Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Ian C. Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I am going to make a tiny bit of progress once I have given way to my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas).

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. What Government Members do not seem to understand is that the whole rationale for this Bill is the need to address their failure to deliver on the economic promises they made when they first came into government. The Bill is necessary only because the Government have failed economically.

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When the Chancellor came to the House back in December, he was forced to admit that somehow, for some reason, growth had eluded him once again—it had got away. He brought forward a package of measures that was so focused on generating jobs that the Office for Budget Responsibility looked at it and revised the claimant count for the forecast period, not down but up by 300,000. The OBR also spelled out how much this was going to cost us: it is an eye-watering figure. The heroic efforts of the Chancellor and the Secretary of State to get the claimant count down over the next few years is costing us £6 billion in higher welfare bills, and today’s Bill shows us exactly who is going to pick up the tab.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Sajid Javid)]

Let me start with some comments on tone. The Government have been wrongly accused by many on the Opposition Benches of using inflammatory language on this most important issue, but let me refer to some of the inflammatory language that has been used:

“Let’s face the tough truth—that many people on the doorstep at the last election felt that too often we were for shirkers not workers.”

Those are not the words of any Government Member, but those of the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, so let us hear no more about tone from Opposition Members.

I thank all 36 hon. Members who have made contributions to the debate. They have shown how passionate they are about this issue, not least my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State Work and Pensions, who has devoted nearly a decade of his career to this important matter. While he was chairing the Centre for Social Justice and looking for ways to lift the poorest out of poverty, the Opposition spokesperson, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), was at the Treasury, dishing out money like there was no tomorrow. I therefore find it quite bizarre that he, the man who so eloquently summed up the economic legacy in another quote of his—

“I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left”—

has told us from the Opposition Dispatch Box how to spend even more. He has told us to commit more money to public spending—money he knows we do not have.

Spending money is something that the right hon. Gentleman and the Opposition have an excellent record on. In the decade before the financial crisis and despite a growing economy, welfare spending increased by 20% and has continued to rise from 11% of gross domestic product in 2008 to more than 13% by 2012.

[Ian Lucas]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sajid Javid]

I will give way just this once.

[Ian Lucas]

Will the Minister confirm that the Bill has been introduced because of the Government’s failure to deliver on the economic pledges they made in 2010?

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman should ask that question of the shadow Secretary of State. There is no money left! Let me put it simply: welfare spending costs the UK—