Universal Credit Roll-out

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

Fundamentally, we asked taxpayers to spend £30 billion a year putting a ceiling on wages and productivity. That is basically what happened, as I saw. Why would people want to earn more or be more productive, if they were so penalised through the benefits system? We ask ourselves why we have had such flat wage growth and such flat productivity. It is because we are paying people not to work harder.

That has a fundamental implication for the years ahead, because Brexit is coming. We need to remember what the country voted for. I campaigned to remain, but in my view the biggest issue was immigration. We want sustainable numbers of people to come into this country, but if that is to happen when we lose access to this almost limitless pool of very hard-working labour, particularly from eastern Europe, we will have to get the work done by people in the United Kingdom.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an extremely passionate case. I want to mention an incident in my constituency of Taunton Deane. A vegetable farmer recently said that he could not get people to work for him, and has to use eastern Europeans. He knows that there are unemployed people, but because of the 16-hour rule they simply will not take the jobs.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I very gently point out that if Members who have arrived in the Chamber relatively recently intervene, they risk preventing colleagues who have been here for some hours from contributing? I know that the hon. Lady, who is a most courteous person, would not want that to happen.