Tackling Poverty in the UK

Debate between Mark Tami and Helen Goodman

Thursday 10th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman]

No, I do not suggest that at all. I suggest that those statistics are selective and that, if we take the decade as a whole, we see an extremely positive record on poverty across the board.

[Mark Tami]

Will my hon. Friend express a view on the comments of the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill)? I asked about them earlier and did not receive an answer, but the Under-Secretary said that the poorest would bear the brunt of the cuts.

[Helen Goodman]

That is the big worry, and if even Government Back Benchers can see it, I hope that Government Front Benchers will take that concern very seriously. As my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) said earlier, the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies also stated that Labour’s tax and benefit reforms have reduced income inequality. If we had maintained the policies that we inherited in 1997, there would have been a much greater degree of income inequality.

The Minister before us this afternoon also overstated his case on worklessness. In fact, the number of people on inactive benefits is now 350,000 lower than the number that we inherited, and the number of lone parents in work has increased substantially from 46 to 58%, because of the positive measures that we took. I hope he does not mind my saying that he will find the problems rather more intractable than he implied in his speech.

We welcome the commitment to restoring the earnings link to pensions, and we are extremely pleased that the Government have decided to maintain the winter fuel allowance and free bus passes, which we introduced. As the Minister said, encouraging a savings culture is obviously important, but Labour Members cannot quite marry that with the halt that seems to have been put on the auto-enrolment programme.

[Helen Goodman]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention.

The Minister talked about the importance of the problem of debt facing the very poorest people, and the Secretary of State mentioned credit unions in his speech on Tuesday night. The Labour Government introduced a growth fund for credit unions, and we put £86 million into credit unions across the country. I very much hope that the new Government will maintain that level of support in the public spending round that they are going to undertake.

[Mark Tami]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is very important that we keep that support for credit unions, because if they are not there, such people will, yet again, have to turn to loan sharks and others who demand very high interest rates, often with menaces?

[Helen Goodman]

That is absolutely right. It is vital that we prevent the poorest people from being exploited in the way they have been. There is a lot of work to be done on this subject.