Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and David Winnick

Monday 2nd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The ambition is to get as many claims online as we can, but there will be some people who cannot get online. Under universal credit, we are keen to ensure that people can, if necessary, continue to make paper submissions, and that they will be treated inside jobcentres, but we will get as many online as we can. We have been talking constantly to the providers about how best to do this, and also about matters of security.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

For clarification, is the Secretary of State pleased that, as a result of sustained parliamentary and public pressure, the Chancellor has been forced to reconsider the proposals on tax credits? Is that a matter that meets with his approval?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Everything the Chancellor proposes meets with my approval, as I am a member of the Government.

Child Poverty

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and David Winnick

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I do believe that. One of the big failures of Governments is that too often they have been ambivalent about the whole concept of stable family structures and have simply chased the errors. Since we came to power, family life has stabilised, according to the latest reports. More than that, we are putting millions of pounds into help and support for those in danger of family break-up, and that never happened before.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Tory party members were the strongest opponents of a national minimum wage, and no doubt the right hon. Gentleman himself voted against it. Apart from those on the Tory Benches, most people will understand very clearly that the whole purpose of his statement and policy is to try to conceal the amount of poverty, child poverty and deprivation that exist in so many constituencies like mine. He should be thoroughly ashamed of himself.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Those are the usual rather bitter and acrimonious remarks from the hon. Gentleman. I say to him, not for the first time, that I utterly disagree. More than that, I point out that all the figures that we would usually publish will continue to be published; there is no hiding anything in this report. If he is not going to be bothered to read them, I will direct him to exactly where he will find them. If we change life chances from the beginning rather than being obsessed about targets, as he is, we might change real lives rather than playing games.

Child Poverty

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and David Winnick

Thursday 25th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I believe that is the case, but there is hugely more to do. I do not for a moment stand here today and say, “It is all brilliantly successful”—quite the contrary. This is a very difficult area, but we are dealing with and trying to turn around some of the most troubled and difficult families. My hon. Friend is right, but we have more to do, and that is my purpose and why I am here.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

If the situation has, according to the Secretary of State, improved substantially, why are there so many food banks—a far larger number than previously? Is it not quite clear that some Tory Members have no idea at all about the amount of poverty that exists—in many cases in their own constituencies?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. Most of my colleagues are hugely involved in food banks and help them. I welcome food banks: I welcome decent people in society trying to help others who may, for various reasons, have fallen into difficulty. I do not accept that the single cause of that is welfare reform—quite the contrary. Food bank usage has been rising over a period. It was never part of the British system, but in Germany, where we can argue that their welfare payments are higher, 1.5 million people a week use food banks—much more than people do here.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and David Winnick

Monday 8th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Yes. My hon. Friend is right. Some 2% of people in work are on zero-hours contracts and the vast majority of them choose to do it because it suits them. Many of them have caring responsibilities and cannot commit to a full period of work, and some of those are in very professional jobs. It has been a success.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Is the Secretary of State really telling us that the Government have no responsibility at all for the acute financial hardship affecting so many people in our country? If so, no one believes him except Tory MPs. No wonder the Archbishop of Canterbury is so shocked by what he sees in Britain today.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The Archbishop of Canterbury also said today that they should not play political games with a serious report. I agree. Of course, a Government take responsibility where that responsibility falls, but we do more than that. I am determined to do whatever it takes to make sure that far fewer people are in any kind of need and have to go to food banks. That is the vital issue. It is all very well, after four years in opposition, to lecture us sanctimoniously, as the hon. Gentleman does, when it was the Government whom he supported who crashed the economy and did not even take any responsibility for the disaster they brought to all the families who lost their jobs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and David Winnick

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

I have been here since the beginning of Question Time and may I tell the Secretary of State that I have been sickened—there is no other way to describe my feelings—by his complacent indifference to the agonising hardship suffered by the most vulnerable in our society? He should be ashamed of the policies he is pursuing.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The only sickening thing is the last Government plunging the economy into such a crisis that more people fell into unemployment and hardship as a direct result of the incompetence of the people whom the hon. Gentleman has progressively supported.

Romanians and Bulgarians (Benefits)

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and David Winnick

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

May I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on getting his urgent question on the second time of trying? He is a model of persistence and I, of course, was over the moon about his persistence.

The right hon. Gentleman has raised an important question and I want to deal with some aspects of it. First, however, I will set the scene as to what we are trying to deal with. I understand that Labour Front Benchers now admit that they fundamentally got it wrong on immigration, but the scope to which they got it wrong is why we have this issue. Between 1997 and 2010, net migration to the UK was some 2.2 million people—larger than the city of Birmingham. Interestingly, from 2004 to 2010, 1.1 million European economic area nationals registered to work in the UK. After the prediction of what was likely to happen, the scope of the problem is far greater than anything the Labour party wanted to tell the public. Most of all, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and her team in the coalition for having begun the process of reducing net migration to Britain for the first time in a long time.

For the benefit of the House and in line with the right hon. Gentleman’s request—I know he particularly wanted me to answer that bit first, so having dealt with it I will get on with the rest of my answer—let me explain the current arrangement. A lot of nonsense is talked about what we are and are not capable of. First, people must pass the habitual residence test, introduced by the previous Government, before being entitled to claim income-related benefits. The current system was put in place in 2004 and has basically two elements—a legal right to reside and an assessment of factual evidence of habitual residence. As we know, EU citizens have the right to live in another member state as long as they are a qualified person, which basically means a worker, self-employed person, jobseeker, self-sufficient person or student. Tax credits have, I am afraid, been open to abuse outside that system from day one because the rules allow anybody from within the European economic area to claim self-employed status and receive full entitlement immediately. The Government are trying to wrestle with that problem, and I will return to it.

We are currently facing—not for the first time—a legal challenge from the European Commission because our habitual residence test states that people must prove they live in the UK habitually before they get access to benefits. It seems strange to me that anyone should be surprised that a habitual residence test requires that a person should live in the UK habitually, but we sometimes live in that George Orwellian political language world, which the Commission seems to foster with great alacrity.

Secondly, on exportability, under the EU co-ordination rules, benefits under the main categories of social security are exportable—that is, payable elsewhere in the European economic area. So that we clear up the confusion, let me say that that includes, notably, child benefit, for example, and has for a while. We therefore pay child benefit to children who live in other EU states when their parents are working here. That causes a lot of concern, and quite legitimately so. When both parents work but in different countries, the EU rules apparently determine who has primary responsibility for paying, but any difference in entitlement is netted off. So, for example, if someone comes from Poland and works over here, the child support that we pay here is netted out against what they might have received had they been paid in Poland, and the net amount is therefore paid across. That is the existing rule. The UK system is obviously more generous, and that is why it pays people in a sense to be here, getting those benefits.

I recognise there are some real issues here. We are in the midst of looking at those issues with other countries as well, and I want to mention which ones are on the schedule. The Government are concerned that, although some protections are in place, they are not enough. That is particularly worrying given the issue, which the right hon. Gentleman raises, of 1 January 2014. So we are trying to look carefully at where the system is falling down at the moment, and I am exploring a series of options. Today, for example, I have called for another meeting of a series of European nations that share our concerns. Some people might have noticed today that Germany has woken up at last to the reality that it might face a large net migration. We are due to meet its representatives and others from around the EU to try to ensure that we deal with this. I do not believe that it is acceptable that we go on with it—I have told the European Commission that—and we will resist it.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

What about answering the question?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am answering the question. To be frank, the real question for the hon. Gentleman is why he sat with a Government who, for over 10 years, made such a shambles and a mess of this.

The reality is that we are trying, for example, to figure out the rules that allow us to prevent individuals from staying in the UK for only a short time before claiming benefits—a rule that existed under the last Government. We are looking at the tests about accommodation and the length of time people spend here. We want to look at things such the leasing arrangements they have for their housing and over what length of time, and even at challenging the narrow and short-term definition of “habitual” used by the European Court of Justice. In other words, we are trying to lock people out from coming here solely for the purpose of claiming benefits.

I have to tell Opposition Members, who were making a noise just a second ago, that one of the big problems is that the last Government did not collect any data on how many migrants actually claimed benefits here. We have changed that. We are now totalling up who is here and who will claim benefits, and we will be on top of those figures.

In conclusion—I know the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) wants to ask some further questions—there are a number of things we need to do. We need to tighten up immediately the rules about habitual residency. We need to tighten up the rules about accommodation and the leasing length of time. We need to tighten up and start the process of arguing hugely with the Commission that it is quite wrong to net out things such as child benefit and pay the higher level to people whose families do not even come with them into the country to work. Finally, many nations in Europe are just as angry as we are about this, and we have been meeting them since last summer and reaching a common purpose to deal with the Commission and force it to recognise that any further changes it wants to make, including by taking us to court over the British residency rules, are not acceptable. We will tighten up. I refuse to accept the Commission’s rules. I will not give way on the habitual residency test, and we will tighten up on net migration.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and David Winnick

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

What the hon. Lady and her party presided over when they were in power was a complete mess in housing—[Interruption.] It is all very well for Opposition Members to shout like a bunch of discombobulated monkeys bouncing up and down on the Benches; the reality is that their housing benefit record left many thousands of families unable to find housing because they were in a queue, while others occupied housing that had far too many rooms. We have to put that right, and that is what we are doing. The Labour party never did that when it was in government.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Although I am not a vindictive person—at least, I hope I am not—I would like to see the Secretary of State and his colleagues, plus the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, try to live, just for six months, on the income of those who have been adversely affected as a result of the cuts carried out by the Government over the past two years. Try and live on that sort of income; see what it is like not having any recourse to private income.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I have known the hon. Gentleman for a long time, and the reality is that none of these decisions is taken lightly by this Government—indeed, any Government. I remind him, however, about all those people who, because of the mess in which the previous Government left the finances, have found themselves out of work or with incomes falling. When he talks about vulnerable people, it is this Government who have increased the pension and made it better for some of the most vulnerable people in society.

Youth Unemployment (Walsall)

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and David Winnick

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I applied for this debate in view of the serious youth unemployment in the Walsall area and particularly in my constituency. The latest figures show that, in my constituency, just under 16% of people in the 18 to 24 age group are claiming jobseeker’s allowance. I am pleased to see the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the Front Bench tonight, as well as the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). I should point out to them that that rate of just under 16% is the third highest in England. The situation in the other parts of the borough is not much different, and it is certainly still higher than the national average.

Let me state what should be obvious: unemployment is a curse to all those seeking work, and no less so to young people who want to get started in life. I emphasise again, as I have done in this House over the years, that we ourselves do not wish to become unemployed through losing our seats at any stage, and that we are always anxious to find work, and the same applies to the overwhelming majority of those who are registered unemployed.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

indicated assent.

[Mr Winnick]

I am glad to see the Secretary of State nodding in agreement. There is understandably considerable concern over the position locally. I fear a return to the situation in the 1980s, when two major recessions had a devastating effect not only on the borough but on the black country and on the west midlands in general.

Let me give the House an illustration of the situation nearly 26 years ago. In September 1985, more than one fifth of the age group that I am referring to were on unemployment benefit in the borough of Walsall. The situation improved over a period of time, and it certainly did so in the first years of this century. In May 2004, the youth unemployment percentage in Walsall was down to 7%. Even then, however, it was higher than the national average. I ask the Ministers to tell the House when we are likely to see the percentage go down to that figure that pertained seven years ago. Last year, youth unemployment rose in the three constituencies of Walsall North, Walsall South and Aldridge-Brownhills.

I do not challenge the fact that as the global recession took effect from 2008 onwards, unemployment grew. It is clear; the figures show it. I am not going to dispute what is, after all, quite obvious. There are bound to be continuing debates about how to deal with the recession and, indeed, about how it came about. My purpose tonight, however, is not to engage in that wider debate—there will be many opportunities in which I am sure I will participate—but to concentrate on the borough and the particular constituency of Walsall North that I represent and on what can be done to provide more opportunities for those without employment. That is the purpose of tonight’s Adjournment debate.

The sharp decline in manufacturing—what is sometimes referred to as metal-bashing—is clearly an important factor, not only for Walsall, but for what are usually described as the four black country boroughs. Walsall council’s latest review, looking at the overall employment situation in the borough, noted that in 2009, quite a number of new enterprises arose. That was very good. Unfortunately, however, there were quite a significant number of job losses. The net loss in 2009 was somewhere in the region of 285 jobs. Yes, jobs come in, but too many also go out.

As for vacancies, the figures show that 10.8 people—I use the exact figure—go after every job. I hope that there will be no disagreement about the fiction that there are jobs here and jobs there, so that those registered as unemployed—whether in the 18 to 24 age group or older—are not particularly keen to get work and are not willing to try to get it. All that is absolute fiction. I have seen reports in the paper on many occasions that when a vacancy occurs, there are sometimes as many as 40, 50 or even 100 people applying for it. As I said at the start, if we take the view, with which Ministers agreed, that those who are unemployed are keen and want to work, it is not surprising that people chase after vacancies and take every opportunity to try either to get into work for the first time or to get back into work.

What I want to find out tonight is what steps the Government intend to take, particularly in boroughs like mine. Let me point out again that this borough is the third highest in England for youth unemployment. What measures are the Government going to take? What feeling can people in my constituency and in the borough have for the fact that the Government recognise the urgency of the position and are willing to act on it?

I know that a number of measures have been publicised. Insofar as they are positive and will bring work and bring down unemployment, I will obviously welcome them. It would be strange otherwise. However, I ask Ministers when these measures that have been mentioned and published are going to come into effect. Have any of the measures on youth unemployment yet come into effect? Moreover, what priority will the Minister give in his reply to areas of high youth unemployment? It is important for him to answer that question.

There is no doubt that we need more apprentices. It is unfortunate that, more in my part of the country than in other areas, too many leave school at the first opportunity. Here we are talking about the under-18s. In a debate on education maintenance allowance that I initiated in January, I demonstrated that the percentage who received the allowance in the borough and in my constituency was very high indeed.

As the House knows, EMA is paid to those who stay at school after the age of 16 when the income of their households is relatively low. Unfortunately, the Government took measures to undermine the allowance. I do not know whether that is a controversial thing for me to say in a debate in which I have tried to avoid controversy, but I do know that the steps taken by the last Government through EMA to encourage 16-year-olds to stay at school were very useful. It is clear that more training opportunities are needed, so that those who leave school at 16 or 17—which I think we all agree is too early—can obtain the necessary skills and need not spend years, perhaps the rest of their working lives, in unskilled work with all the insecurities that that involves.

I said that I had applied for the debate because of the seriousness of the situation, and it is indeed a serious situation. As a constituency Member, I have a duty to do what I can to highlight the difficulties and bring them to the attention of the House of Commons, which, after all, is one of the responsibilities of a Member of Parliament. I have done that in the past, and I shall continue to do it for as long as I sit in the House. I hope that the Minister will be able to satisfy me that the measures announced by the Government will be effective, and will come into operation soon.

Welfare Reform

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and David Winnick

Thursday 11th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The policies on housing benefit stand as they are. On the hon. Lady’s point about a living wage, I genuinely believe that the reality is that what we are doing is the best way to ensure that households end up with a living wage. In the past, because the system was so difficult and complicated, the first person into work in a household would often not be able to earn enough money to support the household. Because it will pay more to be in work, the process that we are introducing will give the first person in a household who goes into work a greater opportunity to earn enough money to support the household, allowing the option for the second earner to be just that: an option, rather than an absolute must.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

In the real world, is it not the case that 18 unemployed people are chasing every vacancy and that two thirds of our unemployed people have each applied unsuccessfully for 11 positions? Let me also tell the Secretary of State that the sum of his recent utterances about the unemployed reminds one of his constituency predecessor, who at a time of mass unemployment in the 1980s told the unemployed to get on their bikes. Now, apparently, it is buses.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The reality is that the hon. Gentleman should welcome the programme that I am introducing today, because it will improve the lives of the poorest in society. I am sorry that he chooses to cavil about this. My comment on buses was simply this: people on low incomes in London and many other cities recognise that it is sometimes necessary to travel to their places of work. That is the key point. Frankly, I do not need any lectures from him, and if he and his party—[Interruption.] No, they should be prepared to accept that the recession that he refers to is the recession that they left us.