Budget Resolutions

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

Six months is a meaningful period of time. Inflation is coming down. As the OBR says in its report, inflation is expected to hit target within the next few months, which will make a huge difference. It highlights some uncertainties around that, but £500 million of investment over six months, including Barnett consequentials, is a major move forward to support the most vulnerable.

The sustainable way to change lives is through work, and the evidence could not be clearer. It is good for the economy, communities and the individuals concerned. I want everyone who can work to have the opportunity to do so. One of the great labour market challenges is economic inactivity, and I want to put that into context. In the UK, inactivity has come down since its pandemic peak and remains lower than the average across the G7, the OECD and the European Union. Our progress has seen a significant fall in the number of people who are inactive because of caring responsibilities. We have the second lowest youth inactivity rate in the G7, and thousands of over-50s are returning to work.

However, the rise in the number of people out of work due to ill health and disability is stifling potential—potential that I am determined to realise. That is why, as we cut taxes for working people, our multibillion-pound back to work plan is providing substantial support to help the long-term sick return to work and keep people in the workforce. That includes doubling the number of placements on universal support, expanding access to mental health support, delivering Work Well, giving people earlier and better access to integrated work and health support, reforming fit notes and working with employers to improve occupational health. Through our next generation of welfare reforms, we are breaking down the barriers to work. Our chance to work guarantee will enable people on incapacity benefits to try work without fear of losing their benefits if a job does not work out. As the OBR has confirmed, our reforms to the work capability assessment will reduce the number of people on those benefits by 371,000. That is 371,000 more people getting the support they need to enter employment.

As part of our back to work plan, we are also tackling long-term unemployment, because the longer people stay in unemployment, the less likely they are to rejoin the workforce. That is why we are phasing in more rigorous requirements for fit and able jobseekers, with more time with work coaches, more intensive support and mandatory work placements. Ultimately, if a claimant does not engage with the support they are being offered, they will lose their benefits, underscoring our belief that we should always be there for those who need our support, but we must equally be fair to taxpayers.

By contrast, for all the protestations from the Opposition that they have changed, they are not fooling anybody. They are squeamish on conditionality, weak on sanctions and completely out of touch with the British public, who rightly expect a welfare system in which everyone meets their obligations.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

rose—

[Chi Onwurah]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow the previous speakers, and the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali). Today’s theme is making work pay. I believe that this is one of the key challenges facing our country. Conservatives believe in conserving, but what is it that we seek to conserve? In a word, freedom. As Ronald Reagan said:

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same”.

There is nothing more important to the cause of individual freedom for human beings than the opportunity to work. It is the only moral way to achieve financial security. It is the path to a better life. It is not the meaning of life, but there is no meaning in life without work. It is:

“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower”,

as Dylan Thomas said.

God put Adam and Eve on Earth to work. I believe that was a wise decision, because good, hard, challenging, stressful and important work, done well, makes people happy and purposeful. It is not just a means to an end for generating taxes; the true gifts of life are to be found in the struggle on the hard road. We Conservatives are not blind to the reality of human nature. We do not pretend that people are not motivated by financial incentives. It is not selfish to want to earn more for ourselves and to work hard for it. I believe that in the Budget that was set out yesterday by the Chancellor, Mrs Thatcher would have found much to be pleased with. In 1975, she said that

“the person who is prepared to work hardest should get the greatest rewards and keep them after tax…we should back the workers and not the shirkers…it is not only permissible but praiseworthy to want to benefit your own family by your own efforts”.

How right she was in 1975, and how right we are as Conservatives to do that now.

That is why I welcome the Budget measures, especially the cut in national insurance, which will save the average worker £900, and the average self-employed worker—we have a lot of them in Redditch—£650 per year. Combined with the changes to high-income child benefit and the childcare support that we have previously talked about, the reduction in inflation, and the economy starting to turn a corner after a very difficult time, I know that those measures will be welcomed by hard-pressed families in Redditch juggling work and home life.

Of course, the welfare state and benefits are necessary in today’s world. Our fellow citizens rely on us when they are sick, or struck down by life’s blows, or cannot sustain themselves, but the pandemic has had a worrying impact, and I have seen a loosening of the links of the social contract between all our citizens as a result. We cannot ask a shrinking pool of workers to pay out of their taxes for a growing cohort of people who cannot or will not work. Benefits must only ever be a last resort for those truly unable to work—never a lifestyle choice caused by faulty wiring in our system.

It is tempting to view the Budget as a single event. It happens over a day, and there are headlines in the media. We look at it through the obsessive lens of our 24-hour news cycle and social media feeds, but we should not judge it in that way, and nor should we look at the events happening in our country as unique. We are not an outlier. Every country around the world has suffered from the pandemic, and the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Dame Jackie Doyle-Price) rightly said, the public are not fooled—they definitely understand and can see what is going on. They can also see that, over the course of 14 years, it is the Conservatives who have made huge strides in reversing Labour’s “something for nothing” culture. We have ensured that welfare is truly targeted at the people who really need it, meaning that we can be more generous to really vulnerable citizens.

After all, Keith Joseph first articulated the concept of the cycle of deprivation, and he set about helping people to break out of it. A Conservative Government implemented the life-changing universal credit reforms so successfully being rolled out across our country. Those reforms were conceived and led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). That was the true genesis of the value that work must always pay.

Every time we have made reforms to welfare, the Opposition parties have howled that we are cruel and heartless. It is totally fake outrage. The true moral failure is to let people languish on benefits and not expect any better from them. That is Labour’s legacy, and we saw record levels of unemployment in every age group when they last left office, in particular among young people and women. We were prepared to take the hard decisions about universal credit. I have the scars on my back from standing here to defend the Government’s decisions at the time. But guess what? The apocalypse did not arrive.

Instead, we now see record numbers of people in work, including record numbers of women and record numbers of women over 50. Government analysis has consistently shown that universal credit is having a positive impact on labour market participation for all groups, including single parents and other vulnerable groups who face the most barriers when returning to work.

[Jim McMahon]

Most people who experience the benefits system will understand and support the need for a more simplified one that works around working people. The hon. Lady must also accept, however, that that was not the design of universal credit that met such opposition. The five-week wait limit before entitlement was drawn, for example, meant that people were getting into debt unnecessarily when they were entitled to the benefit earlier. She must accept that even given the principle of a simplified system, the way it was done was not right.

[Rachel Maclean]

I do not accept that, and I do not wish to rerun all the previous debates. The Government have listened to a lot of the issues involved in the roll-out of an incredibly complicated system, and the evidence speaks for itself. Universal credit has helped more people get into work, and work is always the best route out of poverty.

Before I move on, I will make a few comments about mental health conditions. A category of people in our country are the economically inactive, which is sad to me and many of us, because those people are fundamentally not free—they are dependent on the state. My concern is that the number of working-age adults who are out of the labour market because of long-term sickness has been rising since 2019, from about 2.2 million people then to about 2.5 million in the summer of 2022. I understand that that started before the covid pandemic.

The biggest relative jump in economic inactivity due to long-term sickness is among the under-35s, whose main complaints are depression, bad nerves or anxiety. I have two psychology degrees, and I fully understand mental illness and mental ill health. I also believe in using words precisely. I am therefore alarmed to see the conflation of the terms depression and anxiety together with “bad nerves”. Bad nerves? Both anxiety and depression are clinically recognised conditions; bad nerves is not.

Government statistics, obtained following several questions that I posed to the Department, do not break down the number of people self-reporting under each condition, and there is no data or information on how that concept of bad nerves is defined, assessed, treated, understood or prevented as a separate condition from depression and anxiety. That is because there cannot be. Having “bad nerves” is a totally meaningless phrase. No one knows what it is, so how can people decide if they are unfit to work if they have it? I have bad nerves about standing to speak in this Chamber, and my constituents have bad nerves when they are navigating the day-to-day challenges of juggling work and family. The phrase sounds like something out of a good housewife manual in the 1950s.

I simply do not believe, frankly, that bad nerves is a reason to be on sickness benefits, and yet figures from the labour force survey indicate that 1.3 million people are economically inactive due to some combination of bad nerves, anxiety and depression. We do not know how many are off because of each condition or how many are off because of bad nerves. I think it would be a good idea for the Department and the Ministers I can see on the Front Bench to understand on a more granular level what conditions are preventing our constituents getting back into work, so that we can target more efficiently the taxes of our constituents who are working hard for long hours and paying into the system, so ultimately reducing the bill.

[Alex Cunningham]

Did the hon. Lady detect anywhere in the Chancellor’s statement or the Red Book where he actually says, “We will put more resources into dealing with mental health services”?

[Rachel Maclean]

Over my time as a Member of Parliament, I have detected many statements by many Ministers on the Treasury Bench about investing in mental health services and back to work services, nationally and in my constituency. Redditch has a brand-new local mental health hub, delivered by the Conservative Government, and the Conservative borough council led by the excellent Mr Matt Dormer.

It is worth observing that a total of 2.6 million people reporting those conditions are actually in work, and that is a credit to our mission to support people back into work, which ultimately is the best way to improve their mental health. I have a concern that following the pandemic, we have possibly seen a trend to over-medicalise some of the normal ups and downs of daily life. It is almost as though it were possible to live in a state of blissful utopia and that if there were any interruption to paradise, that is a condition requiring help. That is just not true.

The struggle of life defines us and builds our character. Taking away individuals’ opportunity and responsibility to face their fears by overprotecting them is the worst way to develop resilience, as any parent knows. The human condition is a state, mostly, of pain and fear. If we are fortunate, we will experience love and happiness in some small interludes, and we must appreciate those.

I want to be very clear, however, that I do not criticise anyone who is suffering from any mental health condition —I do not—including bad nerves, whatever that is. If we have a poorly designed system with poor labelling, it is not people’s fault if they respond to the structural incentives that we have designed, but we must not have bogus, badly defined phrases and cod psychology as a pathway to a lifetime on benefits. I really hope that the Minister will return to that in the summing up.

[Danny Kruger]

My hon. Friend is giving a very brave and eloquent speech. Does she agree that there is a real problem with overprescription in the NHS? Doctors of people who have mental health difficulties respond too quickly with a chemical response. In fact, what would often be best is to encourage them either to work or to take part in social activities, which the Government support through the social prescribing programme.

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank my hon. Friend for that observation. I hesitate to agree with him definitively, because I just do not have the evidence, but I strongly agree with the basic point that we should not reach straight for the chemical solution. We should look at other solutions that are clinically much better for people, including the social prescribing to which he refers.

I could highlight many issues in the Budget that I know would be welcomed in Redditch. I have campaigned long and hard for the Alex hospital and the Conservatives have delivered an £18.8 million operating complex, now open, ensuring that we are making progress in cutting the waiting lists. People can get operations closer to home and can get home quicker, and they can have more lifesaving surgery closer to their homes. I was glad to see the emphasis yesterday on productivity gains in the NHS, as well as pouring in money. Constituents know that healthcare is expensive and valuable. Staff time and public resources must be properly stewarded and not wasted.

Yesterday, there was an unexpected but welcome announcement—a delightful one—by the Chancellor: £5 million to spend in Redditch on cultural projects. That will be massively welcomed in our area, where the arts play a huge part in our local life. I will talk to local and community groups about how we can best use that. We have plenty of potential destinations, including the Palace theatre, Arts in Redditch, our new library complex—also boosted by Government levelling-up funding—and many more.

I am particularly proud of the record of my local council, which is led by Councillor Matt Dormer, who instigated a council house building programme that has delivered 19 council houses. I always appreciate the fact that we need to go further, but that is a significant move because they are the first true council houses built in Redditch for 29 years. For all the years that it was in control, Labour did not build a single council house, even though they are much needed.

[Dame Jackie Doyle-Price]

Hear, hear!

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Maclean]

I am glad to hear the “Hear, hear” from behind me. We all know that those council houses are a route for local families to have a decent home, put down roots, build and raise their families and better themselves through work. It is a platform for the life that they can build for themselves—that is the Conservative way.

Ultimately, I observe that, as Roger Scruton reminded us:

“A free economy is an economy run by free beings. And free beings are responsible beings.”

Our plan for work is making our country a place for free and responsible people to realise their full potential. It sets out a pathway to freedom through work, and it will make work pay. I strongly welcome it and will back it in the voting Lobbies.