Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

How can it be that we are the seventh richest nation in the world but our children are getting rickets? How is it possible that in our rich nation 13 million people live below the poverty line—or that 200,000 people had to go to food banks last year, or that the poor have to make a choice between heating and eating, or that children are going to school hungry?

The reason is that this rotten, heartless Government have given a tax cut to millionaires but with this Bill make the poor suffer even more. They have the cheek to label the 2.5 million people who are desperate for work as “shirkers”. How dare they?

Do the Government want to tell Allan, who was working for an agency that gradually reduced his hours to the point where he lost his home—he is now sofa-surfing—that he is a shirker? What about Nicola, who lost her tax credits while she was on maternity leave, or 59-year-old Patricia who, having worked all her life, has become unemployed due to an injury and already cannot heat her house? What about Stephen, who has just got custody of his three boys aged under seven and has had to give up his job as a chef because he could not get care for the children at night? What about Peter, who was about to set up home with his girlfriend until he lost his job three weeks before Christmas?

Government Members do not have a clue. What would they like to say to my neighbour Leah, a single mum of two working 16 hours a week on the minimum wage? She uses her £101 a week wages to pay her rent, utilities, council tax and other household bills. She uses her tax credits to buy food, clothes, school dinners and her £18-a-week bus fares. What will she cut out when her money will not cover her basics? Should she beg for food at a food bank, stop her children from going swimming, stop heating the house or do what so many other parents have to do at the moment—skip meals just so that she can feed the children?

Sixty-eight per cent. of the people hit by this Bill are, like Leah, in work. They are nurses, soldiers, shop workers, cleaners, teachers, admin workers and care workers. Many are already struggling to make ends meet, and this will put them over the edge. What about the others who are affected—carers and the disabled, and people desperate for work? Government Members should be ashamed of themselves.

This policy is also going to harm the economy. The IMF has already warned the Government that their annual cut of £24 billion to benefits and tax credits will reduce economic output by up to £40 billion. Not only are they heartless; they are incompetent too. The way to get down the benefits bill is to get people into decently paid work. By already having a double-dip recession and heading for a triple dip, the Government have demonstrated that we cannot cut our way out of a recession—we have to grow our way out. Punishing the poor and bringing them to desperation will not grow the economy; it will simply make it worse.

The Government boast that they are creating jobs but fail to tell us how many of those jobs are unpaid, because unbelievably they are including unpaid workfare placements in the figure for jobs created. They are silent on the number of those jobs that are under 16 hours a week, and they do not tell us how many of these so-called new jobs are really public sector jobs that are simply being transferred to the private sector.

Yes, the Government need to get a grip on the economy, but not by driving the disabled to suicide and the poor to despair. They need to take action to grow the economy, not starve the poor. This Bill is a disgrace and I will be proud to vote against it and stand up for my constituents, both in work and out, who need a system that will support them and their families in good times and bad.