions of welfare, and the welfare measures in that Bill are not restricted to conventional social security benefits; they extend to tax credits as well. We have a right to more clarity, and I hope that the shadow Secretary of State will receive a clear answer to his question.

This has been a bit confusing. When my hon. Friend the Member for South Down pointed out that not all the tax credit losses would be covered by this package, we were told that tax credits were nothing to do with it because they did not constitute devolved welfare. At the same time, however, DUP Members have claimed that the mitigation on tax credits has been the significant part of the deal, and the main justification for accepting it. They cannot have it both ways. They cannot say that it must be counted for the purpose of one side of the argument, but not for the purpose of another side.

In response to the challenge presented by the fact that some are not prepared to work for consensus, the Secretary of State may well confirm that in the Stormont House talks we made it clear that we wanted all the parties to agree that the Institute for Fiscal Studies should be invited to provide us with a quick regional analysis of the implications of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill and the tax credit changes. That would also test the Secretary of State’s argument at the time that the Welfare Reform and Work Bill was a good deal for Northern Ireland—she used exactly the same words she is using for this Bill for the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, before the Government were moved to say they would amend it or mitigate it in some way. On these measures, she said that we needed to take account of the changes in terms of the tax thresholds and the national living wage that would make good the loss. We were saying, “Let’s get the IFS to do this so we’re not just relying on figures from our own officials in the Department for Social Development or anywhere else.” Again, however—surprise, surprise—the SDLP put forward an idea for all the parties to go with, that was informed and would have been neutral and constructive, but it was not supported. That was not for lack of action by us to try to take a consensus approach and make sure all parties have a better-informed approach in that regard.

We were being told by the Secretary of State—Sinn Féin and the SDLP in particular were being told this—both publicly from the Dispatch Box and in the talks that there would not be a deal on the past if there was not a deal on welfare reform. It was said that welfare reform had to be settled and move forward or else there would be no progress on the past. But now we have a deal that gives us welfare reform moving forward in the way the Government want—entirely in the Government’s hands—and we do not have a deal on the past moving forward. People want to know how that came about; it is not only the victims who want to know that.

When we listen to Sinn Féin on this, it tells us, on the past, “No deal is better than a bad deal,” but then we ask them about welfare reform, and they tell us, “A bad deal is better than no deal.” It is a complete contradiction; the only consistency is Sinn Féin’s inconsistency and lack of principle. Of course Sinn Fein might well try to tell us, “Oh no, we’ve delivered on our promise,” because Gerry Adams’s big promise was, “No one will have a reduction to any benefit under the control of the Assembly or the Executive.” So how does Gerry keep his promise? He removes it from the control of the Assembly or Executive and hands it to direct rule.

We must remember that it is direct rule we are giving; it is going back to the old Order in Council position. Such measures cannot be amended—indeed, the sponsoring legislation for the system we have tonight cannot even be amended either, unfortunately, because of the way the allocation of time motion works. That is what we are stuck with; that is the choice Sinn Féin has made and it has yet to explain adequately why.

Sinn Féin does not have the protections it says it wants, therefore, and it now tries to pretend that we are in a completely new situation because of 8 July—because the Chancellor announced a Budget on 8 July that changed everything and threatened a lot more people. We all knew there was going to be a Budget on 8 July. In fairness, Sinn Fein, like ourselves, pointed out during the election, and even back last year at Stormont House, that whatever package we had, if the Tories got back into government other cuts could be sought. There was speculation: sums of £12 billion or £16 billion were mentioned. We also knew that, even if Labour returned to government, it was committed to applying the welfare cap on a UK-wide basis. So we knew there were going to be difficulties. Therefore, for Sinn Féin to pretend that a completely new situation that nobody could have predicted came about with the return of the Conservative Government and the Budget of 8 July is completely wrong.

Sinn Féin’s argument back in July was that all parties should work together in facing the Government and we should join forces with Scotland and Wales as well. When some of us looked for that approach at the recent Stormont House talks, we found there were no real takers for it, not even Sinn Féin, which had advertised itself as the main sponsor and advocate of that way forward.

People will want to know why we have come to this position, therefore. They will want to know why Sinn Féin has used the so-called threat of collapse of the institutions to collapse its own position. We have known for some time that the DUP has been in something of a roll-over mode in relation to welfare reform legislation, because the DUP position has been that once the legislation went through Westminster—[Interruption.] The DUP position has been that, once the legislation went through Westminster, we have no choice but to go along with it; that has essentially been the line it has pushed in the Assembly. It also never objected to the fine and never raised any argument against it. One would think that it was almost in on it at the beginning as a tactic. The threat of a fine was never used before in relation to welfare changes, which were not always reflected in Northern Ireland on the basis of parity, but it was used this time. But essentially, the DUP’s position has been to say, “We weren’t really for that legislation when it went through Westminster”, even though there were parts of it that they did not really oppose. DUP Members actually voted down amendments from the House of Lords, including measures to protect child benefit from the benefit cap. The DUP’s position has been to say, “We have to comply with this”, whether in the name of parity or to avoid fines. It has adopted a roll-over approach.

[Gavin Robinson]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman is making every effort to build consensus on this issue. He has said on a number of occasions that this is “karaoke” legislation. Is he really saying that, while he is happy to follow the substance of what is being asked of him, he is having difficulty in striking the right tune?

[Mark Durkan]

The karaoke legislation is the legislation that goes through the Assembly. The Assembly is told that, in the name of parity, it has nominal legislative power, but it has to stick to the words and music set down by Whitehall; otherwise, there will be fines, penalties and threats. That kind of budget bullying would rightly not be accepted in relation to the new devolved procedures in Scotland. I am sure that the Treasury would think twice before daring to apply penalties and fines in relation to the concurrent decision-making powers that will apply under the Scotland Bill. The Minister talked about parallel powers. The Scotland Bill contains measures referring to decisions being made concurrently. Some decisions are to be made by the Secretary of State for Scotland and others by Scottish Ministers, but the clauses refer to decisions being made concurrently and to consultation. There is no suggestion that a disagreement between a Secretary of State and Scottish Ministers would result in the kind of budget penalties that have been invoked in the context of Northern Ireland. That brings me back to the point that we shall need to look at this in a wider context after we get over this particular episode.

I was making the point that the DUP has been in an acquiescent, roll-over mode for some time. The bizarre thing is that Sinn Féin is now in hand-over mode in this regard. Its best way of holding on to its position is to hand over power to the British Government—the Tory Government—and to give them direct rule in relation to these matters for 13 months. Some of us have tabled amendments that would provide a middle way, even though the DUP and Sinn Féin have already got a legislative consent motion through the Assembly. The effects of that could be mitigated if we were to pass amendments to better delineate the powers that the Secretary of State could exercise, as well as the other powers that we are told will remain seated with the Ministers in the devolved Assembly, not least those relating to the vexed question of sanctions. The hon. Member for North Antrim mentioned that in his speech.

Many people in this House have fundamental concerns about how the sanctions regime that stems from the 2012 Act operates. I have even heard Conservative MPs saying that, although they have no problem with the rationale behind the benefit changes in the Act, they have serious questions about the sanctions regime. I believe that Members from Northern Ireland and elsewhere share those concerns. Having listened to the debates on the Welfare Reform and Work Bill and the Scotland Bill this year, I know that Members have concerns about how the sanctions would apply in Scotland and elsewhere.

That is one reason why some of us are making decisions in the name of consensus. We think we are putting forward concerns that other parties have expressed, and we are trying to create a legislative answer to them and have trust in ourselves. After all, I heard the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr Donaldson) saying that we should not be talking down Northern Ireland and its institutions. Some of us are trying to maintain the democratic institutions there, even if Sinn Féin and the DUP have to let some of these matters go, and we should at least ensure that we hold on to our responsibilities relating to sanctions, among other things. We have to do more than have a form of devolution that says, “Yes, we have all the power and we are making all the decisions, but this one we didn’t want. A big boy made me do it.” Sinn Féin’s answer this time is, “A big girl is going to do this for us.” I refer to “Tough Theresa”, or whatever the hon. Member for North Antrim is going to call her. That is not good enough, because if we are to give people confidence, we have to show that we are serious about using our powers when we have them and not let them go. That applies to the corporation tax power as well as to other things that other people talk about.

The final point I wish to make is about the wider aspect of the fresh start. Some of us made strong contributions about paramilitarism during the Stormont House talks. We emphasised, and shared papers with other parties about, a whole community approach to rooting out all traces and vestiges of paramilitarism in our society—not just singling out groups and singling out parties. We suggested a common declaration that should be taken by everybody. We put forward those proposals—we did not see proposals from other parties. We are glad that some of our proposals have found their way into the fresh start, but we think the proposals there could be better, stronger and more amplified. Similarly, we proposed a whole enforcement approach, covering all the policing agencies and the Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs pursuits that should be undertaken, including those on a cross-border basis. We sought a whole community approach and a whole enforcement approach.

My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell) has said that he was disappointed about the wider economic aspect of the package, and we see the reason for that when we compare what is in the package with the range of proposals and ideas that my party put forward and shared with other parties. I hear Conservative Members talk about the importance of reducing corporation tax so that we can compete with the south, and somebody was quoting a recent newspaper headline. We need to remember that our task in the north is not just to compete with the south with a comparable rate of corporation tax; we need to recognise that the south has built up because of its huge investment in further and higher education and in skills, and a very significant investment in infrastructure, and we are not matching that in the north. It is not there in the current programme for government and it is still not there in the vision after the fresh start. We need to be moving a lot further on that.

It is not only the south we need to be competing with; we need to recognise that as a regional economy, localities and city constituencies such as mine are having to compete with cities and city regions on this island, too, which are benefiting from things such as city deals and various other packages and measures. Although I do not buy all of the bluff and guff that goes with the whole northern powerhouse idea and so on, the fact is that significant drivers for economic growth are being given, and they are allowing cities and regions to shape things for themselves and we are leaving ourselves out of them in Northern Ireland. We should have had something in the class of city deals as part of this package, too.

Where there are positive things that allow us to move forward on issues, my party is prepared to recognise them. We are not going to be in denial about those things where there are difficulties. As ever, we need to build on what we have. We might not like exactly how we got here and we might not like the detail, but we always have to build forward—that remains our approach. As we build forward, we have to remember that the Assembly is meant to take on its responsibilities and to meet them, and it should not have been sliding over as handily as it did just to spare the blushes of Sinn Féin. The hon. Member for North Antrim says we are being too light on Sinn Féin, but we must recall why the motion has been put through here in the way it has been. We must remember why it is all being done so fast and why no amendments can be tabled. That is all designed to minimise the difficulty and the embarrassment for Sinn Féin. The timing of all this is not just to convenience the step-down by the First Minister; it is to cover and convenience the climbdown by Sinn Féin.