Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill Debate
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Iain Duncan Smith
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Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The Bill, which stands in my name and that of my right hon. and hon. Friends, is about the renewal of what I believe is a principled welfare state based on affordability, integrity and fairness. For the convenience of the House, let me explain that I intend briefly to run through the features of the Bill, and I will then open up the debate to take interventions and deal with the amendment.
This Government inherited from the previous Government an unsustainable and costly system, and a welfare state that I believe delivered poor social outcomes, trapping people in dependency, as well as a poor deal for Britain’s taxpayers. My opposite number, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), needs no reminder of that as it was he who, when we arrived in government, told us that there was no money left. That was the result of a recession that was later discovered by the Office for Budget Responsibility to be deeper and sharper than anyone thought. The original estimate—
Mr Duncan Smith
I will give way in a moment. I am in the business of having the right hon. Gentleman justify his own position so I will be happy to give him a chance, but let me finish this point. The previous Government originally claimed that the shrinkage in the economy was 5.8%. In fact, as the OBR later pointed out, at 6.3% the shrinkage was deeper than we had ever seen before—the biggest shrinkage in the economy since world war two.
Mr Duncan Smith
I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman raises that point because a huge part of that is spending on pensions. He will know that we are spending more on pensions and provide a better deal for pensioners than his Government ever did. Until this Bill, the Government continued to raise welfare payments in line with inflation; this is the first time that we propose not to do so. That will take effect through the uprating order that should be laid before Parliament later this month. The Bill provides that discretionary working age benefits and tax credits will be uprated by 1% for a further two years in the tax years 2014-15 and 2015-16, if prices have risen by at least 1%. The schedule to the Bill sets out the benefit payments and tax credits in question, which are listed in full in the explanatory memorandum. By providing for those changes in legislation, we can provide certainty for taxpayers, the markets and claimants.
A number of exceptions to the Bill are not included, and a number of benefits remain outside the scope of the Bill. We are maintaining our commitment to the triple lock so that the basic state pension will rise by 2.5%. In April 2013, pensioners will see an increase of £2.70 on last year—far more than the derisory 75p that Labour gave them in 2000—and I stress again that we introduced the triple lock to guarantee that. Crucially, we are also protecting disabled people and carers. Benefits to cover the added costs faced by these groups will continue to be linked to price inflation.
Mr Duncan Smith
I will give way in a moment. That includes carer’s allowance, disability living allowance, and new personal independence payments, as well as premiums paid to disabled people receiving working age benefits such as the disability additions in tax credits, and the support group component of employment and support allowance.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has stated that benefits have been raised in line with inflation, but he did not say that tax credits— 2,000 people who are affected by the Bill are in work and receiving benefits such as tax credits—have not been increased for the past two years. In fact, they have been frozen.
Mr Duncan Smith
It is interesting that the hon. Lady raises that point, because under the Labour Government, tax credits absolutely boomed. In 2005, there were increases of 58%. Overall, there were 340% increases in tax credits, 70% of which goes to child tax credits. The hon. Lady says that tax credits should continue to rise, but she can make that argument in due course.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State admit that the social security budget is going up on his watch because unemployment is rising faster than his colleague expected?
Mr Duncan Smith
Never let a good fact get in the way of a good argument. Unemployment is falling, youth unemployment is falling, more women are in work than ever on her watch, and long-term unemployment is flattening out. The reality, therefore, is that we have better employment figures—there are 1 million new private sector jobs, which outweighs the public sector jobs we have had to get rid of. The reality is that the rate of unemployment, at 7.8%, is better than the EU average and better, almost for the first time, than the United States of America.
Mr Byrne
It is significant that the Secretary of State has just admitted for the first time that welfare spending on his watch is rising £14 billion higher than projected. Will he go a step further and confirm his understanding of the OBR figures that show that the claimant count is forecast to rise by a third of a million more than anticipated over the next few years? Will he admit that, yes or no?
Mr Duncan Smith
I should remind the right hon. Gentleman that the claimant count was forecast to rise but has fallen throughout all those forecasts. I know it is inconvenient for the Opposition, who would rather unemployment rose than fell, but unemployment is falling. Many countries in Europe would give their eye teeth for the employment figures in this country.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
On disabled people, paragraph 24 of the Secretary of State’s impact assessment, which has just been published, states:
“Nevertheless, despite this protection…those households where someone describes themselves as disabled, (under the DDA definition) some of whom will not be eligible for a disability benefit, are more likely to be affected than those where there is not a person”
in that category.
Mr Duncan Smith
There are two good reasons for that. First, families in which there is some disability are often more likely to include people who have claims on other benefits. Some of those will be affected by the change.
Mr Duncan Smith
No. That is exactly the reasoning behind what the impact assessment says. The second reason is that, as part of employment and support allowance, the support group is protected. However, people who are described in the terms of the Bill as qualified under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and are not in the support group will find that they will be affected by the 1% increase. Therefore, by and large, the benefits for those who are disabled and qualified as disabled, and for those in receipt either of support payments in ESA, disability living allowance or the premiums in many other benefits, are being uprated in line with inflation—[Interruption.] May I finish? The only benefit that is not being uprated in line with inflation is ESA for those not in the work-related activity group. Some of those with disability will be affected because many in their households will be on other benefits. That is the reason.
Mr Duncan Smith
I think I have dealt with that particular point and will move on—[Hon. Members: “No!”] All right, I will give way to the hon. Gentleman again.
Derek Twigg
I thank the Secretary of State for giving way, but I am not clear about what he has just said. Will he confirm his impact assessment, which states that
“despite this protection …those households where someone describes themselves as disabled, (under the DDA definition) some of whom will not be eligible for a disability benefit”—
this is the crucial point—
“are more likely to be affected than those where there is not a person who describes themselves as disabled”?
Does he agree?
Mr Duncan Smith
I have just told the hon. Gentleman that the reality is that someone in those households is more likely to be on benefits, but particularly ESA. Let me remind him and the Labour party that they introduced the changes to the work capability assessment and ESA. The Government inherited, modified and improved those measures, but they are part of the reason why that is in the impact assessment.
Mr Duncan Smith
No. I have dealt with the hon. Gentleman’s point. The truth is that the Labour party is not only against the Bill but against what the Labour Government introduced just before the last election and the work capability assessment. Labour Members have opposed £80 billion of changes and reductions in every single vote and every single motion. I have dealt with his point. They must decide what they are in favour of when it comes to reducing the deficit; otherwise, they will be a laughing stock.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Is not the bottom line that it is very difficult to justify 20% increases in benefits when earnings for hard-pressed families have gone up by only about 10%?
Mr Duncan Smith
It is worth pointing out to my hon. Friend that, when the Opposition originally heard about the Bill, the shadow Chancellor and my opposite number—the shadow Secretary of State—entertained the idea that what was wrong with the Bill was that it affected too many people who were in some kind of work through working tax credit. The speculation was that, somehow, they would be prepared to support, or not oppose, measures on those not receiving working tax credit. I notice that there is no mention of that position in the amendment, because they have been clobbered by their left and by the trade unions, their paymasters. Instead, there is a rag-bag amendment expressing opposition to a variety of things, which bears no relation to their previous position. There they go again, denying where they are.
The real question for the shadow Secretary of State and the shadow Chancellor, before they intervene again, is this: having opposed every single reduction to the deficit, what exactly would they do to cut it? They have not a single answer.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
We have just heard that one justification for capping benefits at 1% is that, allegedly, benefits have risen significantly more than wages. In that case, would it not be wise for the Government to introduce a measure so that benefits do not increase by more than average wage inflation?
Mr Duncan Smith
As I have said, the Bill is about trying to bring that fairness back into the welfare payments process. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) has said, the reality is that in the period since the recession, payments for those in work have risen by about 10% and payments for those on benefits have risen by about 20%. We are trying to get a fair settlement back over the next few years. Eventually, benefits will go back on to inflation.
Andrew George
We do not know—the Secretary of State is probably more clairvoyant than I am—what food price inflation will be in, for example, 2016. We are being asked to predict what the circumstances will be in the context of the rather arbitrary figure of 1%. I simply urge my right hon. Friend to keep an open mind, and to have a means by which we will uprate that is fair to both benefit recipients and those in work.
Mr Duncan Smith
I accept the point about fairness—that was my point—but the reality is that the Bill is also about getting the overall welfare bill down and in kilter. As I have said on the radio and again today, the key is that we must reduce the deficit—that is at the heart of the measure. The Liberal Democrats joined us in the coalition. I should remind the hon. Gentleman that the No. 1 priority we face is reducing the deficit that Labour left us—the biggest deficit on record of any Government since the second world war. That is the reality, but Labour Members are in denial, so I will move on.
The reality is that affordability—
Mr Duncan Smith
I will give way in a minute—I want to make progress and I have been quite reasonable in giving way.
First and foremost, under Labour public spending spiralled out of control—[Interruption.] Yes, it did. That left behind the UK’s largest ever peacetime deficit, and interest payments running at £120 million a day—[Interruption.] It is interesting that as soon as I speak about what Labour Members left behind, they go into denial. They try and shout me down because they do not like the sound of it. The reality is—
Mr Duncan Smith
I will give way in a minute. The reality is that the shadow Chancellor and the former Chief Secretary deny that they left a problem. It was a nightmare, and they should apologise and tell us what they would do to put it right.
Mr Byrne
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way again: he is being typically generous. No doubt he, like me, will have looked at the DWP benefit expenditure tables, which show that spending on out-of-work benefits between 1996-97 and 2009-10 did not rise, but fell by £7.5 billion. That is why Lord Freud said that Labour’s record in getting people back to work was “remarkable” and noted that Labour had tackled the long-term dependency on unemployment benefits that it had inherited from the Tories in 1997.
Mr Duncan Smith
I notice that the right hon. Gentleman is very careful to avoid telling the House how much Labour spent on tax credits as well. The important point that Labour Members need to realise is that of the total bill for tax credits, 70% had no involvement with work at all. Child tax credits had no work agreement on them whatever. The reality is that Labour spent 340% more on tax credits, 58% before the 2005 election and 29% before the last election, in the hope of buying votes to get it out of difficulty. The result was that the debt we had to pay off was costing us £30,000 every single minute. That is what we had to pay as a result of that expenditure—
Mr Duncan Smith
I am not giving way to the right hon. Gentleman again. I keep reminding him that he is the man who, when he left office, admitted that there was no more money left. He should apologise for that. Labour has opposed the £80 billion of savings that we have proposed. When he gets up again, he needs to tell the House what Labour would do to reduce the deficit and where it would find the savings. If he answers that question, I will give way to him.
Mr Byrne
My right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor has set out far more about the difficult decisions that we would make than the Chancellor ever made. We have said that uprating of benefits should be slower; that there should be a two-year cap on contributory ESA; that there should be a reduction in disregards in tax credits; that there should be a benefit cap in different parts of the country; and that no one in this country should be allowed to live a life on welfare and languish for more than two years on JSA. The best way to bring the welfare bill down is to get people into work, not give them a failed Work programme.
Mr Duncan Smith
I remind the right hon. Gentleman again that we are getting people into work. Unemployment is lower than it was when we took office, youth unemployment is lower and we are getting more people into work. He said that he was in favour of the cap. That is very interesting, because he voted against the cap. He says that he is in favour of a number of issues, but he voted against the Welfare Reform Act 2012. He is against universal credit and the housing benefit changes. He has not agreed to any of the changes that we have made.
The overall bill for welfare rose by 60% between 1997 and 2010—
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Is not the philosophical underpinning of this debate our wish to create a hand-back society, not a hand-out society? Is not cutting taxes on lower earners the best way to help those on low earnings, rather than recycling their hard-earned money through the benefits system?
Mr Duncan Smith
That is exactly the point. Labour Members think that helping people is about trapping more and more people in benefits. It is interesting that under the tax credits system, nine out of 10 families with children were eligible for tax credits, in some cases those with more than £70,000 in earnings. What a ridiculous nonsense they created.
Labour’s system was riddled with fraud and error. HMRC had to write off £4 billion in fraud and error payments and will probably have to write off another £4 billion, so £8 billion has been lost. This Bill is about finding savings of £1.9 billion, but as a result of tax credits Labour lost probably nearly £8 billion. That is the record of the last Government. They should apologise for the mess they left us in.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I appreciate the Secretary of State’s generosity in giving way.
I welcome the Secretary of State’s confirmation that pensions will not be detrimentally affected by the Bill. Can he confirm that in actual cash terms there will be an increase in benefits?
Mr Duncan Smith
That is correct. That is exactly what this Bill sets out. That will also be the case this year.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
I wish to take the Secretary of State back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) about disabled people. We have now gone from the Secretary of State saying that there is a blanket protection for disabled people to him acknowledging in the impact assessment that some disabled people will be affected by these changes. Given that recognition in the impact assessment, can he tell the House how many disabled people his Department estimates will be affected by these changes?
Mr Duncan Smith
I stand by what we said originally, and I say it again: in this Bill we have protected people on disability living allowance, as well as people in the support group on ESA. All the disabled premiums in JSA and so on are also protected. I do not know where Labour Members think they are going with all these points, because the reality is that they are basically opposed to absolutely everything. They would spend more money, they would tax more and they would borrow more, and the people who would suffer would be the British people who would have to pick up the bill. That is the reality.
I was making an important point about fraud and error. In essence, more than £10 billion was lost, and we do not even know how much was overspent, because Labour would not collect the figures. Writing off those debts wastes taxpayers’ money. To put this in perspective, the Bill sets out what we are doing at the moment to raise £1.9 billion, but that money could have been raised without difficulty had Labour’s system been better and more efficient.
It is also worth pointing out that, for many of the people Labour Members talk about, universal credit will improve their income dramatically. I have some very good examples of that. Under universal credit, a typical one-earner couple who have two children and rent their home will be £61 better off—including the changes today. A one-earner family with an income of £20,000 and two children will see a net gain of at least £34 a week. That will be a big boost for them and was not taken into consideration in the IFS figures.
The reality is that there is an issue about fairness, which we touched on just now. We should bear in mind that 70% of all households will not be affected by this legislation. Many of our constituents are taxpayers picking up the bill for all these costs, including the deficit and borrowing that the last Government left us. Over the last five years, following the recession, the gap has grown between what people in employment have been earning and what those on welfare have been getting. Those in work have seen their incomes rise half as quickly as those on out-of-work benefits—10% compared with 20%. That is not fair to taxpayers. Returning fairness to the system is critical, and it is one area that Labour refuses to acknowledge. Under the previous Government, taxes rose, borrowing rose and the deficit rose—and they left those bills for the next generation to pay. It is our job to get that under control. These are not decisions taken lightly or easily, but we have to take them and they are in denial.
The shadow Chancellor likes to sound off from a sedentary position. He likes to give it out but does not like to take it. I remember only a few weeks ago that he went around the studios complaining that we were too mean to him. If he does not like it, then he should stop making sedentary interventions.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State confirm that inflation can be particularly tough on people on low incomes who face small increases? Will he reassure people in the country that the Government and the future Governor of the Bank of England will be dedicated to getting inflation down, so that the value of benefits is not eroded more?
Mr Duncan Smith
Exactly. Mortgage rates are a critical component of what a household spends each year. Under Opposition plans, if interest rates had to rise because of their messy borrowing and spending, every 1% would cost another £1,000 on a typical mortgage. What have also done as a coalition, which we should be proud of and on which our coalition partners were very keen, is raise the tax threshold. That is taking more than 2 million people out of tax—people who were paying tax under the previous Government. That is serious help and an improvement of £165 a week for the average family.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I want to ask the Secretary of State about the people who are moving into low-paid work. Of the increase in employment in the past year, only 20% has been for full-time work, and so 80% has been for people who are by definition in part-time, and therefore probably low-paid, work. How will they benefit when he is capping the in-work benefits increase by just 1%?
Mr Duncan Smith
I will make two points to the hon. Lady. First, the vast majority of people who take part-time work choose to take part-time work. In all the studies we have—I am happy to let her have them; they are in the public domain—only 17% or 18% say that they did not want a part-time job, and wanted a full-time job, so she should not decry those who take part-time work. My second point is that that is why we are bringing in universal credit. Universal credit is about in-work and will be a huge support to those in part-time work, starting this year. The trouble with the tax credit system, which the Opposition are defending despite the fraud, the over-payments and the massive error, is that it lodged people into little silos where they could not move up, out of those hours. If a job moved from 16 hours to 17 or 18 hours, people did not do it because they could not afford to do it. Large numbers of lone parents, as she knows only too well, would rotate out of that and crash back out of work, because the job moved on and they could not stay with it.
The reality is that we are reforming the welfare system to make it better and easier for people who are in part-time work to have improved incomes. That is a part of this overall welfare programme that will deliver an efficient and even-handed system. It is right that the 1% applies across the board, including the tax credit system. As I said earlier about the overall numbers of people affected, of those working households, 20% of all households are affected by the Bill. If tax credits and child benefits were excluded, as the Opposition have prescribed, we would see a requirement to find a further £1.5 billion—yet another amount of money which they cannot say how it would be found. When in denial, like those on the other side of the House, one just votes against everything. A constructive Opposition would give us a proposal on how they would save that money.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State has used the word “denial” twice. In previous Budgets and autumn statements, the Government talked about and acknowledged measured child poverty. However, in the most recent autumn statement and in the Bill, there is no mention of child poverty. Will he admit that under these plans child poverty in our country will go up and that that will come at a cost to us all?
Mr Duncan Smith
I will say two things about child poverty. First, we want to ensure that the figures published concern the years that this measure covers, and the year in which I will be introducing secondary legislation. The figures will be published next week in time for the debate—the Committee stage will be on the Floor of the House and everybody who is here today can take part.
Secondly, child poverty was calculated based on the median income line, and the previous Government lost control of it. Tax credits rocketed because they were chasing a moving line. As upper incomes rose, so did average earnings, and that is why they had to spend so much money. I remind the hon. Lady that they missed their targets in 2010 by 600,000 children in poverty. Since we have come in, the figures published this June show that child poverty fell by 300,000. I am not going to stand here today and try to claim credit for that fall. The figure fell because we saw the biggest fall in earnings for many years. Does that mean that because earnings fell child poverty has been solved? No, it does not. That is why we are consulting on a better way to measure child poverty.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
The Secretary of State brandishes the figure of a 20% increase in benefits in the past five years. In cash terms, jobseeker’s allowance has gone up from just £59.15 in 2007 to £71 in 2012. In other words, in each of those past years JSA has gone up by just £2.50. Is it not the truth that this is a mean and miserable piece of legislation from a mean and miserable Government?
Mr Duncan Smith
I hear the hon. Lady’s point; I have to say that I do not agree with her. Benefits have risen, but if she would like to talk to those who are in employment on lower incomes in her constituency she would find that many have seen absolutely no rise in their incomes at all, and some even less than that.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
On that point, I was approached by a member of Manchester constabulary in my advice surgery recently. He said, “How can you justify putting out-of-work benefits up by 5.2% last year, when I have had a pay freeze and I risk my life every day?” Is that not the nub of the argument? People who are in work have to be treated fairly.
Mr Duncan Smith
I agree with my hon. Friend. I want to make some progress because he is absolutely right. The reality that Labour will not face up to is that the programme it has put forward is hugely costly.
I want to deal with the programme that Labour put forward in the past week, which I think is in the amendment before the House. I looked at it and it seemed very familiar. I remembered something, looking back over the past 10 years. I went back and had a look at the programme that the shadow Chancellor and his then boss, the then Labour Prime Minister the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) came up with. [Interruption.] I seem to recall that they came up with a programme called StepUp. The right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) was an adviser at the time. [Interruption.] Well, he was certainly very close to him. Is he now denying—[Interruption.] Well, there we have it finally: he no longer wants to have the former Prime Minister as his friend. More than that, from his sedentary position, he will probably deny that, late in the hour while the then Prime Minister was troubled and in difficulty, he did not come by taxi or by car to consult him and help him out. A denial of a friend is pretty cheap, and I think we will remember that.
The reality is that the StepUp programme, on which the Opposition have clearly based this new programme, was piloted in 20 areas between 2002 and 2004. It was never rolled out nationally, and I want to quote from the evaluation report. The StepUp programme was all about giving paid employment to people who had been out of work for some two years. The report stated:
“StepUp produces a very modest improvement in job entries…but this is below the level of statistical significance.”
In fact, each of those jobs would have ended up costing £10,000—a massive cost for a very small regard. When they did it—[Interruption.] Wait a minute. When they did it—[Interruption.] They do not want to hear about it. They made a bogus announcement and now they do not want to hear how useless it is. The work prospects of under-25s in the pilot got worse as a result of this programme.
Here is what happened. The Opposition were in a hurry during the Christmas recess, worried about being attacked for having no proposals, so the shadow Chancellor said, “Oh, I remember something we did under the man who used to be my friend, but is no longer my friend. I remember we had this programme.” So they decided to put that out and propose raiding pensions savings yet again to pay for a bogus programme. If anyone thinks for one moment that it would help anybody at all, let me tell them that it is more than a joke—it is pathetic. And it is pathetic that they have done it to try to get themselves off the hook.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
Has my right hon. Friend pondered this question? The Government are trying to ensure that the social security net works for people who need social security. When does he think that Labour decided that they were not interested in social security, only in bribing the electorate?
Mr Duncan Smith
It is in its DNA, so I am not sure when it started, to be honest. The tax credit system was out of control, as I said earlier on, because Labour was chasing a figure it could never reach, and as a result its spending was enormous.
In conclusion—
Mr Duncan Smith
No, I want to conclude. The right hon. Gentleman will have plenty of time to speak.
Mr Duncan Smith
Okay, I will give way in a second.
I want to remind the Opposition of what they have done. They have opposed £83 billion-worth of savings this Parliament. That is equivalent to adding another £5,000 of debt for every working family in the country. We hear much about taxing the rich, yet, in this Parliament, the richest will pay more in tax than in any single year of the previous Government—more tax on capital gains, more stamp duty—they will be less able to avoid and evade tax and they will pay more when they take out their pension policies.
We hear much about the bankers’ bonus tax, but Labour would have spent that money 10 times over. This is its great bankers’ bonus tax of £2.3 billion. Let us think about it very carefully. It would have overspent that to the sum of £25 billion—through reversing the VAT increase, more capital spending, reversing tax credit savings and reversing the child benefit savings. We are talking huge sums of money.
Mr Byrne
The Secretary of State has the temerity to criticise proposals we launched on Friday, when he is presiding over a Work programme that is literally worse than doing nothing. He stands before the House justifying the position of his Government, which is that it is possible to spend a life on welfare, but we say that is wrong. The way to bring welfare spending down is to get people into jobs, and when there are no jobs we invest in creating them.
Mr Duncan Smith
Our record on getting people into jobs is better than theirs. The difference is that Labour spent taxpayers’ money like drunks on a Friday night, with no care or concern for how effective it was. The work experience programme achieves what the future jobs fund did, but at a fraction of the cost. The Work programme is getting more people into work than the flexible new deal programme.
Mr Duncan Smith
No, I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman. I think he has a few apologies to make before I give way.
This was Labour’s legacy in government: 5 million on out-of-work benefits, one in five households with nobody working and 2 million children living in workless families—a higher proportion than in any other EU country. In opposition, they have learned nothing. Today’s amendment shows—if Members can be bothered to get to the end of it without falling asleep—that Labour would spend more, tax more and borrow more and let the next generation pick up the bill. The Bill is about picking up the pieces, sorting out the deficit and being a responsible Government.
Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Welfare Benefits Uprating Bill because it fails to address the reasons why the cost of benefits is exceeding the Government’s plans; notes that the Resolution Foundation has calculated that 68 per cent of households affected by these measures are in work and that figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that all the measures announced in the Autumn Statement, including those in the Bill, will mean a single-earner family with children on average will be £534 worse off by 2015; further notes that the Bill does not include anything to remedy the deficiencies in the Government’s work programme or the slipped timetable for universal credit; believes that a comprehensive plan to reduce the benefits bill must include measures to create economic growth and help the 129,400 adults over the age of 25 out of work for 24 months or more, but that the Bill does not do so; further believes that the Bill should introduce a compulsory jobs guarantee, which would give long-term unemployed adults a job they would have to take up or lose benefits, funded by limiting tax relief on pension contributions for people earning over £150,000 to 20 per cent; and further believes that the proposals in the Bill are unfair when the additional rate of income tax is being reduced, which will result in those earning over a million pounds per year receiving an average tax cut of over £100,000 a year.
It is good to see the Secretary of State fronting the Bill today and to see the Economic Secretary to the Treasury in his place. Where, however, is the Chancellor? It is a disgrace that he is not here in person. Where is he?
Mr Duncan Smith
The Chancellor told me earlier he was in Berlin making a speech—a long-term commitment —but he will be back in plenty of time for the winding-up speeches, and he is looking forward to hearing Labour make as much of a mess of it at the end as at the beginning.
Mr Byrne
I think it is surprising that the Chancellor is talking to people in Germany, rather than to MPs in the House about the disastrous consequences of his policies.
We know that the Chancellor and the Secretary of State do not see eye to eye on much, but they are jointly and severally liable for the mess and the haemorrhaging of the welfare budget that the Bill seeks to staunch. The Chancellor’s disappearance is a hallmark of the contempt that has been shown for the House today. The impact assessment for the Bill was published at noon. It makes radically different assumptions from the policy costings set out by the Chancellor last year. And now the Government propose to ram the Bill through the House in just one day of debate. They are terrified of scrutiny and exposure. It is turning into a hit and run on working families, and frankly we should not stand for it.
The Chancellor should have shown up, because the Bill is about clearing up the consequences of his failure. His reputation as a maker of recessions is now pretty well established. Every time he has come to the House, he has been forced to downgrade growth yet again, and since he took office he has battered the life out of the recovery that Labour left him in 2010. He is the first Chancellor for 35 years to preside over a double-dip recession. History will not judge him well.
But the Chancellor has a partner in crime: the Secretary of State, the man who has become the Comical Ali of the Government, the only man in the DWP who thinks that everything is fine and hunky-dory—a man who would put Dr Pangloss to shame. Every time he comes to the House, he comes with words of reassurance: everything on his watch is going according to plan. He blithely assures us that the Work programme is fine. We are told that universal credit is completely and utterly on track—not a hiccup to be heard—and that the benefit cap will definitely start in May. The only problem is that he is living in a fantasy land of his own, because everything is not okay, everything is not on time and everything is certainly not on budget. We were promised a Work programme bigger than any yet known to man. So big it could be seen from space. This is a programme that is so effective it is literally worse than doing nothing. It works so well that just three out of 100 people who passed through it passed into sustained jobs. It is a disaster.
Then, of course, we have universal credit—a policy that is now proceeding so smoothly that, it is fair to say, it has earned widespread support and praise from right the way across Government. Members of the Cabinet—perhaps even those sharing a building with the Economic Secretary—are now so impressed that they are telling anyone who will listen at the Daily Mail and elsewhere that it is a “disaster waiting to happen” and that the IT is “nowhere near ready.” The Secretary of State has so much grip on this project that the Prime Minister himself invited him to pack his bags and clear on out of the Department—a vote of confidence that I know rang around Caxton house, because senior officials are now leaving the Department as fast as they can.
Now, of course, we have the news that the benefit cap—which Lord Freud told the other place would absolutely, definitely, without question be introduced nationwide in April—will be introduced in just four London boroughs. This is a record of chaos, delay and impending disaster, and today the Government are inviting millions of working families in this country to pay to clean it up.
Mr Byrne
I would contrast that money with the £3 billion a year that the Chancellor is giving away to Britain’s richest citizens, in a tax cut that will kick in next year, at a time when the Government are cutting tax credits and when Britain’s working families are under pressure. How can the hon. Gentleman possibly justify that, either here or to his constituents?
Mr Duncan Smith
I would be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman will now acknowledge that all the OBR’s latest figures show that, under this Government, the wealthiest are paying more in tax than in any single year under his Government.
Mr Byrne
Like me, the Secretary of State will no doubt have seen table 2.1 of the Budget, published in March 2012, which clearly shows that in 2014-15, the cost of the tax giveaway will be £3.4 billion. How can he possibly justify that at a time when he is hitting Britain’s working families? Will he justify it now?
Mr Duncan Smith
I asked the right hon. Gentleman a simple question—[Interruption.] Actually, the shadow Chancellor should leave the right hon. Gentleman alone for a second; I think he has a brain in his head. Don’t listen to him; his advice to the last Prime Minister was hopeless. I want to ask the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) a simple question. Here are the figures: the wealthiest in Britain are paying more in tax under this Government than in any single year under the last Government. Does he agree with that?
Mr Byrne
We put the top rate of tax up. It is this Government who are cutting it, at a cost of £3.4 billion a year. How can the Secretary of State possibly justify the choices made by his right hon. Friend the Chancellor, a man who has supported him hilt and sword? How can the Secretary of State justify giving away £3.4 billion to Britain’s richest citizens in a tax giveaway when he is hurting Britain’s working families? Justify it now!
Mr Duncan Smith
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree or disagree that the OBR figures show that, under this Government, we are raising more in tax from wealthy people than in any single year under the last Government? Will he now admit that?