Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Liam Byrne and Margot James

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Byrne]

I shall give way to people who were here at the start of the debate, rather than to those who have wandered in late. This is an important debate. The point that I want to make, before I give way to the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), is that we are learning today who is being asked to pick up the bill for this catastrophic economic failure. It is not Britain’s richest citizens, who are now so hard pressed and under the cosh that they are being given a tax cut. From next year, millionaires will have £107,000 more to help them to heat their swimming pools. It is not Britain’s millionaires who are picking up the tab; it is Britain’s working families. The measures in the Bill are a strivers’ tax, pure and simple.

[Margot James]

Is the right hon. Gentleman going to acknowledge the 1 million extra jobs that have been created since 2010? Will he also acknowledge that the number of people claiming tax credits escalated to an unsustainable level under his Government? The country cannot afford to have 50% of the population either claiming tax credits or in receipt of benefits. That is unsustainable.

[Mr Byrne]

I look forward to coming to Stourbridge and helping to explain to the 6,500 people there who are on tax credits that their Member of Parliament thinks that the money they are getting is unsustainable. I happen to think that those 6,500 people, whom the hon. Lady has just dismissed, need every pound of the tax credits that Labour delivered when we were in office.