Welfare Spending

Debate between Kieran Mullan and David Pinto-Duschinsky

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Mullan]

As others have pointed out, the Government put forward welfare reforms that were supposed to save money but ended up costing money, and this is yet another attempt to placate their Back Benchers in a way that we cannot afford. We must be clear about our record: we brought down absolute child poverty when we were in government. Labour Members are happy to quote figures on relative poverty and take them at face value, but when we quote figures on absolute poverty from the same datasets, they do not want to hear it. I am clear that I care more about absolute poverty, and how much someone actually has to spend on things that they need, than I do about relative poverty.

[David Pinto-Duschinsky (Hendon) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman also care about deep poverty? That increased to a point where four in 10 children who were in poverty under the Conservatives were in deep poverty. Will he apologise for that?

[Dr Mullan]

I think we need to look at the absolute poverty figures and at what difference we can make to them—and what makes a long-term difference to the number of people in poverty of any kind is employment. We reversed the decline in employment, but we are now seeing it get higher every day under this Government’s policies. That is what is bringing even more people into poverty—their record on the economy and on employment.