Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill

Debate between Mike Weir and Conor Burns

Friday 2nd December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

I join my Conservative colleagues in congratulating the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) on securing this private Member’s Bill.

There is surely a consensus on both sides of the House that unemployment is a tragedy when it befalls anyone. There can be few things in life worse than wanting to work and failing to find it. However, I begin by bringing a group of people into the debate who were mentioned only once by Opposition Members in all the interventions in the hon. Lady’s speech: the taxpayer, which was referred to by the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Callum McCaig). Every benefit that is paid to a benefit claimant is paid out of the receipts that the Government take in tax. The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South referred at one point to something that would cost the Government. The Government do not have any money; the Government have only taxpayers’ money.

[Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not recall the National Audit Office report that showed that this sanctions regime does not actually save any money? His point is without merit.

[Conor Burns]

The hon. Gentleman is approaching this from exactly the wrong angle. The point is that the Government have an obligation to ensure that every person who is in receipt of a benefit is entitled to it. That is part of the social contract that underpins our society. It was at the very core of the Beveridge report, whereby people paid in in times of good, in times of work, and drew down in times of sickness, unemployment and retirement—drew down in terms of need.

If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that we should carry on in certain circumstances, where people have been demonstrated not to be legitimately in need of benefits, that is an abuse of the taxpayer. Many of those taxpayers are on very modest incomes indeed and work extremely hard to contribute to our society.