Benefit Entitlement (Restriction) Bill

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Friday 17th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

Apart from anything else, Madam Deputy Speaker, I do not want to exclude my hon. Friends from speaking in support of the Bill.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

To help my hon. Friend seamlessly to slip back into the mainstream of his present Bill, as opposed to commenting on his other Bill further down the Order Paper, will he explain what could have possessed the Government, if they decided that they wished to deter benefit tourism, to impose a non-claimability period of just 12 or 13 weeks rather than an effectively longer period? If they did not want to impose an effectively long period, why put in any period at all—other than for some sort of public relations purpose?

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about public relations; the Government have to be seen to be doing something, but they are constrained by the current state of European Union law, which will prevent them from being able to take any action against people after they have been in this country for more than three months. That is why the Government are making a great virtue of saying, “We are going to get really tough on people in the first three months they are here.” However, they are not emphasising that once those people have been here for three months the world is their oyster and they have free access to all our taxpayer-funded benefits.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

Clause 4 of my Bill says:

“Notwithstanding the provisions of the European Communities Act 1972, no UK taxpayer-funded benefit”—

which is obviously what child benefit is—

“shall be paid to a citizen of another country in membership of the European Union…unless the entitlement to that benefit arises from an insurance-based contribution which the claimant has made.”

In that case, such a person would not be eligible for child benefit. Clause 3 would also have a bearing on that. It says that

“no UK taxpayer-funded benefit shall be paid to a citizen of another country…at a rate which exceeds in cash terms the equivalent benefit which would be payable to such a person if that person were resident in the country of his nationality.”

In other words, a Pole working here would be able to claim child benefit in respect of his children in Poland at the rate prevailing under Polish national law, rather than at the rate prevailing under UK law.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Given that we may have to wait a year or two at least before we have the opportunity to decide whether we stay in the European Union, does my hon. Friend think that the suggestion made in the letter organised by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) about this Parliament being given the right to overrule decrees from the European Union that we regard to be against the national interest might be one way of making progress, even if his Bill, for all its merits, does not succeed in the meantime?

[Mr Chope]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I signed that letter, as far as I know. I certainly support its content, and I am sure that if it were suggested that I had signed the letter when I had not, one of the Whips would have come to tell me about it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I suspect that many Members have had similar cases. A man from Poland came into my constituency surgery who had come here to work, as he was entitled to do. He had heard on the grapevine in his local community that he was entitled to claim child benefit for his four children who were still residing back home in Poland. He thought that seemed like a good wheeze and that, if all his colleagues were doing it, he might as well do it himself. Of course, he found that, bizarrely, he was entitled to child benefit for his four children, who had never in their lives set foot outside Poland and who were living there with his wife, their mother. There is absolutely no justification for anybody from another country in the EU claiming child benefit for children who have not even had the decency to come over to this country and who are still residing in their home country.

The reason I support the Bill so strongly is that I believe we should treat all non-UK citizens the same, irrespective of where they are from. To me, that means restricting their access to benefits in this country. That is a simple proposition that I think most people in this country would support. We cannot afford to carry on handing out benefits willy-nilly to people who choose to come here from all over the EU—it is not sustainable for the welfare state or for our citizens. It will collapse the welfare state for UK citizens if we keep having to add to the burden.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

On a point of clarification, let us suppose that someone had come from abroad and been in genuine employment, and had paid some contributions towards social security, but then lost his job through no fault of his own. Does my hon. Friend agree that that person ought to have some entitlement to appropriate levels of benefit?

[Philip Davies]

No, I do not necessarily agree with that proposition. I do not know whether my hon. Friend has in mind how long that person might have had to work to be able to access benefits—it was not clear whether he felt that there should be a certain time span. As far as I can see, he is describing a non-British citizen who has come here not out of the goodness of his heart and concern for the UK’s economic well-being but, presumably, out of concern for his own economic well-being. It sounds as though he would have done rather well. Once the job is no longer available, I do not see any particular reason why we should then sustain such people in unemployment. It seems to me that at that point, we should be perfectly entitled to say, “If you can’t support yourself, we are not responsible for your continued upkeep.” I do not see why that should be unacceptable.

The UK Government’s primary duty should be to look after UK citizens, not to look after anybody who chooses to come here, works for five minutes and then expects us to sustain them on benefits for the rest of their life. I therefore do not necessarily agree with my hon. Friend’s premise—and even if it were desirable for the British Government to make such promises, I do not think it is affordable.

I ask that the Government accept the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. I do not doubt that the consequence of it would be that we would have to leave the European Union, and I do not have a problem with that—I want to leave the European Union at the first opportunity. If the Bill would hasten our exit from the EU, that is an even greater reason to support it.

The Bill seems to me a statement of common sense and of what, as we have seen from Lord Ashcroft’s polling, the British public not only want but, I suspect, expect from their Government. I cannot understand how anybody could possibly be opposed to it, and I look forward to the Minister and shadow Minister doing some kind of gymnastics to explain why on earth it is not a sensible Bill. I suspect that most of their constituents think it is sensible.