amendment of the law

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Again, I say to the hon. Gentleman that he really needs to address his question to those who were governing, because, as I said earlier, GDP fell by 7.5% under the previous Government during the recession. What does he think forced those economics for individuals and working households to fall? It was the fact that there was a massive recession—the biggest for 100 years —on Labour’s watch.

I want to make some progress. The latest labour market statistics are remarkable. The Work programme that we brought in is now helping long-term unemployed people dramatically: half a million people under the programme have started a job; 252,000 have now gone into sustained work; and 10 times as many people have achieved job outcomes now compared with the end of the first year.

Compared with the flexible new deal, one of Labour’s great flagship programmes, under the Work programme, twice as many people have gone into a job, and it costs £5,000 less per place according to all the estimates. So, too, with the work experience programme that we brought in, allowing young people to take a work experience placement for up to two months while still keeping their benefit. That has helped 50% of participants off benefits and into work. It has the same success rate as the future jobs fund, but at a 20th of the cost—£325 as opposed to £6,500 of wasted money. What is more, the majority of places are in the private sector, whereas the future jobs fund created jobs almost exclusively in the public sector.

This Budget has been very good for jobs but it is very good for apprenticeships as well. The Government have already committed to a quarter of a million more apprenticeships than Labour ever planned, with 1.6 million starts since 2010. The Budget announced £170 million more for another 100,000 apprenticeship grants and for developing new degree-level apprenticeships as well. It is important that the Government are not only finding and helping to find people work, but helping to shape their skills and experience.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

In the Secretary of State’s list of successes, rightly attributed to the businesses in this country and the Government’s policies, will he also make reference to those that are now being supported by the enterprise allowance and the start-up schemes? As we saw at my recent jobs fair, more people are seeking self-employment as well.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I pay tribute to my neighbour and hon. Friend for his phenomenal work on the jobs fairs, on all the creation he has done and on the work he has done with local unemployed people. He is absolutely right: the new enterprise allowance has been a phenomenal success. Thousands of people have started their own businesses under it. It is one of the big success stories of this Government. It is going to grow and we are going to ensure that many more people, particularly young people who are more and more keen to start their own businesses, get the kind of support they want.

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[Rachel Reeves]

He continues to do so now. If three years later and £130 million down the drain is on time and on budget, that says more about the Secretary of State’s grasp of mathematics than anything else.

The truth is that from Easterhouse—where the Secretary of State had his epiphany—to the Vatican, people are queuing up to tell the realities of this Government’s reforms. Rosemary Dixon, the chief executive of a charity on the Easterhouse estate in Glasgow—the Secretary of State might remember her—has said that the simple truth is that “things are going backwards.” A letter from 27 bishops stated that

“we must, as a society, face up to the fact that over half of people using foodbanks have been put in that situation by cut backs to and failures in the benefit system, whether it be payment delays or punitive sanctions.”

Archbishop Vincent Nichols has said that

“the role of food banks has been crucial to so many people in Britain today and for a country of our affluence, that quite frankly is a disgrace.”

The Secretary of State says that he is on a moral crusade. The people affected by his policies know what sorts of morals he has.

[Nick de Bois]

The hon. Lady may regret bringing the bishops and the moral case they were arguing into this. Perhaps she would like to reflect on what the position was of the bishops, and what Labour’s position was, when her Government kept people on benefits at a 95% marginal tax rate? Those people could not afford to take a job and Labour did nothing but trap them in a life on benefits.

[Rachel Reeves]

The employment rate reached a record high under the previous Labour Government and it has not risen to that level today. I believe that work did pay under the previous Government, and a flagship reform to make work pay under this Government has failed. The national minimum wage did more than anything under the previous Labour Government to make work pay, but that policy was opposed by the hon. Gentleman and his party.

If the Secretary of State really wants to get the welfare bill down, he must tackle the low wages and zero-hours contracts that leave too many people reliant on in-work benefits. If he really wants to get the social security bill down, he needs to build 200,000 extra homes a year to control the cost of the rising housing benefit bill. If he really wants to get a grip on the social security bill, he should introduce a basic skills test to help those who are unemployed to find and stay in work. If he really wants to control the cost of social security, he should introduce a compulsory jobs guarantee to get the young and the long-term unemployed back into work. The Budget failed to do those things. If we did them, however, we would gain control of social security. For those reasons, we will support the Government when we vote on the welfare cap tomorrow.

However, Labour would make different choices. We would get a grip on the failing programmes, such as universal credit and the Work programme, and focus on the cost of living crisis. We would scrap the bedroom tax, which is cruel and costs more money than it saves. We would take tough decisions, such as scrapping winter fuel allowance for the richest pensioners. We would get more people into work on decent wages that they can afford to live on. Different parties, different values, different priorities. Our priority would be to control the cost of social security; under the Tories, it continues to rise.

On pensions, I think that we can all agree that people need more help to save for their retirement. That is why I am pleased that the Labour Government legislated for automatic enrolment and that this Government have taken forward that Labour policy, based on the Turner consensus. We support greater flexibility so that people can get a better deal from the pensions market when they retire. We will continue to support reforms in the annuities market, which we have campaigned for and which the Leader of the Opposition called for in 2012.

The Government should go further than they did last week. Their figures show that savers are losing up to £230,000 from the value of their pension pots because of excessive fees and charges when they save. The Government should bring forward a meaningful cap on fees and charges to ensure that people’s pension pots are not drained by insurance companies. They should ensure that there is full disclosure of fund manager charges alongside that cap. They should ensure that, for those who want to turn a lifetime of savings into a secure and decent stream of income with an annuity, that is not made harder, and that brokerage is not just offered, but is taken up, so that people get the support they need to make the decisions that are right for them. We must not risk another Tory mis-selling crisis like the one that followed the personal pensions revolution of the 1980s.

To ensure that the Government get the reforms right, we will hold them to account with three tests. First, is there robust advice for people who are saving for their retirement? Secondly, is the system fair to those on middle and lower incomes who want a secure retirement income? Thirdly, are the Government sure that the changes will not result in extra costs to the state, either through social care or by increasing housing benefit bills? We will continue to push for the reform of pensions, but it must be reform that works for people who have saved all their lives, who deserve security and confidence in retirement.

We must be clear that the Office for Budget Responsibility has delivered a damning verdict on the Government’s record of getting people saving. The proportion of income that people are saving has fallen from 7.2% in 2012 to 4.1% this year, and it will fall to 3.2% by the end of the forecast period. More needs to be done to ensure that people have the confidence and the ability to save.

To conclude, whether you are a young person looking for work, a couple looking to buy your first home, a mum and dad trying to pay the bills and get decent child care, a pensioner struggling with rising energy bills or a business trying to access finance, you are worse off under the Tories. They have had four years to deal with the cost of living crisis and they have failed. They have had four years to help young people and the long-term unemployed, and they have failed. They have had four years to help those who are disabled and vulnerable, and they have failed.

There is a tax cut for millionaires, and beer and bingo for the working classes. George Orwell wrote of his nightmare vision of the world in 1984 that

“beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds.”

Thirty years on in 2014, it seems that the Chancellor thinks that all he needs to do is to cut taxes on beer and bingo, and they will be happy. It is them and us, Mr Speaker—how patronising, how out of touch, how very Tory. The Tories cannot deal with the cost of living crisis; only Labour will.

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[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

I am pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth). I tried to follow his argument, but felt some confusion, because his constituency, notwithstanding the barriers there, has seen a drop in youth unemployment from a terrible high of 17% to 10%, so clearly some progress is being made. [Hon. Members: “Well, that is all right then.”] Before he attempts to misinterpret my words, he should read Hansard to see exactly how I phrased my thoughts.

In the Budget, the Chancellor demonstrated that he has the ideas to continue his drive to rebalance and rebuild the economy on a sustainable platform, rather than on the platform we inherited after 13 years of the previous Government, where our over-dependency on one sector and a bloated welfare state led to many of the problems we are dealing with today.

I talk about ideas. Opposition Members would do well to remember—those who are old enough to remember—what James Callaghan said after the election defeat of 1979. He said that he knew he had lost the election because his Government had run out of ideas. Frankly, it seems that Labour has nothing new to offer judging by the responses of its leader and the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary. It has chosen to move off the historic centre ground of British politics. Nothing illustrates that more than the contemptible speech that we heard in response to the Budget. It was full of class war rhetoric and it lacked ideas. The intellectual pulse of the Labour party is not there; the party is flatlining and, as I have said, it would do well to remember the words of its former Prime Minister.

It seems that Labour, having nothing new to offer, have returned to the past. Yesterday, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) talked about returning to widespread union-brokered collective bargaining and direct action. Labour is now officially wedded to the unions. It also remains married to the discredited politics of borrow and spend and has no ideas for the future.

Unsurprisingly, the Chancellor and his team present a stark contrast to the Labour team. They understand not only the scale of the challenge but how to bring forward ideas to help sustain the economy. They have recognised that there is a massive transfer of economic power from the west to the east. Conservatives understand that nobody owes us a living. We have to create the conditions and the mentality to go out and earn our way.

The Budget is about developing building blocks to rebalance the economy and to sustain the growth that we need. Above all else, the Conservatives trust individuals to spend their money far better than the Government. Individuals recognise that tax is not the Government’s money but the taxpayer’s money, and that if they do the right thing, this Government will be on their side.

The platform for growth may have been laid down in this and other Budgets, but it is the aspiration of the British people that will see us exporting more and getting on in life. It is they who will deliver the competitive business environment and stable public finances. However, to achieve that we must look beyond economics to education and the welfare system. There are people in this country who are trapped in worklessness. They leave school at the age of 16 ready to compete in the world. The shame of the Opposition was that they stifled ambition and strangled aspiration for so many people and trapped them on benefits. There were 1 million households in which people had not worked for more than 10 years. This Government are reducing the numbers of workless households. Fewer children are growing up in workless households, employment is increasing, youth unemployment is reducing—in my own constituency the number is down by 32% since the election. It is our deep understanding of making work pay that drives our reforms. We want to rid this nation of the appalling high marginal tax rates. The fact that someone could pay a 95% marginal tax rate if they came off benefits into work provided no incentive to work, which is why we inherited a legacy of high long-term unemployment and youth unemployment.

The Government have proved that financial measures alone are not enough. By tapping into the natural aspirational instincts of the British public we can change behaviour and improve lives for ever. Nothing illustrates that more than the measures we have taken to trust people with their own money—albeit in savings or in reducing the tax burden. We have shown trust in companies to invest in their people and their businesses by lowering corporation tax. That has been done within the difficult, demanding financial constraints that we inherited and are having to deal with. These are the issues that will drive greater growth and more employment and will change lives for the future. The tax-free allowance has gone up to £10,500. It represents a 66% rise in the amount that a person may earn before tax, which is a good thing. The pensions policy, which allows a person to use their own money as they wish, is indicative of a Conservative Chancellor who uses Conservative values in a Conservative Budget and who trusts the people.