Welfare Reform Bill

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Willott]

I was going to come on to that. If the hon. Lady will bear with me, I will hopefully answer her question.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making many interesting points. Does she agree that when a person has a degenerative illnesses such as multiple sclerosis, their condition may change during any finite period, so it is important to emphasise that people can be reassessed and put into the support group if their condition deteriorates?

[Jenny Willott]

The hon. Lady is right, and many conditions get worse at varying rates—very slowly for some people, and very quickly for others. It is important to make sure that people get the benefit that they should, and that the assessment is right, as the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) said.

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[Chris Grayling]

We need to be clear about what has happened. We have been through months of debate. The Labour party has got itself on to an almighty hook on the issue of the benefit cap—it is on the wrong side of the argument—and is desperately trying to wriggle free. The Government are having none of it. We are standing by our proposal. The benefit cap that we propose is the right thing and we will press ahead.

[Harriett Baldwin]

My right hon. Friend is right that in the 26 sittings of the Welfare Reform Bill Committee, which I had the pleasure of attending, we did not hear once about the regional benefit cap. Fifty-seven per cent. of those affected live in London. Does the timing of the Opposition proposal have anything to do with the London mayoral elections?

[Chris Grayling]

There might be an element of that—it is difficult to escape that conclusion. The Opposition proposal would have more credence had it not been made at the 59th minute of the 11th hour. We should not take them seriously when they make such ill-thought out, last-minute proposals.

The Government are clear that average earnings are the right way to determine the level of the cap. We do not need the Opposition’s proposed independent body—another quango, I hasten to say—to tell us otherwise. The cap needs to be a single, national one for the policy to make sense. The Government will lay before the House a report on the policy’s impact evaluation after a year of operation.

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[Mr Byrne]

I am going to do exactly that. The Minister makes an important point about regionalisation and localisation, but the point has already been made that we have a local component to the benefit system, and we have had it for 70 years. It was such a big feature of the benefit system that in 1942 William Beveridge devoted an entire section of his report to “the problem of rents”, as he put it. I know that the Conservative party tried to block the Beveridge report back then and that Conservative Members do not want to admit this problem now, but I am afraid that it is a problem that bedevils their policy.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman enjoyed my recently published Centre for Policy Studies policy that mentioned regional benefits. On that subject, for the most expensive part of the London would he set the benefit higher or lower than £26,000?

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[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is right, and what has been noticeable by its absence this afternoon is any argument from any Government Member relating to what we should do about private landlords.

[Harriett Baldwin]

rose—

[Mr Byrne]

I promise that I will give way to the hon. Lady in a moment.

A one-cap-fits-all approach will not work in London, and it will not work elsewhere. As has been pointed out by many Members representing all parts of the United Kingdom, the cap that the Government propose may not send people the signal that they are better off in work. Our argument is in our amendment, which says that the cap should reflect differences in housing benefit costs in different parts of the country. That has always been an element of our benefits system, but we would add a couple of extra safeguards. There should be a safeguard against homelessness and the kind of costs that the Minister has had to fix this afternoon, and—in my view—there should also be a safeguard against child poverty. Heaven knows, that is worsening enough under the present Government, and we do not want it to become worse still.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Will the right hon. Gentleman answer my second question? Would the regional benefit cap in central London be set higher or lower than £26,000?

[Mr Byrne]

The hon. Lady will have read our amendment, so she will know that we propose to take politics out of the issue, and to establish an independent commission to set the level of the cap. As has been demonstrated this afternoon, when it is left to politicians, they make a pig’s ear of it.

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[Mr Redwood]

This is rightly difficult territory. I am relieved to hear that Ministers have reconsidered the transitional arrangements, and I am pleased that the Opposition welcome that. In the noise and heat of the debate, important truths are getting lost or ignored. We are not generous enough towards the disabled, and I was pleased to hear that they are completely exempted from the proposals, which should be widely welcomed across the House. The exemption of war widows, who often have very little to live on and whose former husbands sacrificed so much to help our country, is extremely welcome, as both parties in government have asked their loved ones to go into battle on our behalf.

I am also pleased to hear that anybody in work is exempted. The Government’s case revolves around something with which I believe the Labour party normally agrees: working should always be worth while. In today’s debate, there has been more heat than light. If the Labour party, the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrat party all believe that it should be more worth while to work, we need such a provision to achieve the desired effect. It comes down to the last-minute proposal that there should be some regional differentiation of the cap. We are no longer arguing for or against caps—we all now believe in that type of headgear—but Labour believes that there should be different fashions of cap across the country whereas, on the Government Benches, the passion is apparently for uniform caps.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is difficult to set a cap if one is not prepared to name a level for it?

[Mr Redwood]

My hon. Friend is ahead of me in my argument. So far, I think I have carried an expectant and worried Labour party with me. Labour agrees with all the exemptions, agrees with the delayed transition and agrees that we need to make working worth while.