Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Gavin Newlands(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
I am very happy to see my hon. Friend myself. If what he is suggesting has happened, it should not have done, and let us put it right.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
T7. Will the Secretary of State support Oxfam’s calls for the Welfare Reform and Work Bill to include a requirement for his Government to publish a poverty strategy that would properly address the issue of low pay and tax credit cuts? Please note: the answer is not the Chancellor’s entirely bogus living wage.
Mr Duncan Smith
We are focused constantly on trying to get incomes up, and we are looking to do that through the raising of the national living wage announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. For this Government, the No. 1 thing we need to do to make sure that people get out of poverty is to get them back to work. There are some of the best employment figures in Scotland thanks to this Government.
Child Poverty
Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Gavin Newlands(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
That is exactly the point. It is work that takes people out of poverty. We must support those who are furthest away and have the greatest difficulty, but we want the rest of them to move into work. We want the barriers, the debt problems and all those issues to be removed and we want to get them into work. We want to improve their kids’ education and improve their life chances. My hon. Friend is spot on.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
A failure to increase child benefit and child tax credit in line with the cost of living means that more than one in five families struggle to provide the basics for their children. Given that unacceptable situation, does the Secretary of State support the End Child Poverty campaign calling on the Government to give children’s benefits the same triple lock protection as the state pension?
Mr Duncan Smith
I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his post. May I say that the latest figures from Scotland show a fall of 40,000 in the number in relative poverty between 2012-13 and 2013-14? Our position is to help the worst-off, to support pensioners through the triple lock and to get all of them into a sustained life of good income.