Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to remind the Committee of that. We have made our commitment to the triple lock on the state pension, which means that it will rise by an amount above inflation this April. We have passed cash on to the guarantee credit to ensure that the poorest pensioners get the full increase, protected the key disability benefits—disability living allowance and attendance allowance—and ensured that the support component of employment and support allowance is protected. We can be proud of achieving all those things despite the difficult financial situation.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

Is the Minister aware that in the city that I represent, which also happens to be the birthplace of Charles Dickens, 82,000 people will benefit from the tax cut in April and nearly 7,000 will have been lifted out of poverty altogether by the cumulative effect of tax cuts under the coalition? Is that not the best way of tackling poverty—to stop taking money off people in the first place?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Byrne]

No. Given the hon. Gentleman’s support for a programme motion that has given me six minutes to respond to a Bill that takes hundreds of pounds off thousands of his constituents, he will forgive me for carrying on.

Some 206,000 disabled people will be £62 a year worse off as a result of this Bill. The Government have been caught red-handed trying to keep the truth from this House.

I am glad that today we have had an extensive debate on child poverty, because we were told nothing about how many children and how many working parents would be hurt by this Bill. Only in the past couple of weeks has the truth finally emerged. I want to put on record Labour Members’ gratitude to the Child Poverty Action Group for ruthlessly exposing the impact of the Bill and the cumulative impact of other measures.

The Secretary of State spent some time casting doubt on the strategy for tackling child poverty, which I seem to remember he voted for when he supported the Child Poverty Act 2010. On 24 November 2004, the Prime Minister said:

“I believe that poverty is an economic waste and a moral disgrace. In the past, we used to think of poverty only in absolute terms… That’s not enough. We need to think of poverty in relative terms.”

The Chancellor was even blunter when he said to the News of the World: “We’re all in this together. I’m not going to balance the Budget on the backs of the poor.” That encouraged the Secretary of State to wade in on “Sky News” in June 2010, when he said that “you have” to make savings

“but protect the poorest and that’s my absolute priority.”

How hollow those words ring tonight.

The truth is now before us: 200,000 children will be pushed into poverty as a result of this Bill. According to the Child Poverty Action Group, the measures in this Bill, alongside other measures that have been introduced, mean that 1 million children will be pushed into poverty by this Government. That will be the Secretary of State’s legacy. He spent all those years trying to persuade us that the Conservative party was finally a party that cared about poverty, and now, because the Chancellor needed a new year’s dividing line on welfare, he is accountable for putting 1 million children into poverty. It is well and truly clear that the nasty party is back.

This is about not just children but their mothers. A fortnight ago, my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) published a list of 106 battle- ground constituencies. In those seats, there are 150,000 mothers who will be hurt by this Bill, losing £180 a year. In fact, as a result of measures put through by this Government, they are now losing £1,400, and tonight Members on the Treasury Bench voted to allow that to continue. They were given the chance to protect those 150,000 mothers and they chose not to. Over the next few months, we will be getting in touch with mothers in those constituencies and making it very clear that their Member of Parliament had a chance to protect their maternity pay and chose not to. Right now, the price of children’s clothing is rising by 4.5% and food prices are rising by 3.6%. Working mothers going on to statutory maternity pay are losing £180 a year at a time when someone on £1 million a year is getting a £2,000 tax cut. How are Government Members going to justify that to people in their constituencies?

[Penny Mordaunt]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?