Tax Credits

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whiteford]

The hon. Lady is making a ridiculous argument and once again trying to pretend that there are people on welfare and people in work whereas in reality—as illustrated by the tax credit system—many thousands and millions of working people are dependent on benefits because of low pay. That is the key issue in this debate. The Government are attacking low-paid workers, just as they have over the last Parliament, while giving tax breaks to the wealthiest people in our society. The deep cuts to the incomes of the poorest families that the Government are trying to enact today will only exacerbate the inequalities we already have in our society and push opportunities even further out of the reach of those who already lag behind.

The most bizarre claim that has been made for the Government’s austerity measures is that they will encourage people to work harder. I think that we should reject the rather insidious implication that people in low-paid jobs somehow do not work as hard as people in better paid jobs, because that is simply not the case. We must remember that those low-paid jobs are often far more physically demanding, and many people who are set to see their incomes cut under this measure are already working very long hours in exhausting and often pretty unrewarding roles.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Does the hon. Lady also reject the glib answer from those on the Government Benches that low-paid workers can somehow just take more hours, because clearly those hours are not available?

[Dr Whiteford]

In various parts of the country unemployment is still unacceptably high. Whether someone can easily pick up extra hours depends on which part of the country they live in, which sector of the economy they work in and what caring commitments they might have, whether for children or other family members. It is not so straightforward when lots of parents are chasing part-time work between the hours of 9 am and 2.30 pm, when their children are at school. A lot of part-time work needs to be done outwith those hours, when parents have real difficulties accessing childcare.

The charity Gingerbread has today pointed out that some lone parents working full time on the minimum wage with one child will, by 2020, be no better off than non-working lone parents were in 2010. By 2020 many parents working full time will have fallen even further below the minimum income standard than they are at present, but essentially they will be no better off working full time than they would have been had they been out of work five years ago. Where is the work incentive in that? If we really want to incentivise work, we should be increasing work allowances, as my party proposed in the run-up to the general election, not cutting them. That would incentivise work and cut child poverty.

Once again, we have been told today that increases in the minimum wage will compensate for those losses, but the numbers simply do not stack up. Even if the Government proposed raising the minimum wage to the level of the current living wage, which is already £7.85 an hour—well above the Government’s proposed ceiling—the calculation of the living wage is based on not only the cost of living but the assumption that low-paid families are already receiving their full entitlement to tax credits at the current rate.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Resolution Foundation, trade unions and others have all pointed out that the proposed increases in the minimum wage, and indeed the increases in the personal tax allowance, will not make up for the loss of tax credits. The crucial point is that if we cut tax credits in the way the Government are proposing today, the minimum wage would have to rise substantially further, to around £11 an hour, just to keep incomes standing still in real terms.