Oral Answers to Questions

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that assurance. We are expecting further work from Professor Harrington about fluctuating conditions shortly, but I have also extended an invitation to voluntary sector groups that specialise in particular conditions to come into Jobcentre Plus and give briefings and training sessions about those conditions to our decision makers, so that we do everything we can to ensure that we get this right.

[Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

With the OECD forecasting that unemployment is set to spiral to more than 9% in the next year or two, it is clear that the squeeze on working families will only get tighter and tighter. Can the Secretary of State remind the House how much extra it is budgeted will come off tax credits over the next year?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I have to say to the right hon. Gentleman that he needs to wait until the autumn statement to have all those figures set in place—if such a thing does exist.

[Mr Byrne]

I am happy to write to the Secretary of State with his own figures. Budgets laid out by the Chancellor project that more than £3 billion will come off tax credits and child benefit for working people, starting from next April. That squeeze is already serious, and that is why it is unacceptable to propose a further squeeze on tax credits in order to pay for the Secretary of State’s failure to get young people back to work.

On Friday, the Deputy Prime Minister was asked where the money for the new youth contract would come from. He said:

“Well the money clearly comes from the Government”.

He is full of insight. Will the Secretary of State confirm that he has been rolled over by the Deputy Prime Minister and that tax credits will be squeezed to pay for his failure to get young people back to work?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Just in case the right hon. Gentleman has missed the point, I remind him that decisions about tax credits are a matter for the Chancellor. I am surprised that he does not know that, because he was once in the Treasury himself. That reminds me that he is the individual who left a letter saying that there was no money left. Where does he think we were going to get the money from to get our successful programmes under way? The answer is that we have made a great start through the work experience programme, the Work programme and the changes to universal credit. We as a Government are doing more to get people back to work than anything his Government did when they were in power.