Welfare Reforms and Poverty

Lady Hermon Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

I will not give way, because I do not have time.

My hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth raised the most important issue, and I am pleased that the shadow Secretary of State is here now. The shadow Minister engaged in a rewriting of history. My hon. Friend and several others alluded to the fact that the shadow Secretary of State said that Labour would be tougher than the Tories on welfare and on welfare reforms. There was no nuance about helping more people. Labour said it would be tougher than the Tories on welfare. We have saved £83 billion on welfare spending—that is the predicted saving. I would like to know where those cuts would take place if not through welfare reform. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) says from a sedentary position that the cuts would come through jobs, but more than 1 million people have been placed into jobs since this Government took office. That is most important.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

rose—

[Mike Penning]

I will give way to the hon. Lady because she has sat through the whole debate without having an opportunity to speak, and it is a credit to her.

[Lady Hermon]

Before the Minister came into his current job, he was a very effective Minister in Northern Ireland. He will know, therefore, that in Northern Ireland we have had an increased threat from dissident republicans, who are deeply and utterly ruthless. Would it not be worth while to extend this proposed commission to Northern Ireland? I hope that those who have proposed it would support that, but that is a point that could be clarified later. If the commission were to be granted, we could have a worthwhile review of and inquiry into whether deprivation and poverty in Northern Ireland have fed into the increase in dissident violence. Would that not be worth while?

[Mike Penning]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and for her comments about my time as a Minister in Northern Ireland. That means an awful lot to me. Most of the welfare reforms have not been implemented in Northern Ireland yet because they are being blocked by one particular party, so it is difficult to see how we could appraise what was going to happen in Northern Ireland compared with the rest of the United Kingdom because the welfare reforms have not been introduced there in the way that they have in the rest of the country. I do not think that the answer at this stage is to have an independent review. The Government issue huge amounts of research—very expensive research—and we need to look carefully at what is going on.

We have of course brought in the benefit cap and reformed housing benefit. My constituency has one of the largest council-run social housing stocks in the country—nearly 16,000 council properties—as well as quite a large housing association stock. I get family after family saying to me, “Why do my children have to do their homework in the corridor? Why can’t we move into a larger property.”