Margot James
Main Page: Margot James (Conservative - Stourbridge)Department Debates - View all Margot James's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(9 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Duncan Smith
We take full responsibility for ensuring that that benefit is rolled out carefully, so that when we do the full national roll-out of the whole benefit, we will know that it works. We have made a series of adjustments and also have more recruitment going on and more staff going in. I will give some pointers about where we will be when I return to this point. I simply say to the hon. Gentleman that when Labour rolled out tax credits, more than 400,000 people failed to get their money and the Prime Minister had to make a personal apology. I do not want to repeat that in this case. I want to ensure that those most in need will get the benefit.
Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)
Amid the litany of failures of the previous Government, which my right hon. Friend was recalling, and their dreadful legacy in this area, does he remember that of all the new jobs that the property boom-fuelled growth generated, three quarters or more went to foreign nationals? Is that not a circumstance which this Government have reversed entirely?
Mr Duncan Smith
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Well over 70% of new jobs now go to British nationals, as opposed to 90% that went to foreign nationals before.
I want to repeat the figures: there were 5 million on out-of-work benefits, youth unemployment increased by nearly half, long-term unemployment doubled in just two years, and one in five households—it is worth stressing that—was workless, and the number of households where no one had ever worked almost doubled under Labour. Now, as the Opposition themselves seemed to admit over the weekend, as I noticed in the papers, they have no plans, no policies and no prospects—only, as the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) put it put rather succinctly, an
“instrumentalised, cynical nugget of policy to chime with our focus groups and our press strategies and our desire for a top line”.
I agree. Today’s debate is just that—a cynical nugget of short-term policy to put to the unions.