Pensions and Social Security

Debate between Russell Brown and Julie Hilling

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brown]

Exactly, and that is the difficulty we face this evening.

I have raised the point about the 1% freeze on benefits before. I have asked Ministers in both the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury what kind of impact assessment has been done and what consultation there has been between the two sets of Ministers, but I have never had a straight answer. What we will be witnessing over the three-year period, according to the Government’s figures, is almost £6 billion being saved or, as I would put it, £6 billion being taken away from the lowest income households. The Minister must surely know that that £6 billion would have been spent in the local economy.

When I first arrived in this House, in 1997, the then Labour Government decided to introduce a national minimum wage, which effectively put money into people’s pockets. The impact assessment at the time was based on £1 million being given to the poorest households, which clearly would then be spent in the local economy. For every £1 million spent in the local economy, 40 jobs were created.

If the Minister is able to do his work—I think that he is an intelligent man—he will see that taking £6 billion out of local economies over three years will have a detrimental impact. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) is telling me that yet another high street outlet is on the brink this evening, so more jobs might go.

[Julie Hilling]

Does my hon. Friend agree with the International Monetary Fund, which states that the cuts to welfare benefits will cost the UK economy £40 billion, almost double the cuts to welfare?

[Mr Brown]

I do not know whether it will be £40 billion, because I have not seen the figures, but I trust what my hon. Friend says. There is no doubt that it will have a severe and adverse impact on the economy.

I come now to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington made about families and children. If we do not give the next generation the right start in life when they are children, we give them the wrong start. I must say to the Minister that even now we see across our country the struggle that my party had in government to undo some of the damage from the previous 18 years. The damage can be done in a short period, but it takes an awful lot longer to recover from. We struggled in government to try to get things back on track. What the Minister is doing today is not what he said he would do when he was in opposition.

When he leaves this place tonight, I implore the Minister to pick up a copy of a documentary called “Poor Kids”. I have seen it a couple of times and it is heart-breaking, to say the least. As a father and grandfather, I say to the Minister that what the documentary shows is not beyond belief, because it does happen. It happens in many towns and cities across this country where families are living on basically nothing. Children as young as eight, nine or 10 years old have become worldly wise: they know about not having money and what debt is, and they understand how trying to put a meal on the table can result in other elements of poverty. That is not how children in this country should be spending their early years. They survive on hand-me-down clothes, not necessarily from older brothers or sisters but from other family members. Despite what many people think, charity shops on our high streets are an absolute godsend for such families, because sometimes they are the only way children can be clothed.

Parents sometimes sacrifice their own meals to feed their children. Perhaps I have led a sheltered life, but it was only when it was drawn to my attention that some mothers will prepare a meal for their children and tell them, “I’ll get something to eat later,” that I realised—I take no pleasure in saying this—that I witnessed that as a child in my household. I was part of a family of five and I know only too well now—perhaps I was naive when I was younger—that that was going on in my household. I witnessed my mother having nothing to eat while the rest of the family sat waiting for my father to come home from work.

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[Mr Brown]

My hon. Friend is correct. I worry about some of the figures that the Government are working with in terms of savings. Only time will tell, two or three years down the road, whether all this has been worth it.

We need to give children a proper start in life. We really do. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) said, we are already witnessing difficult enough times for many families.

[Julie Hilling]

What does my hon. Friend have to say about the fact that we are the seventh richest country in the world and yet last year 200,000 people had to go to food banks? In that context, what does he think we should be saying to the Government?

[Mr Brown]

My hon. Friend makes the same point as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington. We are the seventh richest nation but this is how we are treating families—treating children—in this country. Two food banks are about to start in my constituency. I hate the idea, but I recognise that it is the only way some families are going to survive. My wife volunteers and works alongside the local church providing meals for homeless families. In reality, there are very few homeless families, but there are families who are in great need of a hot meal a couple of times a week. It is right that she does that, and I suspect that if at some stage I ever retire from this place she will have me in there helping her—because it is going to that long before we throw off what we are witnessing at the moment.

I mentioned to the Minister earlier the case of the lady who has lost her disability living allowance and I told him what her GP said to me. The GP also said that his practice is now coming under real pressure because aspects of the welfare reform are starting to bite. He has patients with fluctuating conditions, mental health problems and stress-related illnesses that are leading them back in to see him. People are going back to their GPs to look for help, support, guidance, and even help with completing forms. Some GP practices are beginning to creak at the seams in having to deal with people they should not really be seeing—people whose conditions will never, in all honesty, get any better medically. It is a real worry when the professional people in our communities are beginning to see, to recognise and to understand that life is really going to get tough for some.

Let me finish by saying to the Minister that if he has not watched the documentary “Poor Kids”, I suggest that he and many others do so, because it is quite frankly heartbreaking. This is not how people should be living in the seventh richest country in the world, and things are only going to get tougher for these families.