Department for Work and Pensions

Huw Merriman Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) on her absolutely excellent speech. She set out what social security should be about. It is about the type of society that we want. The key thrust of her message was to ask whether it is acceptable that so many children are living in poverty—one in four currently grow up in poverty, and one in five are in persistent poverty—when we are the fifth richest country in the world. Is this the sort of society we want them to grow up in, when, despite being the fifth richest country in the world, we also have the highest child mortality in western Europe?

We know the causal relationship between poverty and early childhood death. Is this acceptable? To my mind, it is not, and I am sure that many people across the Chamber agree with me. That is why I asked the hon. Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison) for her evidence. We have to look at the evidence. There will also be issues with addiction, but are we seriously saying that all poverty issues relate to addiction? There is no evidence to support that. I shall get back to the point of whether this poverty is acceptable. If it is not, we need to look at mechanisms that will ensure that in the civilised society that we aspire to lead we have the policy measures to ensure that this does not happen.

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

Is it acceptable to be in a party that has always left office with unemployment higher than when it entered office, or is it acceptable to be in a party that has delivered record numbers of jobs?

[Debbie Abrahams]

I respond to the hon. Gentleman by asking whether it is acceptable that we have the highest level of in-work poverty and that two thirds of the children living in poverty are from those working families. I throw that back at the Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be the last, I think, of the Back-Bench speakers today on the important issue of the spending of the Department for Work and Pensions and its estimates. That vital Department takes a quarter of the £800 billion-odd spent each year on public services. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) on securing this excellent debate.

I spent a happy year sitting behind Ministers PPS-ing at the DWP. I was really passionate about working there, because it is a Department that can really make a difference; it has a huge spend and a vast range of levers to really help people and make a difference. Alternatively, if things go wrong, we see where people are hindered.

In his excellent speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) referred to a number of Conservative Members elected in 2017 to seats that might previously have been described as the Labour heartlands. I want to add North East Derbyshire, a seat we won in 2017, to the list. I stood for that seat in 2010 against Natascha Engel—a former occupant of the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, and an excellent MP. I spent two and a half years there. I remember how toxic the benefits culture there had become: an issue that set neighbour against neighbour.

People were concerned that they were working hard while they saw other people who they thought were not putting in the shifts. At times, that was unpleasant and unfair: it is very difficult to tell who is capable of work and who is not, and neighbours are not necessarily able to make the distinction. But I was troubled by the situation and by the statistics showing that, in 2010, 1.4 million people had been on long-term benefits for nine years and 2.6 million had been on them for five years. Clearly, that was a difficulty.

The big challenge for any Government elected in 2010, whether Labour or Conservative, was to work out how to get people capable of work off benefits and give them the tools, access and ability to step into work, thus reducing the benefits bill and focusing funds on those who really could not work. It was about helping and empowering those who could work to get into and rise up the jobs market.

I think my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar is right about electoral success. Fast forward to now, and we see that the approach has gone down incredibly well with voters—not only those who saw people on benefits who perhaps should not have been, but those people themselves, who wanted the help and were given the encouragement.

[Debbie Abrahams]

rose—

[Huw Merriman]

I will give way only once, as we are short of time.

[Debbie Abrahams]

The hon. Gentleman continues to make the assertion that welfare reforms have driven the increase in employment. There is no evidence to support that: the National Audit Office, for example, disputes it.

On the issue of working as the route out of poverty, I should say that, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, four out of five people in low-income work will still be in such work 10 years later. It is an absolute myth that work is a progression. That does not mean that we should not do stuff about that issue—of course we should.

[Huw Merriman]

Well, we can argue about statistics, but try this one. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady wants to throw one at me, but then will not let me respond with one, which I find slightly dictatorial. Some 2.2 million people were unemployed when we took office in 2010; that figure is now 1.4 million. I can give her the number of those who have clearly moved off unemployment benefit into work. We can argue about this all the way through—

[Alison McGovern]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Huw Merriman]

I am not going to take any more interventions because, to be fair, those making them have had a lot of time to speak, and I am not going to get much of a chance.

We have seen people moving into work, and that has been a huge success. From listening to Opposition Members, one would think that the benefits system was completely rosy. As I have said, not only were too many people on benefits—trapped on benefits—but if we look at the tax credits system and the attacks on universal credit, we can see that universal credit has been rolled out in a slow, progressive manner, and we have changed it as we have gone along, while tax credits, which were rolled out in one big bang, were overpaid by over £7 billion, and over £2 billion had to be clawed back from those who were actually the poorest. I do not want to take too many lectures on how to introduce a successful benefits system, because we have seen how things have failed before. What has most impressed me about the Department is that it has learned from the failings over the years and has tried to do things better.

I am absolutely passionate about universal credit, because I have spent time with my jobcentre and seen the enthusiasm that the work coaches have for it. When we go into a jobcentre now it is not like going into some cold, austere office where people are too scared to go in and get any help. It feels almost like a recruitment centre to help people. There are help points and people who are passionate about helping people into work.

I am really proud of this Government’s record. I believe that every Government should be judged on what they have done in helping people into work. As I have said before, on every occasion the Labour party has left office, it has done so with unemployment higher than when it entered, which has got to be considered a failure. The Conservative party has been able to secure 3.6 million extra jobs. We have also increased the living wage, taken people out of tax and incentivised them. We have tried to focus on people who need help the most. It is said that all these jobs are low-paid, but 70% of them are highly skilled. It is said that wages are not going up, but for the 15th month in succession wages are going up by more than inflation. The proportion of jobs that are low-paid stands at its lowest level for 20 years as a result of the national living wage. Yes, there is more to do, but let us not knock the record that we have delivered.

I am going to make one suggestion, and I am echoing a point made by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), who talked about the Motor Neurone Disease Association. He and I played football against that organisation, and I found it the most extraordinary moment. It was incredibly touching to play alongside them, and I then met that team. The organisation makes the very good point, which is also made by the Marie Curie cancer organisation, that it cannot be right that we have to test those with terminal illnesses for their disability benefit. They are reliant on a doctor saying that they will die within six months, but GPs are not comfortable saying that. The challenge for us as a Government is really to listen, and to look at how much such a change would cost. We know those people are going to be able to claim benefits in the main, so it is only a delay while they have to wait. However, they do not have time to wait, and I would like our Government to look at that. It is not just about those in that period of six months, but also those who have managed to survive their terminal illness three years and then have to be retested.

While I am very proud of the Government for what they have done in putting people into work and in targeting support, with almost an extra 1 million disabled people in work as well—we have record levels—we still have individual policy areas that we need to fix and on which we should do better. We must never rest on our laurels.