Welfare
Debate between Josh Fenton-Glynn and Helen Whately(1 day, 9 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Helen Whately
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The first duty of Government is national security. We will not even have social security if we do not have national security. We have to find a way to fund defence. There is no time to waste. As I will set out in my speech, there are plenty of opportunities to make substantial welfare savings, to cut taxes, to bring down the deficit and to fund defence.
To be fair, some Government Members understand the situation that the country is in. Some of them know that their constituents understand it, too. That is why they sometimes go through the motions, as with their amendment today, albeit they hid it at the very end, with some wording that they want to “bring down the benefits bill”. I wonder whether Labour Whips were hoping that their leftie Back Benchers would not read that far. Though Labour talks about bringing down the bill, there is no date. It is the same thing when the Prime Minister says that he wants to bring welfare spending down
“as soon as we possibly can.”
It is nonsense. Without a date or plan, it is just empty words. No one trusts this Government on welfare. Apparently there will not even be any savings in the Prime Minister’s 10-year plan.
Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)
The hon. Member says that we do not have a plan to bring down welfare spending. We are putting £3.5 billion into getting young people back into work. Can the hon. Member tell me how the Opposition arrived at their £36 billion figure—the Institute for Fiscal Studies does not know—and, indeed, how much they will put into getting young people back into work?
Helen Whately
I will set out how we will achieve our £36 billion in savings, if the hon. Gentleman will just sit back and listen. All we have heard from him and his party are plans to spend more money, and he simply reiterated that just now. We do not bring the benefits bill down by spending more money.
This is not just about the welfare bill. Let us talk about what is happening to our country. A total of 6.7 million people of working age are not working and are on out-of-work benefits, and 700,000 of them are under the age of 25. This is a disaster. All those young people are sitting at home whiling away the day instead of going out to work and getting on with their lives. One in four adults now identify as disabled. Claims for personal independence payment have doubled since 2019, but the country is not twice as sick. Hundreds of thousands of households claimed more than £32,000 in benefits last year, and some of them claimed more than £60,000. That is almost twice the average take-home pay of a British worker. People who are working are asking, “Why do I bother?” We cannot expect taxpayers to keep funding a welfare system that is clearly so broken and so unfair.
Helen Whately
What would the hon. Lady say to people who are not on benefits, who ask, “Can we afford to have another child?”, and decide that they cannot? The fact is that someone who is in work and decides to have another child will not be given a pay rise.
None of what I am saying should come as a surprise, given that 204 Labour Members have more PIP claimants in their constituencies than the size of their majorities. No wonder the Welfare Secretary has said that all his MPs ask him is, who can they tax more in order to pay more benefits? Most Labour Members see no problem with the size of the welfare bill. The Disability Minister himself said that
“the current level of spending is not a great concern”,
but some of them know that the anger is building out there. People who work are getting tired of being taxed to the hilt to pay for people who do not. Some Labour MPs will desperately want to reassure their constituents. They will be hoping that the Timms and Milburn reviews will give them some succour, but they will not face the facts, and neither will they bring down the benefits bill. Labour spin doctors may try to say otherwise, but nobody is buying it.
The Conservatives are the only ones with a plan that backs welfare savings—no ifs, no buts. Our reforms will save £36 billion.
Helen Whately
The hon. Member asks “How?” from a sedentary position. I have our plan with me here and, if he will just listen, I will set it out.
As I said, our reforms will save £36 billion. When the Prime Minister was asked about them, he said that they were just a number. He could not be more wrong. Savings are important, but reforming the welfare system is a good thing to do in its own right. We have not just plucked a big round number out of thin air; it takes hard graft to work out who should get support and what help they should get. It also involves saying who will not get benefits any more, which is not something that welfare party Members will ever have the courage to do.