DWP: Performance
Debate between Rachel Reeves and Emily Thornberry(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Rachel Reeves
What I know from my business experience—I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows it as well—is that writing off and writing down £131 million of expenditure is not good value for money. It is good to test things, but I do not see this Government doing much learning from the mistakes they are making.
The evidence is now clear that the Secretary of State’s record has been a complete car crash.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
On the point about learning lessons, is my hon. Friend aware that I have been making freedom of information requests to the Department in relation to mandatory reconsiderations? When people get their work capability assessment, and it has failed, before they can appeal there has to be a mandatory reconsideration. The Department does not know how many cases have been overturned, how many claimants have been left without any money and how long the longest period is for reconsideration. It cannot answer a single one of those questions under a freedom of information request.
Rachel Reeves
That links in with what I was saying earlier. If the Government do not learn from their mistakes, how can they make improvements?
Universal credit is widely off track; the work capability assessment has almost completely broken down; personal independence payments are a fiasco; the Work programme is not working; the Youth Contract is a flop; support for families with multiple problems are falling far short of its target; the jobmatch website is an absurd embarrassment; the unfair and vindictive bedroom tax is costing more money than it saves; and the Government cannot even agree on a definition of child poverty let alone take action to deal with it.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: to fail to deliver on one policy might be considered unfortunate; to miss one’s targets on two has to be judged careless; but to make such a complete mess of every single initiative the Secretary of State has attempted requires a special gift. It is something like a Midas touch: everything he touches turns into a total shambles.
Meanwhile, the Secretary of State will spew out dodgy statistics, rant and rave about Labour’s record, say “on time and on budget” until he is blue in the face and, in typical Tory style, blame the staff for everything that goes wrong. We have all long given up hope on the Secretary of State ever getting a grip on his Department. The real question today is when will the Prime Minister learn and take responsibility for the slow-motion car crash he has allowed to unfold? The DWP has the highest spending of any Government Department, and the responsibility for handling some of the most sensitive situations and some of the most vulnerable people in our country. We will all be paying a price for a long time to come for this Government’s failure to get a grip, and the lives of too many people, such as Malcolm Graham who is still waiting for his personal independence payment, have been irreparably damaged. It is clear that this Government will never take their responsibilities in this area with the seriousness that is needed. Let me pledge today that a Labour Government will. They will help those thousands of families who have been let down by the system and the millions of taxpayers who are seeing their money wasted. That change cannot come soon enough.
Housing Benefit
Debate between Rachel Reeves and Emily Thornberry(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Rachel Reeves
I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution. Surgeries can be difficult when we discuss these issues with constituents and they break down in tears. It is people who have done the right thing, gone out to work and tried to support their families, but who have fallen on difficult times, done nothing wrong and whose children have left home or gone to university who will be saddled with this tax. I pay tribute to them for sharing their stories and to those who came to London this morning to tell us their heart-breaking stories.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Is my hon. Friend aware that, in Islington borough, 3,100 families will be affected by the bedroom tax? The local authority is making a stupendous effort to build as much social housing as possible—the joke is that if someone moves their car, they will return to find that a flat has been built in its place—but even it has been able to let only 1,600 flats in the last year and it cannot keep up with the demand of people who need to move because of the bedroom tax, let alone because of the general housing crisis.
Rachel Reeves
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention.
We say that it is time to stop this cruel and mad policy. It is time for Members on both sides of the House to take a stand. It is time to stand with the desperate families who are being forced out of their homes or forced into debt, and time to stand with anyone who knows anything about housing or homelessness, the plight of disabled people or the lives of children in poverty, who are all warning that this policy is fast becoming a fiasco. Indeed, it is time to stand with the father of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and chair of the Lochaber housing association, Mr Di Alexander, who says that the policy is
“particularly unfair in that it penalises both our tenants and ourselves for not being able to magic up a supply of smaller properties.”
It is a shame that the Chief Secretary listens to the Prime Minister instead of to his father.
It is also a shame that the pensions Minister does not listen to his own party, which only last month, at the Liberal Democrat party conference, voted overwhelmingly against the bedroom tax, saying that it is
“discriminating against the most vulnerable in society”,
and noting that the Government have shown
“a lack of appreciation of the housing requirements of children and adults with disabilities and care needs”.
I am afraid that that is what we get with the Liberal Democrats: they say one thing at their conference and when they are out on the doorsteps, but they vote another way here when it really counts. When they could make a difference, they turn the other way. While the Secretary of State scuttles off to Paris, he gets his Liberal Democrat pensions Minister to defend a policy that is not even part of his brief and that is in contradiction with his own party’s policy. I say shame on him and shame on his party.
We know that tough decisions are needed to build a social security system that is fair for all and to bring the benefits bill down, but this policy does neither. It may well cost more than it saves, but to be absolutely certain that its reversal will require no extra borrowing we have identified the funds that could more than cover the costs. They will be raised by cracking down on bogus self-employment in the construction sector, reversing the tax cut for hedge funds announced in this year’s Budget and cancelling the Chancellor’s failed shares for rights scheme, which according to the Office for Budget Responsibility has opened up a tax loophole of up to £1 billion.
The Labour party is committed to reversing the bedroom tax, if elected in 2015, but we know that for many families that is too long to wait, so I hope that Members on both sides of the House will vote with us tonight. If the Government stick their heads in the sand, let no one be in any doubt that this will be the beginning, not the end, of our campaign to cancel this unjust and unworkable tax. If this Government do not repeal it, the next Labour Government will.
Living Standards
Debate between Rachel Reeves and Emily Thornberry(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Rachel Reeves
The shadow Chancellor said in his conference speech two years ago that VAT should be reduced from 20% to 17.5% as an emergency measure to stimulate the economy. The reality is that since then the economy has flatlined and we have continued to argue for that, but he has also said that as the economy slowly begins to move into recovery mode—we hope that the growth over the past two quarters will continue—the emphasis should move to infrastructure investment. Were we in government today, our priority would be the £10 billion of infrastructure investment that the International Monetary Fund has called for.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
May I bring my hon. Friend back to the real-life situations that real people face? Is she aware that in Islington the cheapest subsidised place for full-time child care costs £164 a week? The minimum wage is £212 a week and the London living wage is £272. Is that reality not why it is so hard for so many people in Britain today to make ends meet?