Working People’s Finances: Government Policy

Kirsty Blackman Excerpts

Tuesday 21st September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I am incredibly proud to be part of the extraordinary transformation of Teesside’s economy, which is taking incredible shape under the work of our Mayor, Ben Houchen. Of course, that was reflected in the fact that the Tees Valley voted by 73% to re-elect our Conservative Mayor just this May. Why was that? It happened because of jobs and growth, and hope and pride in place—all the things that this Government are committed to delivering, and all the things that a Conservative Government are doing after years in which Labour neglected areas such as Teesside and left us with no plan, no options and no future.

Peak unemployment is now forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility as being substantially lower than initially expected. All the evidence now points to a rebounding labour market. Just last week, the Office for National Statistics reported that vacancies are at a record high, while the headline unemployment rate has fallen for seven consecutive months and now stands at 4.6%.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I am a bit concerned that the Minister has not actually read the motion on the Order Paper. This is about people who are in work. I absolutely agree that people have been kept in work as a result of the schemes that are being scrapped—that is the case—but the thing is that if people are not being paid the living wage and are not being paid enough money to actually live on, they are going to continue to be in poverty no matter whether or not they are in work.

[Mr Clarke]

I can assure the hon. Lady that I have read the motion closely, which is of course why I am celebrating the fact that the ONS estimates that underlying regular wage growth is between 3.6% and 5.1%. It is why I am so proud that we are the Government who introduced the national living wage, which has of course meant more money in the pockets of working people. So this is exactly about bearing down on the cost of living and about supporting families throughout a really difficult time. That is what we have managed to do and what we will continue to do.

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[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

It is a delight to follow my Procedure Committee colleague, the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell). It is helpful because we are ideologically opposed on every single matter, so I can pretty much stand up and say exactly the opposite of what he said, and it will be grand. Mr Deputy Speaker, I want to take to take you back to 1915. In 1915, my great-great-grandfather John Murray was killed when his steam herring drifter was cut in half by a British warship. My great-granny’s mother Barbra Helen Murray, who was known as Babeellen, was left to raise five girls by herself. When she was left in that situation of abject poverty, there was no Government funding to help her. She had no support from the Government to get through that very immediate crisis. Her sister stepped up and offered to take the youngest child off her hands—offered to give that child a home and pay for that child’s upbringing. Imagine having to make such a choice about whether to keep her child. Imagine being forced into that choice of whether to keep that child, whether in 1915, or in 2021 with the rape clause. Imagine having that choice. Thankfully, she chose to keep her child, and she brought up my great-grandmother.

The family were helped: they were helped by the church, their friends and their relatives. However, the reality was that people did not have a lot to spare and people did not have a lot they could give in such charitable situations, so the family really had very little money. This was despite the fact that my great-granny’s mother worked in every single job she could find. She knitted things, she sewed things and she mended things. She cleaned every building she could possibly get access to and that she could convince people to pay her for cleaning. She did not get any money at all from the Government until she turned 70, when she got 7 shillings and sixpence for her pension, which was an absolute fortune to her. She had spent 37 years working in every job she could have and in every moment she could find in insecure employment—like people are being forced to do in the current system; trying to work every single hour in multiple part-time jobs just so that they can try to put food on the table.

[Alex Cunningham]

The hon. Member makes me reflect on a family matter of my own. When my grandad was killed in a pit accident, my dad had his apprenticeship, and my granny went out and scrubbed floors to ensure that he completed his apprenticeship. But today we find that grandparents are looking after grandchildren—perhaps because somebody is in prison or because they have a drug problem—yet they do not get help, and even those people are going to lose this £20 of universal credit. Would you credit that?

[Kirsty Blackman]

Stories like this belong 100 years ago; stories like this do not belong in the 21st century. We should not have constituents who are in absolute poverty coming into our constituency offices.

This motion is about the working poor. My great-granny’s mother did not have money to buy what she saw as necessities; she obviously did not have enough money to buy food and stuff but was helped out in that, but she also could not go to church because she could not buy clothes for church. She had her working clothes but could not buy Sunday best clothes to go to church; that was her biggest regret about not having money. Nowadays, people on UC may not be able to afford internet access, which they need to get their UC, or to afford other things we see as necessities. Not many people are wanting a Sunday outfit to go to church—some are, but not that many—but they desperately need access to the most basic of services so they can get their UC and make their claims, and so that they can speak to friends and family and not be hugely isolated.

A cut of £80 a month is a huge amount. For a lot of people, £80 a month is their council tax bill, or two mobile phone bills, or—goodness knows—one pair of shoes for the kid, maybe two pairs for those who are particularly lucky and their child is going to wear something a bit cheaper. It is a huge amount of money, not pennies; it means people will have to cut back on a big, major bill when this cut is implemented. My great-granny remembered her mother crying because winter was coming and she could not afford to buy shoes for the children. That was over 100 years ago; this should not be happening today—we should not be having single parents crying because they cannot afford to buy winter shoes for their children.

[Catherine West]

What does the hon. Lady make of the fact that there are 23 more billionaires in The Sunday Times rich list this year?

[Kirsty Blackman]

I am going to come on to that, because I am thinking there is a divide across this Chamber: the constituency cases we on the Opposition Benches are seeing do not appear to be reflected in the cases being seen by those on the Government Benches, or they would not be making this cut. If they were sitting around those tables with people crying because they are living in absolute poverty and destitution, they would not be choosing to cut this £20 a week.

Some 72% of families who need food bank help have at least one parent in work. In my constituency more than four in 10 families will be hit by the UC cut. Aberdeen has been hit by a triple-whammy: the oil price crash has meant many people have been made redundant; we have seen the reduction in the reliance on oil; and we have seen both covid and Brexit. All those things are having a significant impact on the people of Aberdeen, and particularly my constituency. We have seen massive house prices in our city, too, so people have not been able to save money, and they have not been able to get council houses because of the right to buy, which we have, thankfully, cancelled now in Scotland. They have not had the opportunity to get back on the housing ladder, and they are doing the kind of insecure work my great-granny’s mother was doing: they are cleaning hospitals and working as porters and carers. I defy anyone to tell me those people are not working hard; these are hard-working families, yet they are being slammed consistently by this Tory Government.

We are talking about absolute destitution. My hon. Friend on the Front Bench, the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), mentioned prepayment meters. I do not know how many Members have had a prepayment meter, but I lived in a flat with one when I had hardly any money. If a prepayment meter goes £20 into the red, it stops working—the electricity stops—and people do not just need a fiver to bring it back; they need to pay the full £20 to get back into the green. Many of my constituents are faced with those numbers ticking towards that negative £20 and wondering, “What on earth are we going to do about this? How are we going to pay for the electricity so our children have heat and do not freeze?” We had a guy come into my office one day. This chap was on universal credit, and he was one of those single people on universal credit who is literally destitute. That is a significant portion of single people on universal credit; they are living not just below the poverty line but below the line of destitution. This chap came into my office to say that he did not know what to do. He had not eaten in three days. His dog had not eaten in three days. He had sold every single item of furniture that he had in order to try to keep them both fed. He had sold his bed, so we managed to source a bed for this chap.

That should not be happening in 2021. We should not be having those conversations with people, yet Government Members talk about £6 billion and say, “Oh, we’ve given £80 million to this scheme” or whatever. It does not matter if they have given £80 million to that scheme; it does not make a difference. What makes a difference is ensuring that these folk have enough money to eat—enough money to feed themselves and to clothe themselves. The hon. Member for Bury North (James Daly) talked about hope and aspiration. How can someone have hope and aspiration if they spend every single moment of every single day—

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Worrying.

[Kirsty Blackman]

Worrying—exactly. Worrying and thinking about what on earth they are going to do tomorrow, and what they are going to do the next day. Half of people who go to Trussell Trust food banks are in debt to the DWP because the universal credit system is so rubbish. People are in debt because they have had to take crisis loans due to the universal credit system.

That is before we talk about the £20-a-week cut. That is absolutely a cut for people who have been going through the hardest times. Government Members can talk about the £6 billion all they like, but the reality is that the damage that this cut will cause to people—the number of hospital admissions we will see and the number of people who will die as a result of the cut—will be far more and cost far more than £6 billion.

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[Mr Dhesi]

The crisis in Heathrow has impacted not only my Slough constituents but regional airports and the economy of Wales, about which I know my right hon. Friend feels passionately. That is why we must help the aviation sector. Heathrow used to be the busiest airport in Europe but is now no longer even in the top 10; that is diabolical and is a direct consequence of inaction by this inept Government. Not only is it the right thing to do to help the aviation sector, but it is how we will effectively recover as a nation.

One of the most immediate dangers facing my constituents from the Government’s barrage of cuts and policies is the cut to universal credit of £20 a week. Over £17 million will be cut from my constituency, and this will affect families who have battled through a pandemic, who were clapped, who face a very difficult job market, and whose children have only just returned to the routine of school. I have been contacted by constituents who have been furloughed then had their UC capped, and are struggling to make ends meet. There are self-employed people using up all their income and being told to use food banks and claim UC. Continued cries from the Government Benches that that is a solution is insulting to all the families who work tirelessly just to put food on the table.

[Kirsty Blackman]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is disrespectful of the Secretary of State to say that such people can just pick up another couple of hours of work? A working mother already on part-time hours because of childcare cannot just suddenly become an HGV driver overnight or pick up a couple of extra hours; that is not how it works.

[Mr Dhesi]

The hon. Lady eloquently makes my point, and even that calculation of two hours has been demonstrated to be completely off the mark; the number of extra hours hard-working Brits will need to work is actually nine.

Another main issue on which constituents ask for my help is housing, and, sadly, that is unsurprising. Average rents have risen by £456 in a year, the highest rise since 2008, rising above average wages by over £2,000, leaving home ownership a distant or impossible dream for too many in the next generation.

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[Matt Western]

I thank my hon. Friend; she is incredibly generous to suggest that I might be of a similar age, but I will take that compliment from her. Of course, I agree. Certainly, I think about my generation and what happened to inflation in, say, 1990 and 1991, as someone who was paying a mortgage at the time and seeing 60% of my income going on the mortgage because of the excessive interest. Those on tracker mortgages and so on will be really worried about what is happening, because their incomes are certainly not keeping up with that kind of increase. I speak as someone who suffered—okay, I am nowhere near, and never have been, the sharp edge of the sort of extreme poverty that we are here to talk about. However, we should realise the pressure that that puts people under emotionally and psychologically, and the impact on mental health. What inflation can do, in eroding pensions and impacting on household budgets, should be a real concern to everyone in this House.

[Kirsty Blackman]

On that point, we got our first mortgage in 2009. People who have had a mortgage for as long as I have had, which is about 12 years, have never really seen interest rate hikes. There are people in the group that the hon. Member is talking about who are not worried because they have never met this in the face, and they are going to get such a shock when interest rates rise, as he is describing.

[Matt Western]

I thank the hon. Member, or perhaps I can suggest friend. Indeed, we have been insulated these past 10 years from the ravages of inflation that some of us know—perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) would say this—can erode business confidence and have an extreme impact on household budgets.

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[Richard Thomson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a succinct and powerful point about how people voted in good faith for something that has turned out to be a fiction and a fantasy. I would always argue for more money to help those who are most in need—there is also an economic benefit to that in the boosting of consumption—but one of the first steps we could take is not to take money away. If the hon. Gentleman waits patiently, he may hear that I have more to say on that later in my speech, but he makes a powerful point.

In the Minister’s response to the opening speech of the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), he spoke of the need to make tough choices. It is that macho rhetoric—fine, easy words that fall a great deal harder on those on whom those choices impact than they do on the perennial Conservative and Unionist party’s self-conceit of being a party of low taxation, which it seldom ever lives up to in office in any meaningful way.

Those tough choices come with very long-standing consequences: they impact on people’s children; they impact on family life and well-being; they impact on a person’s health; they impact on their self-esteem; they impact on their opportunities; and they impact on life chances, and they do so across generations.

In the past fortnight alone, we have seen the triple lock gone, removing the link between earnings and pensions. We have seen the end of furlough. We have seen the £1,040 cut to universal credit. We have seen a breaking of the manifesto promise not to increase national insurance, in a move that will hit the youngest and the poorest the hardest and that will embed generational and geographical inequalities and bake them into our social and economic reality for generations to come. As has been said, this has all been exacerbated by Brexit, with the shortages of products that that will bring, allied to an accompanying increase in prices.

[Kirsty Blackman]

Does my hon. Friend feel that, after a decade of austerity, after all the hits from Brexit, and after covid, this is the worst possible time to be taking money away from people?

[Richard Thomson]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. I was deficient—I should have said what a magnificent speech she made earlier on, encapsulating as it did what it really means to be without and to be in search of that dignity. She is absolutely correct in what she says: this is absolutely the worst time to be taking away that support. It is almost like the Chancellor has gone out to the pub for a round of drinks. He has carried the drinks away from the bar—it was a very complicated order—and staggered across the floor with a big tray, and when he is about one yard from the table, he drops the whole lot, and leaves it smashed on the floor. It is the same with the economy, having carried it thus far. It is inept to say the least.

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[Mims Davies]

Absolutely: jobs, jobs, jobs is the right message, but very little of that has been heard in the Chamber this afternoon from those on the Opposition Benches. On jobs fairs, it is vital that people come through our doors and see what is out there, because it is time once again to be, as this Government are being, forward-thinking, pragmatic and responsible as we push to build back better. The reality is that it is unsustainable to carry on spending the amount that we have been on welfare measures during this pandemic without ongoing increases in public expenditure, which Opposition Members have complained about. Inevitably, that would also affect working people’s taxes—which is what the debate is about.

The extra provision this Government have provided during the pandemic was temporary, to deal with the pandemic head on. Now that public health restrictions have been relaxed, it is right that these temporary support measures come to an end. Of course we also have our successful vaccine roll-out, and pleasingly—we must remember this—we are no longer in the same situation we were in at the turn of the year, and nor is our labour market. We have been able to reopen society, and our economy is recovering strongly. Growth is forecast by the OECD to be 7.2% this year, reflecting the bounce back we are already seeing right across the UK. So it is a time to be bold and empower people to harness their opportunities and help them progress on to their next stage—to give people both the hope and the skills and training they need to thrive in this changing economy.

[Kirsty Blackman]

What would the Minister say to the working parent who is already trying to juggle hours around childcare and who cannot simply pick up another few hours of work a week? How are they going to make up this shortfall?

[Mims Davies]

I would say, “Talk to your work coach.” We heard from two hon. Members from Liverpool today. I was in the Toxteth jobcentre meeting the first people taking the digital online level 3 programme, which people can earn a lot more money by taking part in. There are so many opportunities in jobcentres. I know that the hon. Lady has not been to her jobcentre recently, because I checked. Please do go and visit.

[Kirsty Blackman]

rose—

[Mims Davies]

I will make some progress, because I think it is important to talk about the 1 million vacancies that we have in our economy. We have jobs in growing and emerging sectors; we have green jobs, we have tech roles, and they can all be accessed through our jobcentres.

I am determined to help those with the biggest barriers to move closer to the labour market, to ensure that, as the hon. Lady says, people progress into work and see the reward for their efforts, and to help people increase their hours or get into work for the first time, like—I must correct the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke)—the more than 69,000 young people who are now in kickstart roles, on that important first rung of the career ladder.

My message today to everyone in the Chamber and everyone looking in is: if you want to progress in this jobs market, whoever you are, wherever you are—at any age or any stage—we are here for you. We will get behind you. We have dedicated work coaches, and we have boosted them by 13,500 as part of our plan for jobs. We will give you tailored support and we will help you progress. We will not leave you behind.

We are directly investing in our young people most at risk of long-term unemployment with the £2 billion kickstart scheme, a life-changing scheme of a six-month work placement—a springboard into a future career. With over 188,000—I got it right this time—kickstart roles, young people must turn to their work coaches to hear about these amazing opportunities.

Meanwhile, I must let the House know that we have a new youth hub across every Jobcentre Plus district throughout England, Scotland and Wales. By Christmas, we will have 150 new youth hubs open. These are valuable new partnerships—interventions for direct life chances—with local councils, football clubs, charities such as the Prince’s Trust, and local training providers.

We are also seeing lives changed by our job entry targeted support programme, which is known as JETS, with over 25,000 people starting new jobs since our plan for jobs was launched. That is not forgetting our £2.9 billion restart scheme, which will, crucially, help those who are leaving furlough. We have also refreshed our “50 PLUS: Choices” offer, and we have stronger support for those who need any extra skills through our lifetime skills guarantee.

I am passionate—I hope the House has noticed it this evening—about getting people into jobs, but also about progressing people when they are in work. This Government’s longer-term ambition remains to build an economy that ensures that everyone, no matter what their background, has the opportunities to enter work and progress out of low pay.

We are absolutely taking action. The in-work progression commission was launched in March 2020 by the DWP. We will respond shortly to its report, but it is all about getting that understanding about the barriers that people in low pay face and, crucially, as we talked about this afternoon, ensuring that work remains the best route out of poverty.

Our plan for jobs programme is also helping claimants to gain the skills they need to progress in work. Our sector-based work academy programmes—SWAPs—are helping people get new skills to retrain and pivot into growing sectors, from viticulture to construction, infrastructure and social care. Haulage has been mentioned this afternoon; we have a programme in that, too. We also have DWP Train and Progress, which provides the ability to access the Department for Education skills bootcamps in growing sectors. With over a million—