Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms]

I fear that the hon. Gentleman did not understand the Budget. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Budget reduced the income of 3 million working families by over £1,000 a year on average, and in many cases it lessens the incentive for the first person in a household to go into work. He need only read the very clear analysis of that point by the IFS.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend goes right to the heart of one of the difficulties involved. I support the idea of getting away from taxpayer-funded poverty pay to a situation where people are paid a genuine living wage. The IFS analysis shows clearly that the people most affected by this change are working families in the second lowest decile. If it goes through, together with the other changes, I will have to go back to my constituents and explain why I have made them poorer in work.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight this, because the IFS is absolutely clear that the cuts in tax credits target working families. Those people will lose out from the changes not in this Bill but in the Budget—that is why we voted against them. This is not about making work pay; it is about making working families pay. As the party of working families, we will be fighting those changes tooth and nail in the period ahead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

Welfare reform is needed, but if it is badly thought through it will hurt people, including low-paid workers. The Bill cannot be supported without major changes, so I say to the Government, think again. If the benefits and social security regime is not subject to sensible and proportionate reform, popular support for it across society will fracture, and the case for giving assistance to those in need will be undermined. That in turn will give those who are politically or ideologically opposed to providing assistance to the vulnerable, the temporarily jobless, the low-paid in expensive private sector housing, those with life-changing disabilities, carers and others the opportunity to destroy a social contract that has been steadily constructed and refined over decades.

The support regime must of course be refreshed and renewed for each new generation, and to fit prevailing social and economic conditions. Those who argue against any change are doing real harm to the durability of that social contract. But those changes must be carefully considered and evidenced, proportionate and progressive.

The Government are opening themselves up to accusations that their intentions may not be entirely pure and may not be focused on good and appropriate reforms. We can look at the rush, and at the dismissal of critical analysis of the consequences of tax and benefit changes. There is a seemingly cavalier and careless attitude to negative impacts on low-paid working families, carers, some people with disabilities, and absolute and relative child poverty. All those things suggest that the honourable and high ambitions of some Government Members—to reform the regime to help people out of poverty—risk being bound together with a lower and less honourable ideological fixation with urging the poor to sort themselves out.

I have long been in favour of sensible, progressive and radical welfare reform. Most people, including Labour party members and supporters, want those reforms focused on conditionality, which is not limited only to funds, to help people back to work. They want support for those who genuinely cannot work, and help for carers that gives them dignity, not a begging bowl. They also want a continuing commitment and specific policies to target and remove poverty. Those are all marks of a decent society and decent government. Yet I cannot and will not vote for the Bill today, despite the need for reform, because it risks making life more miserable, desperate and unforgiving for some of the most financially exposed and vulnerable people in our society. The full-throated proponents of the Bill do not seem to see that, or perhaps they do not want to see it.

The core mission of government surely has to be to help make the lives of people better, or, at the very least not to make them worse. That is why I urge all Government Members, including well-meaning supporters of the Bill, to think long and hard before swallowing it whole. The digestion of the contents by their constituents back home will be long and bitter, compared with the short-lived, sugary-sweet taste of a brief political moment in Westminster. I say to them: do not punish low-paid workers, when the IFS shows clearly that the combined impact of the tax and benefit reforms will do exactly that; do not further impoverish children, when groups such as 4Children, which are not against reform, call for changes to be made sensitively and intelligently; do not shoot the messenger by dismissing authoritative organisations and individuals who point out the flaws in the Government’s proposals.

The Bill as it stands will not have my support today, and unless it is changed to take into account the valid concerns that have been raised, it will not have my support in future. In the light of all the dangers contained in it, I call on the Government to think again.