Oral Answers to Questions
Michael Ellis Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
7. What assessment he has made of the implications for his Department’s policies of the most recent employment statistics.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
14. What assessment he has made of the implications for his Department’s policies of the most recent employment statistics.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)
The latest employment statistics, which show a record number of people in work and falling unemployment, demonstrate that our policies are working.
Michael Ellis
Youth unemployment in my constituency has fallen by 25.6% in the last 12 months alone thanks to this Government. I organise a job fair every year, and last year more than 2,000 people came through the doors, many of them wanting to swap jobs. Thanks to the Government, things are moving very much in the right direction. Meanwhile, the Government are expanding the new enterprise allowance scheme, which is designed to improve young people’s entrepreneurial skills. What is the Minister’s assessment of how that is going?
Esther McVey
My hon. Friend is another Conservative Member who is doing a great deal in his area. He has got together 2,000 people from his local community—job seekers and businesses—and has found everyone work. He is right: youth unemployment has fallen by 28% over the year, and long-term youth unemployment in his area has fallen by 26%. The new enterprise allowance scheme is expanding—2,000 young people have already set up businesses in that way—and we are investing more money by extending the scheme until December 2015.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Michael Ellis Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to follow the excellent speeches by my hon. Friends the Members for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), and for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt).
This is truly a triple D-rated Budget that leaves us in more debt than ever before, at risk of a triple dip, and with our credit rating downgraded. It is a Budget once again characterised by unfairness, incompetence and political game playing instead of the national interest. It is unfair, because millions of people face declining living standards while millionaires get a tax cut; it is incompetent, because the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills cannot even clarify the details of the spare homes subsidy; and political game playing has seen the Chancellor play fast and loose with departmental spending to even greater political exposure in the short term, regardless of the consequences for front-line services, our international commitments or, indeed, the growth of our economy.
It is not just Opposition Members who say that—it is the Office for Budget Responsibility, which has confirmed that by 2015, people will be worse off than they were in 2010, with real wages set to fall by 2.4% over this Parliament; it is the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which only yesterday accused the Chancellor of “wasting the time” of Whitehall officials and creating “real economic costs” for the country; and, indeed, the Home Secretary, who hit the nail on the head only a couple of weeks ago, when she said:
“It’s not enough to cut budgets and hope for the best.”
I shall focus on page 70 of the Red Book, which details those £7.6 billion-worth of revenue underspends, and £2.1 billion of capital underspends in Government Departments—a staggering £9.8 billion in total. All of that was apparently done so that the Chancellor could present the illusion of a tiny drop in public sector net borrowing and make up for other accounting errors such as the 4G auction, which raised £1 billion less than he promised in the autumn statement. The consequences are serious. Opposition Members have rightly demanded to know which services, which spending, which projects and which promises have been delayed or cancelled by Departments ranging from the Department of Health to the Home Office. We need answers, and we need them now.
To take a Department in which I was proud to work, in 2010, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor categorically promised us that they would
“not balance the budget on the back of the world’s poor”.
It appears, however, that that is precisely what they have done this year, with the Department for International Development underspending by a staggering £0.5 billion, which amounts to 8% of its total revenue budget settlement for this year. That might represent a failure to pay our dues to the UN, or make our contribution to the World Bank. Indeed, the Chief Secretary seemed to suggest in TV interviews that some of the world’s poorest countries might not be ready to receive our funding. I very much hope that that proves to be untrue, because I am pretty sure that children who need vital vaccines, education or food are ready to receive our help.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
Is it not rather churlish of the hon. Gentleman to make such references, as the Government have been considerably more generous than the Labour Government were in 13 years in office in affirming a 0.7% rate of gross domestic product for international development, which is more generous than almost any other country, yet the hon. Gentleman stands up and—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is hoping to speak later. He must save something to tell the House.
Mr Jones
I totally agree. In defence, for example, the Conservatives called for a larger Navy and larger Army and more expenditure. What have we seen? Cuts, cuts and more cuts.
This morning we again had the nonsense from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions that somehow if the austerity plan does not continue we will end up like Cyprus—it used to be Greece. The right hon. Gentleman conveniently ignores the fact that the wonderful triple A rating, so coveted as the great prize, has now been lost. We need to lay the blame for the country’s problems with this Government.
We used to hear the nonsense about Labour being irresponsible, and not having mended the roof while the sun was shining, but the house has no roof now. All we have seen in the Budget is tinkering at the edges. It is a little like suggesting to someone who has lost the roof that new double glazing should be put in. The important point, which has been made by several colleagues, is about demand in the economy. The way to get the economy going is to stimulate demand, and capital expenditure is one way of doing so. I welcome the announcement of £3 billion of additional capital expenditure, but it is only from 2015, and we need it now.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) rightly referred to the effects of the downturn for housing on other sectors. The emergency Budget slashed housing spending and capital expenditure on schools and so on, and that meant that demand went out of the economy. We are now spending £7.7 billion less than the Labour Government would have spent in the same period. There is an idea that this is somebody else’s fault, but it is not. Deflating the economy and taking demand out of it, while telling everybody that it is in dire straits, will depress demand not only for housing but in other sectors.
The housing proposals in this Budget are very ideological. Am I opposed to encouraging people to buy their own homes? No, I am not. However, it is nonsense to think that someone living in my constituency who has a low-paid job in local government, and is having their pay cut in real terms because of the cap, is going to save up the deposit for a mortgage. It would have been better if the Budget had provided a massive injection of resources into affordable housing and housing for rent. If my local housing provider, Derwentside Homes, was given the ability to borrow money to build new houses, it could do it now. That would provide the housing that we need.
Mr Jones
No.
My fear about these proposals is that if we do not get right the balance between demand and supply, we will end up with a housing bubble and the sub-prime situation that landed us in this mess in the first place.
The other thing that could make a big difference, as it did in my constituency when we were in power, is investing in improvements to local authority housing and social housing. Cestria Housing spent £67 million on improving local housing. That not only made a real difference to those houses but regenerated the local economy. I agree with one thing that the hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) said; frankly, most of it was complete nonsense. If this Government really want to get the economy moving, they have the instruments to do it through banks such as RBS. However, RBS is crucifying small businesses in my constituency, including Ambic, which is run by David Potter. He has a very successful business, but he is being absolutely hammered in trying, in effect, to get RBS’s balance sheets down because this Government want to get it off the asset books as quickly as possible.
Much has been trumpeted about the new cap on the level at which people pay income tax. In my constituency, many low-paid workers will benefit from this, but they will also lose through the bedroom tax, VAT increases, and the loss of child credit. Earlier I challenged the Secretary of State to publish information, constituency by constituency, on how many people were going to gain from this measure. I challenge him again to say how much these individuals are losing through the Government’s welfare cuts.
The welfare cuts that will begin in April will hit some of the poorest parts of the United Kingdom, including my own. The thing about poor people that many Conservatives might not realise is that they do not save money: they spend it. That is not because they are profligate or irresponsible but because they have no choice. These cuts will take money out of poorer communities in North Durham, and in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris), who can ill afford to lose it. Unemployment is rising. As my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) said, these people do not want to be unemployed, but there are no jobs. The jobs that are being created are part time, low paid—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) says “Rubbish.” He should look at the figures, which show that people are holding down two or three jobs to make ends meet. He will also see that productivity is coming down.
This involves a bigger debate about what type of society we want to live in. I congratulate those who work hard in food banks up and down the country; they are very good and worthwhile citizens. However, I feel very uncomfortable in 2013 living in a society where I have constituents relying on charity and food banks. That is not the type of society that I want to live in. We also all need to be conscious of the fact that, while things might be easy for all of us here, including millionaires such as the Chancellor and other Treasury Ministers, each unemployed person faces individual consequences, and suicides are on the increase because of the economic downturn.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
I start by congratulating the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In speech after speech, Labour Members seem to have forgotten the note left by the outgoing Treasury Minister—
Michael Ellis
Oh yes, the old note that was left: “There is no money left.” That is the legacy Labour left this country. After 13 years of a Labour Government who brought this country to its economic knees and a position worse than that of Greece, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Treasury team have picked the country up from where it was left, and will continue to do so.
Dr Offord
I feel that my hon. Friend is being slightly unfair to the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. He may have left that note, but in a confidential briefing in 2006, the shadow Chancellor and the former Prime Minister were warned that the efficiency of the public sector needed to improve rapidly, and that unless it did, spending growth would slow. The former Prime Minister disregarded that advice, and embarked on a £90 billion spending programme once he became Prime Minister.
Michael Ellis
Exactly. The Labour habit of spending money that the country cannot afford almost brought this country to ruin. The lack of an apology grates, but it is difficult for Labour Front Benchers to offer one, because the team that wrecked the country’s economy and trebled the national debt are still on the Opposition Front Bench.
The Budget has been welcomed by the International Monetary Fund, the OECD, the Bank of England, the CBI, the Institute of Directors and the British Chambers of Commerce—it has been rightly welcomed by everyone who knows what they are talking about as far as the economy of this country is concerned. I say to the Chancellor that he should stick with it. We cannot have a situation in which Labour is allowed to borrow more, or we will end up with a Mili-shambles.
Plan A works. It tackles the appalling structural debt legacy. An IOD official has said:
“Deficit reduction is not an option…it is an absolute necessity”.
The Government started in 2010 with the worst debt to GDP ratio of any country—it was worse than that of Greece. Other countries with better figures than ours in 2010 had been put into special measures by the IMF.
Mr Kevan Jones
In opposition, the Conservative party not only agreed to, and did not question, Labour’s spending, but asked for more. As for the figures he quotes, will he explain to the House the difference between the size of Greece’s economy and that of the UK?
Michael Ellis
In common with most Labour Members, the hon. Gentleman’s understanding of the economy is limited. The reality is that the country’s debt is the responsibility of the Labour Government. However hard Labour Members try to transfer the blame on to the Conservatives, we did not spend that money.
When the current Government took over, £1 for every £4 spent from the public purse went on interest. Borrowing is now £3 billion lower, and the deficit is down by one third. What is Labour’s plan? Labour wants to borrow £200 billion more. I wish we had that money, but we do not have it. That is Labour’s plan.
Meanwhile, the OBR forecasts, post-Budget, 600,000 more jobs in 2013. What is the Labour party doing about jobs? Labour Members pretend that the 1.2 million jobs that have been created are fictional, not real, low-quality and part-time jobs. That is a complete fiction, and they should be embarrassed about it. They should talk the economy up and promote industry, trade, manufacturing and jobs. Are they holding jobs fairs in their constituencies? I have a jobs fair in Northampton North on 17 May. A number of companies will attend. I am doing what I can to improve the jobs market, but all we hear from Labour Members is that they will spend and borrow more, and yet they complain.
Corporation tax will be 20%, which is one of the lowest rates in the world. If we had stuck with Labour’s figures, we would have 3p a pint more in beer duty. Not only has that escalator been cancelled, but 1p has been taken off beer duty, but I have sat in Chamber and heard Labour Members criticise even that. They cannot bring themselves to acknowledge positives.
What is more grating is the self-righteousness of Labour Members. They believe that only they can have any compassion or think in any way of the most disadvantaged in society. Well, I have news for them. My colleagues on the Government Benches are equally if not more compassionate. We do not need to be lectured by those who put this country into such debt.
The dramatic fuel duty measures taken by this Chancellor—[Interruption.] If Labour Front-Benchers want to intervene, I am happy to give way.
Grahame M. Morris
That is very kind. The hon. Gentleman has given a list of organisations that support the Chancellor’s Budget. I wonder whether he recognises this quotation from the North East chamber of commerce. Although it was pleased to see certain measures that coincided with its priorities, it said that the Chancellor had
“fallen short of providing the raft of measures that businesses and investors need in order to kick-start growth.”
Michael Ellis
The chambers of commerce have accepted that this is an excellent Budget. Of course there are issues that need to be addressed, but we are dealing with a dramatic deficit. Not everything can be done overnight.
The measures that we have taken on fuel duty mean that it will be £7 per tank cheaper to fill an average car, such as a Vauxhall Astra, than it would have been under Labour’s fuel duty plans. Under Labour, fuel duty went up dramatically. It was costing more and more. The Chancellor’s fuel duty cuts will have a dramatic effect on the cost of filling up the average car.
Measures are being taken across the board in very difficult times to improve the economic position that we inherited. All that Labour can do is whinge, whine, moan and be judgmental.
Mr Kevan Jones
Will the hon. Gentleman get a tax cut for earnings over £150,000 and what type of car does he drive?
Michael Ellis
I am quite happy to answer that question. I will not be getting a tax cut and I have been driving the same car—a Toyota Prius with several dents and scratches—since well before I was elected to this House. However, I would not want to spoil the situation for the millionaires on the Labour Front Bench. There are a fair few of them, driving around in their Mercedes.
Michael Ellis
Not only does Toyota build cars in the UK, but thanks to the measures taken by the Government, this country is exporting more motor vehicles than it is importing for the first time since 1976. That is a measure of the manufacturing improvements made by this Government. It is just one of this Government’s excellent measures, which is why I support the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Budget.
Kelvin Hopkins
A house building programme is exactly what we need. We do not want to increase demand for houses, but supply. If we increase demand without supply, we get house price inflation.
Michael Ellis
Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that, under 13 years of the Labour Government, less social housing was built than at any time since the early 1920s? We are now having to catch up.
Kelvin Hopkins
Throughout that time I was a member of a group called Defend Council Housing, and time and again I urged my hon. Friends on the Front Bench, as indeed did a number of my hon. Friends, to build more council houses, so in a sense I accept that point.
We have seen the policy on the deficit not working—indeed, it will get worse—but we have seen only about a quarter of the promised cuts so far. What will happen in the next three, four or five years—let us say two years, because the Conservatives will only last that long—will make matters worse. The forecasts for the deficit have been out by many billions. The deficit will be £120 billion in each of the next three years, give or take the odd billion. That compares almost exactly with the tax gap, calculated by Richard Murphy, of £120 billion a year. I am not suggesting that we could overcome the tax gap in one year, but we should start to make the billionaires and fat cats pay their taxes properly. We could make a real dent in the deficit and have money to spend to generate the economy.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
The average price of a house in Hammersmith and Fulham is £653,000. The average price of a flat is £493,000. If costs £770 a week to rent a three-bedroom house, and a one-bedroom flat costs £335 a week. At the same time, according to the most recently published census data, 45% of my constituents live in some form of overcrowding, while 62% live in some form of deprivation. Market rents are four or five times what social rents are, so one can imagine how my constituents greeted the Chancellor’s most recent, desperate attempt to do something with the economy—fuel a house price boom. This is what the Financial Times said about it today:
“The government is encouraging people to leverage themselves up to the hilt in order to buy what is already likely to be overpriced property and, as a result of this policy, is likely to become still more so. This is irresponsible enough. But worse, the government will probably…find itself permanently using its balance sheet to support risky housing finance, as the US has done.”
There is indeed a revolution in housing, welfare and planning in this country, but it has very little to do with the Chancellor’s tinkering earlier this week. It is the actions of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who opened today’s debate, and the Department for Communities and Local Government, along with many Conservative councils, that have made rents unaffordable for 540 households in my constituency on the local housing allowance. Some 2,700 households will be affected by the bedroom tax from next week, and as soon as the benefit changes come in another 800 households will be affected.
Mr Slaughter
We have probably heard enough from the hon. Gentleman today. His temporary attendance in the debate and his whipped speech did not do him any credit; I do not think we want any more of that drivel, frankly—[Interruption.] If I need another minute, I might give way later.
The 1% cap and the restriction on crisis loans will make my constituents more dependent on payday loans or pawnbrokers. That is no way to solve the economic crisis that the Government have got themselves into.
House building is at an all-time low. According to figures from the TUC, only 10% of the money from the increase in right to buy has gone back into house building. Only 384 council homes were built in the last three quarters of last year. At the current rates—given the so-called investment in social house building in the Budget, which meets about 1% of demand—it would take more than a century to address demand. At the same time, changes through the Localism Act 2011 mean that we no longer have secure tenancies and that affordable rents in housing associations are now up to 80% of market rents—completely unaffordable. On 1 April, my local authority will abolish 90% of its waiting lists and sweep away almost 10,000 people in housing need, some of whom have been waiting for years. The local authority accepts only 6% of the people who apply to it as homeless.
On planning policy, we have plans that allow for the conversion of much-needed employment land to luxury residential use. We have a policy that says that no additional social housing must be built in my constituency and existing social housing can be demolished for development as luxury affordable housing. As the shadow Secretary of State said earlier, there will be costs through the bedroom tax and through evictions, which are going on daily and weekly. There is an opportunity cost in that people are being forced to move from west London to places where there are fewer jobs and there is a huge social cost to the poorest people, who are being dislocated from their communities.
That is who is losing through the Government’s economic and other policies, but who is benefiting? We heard at the beginning of the debate from my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), who said that the majority of new properties are being built by foreign investors. About 70% of such properties in the richer parts of London are going to foreign investors and are being used as second properties, rather than first properties.
The people who are benefiting are developers. I note from today’s edition of The Daily Telegraph that
“the planning minister, attended a meeting with some of the country’s biggest property developers hours after”
the Chancellor’s
“speech on Wednesday”
and:
“Property developers have been privately promised that planning laws will be liberalised again”.
Developers are making money out of this—the same people who are the friends of those on the Government Front Bench and the donors to the Conservative party.
The same is happening in health. Hospitals in my constituency are being shut so that private providers can come in and clean up with inferior services, as shown today by the 80% of people who do not support the out-of-hours care they are being offered in exchange for the closure of accident and emergency departments. In my area of justice, cuts in legal aid and restrictions on access to justice have been made to benefit the insurance industry, another major funder of the Tory party. It is in those interests that the Government act. It would be polite to call it a class interest, as it is actually a mate’s interest. It is an act of cronyism.
The Budget does nothing to support poorer people or people on middle incomes and it does nothing to help people in crisis in my constituency. The only people it supports are those who fund the Conservative party and those who already are or soon will be millionaires.
Housing Benefit (Under-occupancy Penalty)
Michael Ellis Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Stewart Hosie
The Minister says it is a right. I believe it may be a matter of discretion. It is not at all clear whether my constituent could meet the criteria for a discretionary payment, and even if he did, getting it would depend on whether any money was left in the pot.
I did not intend to speak in such general terms. In the final three minutes, I will concentrate on what is happening in Dundee. We have figures from the council telling us that 3,387 households will be affected by this tax—and it is a tax. Of those, 583 will lose 25% of their housing benefit. That is a loss that will have the impact of a tax.
Stewart Hosie
No, as I have only two and a half minutes left.
The other 2,804 households will lose 14% of their housing benefit. Tenants in two-bedroom council properties could lose benefit entitlement of approximately £9.93 a week, which is £516 a year. Those with two so-called spare rooms will lose an entitlement of £20.07 a week, which is more than £1,000 a year. Does the Minister understand what the loss of £1,000 a year means to families who are already struggling to make ends meet? Does he understand the consequence of that level of indebtedness? Legitimate lending companies will not lend to people in those circumstances, and credit unions can only do so much. This policy will drive people into the hands of loan sharks and illegal moneylenders, and the consequences of that will be picked up by social work departments, health services and the police, at a cost to the public purse for a policy that is unlikely to save this Government any money in the first place.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the hon. Lady, but even if people cannot work, they can take in a lodger, and can get £20 coming in without any effect on their benefit, so they can be better off, because the average that would be lost for one room is £14. The Government have a policy that makes people who are not in work potentially better off, and those who are in work can also be better off, because they will similarly be able to take in lodgers, but they might be able to move to cheaper housing, which they can afford to pay for themselves, rather than being dependent on the state.
Michael Ellis
As usual my hon. Friend makes an excellent series of points. As well as the option for those who cannot work of taking a lodger, does he agree that for those people who can work, and are in some work, in many cases the sums involved would require only two hours of the minimum wage per week to make up the difference?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am sympathetic to what my hon. Friend says, but I think that people need to be able to take responsibility for themselves and to make choices for themselves. The choice they have is either to maintain the benefit they need for the housing they need, or to stay in housing where they have an extra room and adjust their behaviour accordingly. It is not for the state, putting its expenditure on the backs of hard-pressed taxpayers, to fund indefinitely people’s lifestyle choices, and it is a choice if people decide to have an extra room that they are not actually using; they can choose whether to move to a smaller property or, under this new policy, to find a way of getting the extra income they need.
Pensions and Social Security
Michael Ellis Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Steve Webb
The hon. Gentleman is right that non-take-up of pension credit has been a persistent problem. Over the past year or so we tried a pilot scheme in which we took a sample of people we thought, based on our records, might be entitled and put the money in their bank account. We then wrote to them to say, “We’ve put some money in your bank account. Would you like to claim pension credit?” The experiment failed. Incredibly, people did not claim it, or decided that they did not want or need it, or thought that they were not eligible. Even putting money into people’s bank accounts, based on our records, did not succeed. However, I have some good news for the hon. Gentleman. As a consequence of the universal credit reforms, whereby housing benefit for working-age people will be merged with universal credit, we will be merging housing benefit for pensioners with the pension credit.
The reason that is relevant to the hon. Gentleman’s question is that we know that some people claim their housing benefit and not their pension credit, and that some claim their pension credit and not their housing benefit, but when we combine the two in a single payment each group will claim both and we anticipate several hundred million pounds of extra benefit expenditure to low-income pensioners as a result. I think that that will be the most tangible thing that any Government have done in many years.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
Will the Minister confirm that that will also save administrative costs to the state, because we want as much saved in such costs as possible?
Steve Webb
My hon. Friend is right that placing the housing element in a single benefit—the pension credit—rather than it being a separate claim through a local authority will reduce administrative costs and increase take-up as well.
On disability benefits, this year the coalition will ensure that those who face additional costs because of their disability and who have perhaps less opportunity to increase their income through paid employment will see their benefits increased by the full value of CPI. Therefore, disability living allowance, attendance allowance, carers allowance and the main rate of incapacity benefit will all rise by the statutory minimum of 2.2% from April 2013, as will the employment and support allowance support group component and those disability-related premiums paid with pension credit and with working-age benefits.
Oral Answers to Questions
Michael Ellis Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Steve Webb
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question. The idea of measuring pensioner poverty in terms of material deprivation is supplementary to the income measures, and we will continue to publish both. I am sure he would accept that being just a penny or two above an arbitrary income level does not mean that people have a good standard of living if they are isolated or lonely. We aim to address all facets of pensioners’ quality of life.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
8. What recent progress he has made on reform of health and safety legislation.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
On 21 March, I announced an immediate review of health and safety regulation with a view to finding ways to simplify the regulatory burden on business. That review is being chaired by Ragnar Löfstedt, the professor of risk management at King’s College, London. He published a call for evidence on 20 May, the closing date for which is 29 July. We hope to publish the findings of the review later this year.
Michael Ellis
Some of the most inappropriate and burdensome health and safety recommendations on business come from unqualified, cowboy consultants. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is getting rid of cowboy wheel clampers; what are the Government doing to tackle those cowboy health and safety consultants?
Chris Grayling
I very much agree with my hon. Friend. At the beginning of April, we launched a new online register of qualified health and safety consultants, precisely with a view to stamping out the cowboys. I want businesses and other bodies that need consultancy advice to work with qualified people who are capable of advising on what the law actually says, rather than working with people who would like to argue that the law does something they claim it says.
Oral Answers to Questions
Michael Ellis Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
9. When he plans to bring forward proposals to prevent unfair dismissal on grounds of age.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
17. When he plans to bring forward proposals to prevent unfair dismissal of staff on grounds of age.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
We are moving in that direction. Our changes will abolish the default retirement age, and we will make sure that people can no longer be kicked out of work because they have reached a certain age. By getting rid of that, we will improve the economy and help older people find work for a longer period, which is beneficial to the economy and beneficial for those people.
Mr Duncan Smith
The reality for companies and for those who are seeking work is that, because of the need for employment over the next few years, we will need more and more of the skills that are present in the age group to which my hon. Friend refers. Therefore, companies have to reach the sensible solution, which is that people who have those skills and ways of doing their jobs can stay in work much longer. The Work programme will be set up so that they can be helped back into work if they become unemployed. My concern is that companies should recognise that older workers have huge value, well beyond the cost of paying their wages.
Michael Ellis
Constituents in Northampton have raised with me the fact that they have been forced to retire because of their age before they were ready to do so. As I know my right hon. Friend accepts, older people offer a wealth of experience and skill. What progress have the Government made on the consultation on the default retirement age?
Mr Duncan Smith
The consultation has gone very well. We are sifting through the responses. There have been more responses than we anticipated. The vast majority have been positive, although there are some, in some areas of business, that were not as positive as we had hoped. We will publish those results and press on. I can guarantee to my hon. Friend and the rest of the House that we will press on with the issue.
Housing Benefit
Michael Ellis Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Mr Burley
The hon. Lady should have listened to what I said. Our point is that it is not just about reducing the housing benefit bill, but the issue of fairness. We need to go back to the first principles in this debate and decide what is a fair amount for the working majority to pay towards those who do not, cannot or will not work. What is fair? The average annual earnings in my constituency is £25,279 a year.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
On the subject of fairness, is it not right that Opposition Members persistently forget one of the first principles of fairness, which is the juxtaposition between low-paid hard-working families and those on housing benefit? Housing benefit claimants should not be better off than those who are hard-working and low paid. Is that not a principle of fairness?
Mr Burley
That is precisely my point. People in Cannock Chase who earn £25,279 a year would frankly love to have £20,000 to spend on housing from an equivalent annual salary of £80,000, because that is what it equates to. That is dreamland for them. They have never earned £80,000 a year, so why should they be paying out of their hard-earned taxes for some people to have the equivalent of a salary of a quarter of a million pounds so that they can live in parts of London that have some of the most expensive postcodes on Earth.
Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)
Follow that indeed.
I want to pick up on some comments made by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Paul Uppal) and my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods). They referred to the tenor of the national debate on this issue, which I have found deeply worrying, and how our newspapers in particular show unemployed people being divided from employed people, benefit recipients being divided from those who are not claiming benefits.
We saw that division of rich and poor at the weekend with the headlines in some newspapers reflecting announcements from the Department for Work and Pensions. The Mail on Sunday said “New IDS blitz on the workshy”; the News of the World said “Work gangs for shirkers”; and The Sunday Telegraph said “Workshy will have to take unpaid jobs”.
Mr Umunna
I want to make some progress, but I may give way later.
Today, we read that the Department has released figures showing that every family will have to pay more than £1,500 a year in taxes to fund the housing benefit system. As ever, it seems that a particular section of society has become a target. Has the Treasury released figures to show how much each family in this country loses as a result of tax evasion and avoidance by wealthy individuals and companies? It is extremely important that we do not allow the tactic of divide and rule to succeed.
This is particularly pertinent to my community. The constituency that I represent is diverse not only ethnically but in regard to the socio-economic demographic of the people who live there. I spoke to one of my constituents about these issues last weekend. He and his wife live in one of the more leafy parts of Clapham common, an area known as Abbeville village, and he works for a private equity company. He is undoubtedly in the top 1% of earners. I asked him what he thought about the Government’s changes to the housing benefits regime. Given that they will not have a direct impact on him, I was surprised to find that he had strong views about them, and that he was horrified at their likely impact on his community. One of the reasons that he likes living in my constituency is the diverse nature of the streets and the different parts of the area. He said that he did not want to live in a street where all the people were like him. He liked the fact that there were different people living there.
I mention this because it is important to understand that these changes will be an issue not only for people claiming housing benefit but for the community as a whole. Given the impact that the changes will have on my constituents, I do not feel that I am whipping up hysteria or unduly disturbing my community. I am simply looking at the facts. There are 5,470 households in Lambeth that will face huge cuts in housing benefit next year. For example, 1,520 households in two-bed properties in Lambeth will see the contribution to their rent reduced by an average of £25 a week. That is £1,300 a year, and those people simply cannot afford it. The changes will undoubtedly cause an increase in poverty in my constituency. Shelter is predicting that they will affect many of the claimants who live just above the poverty line, and they will undoubtedly lead to deep anxiety and stress among people who are already struggling to get by.
Glenda Jackson
From a sedentary position, the Minister is waving his hands in disbelief. This afternoon he was leaping to the Dispatch Box asking questions about what my party would have done if we had been in government. He knows, and I know, that if my party had been in government and his party had still been in opposition, and we had introduced the policies that he is supporting now, he would have fought them tooth and nail.
The Minister has absolutely no cover any more. As I have had occasion to say before in the House, his party has become the “30 pieces of silver” party, and nowhere is that more marked than in what it is proposing to do to some of the most vulnerable people in all our constituencies. I say to Government Members that the problem is not exclusively London’s; this will affect the whole country. When the second tranche of the Government’s approach to social housing comes in—the increase of rents to at least 80% and the removal of secure tenancies—the impact will run and run.
Michael Ellis
Are not hard-working people on low incomes also vulnerable, and do they not also need to be treated fairly by our society, as opposed to those on whom so many of the hon. Lady’s Opposition colleagues focus—people on housing benefit who are receiving more from the taxpayer than many of the working poor could dream of paying for themselves?