Tax Credits

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman]

I will not give way again.

That is a lifestyle choice that people make. What we can see is that Government proposals and Government restrictions on taxation and benefits change people’s habits, so what we have to do is enable people—

[Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Bob Blackman]

I am not giving way again.

What we need to do is look at how people can change their behaviours to make sure their income is increased. The first area we have to look at is childcare. Working mothers and fathers who have childcare responsibilities need access to proper, decent childcare. I applaud the Government for the 30 hours’ free childcare, but that is not good enough for parents who, as a result, can only work part time. Please will the Government consider improving the amount of free childcare given—not the limited range we are discussing now, but more extensively—so that more people in this country can choose to take on more hours at work, and therefore improve their income at no cost to themselves? That would reduce the tax credits bill and ensure greater productivity in our industry.

Those two measures would start to alleviate the problem, but I believe that the Government, now in listening mode, need to consider where else we can save money in the welfare system. There is also a challenge for the Opposition: if they do not agree with reducing tax credits, from where else within the welfare system should the money come? That is a clear challenge, and I look forward to hearing in the winding-up speeches some of the answers to some of the questions raised in the debate.

The reality, and my greatest concern, is my constituents’ uncertainty about how they will be affected next April if the changes are introduced. As the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) said, one of the problems is that people are making lifestyle choices now. It is not fair to those families and individuals who are thinking about what they should do in terms of work, where they study and so on to leave them in limbo. The quicker this is resolved, the better for everyone concerned.

--- Later in debate ---

[Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) for securing this debate today, and I applaud the other place for taking the decision they took the other night. I am not in favour of an unelected Chamber, but this week just proves that we do need a second Chamber; it must be an elected one, though. None the less, I applaud the Members of the other place.

I have said it before, but my constituency suffers the seventh highest employment poverty and the 11th highest income poverty in the country. I have 5,800 families with 8,300 children who are living in poverty, but they are in work. At the high school where I am a governor, there are 400 children who take free breakfast in the morning. It is offered to all 1,100 pupils, but 400 take it, and they take it because they need to. We chose to make that offer because our children could not learn because they were hungry. They could not concentrate to learn, and that is why we do it.

It made my blood boil when I heard a Conservative Member talking today about people choosing to work part time, on a zero-hours contract, for 16 hours a week or something like that while other people pay to keep them going. I had to be careful not to react, but the people I represent are hard-working families. There are men who went into the bowels of the earth to get coal to make industry work. Many of them are still of employment age. Many are on zero-hours contracts. They know what hard work is and they do not mind it. They miss the camaraderie of the colliery but they love to work hard and to earn their money.

Many of my constituents worked in glass furnaces. Let me tell the House a tale about what happened at one of them. Two years ago, a glass furnace closed—the last one at the factory where I worked. A hundred and twenty men lost their jobs and were secured employment, with the help of their employer—a very large multinational car manufacturer—in a neighbouring constituency. They got employment because they were skilled and hard workers who could use the technology and drive vehicles in the factory. They were told, though, that they were employed through an agency on £10 an hour—not the rate that the other workers in the factory were on—and would work for 12 months before getting a permanent contract with the employer on the other rate of pay. Just weeks before those 12 months were up—10 and a half months in—120 of those men came home from an afternoon shift on a Friday. On the Saturday afternoon they received calls saying they were not needed on the Monday.

Eight weeks went by, and a few of the men got calls saying that there was extra work that they could be given until Christmas. They had not been able to find other work, and they went back to those jobs for three weeks. In the weeks previous to that, many of them were living in rented accommodation and had phoned the housing association every week to explain that their benefits had not come through and so they could not pay the rent. I have to say that universal credit will make this simpler, because they were waiting for housing benefit, council tax assistance, child tax credit and working tax credit, and each one comes through separately. One woman rang me literally in tears, and I had to go round to see her. She had a letter—a notice of possession. We sorted that one out, and we sorted another few out. We secured a mechanism so that this should not happen.

When the men were offered those jobs back until Christmas, they took them. They only lasted three weeks, so back they went again to applying for all these tax credits. These are not people who choose to work on zero-hour contracts or as agency workers. One of the chaps—the woman’s husband—got a call a few weeks ago, from an agency, saying that he had got a job. People have to register with agencies now; they cannot get jobs round there without going through an agency. When he got the call, he was made up, but just 30 minutes later he got another call saying that he had to work two weeks for free, without pay, and would then be guaranteed an interview for a job. Thank goodness, his wife would not let him go. This is modern-day slavery and a stand has to be taken. The same gentleman has now got two weeks work with pay, and has gone off to do it.

I ask the Chancellor to give due consideration to the 700,000—three quarters of a million—people on zero-hours contracts and the hundreds of thousands of people in agency work. Something simply must happen. These agencies are exploiting unemployed people. What is going on in this country is modern-day slavery. Employment has risen—yes, it has—but I wonder how many Members in this Chamber realise that one hour’s work in a month counts as being in employment. I could not believe it, but it is true. There has been an increase of 400,000 in the number of people claiming housing benefit since 2010, despite the 14 cuts, including the bedroom tax and the cap. That is because wages are going down, not up. We have 4,300,000 people earning less than the living wage.

There is a national shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers, but can anyone get the training for that job? When I told the men that there is a national shortage, they asked at the employment exchange whether they could be trained as heavy goods vehicle drivers, and the answer was no, but some were sent away to get training—upskilling—for a stacker truck licence. Some of them were sanctioned because they did not turn up somewhere. The same people who sent them for the training sanctioned them for not turning up.

My ask of the Chancellor is that he does not play games with this mitigation, and that he puts a stop to these tax credit changes, puts hard thinking in, listens to the many excellent contributions that have been made today, and gives consideration to how we can protect those hard-working people who want to work but have been punished through zero-hours contracts and being agency workers.