Universal Credit

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), although I remind her that one of the key tenets of the Beveridge report is that the welfare system should not contain perverse disincentives to work, yet that is a problem in the legacy system we have had to deal with.

I want to focus on two key phrases we have heard a lot today: managed migration and the end of austerity. When I talk about managed migration, I refer not to the benefits system but to immigration into the UK. People outside, if they heard this debate, would think we were in a parallel universe. We are on the cusp of new immigration rules that will be much tougher on the unskilled. As hon. Friends have said, there are 800,000 vacancies, and we know we have a heavy dependency on migrant labour. [Interruption.] Hon. Members might want to reflect on this. In those circumstances, it is paramount that the welfare system does everything possible to encourage the British population into work, rather than putting barriers in their place, because we will need them more and more.

The system must encourage people on part-time hours to work longer hours and the unemployed to take work, and for those who are economically inactive, for whatever reason, it should provide that strong one-to-one support, which is at the core of universal credit, to ensure they can overcome the barriers and make a productive difference to this country, instead of our becoming ever more reliant on migrant labour. That is fundamental.

On the phrase “end of austerity”, the Prime Minister timed it beautifully. In economic history, when we refer to austerity, we mean wages and people’s available income, not public spending, which of course the Labour party is obsessed with. What statistics have we seen this very week? Wage growth is at its highest in almost a decade; as we heard today, inflation is falling; and unemployment is still at record lows. We on the Conservative Benches should be extremely proud of that record. I put it to everyone that we are doing the right thing.

The UK’s big failing in economic history has been to have lower wages per head than similar economies, and we on the Conservative Benches are going to deal with it, and deal with it in the right way, not by increasing dependency and unsustainable benefit payments, but by giving people incentives to get into work and make the most of the talents they were born with so that they can stand on their own two feet, instead of relying on an ever-expanding state.