Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. That brings me on to the third false premise that the Bill is based on: that there are two distinct groups, the working poor and the non-working poor, who can somehow be separated out and divided when, as we know and as the research proves, most of the people we are talking about are moving in and out of work at an alarming rate. Many of the people I represent work part-time on zero-hours contracts. They are agency workers and they are in insecure employment.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that in inner-London constituencies such as mine, the housing benefit cap affects people in work and out of work, and that working families are being forced out of private rented accommodation? They cannot afford the rent anymore, because the cap has been imposed and does not meet their needs. This is an attack on the poorest people in the most vulnerable parts of the country.

[Lisa Nandy]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for helping me to illustrate that point.

We have heard the myth, repeated over and over again today, that somehow the welfare bill is too high when, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband) said, there is a big difference between attacking the evil of unemployment and attacking the unemployed. As the Child Poverty Action Group points out, in 1979 unemployment benefit was 22% of average earnings; today, it is just 15%. It has fallen sharply over that period.

We have also heard the myth over and over again that we can bring down the welfare bill by cutting benefits to the poorest. We know that that is not true, as does the Office for Budget Responsibility, which has forecast an extra £6 billion of welfare costs as unemployment tragically continues to rise in my constituency and across the country. There are two solutions that the Government urgently need to take seriously. If the Secretary of State would stop laughing and listen for just one moment, I would like to ask him to get serious about job creation. That is not just about wage subsidies, but looking at how we use our public procurement power to ensure that we get young people into apprenticeships, and people into work and decent training opportunities.

Secondly, I ask the Secretary of State to take seriously the impact of low pay on local economies. A number of hon. Members have raised this point. The more people there are taking cuts to their tax credits and take-home pay, the fewer people there are spending in local economies. In an area such as mine, where there is a high proportion of small businesses that employ many people from the local area, that is devastating.

The Bill fails every test. It is not fair. It will not work. It will have appalling consequences for the very poorest in society, whether they are in or out of work. All of us, every single one of us, in this Chamber has a minimum household income of more than £65,000. Many of us, particularly those sitting on the Government Front Bench, have a minimum household income of much, much more. For any of us to vote for the Bill today would be simply shameful, but what is more shameful is that, as part of the debate, some of us have managed to demonise the very people who most need and deserve support from their Government.