Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Kevin Barron Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)
First, I am sorry to see that the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) is no longer in her place, as she made a very good speech. She mentioned one word that applies to much of the debate when she spoke about the use of “language”, while another important word, spoken about by the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), who is now leaving, is “ideology”. Language and ideology have surrounded this debate for many years.
In the last 12 months, we have noticed the language used by the coalition to get us to where we are today. Twelve months ago last January, the Deputy Prime Minister was talking about “alarm clock Britain”, and then we had talk about people “behind the curtains”. On 8 October last year on the “Today” programme, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said it was
“unfair that people listening to this programme going out to work see the neighbour next door with the blinds down because they are on benefits”.
My blinds used to be down because I was on night shift, and for many people the blinds and curtains are closed in the morning because they are working hard throughout the night, seven of 24 hours every day to keep industry running. Many people will resent what has been said.
This is not the first time that such language has been used. Andrew Rawnsley, a political columnist for whom I have a lot of time, got it right in an article in The Observer this Sunday, when he said that in view of the true intent of the author of the Bill—I assume he meant the Chancellor of the Exchequer—it should be called
“the Welfare (Make Labour Look Like the Party for Skiving Fat Slobs) bill”.
It is a pity that the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) is not in his place as that description fits well with his anonymous quotes about people being at home because that is what they want to do and because they do not want to go out to work. That is not my experience in life, and I have been a Member of this House a long time. I started work as one of six children in a coalmining community. I lived in that community for most of my life, and I can say that the people I know and have represented for years are not like the caricatures that have been portrayed in this debate for far too long.
Andrew Rawnsley went on in his article to say the real truth:
“The majority of those who are going to lose—about 60%—are people in work, among them 3.7 million people on child tax credit and 2.5 million on working tax credit…those hit will include primary school teachers, nurses and army officers”.
As he went on to say, they are
“not exactly the ‘shirkers’ and ‘scroungers’ of some Tory rhetoric about benefits.”
The Government are trying to play politics with the welfare state, but their claims are clearly unravelling. It is no wonder that the Government have run out of speakers—and come the next general election, some Government Members will deeply regret the speeches that they have made today.
The Citizens Advice Bureau works with these people week in, week out, giving them advice, and it works with us as well, certainly in my part of the world. According to the brief that it sent to us:
“A couple with two children earning £26,000 a year and paying a fairly modest rent of £130 a week… will experience a net loss of £1.85 a week from next April, £6.52 the following April and £11.20 in April 2015. A possible rise in the personal tax allowance to £10,000 in perhaps April 2014 would only give them £0.75 a week to offset the loss of £6.52.”
Mr Barron
No, I will not. Other Members wish to speak.
As was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), this is the first time that we have sat here and not had one debate about one annual uprating of benefits. That is because this uprating is so unpopular. It has been driven by a nasty party, and by a nasty piece of legislation which I will oppose.
Unemployment
Kevin Barron Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)
May I give the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) a little history of how the economy is affected from time to time in the United Kingdom, as it has been for centuries and will carry on being, because unforeseen things come along and rock economies, as we experienced in 2008-09 under the previous Labour Government? That should not cloud the issues before us in the motion that my Front Benchers have tabled and I support, because the figure of 2.638 million unemployed people in this country represents a massive amount of human suffering, costs the economy and will go on doing so for generations if it is not tackled. The hon. Gentleman asked whether people are leaving school with the right language, literature and other skills to go into the workplace, but, having been a Member for 28 years, I have listened to such debates, and at certain points we decided to tackle the major issues that needed to be tackled in order to ease the problems that mass unemployment has caused.
Today’s rise in unemployment is our biggest since July 1994. The regional breakdown for Yorkshire and Humberside shows that employment—not unemployment—has fallen by 70,000 over the last quarter; that unemployment has increased by 9,000 on the previous quarter; that it stands at 253,000; and that the number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance has increased by 500 on the previous month. That tells me and most people that there is something seriously wrong with the path that the Government are taking to turn the economy around, and that a large amount of money will have to be paid from the public purse to keep the figures as they are.
Youth unemployment went up by 54,000 in the three months to October and now stands at more than 1 million, the highest level since comparable records began in 1992. I brought the matter up at Prime Minister’s Question Time today, noting that more than 22% of 16 to 24-year-olds who could be economically active are unemployed, an increase of 1.2% on the previous quarter. That has major implications for the British economy and, certainly, for young people.
Long-term youth unemployment has gone up to 141,200, the highest level since July 1997, and by 68,000 alone since January, a rise of 93%.
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
Government Members are obsessed with immigration, when there is youth unemployment and young people are leaving school without the skills to fill the jobs that are going to come up. In future we will have to bring more people to this country to fill those jobs for which we do not have the skills.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Lots of Members are doing this: when they make an intervention or speak they have to face the Chair, not turn their back to it. So, if everybody could remember that, it would be very handy.
Mr Barron
Long-term youth unemployment has increased. In Yorkshire and Humberside, it increased from 7,160 in January 2011 to 13,895 in November 2011. That is an increase of 94% in long-term youth unemployment. In my constituency it has increased by 68.8%, while in the two neighbouring constituencies in the Rotherham borough it has increased by 125% and 80% respectively. We are talking about the life chances of young people in our constituencies being taken away from them. I have not seen such increases in youth unemployment since the 1980s, when my constituency and neighbouring constituencies suffered from the Government’s run-down of the coal industry, which not only put thousands of people on the dole, but struck off the life chances of people in education trying to get into work, as one of the major employers for young men in my constituency was systematically closed down. The consequences of that have run on not just for a few years, but for generations.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
I do not doubt either the right hon. Gentleman’s sincerity or the fact that he believes the figures that he has been given, but let me tell him that they are simply misleading. What used to happen is that after a young person on jobseeker’s allowance had gone on a scheme, the clock would start ticking as though it were day one, which meant that they had disappeared from the long-term youth unemployment figures. The right hon. Gentleman is comparing figures that exclude those young people with those that include them, so the rise that he describes has not happened in the way that he believes.
Mr Barron
The idea that we should come here and dance around about whether all the figures are accurate, when there are 2.6 million unemployed people in this country, is not sensible. [Interruption.] I do not know: I am not a Minister, and I do not study the briefs that the Minister studies. What I do, and what I have done for over 28 years, is represent a constituency that is largely poor, with far too much deprivation in all sorts of areas, whether in terms of ill health, high unemployment or anything else. I saw that change in my lifetime, over a decade, which affected the lifestyles of many people in my constituency. I see from today’s statistics and what has been happening over the past 12 months that things are returning to how they were decades ago. It is wrong and it is unfair, and I am not going to come to this place and listen to a debate about “the national economy” this or “the national economy” that. We need to look at the crucial issues of how to help the young generation.
Mr Byrne
My right hon. Friend is making a characteristically powerful speech. The truth is that the House of Commons Library is clear: in January 2011, long-term youth unemployment in his constituency was 160, but it is now 270, a rise of more than 68%. Under anybody’s definition that rise is unacceptable, and the Government should be doing more to bring it down.
Mr Barron
I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend.
If anybody wants to know the consequences of youth unemployment—not just now, but in the future—they could do worse than look at the article headed “Future costs of youth unemployment” on the BBC business news website, which refers to an academic paper by Paul Gregg and Lindsey Macmillan that sets out in great detail what happens to people who suffer from youth unemployment. It affects them for the rest of their lives, not only in terms of their jobs, but in terms of their incomes and everything else. It is not acceptable for us to sit in this House today and watch youth unemployment increasing to its current levels, which will disadvantage generations of people and their children, as well as the taxpayer, who will have to pay for it. I will not rehearse how much it will cost, but there will be a cost to the taxpayer—the cost to the individuals concerned will probably be far higher—that we should guard against.
I want to finish on this point. The Government’s ideology was about coming in and saying, “We get rid of the public sector”—I have seen the damage of that—“and we bring in the private sector.” However, for every 13 jobs lost in the public sector in the last quarter, only one has been created in the private sector. It is not good enough. The plan is not working. It is about time this Government tried to protect everybody in this nation.