Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Dennis Skinner

Monday 2nd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I commend the Secretary of State for all the efforts that he is making to restrict benefits for European citizens within the framework of the law, but does he agree that the only way in which the country will ever gain complete control over benefits policy for EU citizens is by leaving the European Union?

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

That’s what he used to say.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The Prime Minister has given the country a referendum on that matter, which is a huge step forward for the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) and everyone else—they will all have a vote. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) will, at that moment, be able to make that powerful argument. I am sure, with his rhetoric, he may yet carry the day.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Dennis Skinner

Monday 8th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is true. Here is the long-term economic plan—a record employment level of 30.8 million, up 1.75 million since 2010; over three quarters of the rise in employment since 2010 in full-time work, and two thirds of the rise in employment in managerial, professional jobs; and the number of British people in work up by over 1 million in the past four years, two thirds of the total rise in employment.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Is the Secretary of State aware that in Bolsover and the village of Shirebrook, Mike Ashley has a different rule? Most of his employees at SportsDirect are on zero-hours contracts. It is time those contracts were abolished. That is what we will do if we get into power in May. Is he aware that the way in which employment agencies bring people over to work at SportsDirect resulted in one employee having a baby in the SportsDirect toilet on new year’s day? That proves that all the talk about the wonderful employment figures is totally wrong, because she should have been on maternity benefits and probably should not have been working on new year’s day. That is what is inflating the bogus employment figures. It is time he sorted it out.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The reality is different from what the hon. Gentleman describes. The personal circumstances of individuals may be appalling and that needs to be dealt with, but people on zero-hours contracts represent 2% of the work force. We are moving to get rid of the one excess that makes them a problem, which is when people are blocked from taking any other work. That will not be allowed, but it was allowed under his party’s Government. The last point I would make about zero-hours contracts is that nearly 70% of those who have them prefer them, because they give them flexibility. That comes from independent polling. Zero-hours contracts were never attacked by his party’s Government and I do not think that it is his party’s policy to get rid of them. We think that they add something to the economy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Dennis Skinner

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Is the Secretary of State aware that a disabled unpaid voluntary worker has been told by the Department for Work and Pensions that as from now she will be in the same category as part-time workers who have a job? Is this a way of padding out the number of people in employment?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I do not know what this case is, but if the hon. Gentleman would like to write to me about it, I will deal with it specifically—

[Mr Skinner]

I have done.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Well, I have not seen the letter, but I will once I have ferreted it out. We are not padding anything out—we do not need to, because there are about 600,000 vacancies now in jobcentres up and down the country and we are doing our level best to help people of all descriptions, including those who have disabilities, most of whom would genuinely like to seek and find work. We are working with them to help them get the kind of job that can change their lives, rather than parking them for many years in a row, as Labour did.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Dennis Skinner

Monday 10th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State explain why, when disabled people are justifiably being applauded the length and breadth of this land, he has chosen this time to close Remploy factories that employ thousands of disabled people? Will he withdraw those closures and put an end to that hypocrisy?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

May I say to the hon. Gentleman that the process was started by his Government? It was they who closed 29 centres. The difference is that they never put in place any support measures for unemployed Remploy factory workers. We, however, are spending £320 million and adding another £15 million to that to ensure that, with the new programme, we try to get them back into mainstream work. It was the lobby groups that wanted us to do this, because they do not like segregated employment.

Welfare Reform

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Dennis Skinner

Thursday 11th November 2010 Commons Chamber

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

With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to make a statement on welfare reform. Let me say in advance of that that I have tried to give the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander), as much time on this as possible, and I am open to more questions. I thank him for his co-operation in that.

In this House in October, I set out our resolve to secure a welfare system that I said should be fit for the 21st century, where work always pays and is seen to pay by those who are engaged in it. Following consultation since then, a broad positive consensus has—I think—emerged. That consultation ranged very widely, from Citizens Advice to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and across the political divide as far as we could go.

The White Paper that we are publishing today therefore sets out reforms that will, I hope, ensure that people will be consistently and transparently better off for each hour they work and for every pound they earn. We will cut through complexity to make it easier for people to access benefits. The intention is to cut costs, reduce error and do better at tackling fraud. The detail is published today, and the White Paper should be available in the Library. Let me take this opportunity to thank all those in the Department and beyond who have helped to build and write it, working very long hours to make sure that we could get it out today.

Perhaps I could take this opportunity to remind the House of exactly what problem we are trying to solve. It does not relate to any sort of party political point; we are dealing with a structural issue that has grown throughout successive Governments. Five million people of working age are on out-of-work benefits; 1.4 million people have been on out-of-work benefits for nine of the past 10 years; 2.6 million working-age people are claiming incapacity benefits, of whom about 1 million have been claiming for a decade; and almost 2 million children are growing up in workless households—one of the worst rates in Europe.

Some have said recently that it is not reform that is necessary or important, but jobs. Well, this is a long-standing problem in our country. We have a group of people who have been left behind, even in periods of high growth. That is the issue. Even as 4 million jobs were created over 63 quarters of consecutive growth from one Government to the next, millions of people in Britain remained detached from the labour market. Some 4.5 million people were on out-of-work benefits before this recession even started, notwithstanding the growth in jobs that I referred to. These reforms are about bringing them back in. I want them to be supported and ready to take up the 450,000 vacancies that even today, as we begin to emerge from recession, are available in the economy. It is also worth reminding the House that of all the jobs that were created, the vast majority, in terms of net take-up, were taken by people coming in from overseas, because businesses could not get people in this country to do the work and therefore had to seek people elsewhere.

The key to solving this problem is to solve the wider social problems associated with worklessness. The measures in the White Paper to get this process under way are the first key strand of our welfare reforms. By creating a simpler benefits system, we will make sure that work always pays more than being on benefits. By reducing complexity, we will reduce the opportunities for fraud and error, which currently cost the taxpayer approximately £5 billion a year.

I think that everybody in the House would accept that work is ultimately the best route out of poverty. At present, some of the poorest people who take modestly paid jobs can risk losing £9 or more out of every £10 extra they earn. The universal credit must put an end to some of the perverse disincentives that make it so risky for the poorest to move into work.

The highest marginal deduction rates for in-work households will fall from 95.8% to an absolute limit of 76.2%—that is with the conjunction of tax and the withdrawal—and there will be a single taper rate of about 65% before tax. That means that about 1.3 million households facing the choice of whether to move into work for 10 hours a week should see a virtual elimination of participation tax rates of over 70%. With single tapers and higher disregards, the system will be simpler and easier and people should be able to keep far more cash in their pockets when they move into work.

The guarantee will—I hope—be crystal clear: if people take a job, they will receive more income. Some 2.5 million households should get higher entitlements as a result of the move to the universal credit, and the new transparency in the system will produce a substantial increase in the take-up of benefits and tax credits. Taken together, we estimate that those effects will help lift as many as 350,000 children and 500,000 adults out of poverty. That is just our analysis of the static effects of reform. Analysing the dynamic effects is not always easy, and it is often best done in retrospect, but we estimate that the reforms could reduce the number of workless households by around 300,000.

Let me also provide assurances about the transition. We will financially protect those who move across to the universal credit system. There will be no losers.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

For how long?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

For ever.

A far simpler system, which operates on the basis of real-time earnings, will also reduce the scope for underpayments or overpayments. We all know from our experience as constituency MPs that that can create anxiety and disruption, and can prove very difficult to correct. Our simplification and reform will help to end that particular problem. As well as reducing official error, these changes will also make life far more difficult for those who set out to defraud the system. They are a very small group of people, but they are there none the less.

The system will be simpler, safer, more secure, fairer and more effective, but it will require investment. Some £2.1 billion has been set aside to fund the implementation of the universal credit over this spending review period, and I have been assisted in that work by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, who has agreed to and guaranteed the investment programme.

This is not just expenditure; it is also investment. We are investing in breaking a cycle of welfare dependency, which I believe is a price worth paying. The universal credit will provide a huge boost to individuals who are stuck in the benefit trap, reducing the risk involved in taking work and lifting 850,000 people out of poverty in the process. That investment will produce a flow of savings, as a simpler system will help to drive out more than £1 billion of losses due to fraud, error and overpayments each year. On the wider economic considerations, dynamic labour supply effects will produce net benefits to this country, as greater flexibility helps businesses and fuels growth, particularly in the high street. We will invest the £2.1 billion provided in the spending review 2010, seeking a multi-billion pound return.

That is how we will make work pay, but as I said earlier, and as our document states, it simply will not be enough. We also have to support people as they make their move back to work, and the two issues cannot be separated. That is why we are moving ahead with our new Work programme, which will provide integrated back-to-work support. It will pick up and bring together many of the programmes that were in place before, and add to them to create a comprehensive system of support. That is why we have already started a three-year programme to reassess the 1.5 million people who have been abandoned for years on incapacity benefit. The Opposition started that process before the election for the flow of new claims, and we are now trialling it in two cities.

Essentially, this is our contract: we will make work pay and support people to find a job through the Work programme, but in return we expect co-operation from those who are seeking work. That is why we are developing a regime of sanctions for those who refuse to play by the rules, as well as targeted work activity for those who need to get used to the habits of work. That will be a selective process, targeted at those who need to do it, not at everybody. It will be targeted as required, using the understanding and knowledge of those based in jobcentres.

Furthermore, evidence from the already existing work capability assessment, which the last Government started, shows that 36% of people withdrew their applications before reaching the stage of being assessed. The knowledge that they are likely to be assessed has a stark effect on those who may be trying to defraud the system. That underlines the effect that the system could have on those who are currently working while claiming benefits.

This new contract, in which we do our best to help people find work, to make them work-ready, to make work pay and to say that they will always be better off in work than on benefits, is a fair deal for the taxpayer and a fair deal for those who need our help. I commend the reforms in the White Paper to the House.