Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Debate between Liam Byrne and Richard Fuller(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that the public do not want false distinctions between strivers and shirkers and he is equally right, I think, to believe that people will see through those who pretend to care when they do not have the money to show that they care. In his more lucid moment, he explained that the Government had no more money left, so would he accept that one answer might be to push forward with ideas such as the living wage, and will he advise us, on the basis of his own research on a living wage, what impact it would have on the long-term benefits needs in the country?
Mr Byrne
I suspect the hon. Gentleman feels that very keenly, as 7,500 people in his constituency are on tax credits. I think that the best way to bring the welfare bill down is by getting people into work. The tragedy with the Bill is that it fails the Ronseal test set out by the Prime Minister yesterday. It does not do what it says on the tin. We are told that this Bill is all about reducing welfare spending. Actually, if we put tax credits to one side, the welfare bill for the period covered by this Bill will not rise by 1%; it is going to go up by 4%. It will go up by £8 billion because the Secretary of State is doing so little to get people back to work.
The reality of the debate is that there is a Labour way to bring down welfare spending and there is a Tory way. The Tory way, aided and abetted by the Liberal Democrats, is to attack tax credits. The Labour way is to bring down welfare spending by getting people into jobs—jobs in which they will pay tax rather than sitting on the dole taking benefits. That is why we tabled our amendment. We think that it is right to introduce a bank bonus tax to get 100,000 young people back to work, and to reform pension tax relief to create a two-year limit on jobseeker’s allowance. We think that it is right to send the clear signal that anyone who can work must not, and will not, be allowed to languish or to live a life on welfare. That is the kind of tough-minded but fair policy that we now need.
Youth Unemployment
Debate between Liam Byrne and Richard Fuller(13 years ago)
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Mr Byrne
The hon. Lady need only look at the statistics, including those for her area. This year, long-term youth unemployment has risen by one third in Solihull. The future jobs fund was helping to bring youth unemployment down. To return to the point made by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), we have to help young people stay close to the labour market because if we let them drift into long-term unemployment, they have a bigger chance of being unemployed in the future, of being low paid and of drifting into ill health. That is why the right decision for her constituents, as well as mine, is not to do nothing, but to act.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman did not answer the question from my colleague, the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt). We are fooling ourselves, if we think that this problem is simply to do with this Government or the previous one. This is a long-term, growing problem of youth unemployment. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) is looking for the statistics for my constituency. I can tell him: it is up 24%. As we look for solutions and as economies across Europe are being destroyed because of their excessive debt, my question is: what can we do that does not incur additional debt for the Government? Will he support our schools reforms? Will he support our efforts on apprenticeships? Will he support the reductions in taxation and regulation on small businesses indicated by the Government?
Pensions Bill [Lords]
Debate between Liam Byrne and Richard Fuller(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Byrne
I will in a moment.
This unfolding chaos has been impressive even for a Government who have presided over U-turns on forests, sentencing reform and the reorganisation of the NHS, because we thought we knew where we were. The coalition Government made a wise move in appointing the Pensions Minister to his brief—he is a man who knows a thing or two about pensions. Indeed, in one of his first major speeches, he told his audience:
“I have become known as something of a bore at pensions conferences.”
We have no problem with that. Then we had the coalition agreement. I do not know whether anyone remembers the coalition agreement—it was important once. Page 26 reads:
“We will phase out the default retirement age and hold a review to set the date at which the state pension age starts to rise to 66, although it will not be sooner than 2016 for men and 2020 for women.”
For good measure, the Pensions Minister got to his feet a month or so later and said that the Government were committed to any change not being sooner than 2020 for women. Then, 118 days later, the Chancellor arrives on the scene. He stands at the Dispatch Box and says that
“the state pension age for men and women will reach 66 by 2020.”—[Official Report, 20 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 956.]
Yet buried in the fine print, we learnt the truth—not the Pensions Minister, the Secretary of State or the Chancellor could bring themselves to that Dispatch Box and actually tell people straight that that policy set out in the coalition agreement was absolutely worthless. The truth was set out in the depths of the spending review, page 69 of which read:
“The State Pension Age will then increase to 66 for both men and women from December 2018 to April 2020.”
That is a promise well and truly broken. At least when the Lib Dems changed their minds about increasing tuition fees, they could pretend that they were just making things up to get elected, but this was a promise they made and broke in government. Just last summer, the Pensions Minister boasted of reforms in the system that he said included
“those who the system has always missed out such as women and the lower paid.”
In his own Department’s review, he said that he wanted to look at the “particular challenge” for
“women pensioners. A group I have long worked for, and who are so often the poor relations in regard to pensions.”
I will let the House draw its own conclusions. One moment the Pensions Minister is offering to protect women pensioners, the next he is presenting proposals that will punish half a million women with a bill for up to £16,000.
Richard Fuller
The right hon. Gentleman was giving a discourse on integrity in pensions provision under the previous Government, which I think is important, because many of my constituents will be worried about this issue, and will be looking for integrity. He is very good with numbers—it is when he has to add them up that he has trouble—so I am wondering, on the point of integrity, could he answer this question? The Labour party has recommendations for how best to treat the women he is highlighting who are being impacted by the Bill, and those recommendations are costed at £10 billion. In the interest of integrity, will he please advise me and other Members where he would find the money?
Richard Fuller
I have not seen those costings, so the right hon. Gentleman can enlighten me further.
Mr Byrne
The Minister gave an interesting answer, because those costings say that if, for example, we increased the retirement age to 67 by 2035—that is, if we accelerated the reform by one year—that would save £6.9 billion. However, if the retirement age was increased to 67 by 2034, by accelerating the increase by two years, that would save £13.7 billion. Therefore, the question for us this afternoon is: how much will be saved by accelerating the reform for those women who are now having to retire later, and who therefore confront trying to find all that money magically, in the space of just four or five years? Has that been traded off against other options, such as introducing advances in the retirement age later on? That is the question that we have to get to the bottom of in this Second Reading debate.
Mr Byrne
I will give way in a moment.
Let us hear what the impact of the Government’s proposals will be, because the Secretary of State rather glided over this point. Some half a million women will receive their state pension at least 12 months later than they had previously been advised, with 300,000 women—those born between December 1953 and October 1954—experiencing a delay of one and a half years. For 33,000 women—those born between 6 March and 5 April 1954—that period increases to two years. For them, the loss in state pension will be around £10,000. For those on full pension credit, the loss will be closer to £15,000. Those women, with five years’ notice of the timetable change, have almost no time to prepare for their income loss.