Welfare Spending

Debate between Rachel Gilmour and Ashley Fox

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Ashley Fox]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making that point. I know that he, like all Conservatives, believes in personal responsibility, living within our means and fairness to the taxpayer.

[Rachel Gilmour]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Ashley Fox]

I will not take any more interventions.

Many thousands of couples think every year about whether to have children. They make that choice based on several factors, but one of the most important is whether they can afford to bring up that child as they would like to. Under the previous system, pre-2017, there was a fundamental element of unfairness in the system. A family in receipt of benefits saw those increase automatically every time they had another child. That is not true for a family not in receipt of benefits. Why is it that someone on benefits should not have to make the same choices and sacrifices as someone in work? Why should a taxpayer who is unable to afford to have more children subsidise the third, fourth or fifth child of someone not in work?

The welfare bill in this country is increasing at an unsustainable rate. Unemployment is rising, thanks to the action of the Government, and more people than ever are receiving disability benefits, but this Government seem completely powerless to do anything to reverse that trend. The Prime Minister says that his welfare reforms strike the “right balance”, but the truth is that he was forced into a humiliating U-turn by his own Back Benchers and has had to totally gut his plans. Scrapping the Government’s PIP reforms means that the welfare Bill will make no savings at all—indeed, the total package will end up costing the taxpayer about an extra £100 million a year. What a fiasco!

The Government set out to save £4.5 billion, and have ended up spending more taxpayers’ money to buy off Labour rebels. No thought was given to the burden on the taxpayer, or to the extra debt that the Government would incur and the interest that will have to be paid on it by our children. The fact that so many Labour Members want to remove the two-child benefit cap is testament to the irresponsibility with which they treat the public finances. Their solution is always to spend more money—preferably belonging to someone else.

Now, we have the spectacle of the leader of Reform UK, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), saying that he also supports scrapping the two-child cap, despite having been an outspoken supporter of it when it was introduced. Reform supporters in my constituency are rather puzzled by his decision. It suggests that the hon. Member is not guided by any political principle, but is chasing votes in the red wall, where he hopes to win seats from the Labour party. In my view, that confirms that he is wholly unserious about governing this country. There is only one party in this House that is serious about sound money, and that is the Conservative party. We are the only party that is serious about stopping the creeping reliance on welfare, and that cares about taxpayers keeping more of the money they earn.

Community Pharmacies: Devon and the South-west

Debate between Rachel Gilmour and Ashley Fox

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Rachel Gilmour]

As the hon. Member knows, I am keen on strategies, particularly the one that he has just mentioned.

Pharmacies are not paid for the informal advice sessions. In over half of such occasions, if the patient had not been able to access their local community pharmacy they would have instead visited their GP surgery. That suggests that we have freed up 37.7 million GP appointments over the course of a year simply by patients having access to their local community pharmacy, which speaks to the point that the hon. Member just made.

Such a workload is commendable, but it is not sustainable in the current funding model. That has meant that over the autumn the National Pharmacy Association found that pharmacies are overwhelmingly willing to reduce services in order to protect patient safety and preserve access to pharmacies, if funding is not provided to protect the network. Pharmacies do not want to do that; they know the impact that reducing their services can have on a community, but if the other option involves continuing in an overstretched, under-supported environment, for pharmacists and anyone committed to delivering health and health-related services to vulnerable people, it is not a real choice.

[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady, my neighbour, for securing the debate. Does she agree that the many benefits that community pharmacies provide are in danger, because in many cases the pharmacist is not reimbursed even for the cost of prescription drugs? Will she, with me, ask the Minister to reply specifically on that point?

[Rachel Gilmour]

I will of course do that.