Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

I do, and I thank my hon. Friend for that point. It is important to reflect on what we can do to help people be in work rather than rely on welfare.

Thirdly, I turn to the measures in the Bill about work and disability and a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate made. Let this not be a taboo topic that we find too difficult to deal with. There is a case for making the best of everybody’s talents in this country. My right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench are right that we all ought to be disability-confident, and we should all encourage businesses in our constituencies up and down the land to be disability-confident. Why should we do that? According to Mind, the mental health charity, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and many other reputable sources, work can be extremely beneficial to a person’s health—in the case of those two organisations, mental health. The measures in the Bill range from mental health to other aspects of health, but let us understand that we can and must offer chances to everybody in the country. We can all look at ways to do that in our constituencies.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

rose—

[Chloe Smith]

I am afraid I will not give way. Out of fairness to other Members, I must finish and then allow others to speak. I have already taken one intervention.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate said, we need to ensure that the support provided in jobcentres is proportionate to the distance claimants have to go to find work, and to the height of the barriers in their way. That is the right thing to do.

Fourthly, I turn to the measures on child poverty. I referred earlier to the comments of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead—I think in his absence, I am afraid to say. He noted that the definition of poverty, and everything that is needed for someone not to be regarded as poor as defined by academics and politicians, can be utterly bewildering. I agree with that, and we are right to attempt to improve on a measure that the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission and others readily say is unattainable. It makes no sense to press on with something that is unattainable when we have the opportunity to improve the situation and do better for children by referring to educational attainment and being in work.

Fifthly, a measure connected to the Bill is the national living wage, which is a crucial part of serving the strivers in this country. No doubt the right hon. Member for Birkenhead knows far more than I do about the difficulties of encouraging high pay at the same time as the Government are effectively subsidising pay with a high welfare net. Nevertheless, I support the measures in the Bill and the Budget for turning Britain into a higher wage economy and a lower tax society, and for creating a more reasonable approach to welfare.

Finally, my constituents in Norwich, where the gross median income is £23,000, will welcome the measure in the Bill to reduce the welfare cap one step further to £20,000 outside London. That is the right thing to do and will support work over welfare.

--- Later in debate ---

[Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

Let me take this opportunity to welcome the vision of welfare reform that has been set out by the Government, and by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in particular. I think we all agree—certainly those on this side of the House—that we have a problem with the amount of money spent on welfare. When Gordon Brown first became Chancellor and introduced tax credits, he promised they would cost £2 billion. They now cost £30 billion, which is a fifteen-fold increase. We have been in a ludicrous position: people have been in work, on the minimum wage, and paying tax, only for those tax payments to be recycled through the welfare system and returned to them in the form of welfare payments.

[Patricia Gibson]

According to the Government’s rhetoric, work is the best route out of poverty, but is this not the reality of their proposals: it does not matter how hard those who live in poverty work; their poverty will remain stubbornly present in their lives owing to cuts in child tax credit and low pay? Is this not about ideology rather than necessity? Is it not about rolling back the frontiers of the state?

[Oliver Dowden]

No, it is not about rolling back the frontiers of the state. The points that the hon. Lady has raised are addressed by our introduction of universal credit, which gives people who are in work a progressive route out of poverty by helping them, as they earn more, not to have all their benefits removed. Moreover, by introducing a national living wage, we are ensuring that everyone who is in work and has a low income will be given a pay rise.

Faced with the current problem, a Government might be tempted simply to salami slice benefits across the board. However, this Government have set out a coherent vision of welfare, which has a number of elements. First, if we are to move from a low wage, high tax, high welfare economy to a higher wage, lower tax, low welfare economy, we must deal with the tax problem. The last Government, with their coalition partners, set about massively increasing the amount of money people could earn without paying tax. We are continuing that agenda, so that as people earn more they keep more

Secondly, we have grasped the problem of people who are in work but do not earn a sufficiently large wage, which is why, for the first time, we are able to increase the minimum wage significantly. Our increase is far greater than any increases that were made by the Labour party when it was in power.