Cost of Living
Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Sheila Gilmore(11 years ago)
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Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission has stated that the fiscal consolidation has been regressive. Does my hon. Friend think that that should be taken into account?
Housing Benefit
Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Sheila Gilmore(11 years ago)
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Kwasi Kwarteng
If that were indeed true, why is there a discrepancy between privately rented accommodation and social housing in this context? I hope that the Opposition will enlighten me on this. The last Labour Government might have wrecked the economy, but they at least had some sense of responsibility—unlike the current Opposition. Why did that Labour Government believe that there was a perfectly good reason to equalise the treatment of the private and social sectors?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I will not; I have only a short time in which to speak.
Labour Members talk about fairness, but is it fair that someone on a low income who is in privately rented accommodation should pay taxes in order to subsidise someone else’s spare room? Is it fair to raise taxation from low-paid workers to subsidise other people’s accommodation?
Disabled People
Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Sheila Gilmore(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Kwasi Kwarteng
I fear that that will be the last intervention that I take. In the first instance, it is not about trying to cut how much money people get; its purpose is to direct the funds, recognising the expenditure constraints. The Opposition, in their robotic insistence on very simple, clear messages that are completely false and not based on any sense of reality, have forgotten about that. Considering that the DLA budget has gone up £10 billion in real terms—that is more than the Home Office budget or what we receive from capital gains tax and inheritance tax—it is vital that we are more sensible and intelligent in how we apply those funds.
It is perfectly clear to me that the PIP reform will be much more intelligently applied than the DLA, the costs of which spiralled, as I have suggested. We had a self-regulatory system, whereby people could essentially say that they were eligible for the benefit.
Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Sheila Gilmore(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Sheila Gilmore
Does the hon. Gentleman not appreciate the reason why this particular Bill and its measures have been called political? It was clear in the autumn statement that the Chancellor intended these measures to be some sort of political trap. In making choices, any Government would not be looking only at the contents of this Bill. I would be happy to talk about a much wider range of choices, so why can we not have a wider Bill?
Kwasi Kwarteng
In my opening remarks, I made a wider point about the eurozone. This is exactly what goes to the heart of the issue. What those countries have done to deal with their fiscal crisis—I am not saying we should follow it, but we have to remember that their deficits are better than ours at the moment—is to make swingeing cuts to public spending in the form of benefits. We have not done that. We have spared our people that measure of severity, but we have to recognise that a large portion of spending goes in this direction and that the savings we are making are in the region of £3.7 billion a year.
Our coalition colleagues, the Liberal Democrats have said that the time frame is arbitrary. Some people have talked about 1912—more than 100 years ago—and some have talked about the last 30 years. I am not interested in the last 30 years. I am interested in what has happened since the financial crisis. I am interested in what has happened since Labour got us into the mess we are in. I accept that it is an international mess and that there is a world crisis, but the fact remains that, at £170 billion, this was a much larger deficit than that of any of our competitor or partner countries in the OECD. In that context, something had to give. We had to make some very tough choices about spending.
Let me consider some of the provisions. There is clearly a measure of disagreement over how we should approach this aspect of welfare spending. I have yet to hear from Opposition Members by how much they think benefits should rise. We have heard one suggestion, although admittedly it came from the only member of the Green party in the House. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) seemed to be saying that she would have raised the rate in line with the retail prices index. When asked how much that would cost, she blithely replied “£7.4 billion”—I am sorry, it was £7.6 billion—as if that were a snip. It is to her credit that she at least had the honesty to spell out what are, in my view, the disastrous fiscal implications of her policy. Labour members have given no such undertakings. They have made no such statements about what their policies would actually cost. They have simply wailed and moaned about the harshness of the Government, without in any way recognising the severity of the crisis that we face.