Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jack Dromey and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 2nd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

T3. With one in four workers in Erdington earning less than the living wage, 82% of children are being brought up in families that are dependent on tax credits. Does the Secretary of State not accept that this is the worst possible time to cut tax credits, and that those families will not be compensated by his phoney living wage? Will he join me in welcoming the initiative taken today by the Labour-led Birmingham City Council to declare that no Brummie in the city should earn less than the real living wage?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Despite all the other arguments, the Labour Government had 13 years in power and they let the national minimum wage fall further behind than ever before. It is this Government who have increased the minimum wage and who are now proposing a real living wage of £9 at the end of this Parliament.

Child Poverty

Debate between Jack Dromey and Iain Duncan Smith

Thursday 25th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Okay, that is an interesting argument. I simply say that, if the hon. Lady wants to claim that, she can also claim the disaster of the crashed economy that the Labour party delivered, putting millions of people out of work.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Following his damascene conversion on the road to a Glasgow housing estate, the Secretary of State pledged that there would be no going back on Labour’s target to end child poverty. With nearly 9,000 children in poverty in Erdington, the great majority in working households, what does he have to say to the working mums I met in the Erdington food bank, who despair at what now looms for them in the next stages? To use the grotesque words of the Chancellor, these are strivers, not shirkers, but his Government are about to make them and their children poorer.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I hope the hon. Gentleman also tells them that his Government failed to halve child poverty against their target. Before we get another lecture about child poverty from that lot over there, I simply say to them that their economic mess—crashing the economy and putting millions out of work—did more damage to his constituents than anything else. We are here to help them and get them back into work.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jack Dromey and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 26th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

17. What recent estimate he has made of the number of people whose housing benefit has been reduced as a result of the social sector size criteria.

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

The latest published figures for August 2014 showed that the number of people affected by the removal of the spare room subsidy has fallen by 75,000. This follows a general downward trend, bringing the number of those affected down from 547,000 in May 2013 to 472,000.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

In previous speeches and today, the hon. Lady has talked about the fact that there are just not enough properties in her constituency to enable people to downsize. In fact, I understand that there are 2,700 people subject to the under-occupancy spare room subsidy, but something like 15,000 one and two-bedroom houses in the social sector properties in Wigan. There are many houses—many more than she might have laid out.

My point to the hon. Lady and the Opposition is that, in their opposition, they need to explain how they will afford it. The policy is saving some £500 million a year. It has already saved £830 million to date. They have no plans for substituting that, which means that their economic record is in tatters. After all, Labour, when in power, was the party that introduced that very policy for those in social sector private rented tenancies.

[Jack Dromey]

Once in every generation, there is a tax so bad that the next generation looks back and asks, “Why did they do it?” Such was the poll tax, now the bedroom tax. Will the Secretary of State tell us how many victims of domestic violence liable to the bedroom tax have had their sanctuary rooms deemed as spare rooms?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The hon. Gentleman knows that that is just another attempt to start scaremongering about the whole idea—[Interruption.] Yes, it is. What has been disgraceful about the Opposition is that they have spent their time scaremongering up and down the country about this issue. He knows very well that local authorities and the police work together, they have discretionary housing payments to deal with that matter at a local level and they can resolve it. More than £380 million has been granted to local authorities for discretionary payments.

I have looked at what the hon. Gentleman said previously about the number of houses available. He said that some 5,000 people are suffering due to the under-occupancy rules because they had nowhere to move, but I remind him that there are 63,500 one and two-bedroom properties in Birmingham. He yet again mis-states the reality, which is that this has to work. I remind him again that it was his Government who introduced this for the private-rented social sector.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jack Dromey and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I shall certainly relay my hon. Friend’s views to the Prime Minister as part of the overall review. When we made the changes to housing benefit, we were attacked by the Opposition for “social cleansing” and all those dangerous things we were supposed to be dealing in—[Interruption.] No, no, by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) and his team. On the one hand, his team accuse us of social cleansing; on the other, he accused me the other day of not cutting deep enough on housing benefit. The only shambles here is their position on housing benefit.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

A million young people are out of work. Now, the Prime Minister wants to deny housing benefit to under-25s, pushing thousands into becoming homeless and punishing workers on low pay or in an apprenticeship who need housing benefit to keep a roof over their head. Does the Secretary of State agree with the chief executive of the YMCA, who says it is

“difficult…to think in our 168-year history of a proposal more detrimental and having a negative impact”,

and the chief executive of Crisis, who says that the Government are being “irresponsible” and should concentrate instead on creating badly needed jobs and building badly needed affordable homes?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We are doing all those things. The housing benefit changes are necessary to bring back under control a budget that was spiralling under the Government the hon. Gentleman supported. In almost 10 years, we saw that budget rise from about £11 billion to £21 billion. That was madness, and it was their lack of control and their creation of the local housing allowance that led to that problem, so we will take no lectures from him or his hon. Friends about what is right or wrong in relation to housing benefit.