Welfare Reform Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I do not doubt the hon. Gentleman’s views, but he is a member of a party whose leader and shadow Secretary of State made speeches a fortnight ago on the need to take tough decisions on welfare. I am afraid that what the hon. Gentleman says is another example of the disconnect that exists within the Opposition.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

What taxpayers in my constituency find obnoxious is people who use the welfare state as an alternative lifestyle choice rather than as a safety net, for which it was first intended. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government, through this measure and their other changes, are trying to go back to what the welfare state was initially intended for, namely a safety net rather than an alternative lifestyle choice?

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we have to have a system that is fair both to the taxpayer who pays for it and to the recipients. As a result of these reforms, we will have a system that is fairer to those receiving support and also fairer to those who are paying for that support.

Support to find work, for those people who will be affected, will be available for all ESA claimants from the outset of their claim, through Jobcentre Plus on a voluntary basis until the outcome of the work capability assessment and, following the WCA, for those claimants placed in the work-related activity group, through Jobcentre Plus or through the Work programme. Every single person who is on ESA, including those on a contributory basis, has access to the Work programme.

Some have said that the limit is arbitrary. I do not accept that. As the Minister with responsibility for welfare reform explained in the other place, it is similar to that applied by several countries around the world, including France, Ireland and Spain, and strikes an appropriate balance between the needs of sick and disabled people claiming benefit and those who have to contribute towards the cost.

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[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend share my surprise that the Labour party, which now has this synthetic anger about the proposals for means-testing, was the party that when in government—the hon. Member for Walsall North himself said that he supported them more often than not—extended means-testing more than any other Government in history?

[Mr Nuttall]

Absolutely. We have heard a lot about this means-testing this afternoon. We have heard that the system is insurance-based, which it is, but with any insurance policy there are terms and conditions. In this case, the means test is just shorthand for the terms and conditions of the policy.

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[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

If anyone ever had any doubt about the same old Tories and the nasty party, they have just seen an absolutely fine example of it. I am not surprised by the views of the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) either, bearing in mind that he said that disabled people should work for less than the minimum wage—well done!

[Philip Davies]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Lavery]

On the issue at hand, one in three of us—

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[Ian Lavery]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

One in three of us suffers from cancer at any one time. I am very unfortunate, as my parents and my wife’s parents all died at a relatively young age.

[Philip Davies]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for an hon. Gentleman to make an accusation that five national newspapers apologised for making? Is it in order for him to make the same accusation and then not give way to allow me to correct him? Those five newspapers at least had the courtesy to acknowledge that they had made a mistake.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

That is not a point of order for the Chair, but you have put the point on the record which I think is what you wished to do.

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[Chris Grayling]

As Mr Speaker has indicated, Lords amendment 47 impinges on the financial privilege of this House. I ask the House to disagree to it, and I will ask the Reasons Committee to ascribe financial privilege as the reason for doing so. Notwithstanding that, the House has an opportunity to debate the substance of the Lords amendment and I intend to provide the Government’s full rationale for rejecting it. I will also deal with the matters raised in the amendments tabled by the Opposition and explain why they should be rejected as well.

I should like to start by stressing that this debate is not simply about the financial aspects of what we are doing. The fact is that the arguments in favour of a cap are about fairness and about ending a situation in which, for some people, benefit rates are so high that it is not worth working. It is worth my saying that on this issue, the public of this country are overwhelmingly behind us.

[Philip Davies]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on disagreeing with the Lords on this point. He is absolutely right that the public are right behind us, but does he agree with many of my constituents who think that the cap is still being set too high? They find it incredible that anybody could possibly think that it was too low.

[Chris Grayling]

Indeed, and what my hon. Friend says makes all the more extraordinary the flip-flopping position that we have seen from the Opposition in the past few weeks.

A recent YouGov poll showed 76% support for the cap, confirming what all of us will know from our mailbags—that the vast majority of the general public agree with the Government. It is not just the general public as a whole who agree with us, it is Labour voters as well. More than two thirds of them support the principle of a benefit cap. They agree with us that it is wrong to pay people who do not work more in benefits than people earn on average when they do work.

The cap will set a firm upper limit on total benefit entitlement, which for families and lone parents will be equivalent to the average wage for working households. We estimate that to be about £500 a week or £26,000 a year, which is equivalent to gross earnings of £35,000 a year.

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[Chris Grayling]

That may well be the case, but of course it is not clear. We do not quite know what is in the mind of the Labour party. Is it suggesting—this is not in its amendments—that the cap should still be set at £26,000, in which case there is no reason why Labour Members should not back our measures? Or do they plan a higher cap in some parts of the country and a lower cap in others, accepting that our benefit system should be regionally based? Frankly, I am completely confused, and the House has every reason to be the same.

[Philip Davies]

I, too, have a great deal of respect for the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), but does my right hon. Friend agree that the logical conclusion of a regional cap is regional benefits? She cannot call for a regional cap unless she is also prepared to argue for regional benefits.

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but that is not a conversation that the shadow Secretary of State will wish to have with his close friends in the trade union movement, who would not approve at all of the idea of beginning to regionalise how the public sector operates.

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[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

It is an absolute delight to join the debate, which is of key interest to my constituents.

I first wish to talk about the people who have had the least said about them today. Indeed, I do not think any Opposition Member has referred to them. They are the people who pay the £175 billion benefits bill that the Government run up each year on behalf of the people of Britain. I wish to speak for some of the taxpayers in Gloucester.

I have done some research on average earnings in my constituency. The figures are not complete, but I think it will be of interest to Members, and relevant to their own constituencies, that of some 20,000 public sector workers in Gloucester, I estimate that 90% have pre-tax salaries of less than the £35,000 that is equivalent to the £26,000 benefit cap that the Government propose. That figure of 90% means that 18,000 people working in my constituency of 100,000 people are in that position

It is harder to get the same figures for people working in the private sector, but based on a straw poll of three companies employing more than 400 workers, I estimate that some 87% are on pre-tax salaries of less than £35,000 a year. I believe that the vast majority of workers in my constituency would be astonished that Labour proposes that there should be no cap on the benefits that people get.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I endorse his figures. Given the scaremongering that we have heard from Opposition Members, does he know how many of those people who earn £35,000 a year are homeless?

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend raises a key point, and I will come on to the definition of “homeless” in a moment, as it is of significant interest.