Housing Benefit

Louise Mensch Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Government are increasing the discretionary allowances that can be used to tackle exactly that problem. My concern is for the people in part-time work who find that increasing their hours is punitive, because their housing benefits will be clawed back.

This measure is not an attack on the vulnerable, nor is it based on an assumption that all benefits claimants are workshy. It is my firm belief that most people do not want to be reliant on state benefits—that they want the pride and self-respect that come with providing for themselves and for their families. However, we have allowed a benefits system to emerge that sucks the self-reliance out of them by preventing work from paying. It is all too easy for self-respecting people to find themselves trapped in worklessness because the amount of support they get from the taxpayer exceeds what they could expect to earn. If we are going to get our economy back on track, that has to change.

Members in all parts of the House will have received many representations on this issue and its impact on vulnerable people. The National Housing Federation claims that those who rely on housing benefit to cover part of their housing costs will be forced to move away from higher-rent areas, and may as a result have to commute and have difficulty finding family care. Well, that is the day-to-day reality for many of my constituents. I consider it unfair that my constituents are having to pay higher taxes for people to live in places where they would like to live but cannot afford to.

[Ms Louise Bagshawe (Corby) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is talking plain common sense. Does she agree that there is a total lack of reality on the Labour Benches, because a YouGov poll in July on the Government’s changes to housing benefit found that 68% of the public supported them, including 57% of Labour voters?

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I would say that Labour Members are in denial about how we are going to tackle the issues that will get the economy moving again. Many of my constituents say, when I go knocking on their doors, “Good for you—it’s about time people did this,” because they are heartily sick of having to keep putting their hands in their pockets.

Tackling Poverty in the UK

Louise Mensch Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ms Louise Bagshawe (Corby) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker, and may I welcome you to your place? I am much in favour of seeing women in positions of authority and, indeed, high office. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister takes note of that.

It is a great pleasure to be called to speak in this very important debate on poverty, and to follow the contribution of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and many fine maiden speeches. On those earlier maiden speeches, I can do no better than agree with the characteristically generous tribute from the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Miss Begg), so I shall not try to do so. However, it is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), who, unlike myself, had the courage to do this without notes, and the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer), who is certainly a most passionate advocate of his constituency. Surely the fact that that was his second maiden speech will explain the fluidity and passion with which he delivered it.

I have the honour of following Phil Hope as the Member for Corby, and I hope that Opposition Members bear me no particular grudge for depriving their Benches of such a kind and pleasant man. He was a passionate advocate of Corby and achieved ministerial office early, serving in various Departments, from Education to Health and the Cabinet Office, before winding up as the Minister for the East Midlands. His obvious political ability was matched only by his kindliness and courtesy, which I know must have endeared him to many Members from all parts. In the four years that I was the Conservative candidate for Corby, Phil and I never exchanged a sharp word, and I am glad to see the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) in her place, because he exemplified the principle that in politics our opponents need not also be our enemies.

Urban Corby, the fastest-growing town in the country, is surrounded by the idyllic countryside of east Northamptonshire. We have more than 60 villages, as well as the thriving market towns of Irthlingborough, Raunds, Thrapston and Oundle. Corby is a former steel manufacturing town, and it played its part in the war effort by supplying the pipes used in Operation Pluto, which bought fuel safely to our allies as they fought in Europe. I am well travelled, but nowhere have I encountered such pride in place as Corby people have in their town. If I had to sum up the town in a single word, “pride” is the one that I would use.

Located though it is in the heart of England, the pride of Corby is its diaspora from Scotland. My constituency, perhaps uniquely in England, celebrates a regular highland games, and I am informed by staff at Corby Asda that they sell 17 times more Irn-Bru there than in any other store in England.

Meanwhile, my right hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Mr McLoughlin)—the Chief Whip—and my Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), who I see in his place, will be glad to learn that rebellious women do not fare well in my constituency. The glories of east Northamptonshire include the village of Fotheringhay, where Mary, Queen of Scots met her fate in 1587. Be that as it may, I am conscious—as are, I am sure, many other Members making their maiden speeches today—that I was sent to this place to represent the interests of my constituents here, not the other way around.

My noble Friend Baroness Thatcher inspired me to enter politics. She taught me the importance of ideology—crucially, in the context of this debate, that politics is in its essence counter-intuitive, and that Conservative means deliver liberal ends. On arriving at the House just after the general election, it was something of a relief to discover that, on occasion, Liberal means may deliver Conservative ones.

It is particularly appropriate that the Member for Corby should deliver her maiden speech in a debate on poverty, because the ambitious programme of welfare to work laid out by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and his team will assist many of my constituents, who saw a 103% rise in claims for jobseeker’s allowance over the course of the last Labour Parliament. This ambitious programme will provide a way out of poverty and despair for many thousands of families. It is the result of years of focusing on social justice by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and I commend it to the House.

If I myself have a political ambition, it is—perhaps I may ask the House’s traditional indulgence for a maiden speech—to suggest a cross-departmental project to my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions and for Defence. For several years, I lived in the United States—indeed, my family are American—and I was struck by the exceptional way in which people treat their troops and their troops’ families. Over there, the Veterans Administration, which has a seat at the cabinet table, oversees all military welfare, from hospitals to low-cost housing loans. There was much in the Conservative manifesto for our troops to celebrate, from extra money for mental health provision to the application of the pupil premium to the children of military families. Too often in Government, however, the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.

I am glad to see my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) in his place beside me, for he spoke most movingly in his maiden speech of the need for this House to put Help for Heroes out of business by providing better medical care for our troops. I suggest to him, and to the whole House, that a fully fledged veterans administration might go even further, overseeing all military welfare, from widows’ pensions to mental health provision, and that it need not cost too much; rather, it would merely tie all military welfare together.

My county of Northamptonshire hosted no fewer than seven United States airfields during the war, and in my constituency the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes still fly proudly side by side to commemorate the fellowship of our forces. I suggest to the House that we learn from the special relationship where it still has something to teach us. We can, and should, do better by our troops and their dependants. We are considering today issues of poverty; let us ensure that poverty and despair do not touch the lives of those who have given so much for this country.

I thank the House for its traditional courtesy in hearing me out in silence during my maiden speech. It has been an honour to speak in a debate on poverty and to commend the Government’s ambitious programme to the House; and also, of course, to speak as the Member of Parliament for Corby and for east Northamptonshire—the heart of steel in the rose of the shires.