Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Helen Jones and Marcus Fysh

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)]

In 2003 the former Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath was spending 0.9% of GDP on tax credits. Under his stewardship that rose to 1.9% of GDP in 2010. By 2020, this Government will have brought that down again to 1.2%, which will still be one third more than the highest levels of spending on tax credits under Labour from 1997 to 2003.

I support the Government’s desire to focus our welfare spending on those who are particularly vulnerable, and to make the system encourage work and people doing better at work. Welfare should be a safety net, not a net that ensnares those it is meant to help. People understand that welfare must be reformed, and even some Labour Members know that the system needs to change and that Gordon Brown’s attempt to create a client state was wrong. His use of tax credits to flatter his relative poverty measure was disingenuous.

People in Britain find abuse of welfare distasteful. A week ago a constituent who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness came to me. He may have a more difficult time under these measures, but he said, “I’m so glad that you are tackling this because the level of welfare is completely unfair on people who work.”

The Bill is full of positive steps such as measuring the root causes of poverty and rightly emphasising the positive intent in calling the measurement process “life chances”.

[Helen Jones]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the measures in the Bill do not recognise the fact that two-thirds of children in poverty are from families in work, and that the number of poor children in families in work, as a proportion of all children in poverty, has been increasing? It increased under his Government from 54% to 63% and he is not even going to measure that.

[Marcus Fysh]

We need to enable more people to get better work, and that is what my Government are focused on doing.

There are other very good measures in this package, such as keeping financial support for people in difficulty with their mortgages, and ensuring that people who claim benefits now face the same choices as people in work. We need to ensure that a job always pays better than welfare and turns life chances around.

It is telling that the Opposition are so divided on these issues, tabling conflicting amendments and saying they will come up with more later. Who knows what they will support in the end? What we do know is that the Liberal Democrats have for now, by their blanket opposition, moved further to the left than the Labour party and into the same basket as the SNP. No longer do they seem to have any intention of balancing the budget and rebuilding our finances.

I commend the Bill to the House.