Charter for Budget Responsibility

Helen Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe]

Will the Chancellor give way?

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Will the Chancellor give way?

[Mr Osborne]

No; I am going to end my speech now. [Interruption.] Well, I want to make sure that all these Labour Members have a chance to stand up and say exactly what they think of the welfare cap, and tell us that they support it, and that they should have introduced it when they were in office. They look such a cheery bunch. I want to make sure that they have a chance to explain what they are voting for this afternoon—or perhaps some of them will not.

I could set out more of the details, but much of that has already been done in the Red Book. This is the key point that I want to make to Labour Members. The welfare cap brings responsibility, accountability and fairness. Those who want to undo our welfare reforms will now have to tell us about the other cuts that they will make, or else come clean and admit to the public that what they really want are higher welfare bills. The phoney argument that welfare can be magically cut by a Government’s spending more and borrowing more will run into the brick wall of the OBR’s independent assessment. The phoney argument that a Government can spend half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money on a spare room subsidy and pay for it with a cut in winter fuel payments worth a fifth of that will be exposed by an inevitable breach of the welfare cap. The “welfare party” will have to make its case for more welfare spending in the plain sight of the British people.

Our welfare cap ensures that never again can the costs spiral out of control and the incentives become so distorted that it pays not to work. From now on, any Government who want to spend more on welfare will have to be honest with the public—honest about the costs—and secure the approval of Parliament in order to breach the cap. Twenty-six benefits will be controlled by the welfare cap as part of our long-term economic plan to restore sanity to the public finances. This is a system that is affordable and fair, and I commend it to the House.