Getting Britain Working Again
Sam Rushworth Excerpts(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Helen Whately
I hate to tell the hon. Gentleman, but Labour is in charge now. It has had nearly two years and nothing is changing.
You do not have to take my word for it, Madam Deputy Speaker; here are the numbers. Over 8 million people are claiming universal credit, almost 4 million people are claiming sickness benefits and over 600,000 households are getting over £32,000 a year in benefits. That is more than the take-home pay of the average British worker. Ninety-one thousand households are getting over £50,000, which is enough to put them in the top 10% of our nation’s earners, and 16,000 are getting over £60,000 in benefits every single year. A person who works would have to earn over £70,000 to have that. All that is costing the country £140 billion a year. People know when they are being taken for a ride.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister had a chance—one last chance—to hit reset, reverse those trends, get people off benefits and bring down the welfare bill. But with his back against the wall, it is no surprise that the Prime Minister’s King’s Speech contained none of that. While hundreds of thousands of people struggle to find work, the Prime Minister is only interested in protecting one job: his own. Yes, the Secretary of State can claim that he is doing something—his work experience programmes, his youth schemes, the savings-free Timms review and all that—but we all know that that is just tinkering at the edges.
The Government tried welfare reform last summer and failed. Now, they have given up altogether. They had no plan when they got into office and they still have no plan now, and that matters. For every day of inaction, hard-working taxpayers pay the price. Doing nothing costs money. The welfare bill will reach £170 billion by the end of the decade and that money could be so much better spent on things such as defence or making our streets safer or—think of this—it could be left in people’s pockets for them to spend.
Helen Whately
The hon. Gentleman wants me to give way. Does he have a welfare savings plan? If so, let us hear it.
Sam Rushworth
I certainly do. It is this Labour Government and it is getting people off NHS waiting lists and back into work. However, it is not for me to answer the questions; my intervention was simply to give the hon. Lady another opportunity to answer the question that was put to her by my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) and which she did not really answer. This broken system that she described as “Benefits Street” is a system that the Conservatives created. Why, in 14 years, did they do nothing about it? It is easy to create political anger, rather than to have dealt with it, and that is why this Government are now dealing with the Conservatives’ mess?
Helen Whately
Oh dear; what a shame. There were no ideas for savings there at all. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that will get him a job under the next Labour leader, I am afraid that he will have to keep trying.
Labour claims to be the party of working people, but the facts do not back that up. Labour always leaves office with unemployment higher than when it arrives, and it is on track to do that again. There are now over 300,000 more people unemployed than when this Government came to power. Their policies—the jobs tax, the Employment Rights Act—have actively killed jobs. Now, as mentioned in yesterday’s King’s Speech, we have the regulating for growth Bill. You couldn’t make it up.
Employers are being asked to swim against the tide with bricks in their pockets, and now the Government are planning to make it worse. Many businesses have stopped hiring; others are letting people go. Businesses tell me that they are getting hundreds of applications for jobs that they might have struggled to fill a couple of years ago. No wonder that there are 700,000 graduates on out-of-work benefits. Youth unemployment is at over 14%. This is a disaster.
Young people want to get their lives going, earn money, pay their own way, save for a car; instead, hundreds of thousands are stuck. The Secretary of State knows that. That is why he has frantically announced a flurry of schemes at the cost of £2.5 billion. Obviously, a work placement is better than nothing, but the young people I speak to want jobs, not Government-funded work experience.
Less than two years ago, the country voted us out and Labour Members in. They have laughed and jeered at us, but they are not laughing now because they have found out that governing is hard. They promised voters change, but the only change that most people have seen is that they are poorer. Who knows what they got up to in opposition? Clearly, it was not working out what they would do if they won the election. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury is chuntering. I know that yesterday he called the Leader of the Opposition “rude” when, actually, she was just telling the truth. He does not like to hear the truth. Maybe he should do a little less talking from the Front Bench and a little more listening.
Being in power is not an end in itself; what matters is what someone does with the power that voters trust them with. I am sure that many of those on the Government Benches care about our country, but caring is not enough. The question is: what are they going to do to fix it? If the King’s Speech that we are debating today tells us anything, it is that they do not know. The only things they can think of will make the situation worse; and on welfare, they have given up.
I believe in learning lessons whenever one can. One lesson that Labour Members should learn is to make good use of time in opposition; work hard, think hard and make a plan. That is what we have been doing, and that is why we have been able to set out an alternative King’s Speech, which has more in it than the actual King’s Speech. Take our plans for welfare—and to be clear, these are just our plans so far. We have a plan to reform welfare and make £23 billion in savings. We will bring back the two-child benefit cap, stop handouts to foreign nationals, stop sickness benefits for anxiety and ADHD, bring back face-to-face assessments, ban “sickfluencers”, reform fit notes and restore the household benefit cap to its original purpose of ensuring work always pays better than benefits. No more gaming the system, no more free cars for tennis elbow or acne—Britain will no longer be a cash machine for the world.
People have had enough. They can see our welfare system is not working. It is not even working for people who are seriously ill or disabled. We are not keeping our plan secret; it is all out there. Other parties are adopting our policies. Reform, for instance, has not been shy about doing so, although it has been confused, and its Members are not here today. The Secretary of State should feel free to do so too, and though the MPs behind him will hate it, we are here to help.
This is the most surreal King’s Speech debate I have ever taken part in. People out there are angry, frustrated and fed up. They can see the country is not working. They want the Government to fix it, but Labour are too busy working out who should be in charge. The saddest thing is that it will not make a difference. They can change their team captain, but they are still the same team. I have heard them cheer on taxes for farmers, family businesses and schools. I have heard them cheer for lifting the two-child cap. I have heard them argue against welfare savings. They think you fix poverty by giving out free breakfasts, paid for by people who are struggling to pay the bills themselves. Labour’s answer is always the same: tax more and spend more of other people’s money, and it is the wrong answer.
Sometimes in life you have to pick a side. We have picked one: we are on the side of people who get up each day and go to work. They are doing the right thing, and we back them. Sometimes things go wrong and people need help. That is why welfare should be a safety net, not a lifestyle choice. Labour have made their choice: it is to carry on as if nothing is wrong. Yesterday’s King’s Speech was a chance to fix things, and they blew it.
Caroline Voaden
What I said is absolutely correct. In my constituency of South Devon, new build homes in developer-led housing estates are selling for £950,000. We are not providing the homes we need—the social homes and the truly affordable homes that young people, young couples, young families and people who want to move out from their parents’ home need. We are providing the wrong sort of homes. Having a system led by housing developers that are driven by profit will never provide the homes that we need.
Is it any wonder that voters across the country have turned to the extreme ends of our political spectrum to stick two fingers up at what they see as an ineffective political class that has completely ignored them? “Blame the immigrants” or “blame the billionaires” seem to be the two easy answers thrown out by these parties to the difficult, thorny, complicated questions that this country faces. The sad truth is that neither of those two propositions will be enough to make the changes we need to see to reform the structures of our economy and public services and to improve the lives of those who need it most.
Ten years ago, we saw a referendum that cut our country in two, like a chainsaw through the trunk of a mighty oak tree, and that division has not healed. The arguments still rage, the communities still feel left behind, and the false promise offered in that awful referendum has turned out to be nothing but smoke and mirrors. People are still angry on both sides of that debate. The House will not be surprised to hear that as a Liberal Democrat, I welcome the Government’s promise to strengthen ties with our nearest neighbours in Europe. The House will probably not be surprised to hear me also say that that promise does not go far enough, especially if we are to get Britain working again.
The upcoming EU reset Bill is just the latest example of the Government’s lack of ambition when it comes to rebuilding our trading links with Europe. When we talk of Brexit red tape, nowhere is that more limiting than in the red lines that Labour tied around itself in its 2024 manifesto. It said on coming into office that the previous Conservative Government had left a £22 billion black hole in the UK’s public finances, yet the botched Brexit deal has left a £90 billion hole, similar in scale to the damage wreaked by the 2008 financial crash.
Businesses in South Devon regularly talk to me about the nightmare of trying to do business with Europe. Many have just given up on it altogether. Others are hanging on, desperately hoping that trading restrictions will be eased and customers will come back. I welcome the promise of a sanitary and phytosanitary deal, which cannot come fast enough for my food and farming businesses. We want to hear the Government talk about a customs union with the EU to slash the red tape that is holding us back, because economic growth has stagnated in this country for far too long. We also want to see the UK at the heart of European defence co-operation, not only for the benefits it would bring to national security, but for the investment opportunities it would provide for the supply chain. We must be front and centre of those negotiations. Europe would welcome our involvement, and we must be confident about shaping and leading that discussion.
There is so much to cover in the King’s Speech, but I will just touch on a couple of other areas. I have talked about people feeling ignored and forgotten. Nowhere is the visible representation of that starker than in our high streets, with boarded-up shops, endless vape shops, cafés and pubs struggling to survive, and exorbitant rents making it impossible to get a new business off the ground. The Government have pledged to nationalise British Steel to protect fewer than 3,000 jobs. I have no doubt that the wider economy in and around Scunthorpe will truly benefit from that decision, but why is there nothing in this speech to protect our once vibrant and precious hospitality industry, which has lost nearly 100,000 jobs in the past year? Those jobs are less visible than the closure of a steelworks or a car plant, because it is 10 jobs here and 20 jobs there, but the effect of the national insurance rise has been devastating up and down the country. Businesses have been calling last orders once and for all or simply shrinking their offer.
In my constituency, Rockfish, the California Inn, the Maltsters Arms and the Berry Head hotel—I could go on and on, because hospitality is the backbone of our economy—are cutting staff hours, choosing not to employ extra staff or closing two days a week so that they can manage on one exhausted chef, rather than employing a second, with the owner of the pub having to step into the kitchen when the chef has a few precious days off. This death by a thousand cuts is having a devastating impact on youth employment and part-time jobs. Those are the jobs that so many people rely on to combine with parenting, caring or studying. Let us not forget that every teenager who gets a job washing pots or waiting tables is learning valuable skills that will take them forward in the job market for years to come.
As the Secretary of State said earlier today, this is about the story of their lives, and I was pleased to hear his passion for supporting young people into work, but youth unemployment now stands at around 20%. That is utterly shameful. One in five of our young people is unable to even get a start in the workforce. The new small business protections Bill is laudable, but it falls far short of a proper plan to protect small businesses. We are disappointed that the Government have not listened to our plan to scrap the national insurance rise, reform business rates and prioritise a high street revival.
As a south-west MP, there is a list of Bills that I would have loved to see in the King’s Speech but are sadly missing. Yet again, the rural south-west seems to have been ignored. We have £45 billion for Northern Powerhouse Rail, but not a word about boosting vital bus services across the villages of the south-west. If we are to get people working again, we have to get them to work. If there are no buses, they cannot get there. There was nothing on boosting digital connectivity for hard-to-reach areas.
Sam Rushworth
I hear what the hon. Lady is saying—we have exactly the same challenges in my rural community, where people cannot get to job interviews or to jobs—but we passed the Bus Services Act 2025 in the last Session.
Caroline Voaden
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. We do not have a mayor in Devon, so we miss out on a lot of that legislation’s benefits. I have loads of villages that do not even have a bus, so talk of bus fares is completely irrelevant when there is literally no service. How are young people supposed to get to college or work or seek opportunities if they cannot get out of their village?
There was no legislation to require banks to offer a minimum service guarantee to their customers. Lloyds bank made nearly £7 billion in profit in 2025, yet it closed branches with impunity, and the Government’s promises to address the lack of banking services have led to nothing so far.
There are some things in the King’s Speech that I would like to welcome. I am pleased to see the Government pledge finally to break the link between gas and electricity prices, which is vital in a country that depends more heavily on gas than many of our neighbours. Investment in home-grown renewable power is also welcome, but we want to see the focus of solar on warehouses and car parks, not on prime farmland. We also want to see stronger community benefits from new renewable infrastructure, empowering communities with the right to buy and sell community energy locally.
Talk of farmland leads me to a devastating omission from the King’s Speech: not once was the word “nature” mentioned. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) so beautifully laid out in her speech last night, that was probably something that the King himself was disappointed to see. Where is the desire to protect our green spaces, to prompt a revival in nature, to restore our ancient forests and our peatlands, and to clean up our dirty rivers and waterways once and for all? We live in one of the most nature depleted countries in the world, yet nature is not a priority for the Government, despite all the benefits that it brings to people’s health and wellbeing. If we truly want to cut the NHS bill, that would be a really good place to start.
The new water Bill is welcome. The Liberal Democrats have long called for Ofwat to be replaced by a regulator that actually has some teeth, but until the Government address the elephant in the room and look at the ownership of the water industry, nothing will really change. No one should be making a profit from water: something that is so vital not only to us as humans, but to the health of all our planet’s ecosystems. The Liberal Democrats have long led the campaign in Parliament against the sewage scandal, tabling 44 amendments to the Water (Special Measures) Bill, none of which the Government or the Conservatives accepted. They must do more.
Lastly, I will mention the education for all Bill. We all know that support for children with special educational needs is broken, so I welcome the Government’s commitment to tackling it; we urgently need this reform. As my party’s schools spokesperson, I will scrutinise every line of the legislation when it comes before the House, so I will no doubt have time to say far more about it, but let me say this. We must build a system designed around the potential that every child has and that works to their strengths, noticing their gifts and talents and what they can achieve given the right support. We must stop judging them by their limitations, ostracising them, separating them from their peers and causing lifelong damage to their mental health and confidence.
Reform to SEND must be done with children and parents at its heart, with open, honest consultation with families, and with a serious commitment to invest the money needed in our educators and our schools so that they can rise to the challenge and truly build a more inclusive system that works for every child, from those facing the hardest of challenges to the lucky and blessed high achievers among them.
It is a strange thing to deliver this speech opposite Government Benches that are so clearly riven by intrigue, and not knowing who will be leading this legislation through Parliament. It is my hope that whatever path our Government colleagues decide to go down today—or over the next few days and weeks—they will commit to going further in the areas that I have set out, remember the challenges and higher costs faced by rural areas in service delivery and communications, and prioritise nature in every single major decision they make about infrastructure and new building programmes. Think bigger, think bolder, think greener for the benefit of everyone.
Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in that I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for T-levels. I thank Harrison Willmott, a sixth-form student and work experience student, who helped research some of the figures for my speech today. He is sitting in the Gallery. I also welcome today’s positive growth figures—the highest quarterly growth in the G7 and the highest real-terms growth in over four years, as well as falling unemployment.
However, there are moments in a nation when a challenge becomes so large and so deeply rooted that it ceases to be merely a policy problem and becomes a test of national purpose. I believe that is where Britain now stands on work, skills and opportunity, because across our country, but particularly in communities such as mine in Bishop Auckland, a generation of young people are growing up under pressures that no previous generation quite faced in the same combination. Those young people have lived through covid and a youth mental health crisis, and they face rising housing insecurity, economic anxiety and a labour market that is changing faster than institutions have adapted. One in seven 16 to 24-year-olds in Bishop Auckland are not in education, employment or training.
I recently visited Dene Valley and Shildon, a deprived part of my constituency that has the highest child poverty rate in County Durham. I met locals to listen to their views about regeneration, and senior citizens with long memories told me stories about a time when these villages were buzzing, with their own swimming baths and the best sprung dance floor in the area. It was a time when people could leave school, and go straight into apprenticeships in the mines, railways or brickworks. It was hard graft, but there was secure work and dignity. The closure of the pits, the wagon works and other industries left deep scars on our community and, in some cases, intergenerational poverty.
I know the effect on a community of seeing thousands of jobs disappear, which is why I welcome this Government’s commitment to British Steel in the King’s Speech. I thank the Government for the work done to save 700 jobs at Hitachi in nearby Newton Aycliffe, and I also thank my hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) for leading that campaign.
Britain’s NEET rate is significantly higher than in many comparable economies, and the consequences are not temporary. Research has shown that prolonged youth unemployment scars earnings, confidence and opportunities for decades. A young person disconnected from work at 19 can still feel the effects in middle age. This is not simply an economic failure; it is a moral failure. If we do not act now, we risk writing off the potential of an entire generation precisely at the moment that Britain needs their talents the most. When they were in government, the Conservatives hollowed out the very systems that help young people find their place, and they talked endlessly about opportunity while cutting away at the ladders that create it.
Ensuring good jobs for our people is a fundamental duty for everyone in this place, so I welcome the ambition set out in the King’s Speech that will help to sustain and create new industries in the north-east, strengthening Britain’s energy security, expanding infrastructure, supporting the defence industries, accelerating the building of social and affordable homes, and creating opportunities through growth.
When I look across the area that I am so privileged to represent, I see real opportunities: new industry around lithium in Weardale; geothermal energy and other types of renewable power to get us off the fossil fuels rollercoaster, creating energy that we build and keep, and creating local jobs; the potential for house building and regeneration in the Dene Valley area; defence jobs, with fantastic employers such as Cook Defence Systems in Stanhope, PGP and Teescraft already in the area, so we can become an eco-centre for the defence industry; new jobs in healthcare; and jobs for a generation of trained counsellors, educational psychologists, and speech and language therapists who will be in our schools thanks to this Government’s commitment to special educational needs.
The King’s Speech also contained plans to strengthen our relationship with Europe. That matters, because it is not all good news. We have lost jobs in my community in Barnard Castle. Pharmaceutical jobs moved to Austria, on the other side of the boundary.
We need to be honest: too many businesses I speak to tell me they struggle to find the skills they need in the workforce. We cannot deliver the defence manufacturing jobs without technicians, fabricators, engineers and advanced manufacturing apprenticeships. We cannot deliver clean power and energy resilience without electricians, retrofit specialists, geothermal engineers, heat network installers and construction workers. We cannot build the homes this country needs without skilled tradespeople. We cannot compete in a world transformed by AI and advanced technology if millions of young Britons are left without the skills or confidence to participate in the future economy. The great challenge of this decade is not whether good, honest work will exist; it is whether Britain will equip its people to do it. That requires us to rebuild the skills pipeline in Britain that has been neglected for too long. The answer is strengthening partnerships between FE colleges and local businesses.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I agree with a lot of what he has said, but on FE colleges, I happened to visit Richmond upon Thames College in my constituency earlier this week, and the chief executive of the group told me that this year it has had only 0.55% per student uplift in funding, despite the White Paper published by the Government last year promising a real-terms increase year on year. That means it will not be able to create the places that young people need or to pay its lecturers enough. Does he agree that that is sorely disappointing from his Front Bench?
Sam Rushworth
I am coming on to talk about the importance of FE funding, while understanding the challenges the Government face. There is enormous demand to spend money everywhere, but I want to make the case for why we really need to resource FE.
FE colleges endured years of under-investment. Funding per student fell by 11% over 14 years of Conservative government. Vocational education was too often treated as second class, and apprenticeship opportunities declined precisely at the moment we needed them most. Between 2017 and 2024, apprenticeship starts for under-19s fell sharply, while too much of the apprenticeship levy drifted away from creating genuine opportunities for young people to enter the labour market. At the very moment that Britain needed a skills revolution, we got drift.
I spent some time as an FE college teacher during that period. It was a job that I loved. I think I loved it even more than this job because of the opportunity, teaching access to higher education courses, to work with school leavers who had struggled and with young adults who needed a second chance. I left because I was not really earning the minimum wage. That is how it is in our colleges.
I want to take a moment to pay tribute to the fantastic staff at Bishop Auckland College for the vital work they do as teachers, mentors and carers to people in their late teens and young adult years, and to the work they also do to tackle poverty. I regularly meet Principal Shaun Hope, because I regard Bishop Auckland college as a key partner in everything I would like to achieve in the place I represent. He recently told me that they have a closet of clothes that they give away, and that because of the poverty of the students going to the college, he has had to add extra budget to ensure that everyone can get a breakfast and lunch.
The decision to cut the education maintenance allowance and not replace it was one of the worst pieces of vandalism by the previous Government. That is why I welcome the lowering of the voting age in the Representation of the People Bill, giving young people a stake and the power to use their vote to demand better. I also welcome new protections from foreign interference, because I somehow doubt that a Thailand-based crypto billionaire had the interests of young people in Bishop Auckland at heart when he chose to give £5 million—and more—to Reform UK.
I welcome the measures and ambitions outlined in the King’s Speech. I welcome the emphasis on growth and opportunity, the focus on rebuilding Britain’s industrial capacity, and the Government’s commitment to reforming skills provision and strengthening pathways into work. For too long Britain has operated with an outdated hierarchy of success—one that implied that the only prestigious route was academic. That thinking has held our country back. There should be no hierarchy of esteem between academic and vocational education, and a young person training to become an engineer, a care worker, a builder, a digital technician or a heat-pump installer contributes every bit as much to Britain’s future as someone sitting in a university lecture hall.
Apprenticeships done properly remain one of the greatest engines of social mobility that the country has ever created. They provide not just qualifications but wages, confidence, structure, dignity and purpose. I welcome the move towards a more flexible growth and skills levy, new foundation apprenticeships, and the Government’s efforts to make it easier for small businesses to take on young apprentices again.
The Association of Colleges, however, has rightly warned that, while additional in-year growth funding is welcome, colleges remain under intense financial pressure after years of rising student numbers, inflationary costs and workforce shortages. Colleges are being asked to deliver more students with more technical pathways, more specialist provision and more support for vulnerable learners, often without the long-term funding that they need to plan sustainably. If we ask FE colleges to become the backbone of Britain’s growth strategy, we must give them the resources to deliver.
FE colleges are not merely peripheral institutions; they are core economic infrastructure. They train the people who will deliver the ambitions that we set out in the King’s Speech. In places such as Bishop Auckland, they are institutions of hope, aspiration and opportunity.
Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)
I rise as a former teacher and someone who loves my current job more than that one—although I did love teaching. Does my hon. Friend agree with the Education Committee that FE colleges that are currently not exempt from claiming back VAT are at a disadvantage compared with sixth-form colleges attached to schools that can claim it back, and that there is an argument that FE colleges should also get that advantage?
Sam Rushworth
I fully agree with my hon. Friend. It would be remiss of me if I did not mention my absolute delight at the education for all Bill included in the King’s Speech. I intend to speak in the debate on that Bill when the time comes. I also thank the Minister for School Standards and the Secretary of State for what I thought was a model of how to engage with charities and parents, as well as with Back-Bench MPs, on that difficult but important piece of legislation. I think everybody across the House will welcome that Bill as they see the battleground over education, health and care plans coming to an end, and the proper resources that children need to thrive entering those schools.
I will finish where I started, by saying that it is not a question of whether we can afford to create opportunity; the fact is that we cannot afford not to do so. The future of our country depends on it.
Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill
Sam Rushworth ExcerptsTuesday 3rd February 2026
(4 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Act 2026 View all Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Act 2026 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
Fairness matters, not only to those receiving the support but to those making the difficult choices without it. During the short time I have, I will talk about the principles and then the context.
I come to this subject thinking about the publican in my constituency who has two children and who wakes up in the morning, leaves their house in Barwell and goes to their business. They have seen their national insurance contributions rise, their valuation has changed and the tax has gone up on that, the rate relief has been withdrawn from them and they have seen the minimum wage go up. Those are all costs that they are having to consider. What about the independent pharmacist on the high street, who gets up and goes to work in Hinckley, having to face the fact that national insurance contribution costs are going up?
Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman mentions the local pharmacist. The local pharmacist in my constituency is my twin sister. She put herself through a degree in pharmacy while on universal credit as a single parent of three children. That was not her choice; it was a position that was thrust upon her. What would the hon. Member say to people like her?
Dr Evans
I would credit her. She is a credit to the hon. Gentleman’s family for what she has managed to achieve.
The key point I am trying to get to is that, when those people leave their doorstep, is it fair that the choice they have made to have only two children is simply thrown out the window, because an extra £3,650 is now being given to the parent of the third and fourth child next door, simply for not going to work? That is not fair, and that is the heart of the principle.
At the end of the day, the welfare state works best when it is a bridge to work and not a substitute for it. We have often heard about the working poor.
Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)
The benefits system is a safety net designed to support people in hardship, but a fair system must balance that with the needs of those who pay for it. Benefits are paid by the taxpayers of today or, if the money is borrowed, as is so often the case with this Government, by the taxpayers of tomorrow. Every time the cost of benefits rises, so does the burden on the taxpayer, and that cost is growing unsustainably. Spending on health and disability benefits alone is set to hit £100 billion a year by the end of the decade. It is a mark of Labour’s irresponsibility that it presents a Bill today to increase welfare spending further.
I believe in personal responsibility. Not only should our country live within its means, but every individual and family should do so too. Many thousands of couples every year think about whether to have children. They make that choice based on a number of factors, but one of the most important is whether they can afford to bring up that child as they would like to. Those in receipt of benefits should face the same choices as those in work. That is why the Conservatives introduced the two-child benefit cap, and it is why I believe it should be retained.
Under the pre-2017 system, there was a fundamental element of unfairness. A family in receipt of benefits saw them increase automatically every time they had another child. That was not true of a family not in receipt of benefits. Why should a taxpayer who has decided that they cannot afford more children subsidise the third, fourth or fifth child of someone not in work?
I understand why Labour Members are in favour of more welfare spending. They stopped representing working people a long time ago, and they now want to create a society where more than half the population is dependent on the state to ensure their re-election. Why has the leader of Reform UK, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), supported scrapping the two-child cap until so very recently? Voters in my constituency, some even sympathetic to his cause, have been horrified. I think the answer is that he is chasing votes in the north of England, hoping to win support from former Labour voters. That instinct for higher spending shows that Reform UK is wholly unserious about governing our country. Britain needs a Government determined to deliver the changes we need: controlling public expenditure and reducing borrowing, leading to lower taxes and a stronger economy.
Sam Rushworth
I am deeply offended by the hon. Gentleman’s comment about people in the north of England, as though they are people who simply vote for their own welfare. That is not true. The people I represent are proud to be hard-working people in good working-class jobs, and many of them have children who have been impacted by the two-child cap. Would the hon. Gentleman like to apologise to them?
Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
The last time we debated this issue, I took many interventions from Conservative Members—there are fewer of them in the Chamber today—who wanted to know whether I would support lifting the two-child cap. As I said at the time, increasing the household incomes of children in poverty is one of several things we need to do to tackle the scourge of child poverty in places like Bishop Auckland, and I trust that the Government’s heart is in the right place on this issue. As such, I am delighted by the proposals they have brought forward and I will enthusiastically vote for the Bill. It will lift 450,000 children out of poverty. Some 2,310 households in my constituency are currently affected by the two-child cap.
As I said, the Bill is only one measure; it needs to be combined with others. We have heard often in this debate that removing the two-child cap is the single quickest way to lift children out of poverty. That is because we measure poverty by household income, but poverty is multi-dimensional, and it is important that we address its multifaceted aspects. Combined with other measures, the Bill will make a real difference. Those measures include: the Renters’ Rights Act 2025; the Employment Rights Act 2025; increases in the national minimum wage; the falling interest rates that are cutting mortgages; the new rules on school uniforms; the 30 hours of free childcare; free breakfast clubs in every school to reduce the early morning stress on working parents; the extension of free school meals to a further 4,500 children in Bishop Auckland; the extension of the warm home discount to more households; and investment in youth hubs, family hubs, and arts and culture. All those things will help to support children in poverty, which is why I am proud to be part of this Labour Government at this time.
At a roundtable in my constituency shortly after I was elected, we invited educators and charities—people who work with children—to talk to us about their experience of child poverty. There were tears in the room as headteachers talked of having to bring food into school to feed hungry children; of a child whose uniform was wet because there was no glass in the window of their home; of children living in cold and damp homes; and of children in Shildon who are excluded from extracurricular activities because they have to get the only free bus home, as their parents cannot afford the £1 bus fare to take a later bus. I came here today to speak on behalf of those children and to be their voice.
I will address some of the arguments that we have heard against the Bill. Too much of this debate has focused on party politics, rather than children. The Opposition seem to be simultaneously arguing that we should have done this sooner and should not be doing it at all. As I have engaged with the Government over the past 18 months and had many conversations, including in No. 10 and with Ministers, I have been reassured throughout that the Prime Minister has a strong personal commitment to eradicating child poverty, so it did not surprise me at all to see this legislation brought forward.
The opposition to what we are doing today is based on falsehoods. The first is that the Bill is about supporting children in workless households. As my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn) said a moment ago, the children are not to blame. We can never blame a child for being born in a poor home. Also, 59% of the families affected by the two-child cap are families in work. We also know that universal credit requires people to show evidence of actively seeking work. People cannot simply sit on universal credit—it is not that easy. We know, too, that it is often a temporary measure.
I think about my family. Twelve years ago, I was working as a gardener on just above the minimum wage while I was completing my PhD, and my wife was working as a carer. We relied for a time on having our income topped up by tax credits, as they were called then. I almost crossed out that bit of my speech, because I know I will get an onslaught of abuse just for saying so, such is the rhetoric in our country right now, demonising people who ever draw on our social security system. My twin sister became a single parent, not of her choosing, and raised three children, two of whom had a disability. I remember her telling me that when she moved into her council house, a friend told her that she could paint the floor and put duvets at the windows to keep it warmer. My sister put herself through a degree in pharmacy at Durham University and now works in my constituency as a pharmacist for a GP practice. My brother, who was the highest earner in our family, died at the age of 35, leaving behind three children. People fall on hard times, and when they do, a caring society should be there for each other.
One of the other lies we are hearing in this debate is that the Bill is funded by a tax on workers. Other parties seek to divide people, telling those who are just about managing that their taxes are paying for people who are not working, and it is not true. We know what is funding this Bill and many other things: a fairer tax system, abolishing the non-dom status, a mansion tax, and the remote gaming duty, which will generate an extra £1 billion. It is about fairness and who pays.
Finally, there is this lie that keeping children in poverty is good or necessary for the economy. It is not. The welfare bill increased by £88 billion under the Conservative Government, despite the real value of welfare decreasing. They oversaw a real-terms decrease in living standards. That led to a generation of children who were malnourished, who experienced family breakdown and who were denied opportunities to become a generation of adults realising their full potential. We had an increase in sickness and in days lost to sick pay, an increase in mental health disorders and a 250% increase in looked-after children. We have rising cost pressures on Government as a result of those policies.
As I finish, I must turn my attention to the comments made by the hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin), who is no longer in her place. I intend to write to her, because I was deeply offended by the suggestion that people who were not born in this country, but work hard, are somehow less. My wife was not born in this country; she came here as a teenager. She worked in a meat factory and as a carer. More recently, she went through university and now works as a midwife in our NHS. I am so proud of her, and I find the idea disgusting that she should somehow be less entitled because of her birth. Reform needs to rethink that.
To conclude, I will be voting with the Government tonight, and I re-emphasise that this is one of several things that we need to do in our national mission to end the scourge of child poverty in our country once and for all.
John Slinger
It is perfectly acceptable and reasonable for a Government such as ours to take measures in Budgets to provide the resources necessary to enact a policy, as this Bill would do, that will lift so many children out of poverty. I think the hon. Member makes a fairly fatuous point, if I may say so.
Sam Rushworth
Does my hon. Friend share my confusion at the point that has just been made? Does it not illustrate that all of this is about choices, and that the choice that is being made on this side of the House is, yes, to increase the tax on gambling and on mansions in order to decrease child poverty? The choice that Reform would make would be to increase child poverty for 5p off a pint.
John Slinger
I am assuming that the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth is opposing the policy before us today. So you actually do not want to take the measure that we are going to take—
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
I will start by repeating something that the Secretary of State said at the start of the debate. He made much of the need to set against anger and division, so I am going to appeal to everyone’s better nature. Ultimately, the removal of the two-child limit was not in the Labour party’s manifesto, so until recently it was not something to which the Government had committed—in fact, it was ruled out by the Chancellor. I have sat through the entire debate and I have to say that it is a bit rich of Government Members to lecture us today, when in 2024 the limit was clearly good enough for the Labour party, including the current Prime Minister and the Chancellor. It is also worth pointing out that we keep hearing the figures 4.5 million and half a million. It seems that the removal of the two-child limit will reduce the 4.5 million people who the Government say are in poverty by just half a million. It will be interesting to hear the Minister comment on that.
The debate has been caricatured as being rich Conservatives versus everyone else, but nothing could be further from the truth. We believe in a safety net, but we also believe in personal responsibility. Many of us on the Opposition Benches grew up on benefits. I am one of those people, and I was in fact worse off when the Labour Government came into power in 1997; they scrapped the child benefit and replaced it with working tax credit, and my mum supported by dad’s business and did not go to work in her own right while she raised her four children. When I am asked why I am a Conservative, that is what I say—and I have checked that this afternoon to ensure that I am factually accurate. We are speaking up for those who work hard and have high bills, as well as housing and food costs, but who are paying tax because they do not qualify for universal credit.
I want to make one final point before I come to the body of my speech. Lots has been said about free school meals this afternoon, but when I recently questioned the Department for Education on whether it has any record of the number of councils making the most of the auto-enrolment for free school meals, I was told that the Government do not have the figure. They might wish to go away and look at that. I absolutely appreciate that auto-enrolment helps the most vulnerable, but if the Government are not taking account of the levers in their hands to improve that system, then they need to do some work.
Having done my bit of ad-libbing, I will make some progress with my speech. Fundamentally, maintaining the two-child limit is about fairness—fairness to working parents who do the right thing, fairness to working parents who make difficult choices and fairness for families who live within their means.
Rebecca Smith
No, I am going to make some progress.
We are talking about men and women who are working long hours in shops, schools, offices, construction sites and care homes right across the country. Why should families in receipt of universal credit have to avoid the difficult decisions about how many children they can afford, unlike those who are not in receipt of it?
Compassion is often framed in terms of supporting the most vulnerable, and rightly so—indeed, I have highlighted my own personal conviction on this in previous debates—but as one a colleague in my previous council career told me, “The left has no monopoly on compassion, Rebecca.”
Compassion cuts both ways. We must remember the millions of hard-working families across the UK who are not on large salaries yet fall outside any thresholds for universal credit—the families who earn the same for going to work as their neighbours do on universal credit. It is unfair to these parents to make them bear a double cost: raising their own children and subsidising other people’s.
Rebecca Smith
I also speak for the 60% of the population who do not think we should be scrapping the cap. No doubt a large proportion of those people are also in my constituency.
As Conservatives, we believe in personal responsibility and living within our means. Our welfare system should be a safety net for the most vulnerable, not a lifestyle choice, as my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) has argued so powerfully. As I have alluded to, it seems that we are not alone; that principle of fairness is echoed across the country, with a recent YouGov poll finding that 57% of respondents believe that the cap should be retained.
The situation is particularly stark for self-employed mothers, who can only access statutory maternity allowance —a flat rate that falls far below what their peers can receive via their employer. I recently met one self-employed mother who told me that she is seriously weighing up whether to have a second child because she and her husband simply cannot afford it right now. This is a deeply personal dilemma, fraught with conflicting emotions. Equally, those not on benefits who have more children do not get paid more wages—they just have to absorb the extra costs within their budgets—so this idea that we need to give people more money because they have more children does not always make sense. However, this Government are determined to give families on universal credit a free pass; as a result, those families will not have to make those kinds of hard choices.
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, for 70% of the poorest households currently subject to the two-child limit, any money they stand to gain from the scrapping of the limit will get partially or fully wiped out by the household benefit cap. How do the Government square that circle when they have been quoting the headline figures for poverty? As has been raised numerous times today by Opposition Members, if Labour truly followed its own logic on child poverty, it would also need to scrap the household benefit cap, at even greater cost to the taxpayer.
Conversely, 40% of those affected by the two-child limit will be exempt from the overall household benefit cap, because they have at least one claimant or child receiving health and disability benefits. This means that households with six children will get an additional £14,000 every single year. For larger families in particular, the financial gap between going to work and being out of work will shrink significantly. We are trapping good people in a bad system. Shockingly, one in four full-time workers would be better off on benefits than in work—that is 6 million workers across the UK whose neighbours on combined benefits are receiving more income than they are. It is no wonder that every day 5,000 people sign on to long-term sickness benefits. According to the Centre for Social Justice, a claimant who is receiving universal credit for ill health plus the average housing element and personal independence payment could receive the equivalent of a pre-tax salary of £30,100, and a family with three children receiving full benefits could get the equivalent of £71,000 pre-tax. How is this fairness?
At best, scrapping the cap is a sticking plaster that does not tackle the root causes of poverty. We know that work is the best route out of poverty—in fact, if this Government hit their ambitious target of increasing employment rates by 80%, that could lift approximately the same number of children out of poverty as scrapping the two-child limit. Instead, this Bill will be yet another strain on our ballooning benefits budget. If it had been retained, the two-child limit would have saved the taxpayer £2.4 billion in 2026-27, rising to £3.2 billion in 2030-31. Instead, the bill is being passed on to all those families I have spoken about already.
Rebecca Smith
No, because I believe the hon. Gentleman’s Minister will want to have a fair share of time as well.
When it comes to reforming welfare spending, the Prime Minister has shown extraordinary weakness of resolve. Scrapping the two-child cap is simply a political decision to placate his Back Benchers, costing taxpayers billions. It is unaffordable for a welfare system that is already on its knees, and damaging to the very work incentives his party promotes. Indeed, no one voted for it at the general election. As the Leader of the Opposition has said,
“28 million people in Britain are now working to pay the wages and benefits of 28 million others. The rider is as big as the horse.”
Let us look at this through the eyes of hard-working parents and individuals. Many of their businesses and workplaces are already being hit by Labour’s damaging tax rises. These are people with a work ethic—they willingly shoulder the burden of supporting their families without relying on the state—but their commitment to doing the right thing is being thrown back in their face. The Conservatives are the only party truly standing by hard-working families. We are the only party serious about bringing the welfare bill under control and protecting taxpayers from yet more unavoidable costs. Keeping the cap is about fairness, responsibility and respect for the sacrifices that parents make every single day. To scrap it flies in the face of that.
Winter Fuel Payment
Sam Rushworth Excerpts(1 year ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Torsten Bell
No, because this Government were formed on the back of disastrous public finances. The Conservative party had announced public spending commitments without having a penny to pay for them. We will not apologise for doing the right thing to put this country back on an even keel.
Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
On 3 September, I said in this House that I represent England’s coldest and snowiest constituency, where even people on a living wage can be in fuel poverty, as can children and pensioners. That is why, as the Minister knows, I pressed the Government not only for the changes that he has announced today, but to widen the eligibility criteria for the warm home discount scheme, which is the smartest mechanism we have for tackling genuine fuel poverty. He has only gone and done both those things, so can I thank him for listening not to me, but to the people I represent? What assessment has been made of the impact of these changes on lifting children out of fuel poverty?
Torsten Bell
I obviously thank my hon. Friend for his question, but I have to disagree. I do not deserve any credit for doubling eligibility for the warm home discount; the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Miatta Fahnbulleh), who is here on the Government Front Bench, deserves it. On fuel poverty estimates, over 5 million households should benefit from the warm home discount next year. That will make a real difference to households right across the country.
Carer’s Allowance
Sam Rushworth Excerpts(1 year, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
May I begin by expressing my appreciation of the family carers in the Bishop Auckland constituency? According to helpful researchers in the Commons Library, one in seven of my constituents provides at least an hour of unpaid care each week, and over half of them are eligible for carer’s allowance. Nationwide, as we have heard, our army of family carers is the equivalent of a second NHS.
I agree with the criticism made by the shadow Secretary of State that we must not risk opening the door to fraud, and it is precisely because I believe in the welfare state that I think it must always be watertight and widely perceived as fair. However, I am concerned that in a huge number of cases—I am inclined to believe that it is the majority of cases—overpaid carer’s allowance is the result of inadvertent error.
As others have said, this is a complicated benefit and when so many stressed family carers find themselves having to pay back large sums of money, there must be some onus on the Government to take responsibility. This issue is so widespread that I think every MP in this place will have been contacted by constituents facing hardship. These are decent, honest people who work hard, who serve their families and communities and who ask for little, and they feel as though they are being treated like criminals while the Government have become the nation’s biggest debt collector.
If I may, I will briefly raise a specific issue that two of my constituents have raised with me. They are being required to pay back thousands of pounds because of inadvertently earning just above the earnings threshold. However, as they have pointed out to me, carer’s allowance is counted as income in universal credit claims, so had they not claimed it, they would have received more in universal credit. I gently urge the Minister to consider this point as part of the review, as people are not only being pushed into hardship due to being made to pay back overpayments, but may actually be worse off on aggregate than if they had never claimed.
Anna Dixon
My hon. Friend rightly points out that this is a huge cause of stress to people. Not only that, but carers are actually leaving work, limiting their hours and not taking on additional responsibilities. Will he join me in calling on the shadow Secretary of State to apologise to the 134,800 carers who have outstanding carer’s allowance overpayments to a total value of £251 million?
Sam Rushworth
This sits among the many injustices that the new Government have to deal with, and I think an apology is in order.
In conclusion, I welcome this Government’s review. I think there have been some excellent contributions from all parts of the House, with some really serious issues raised such as students losing their eligibility to claim, my constituents’ point about universal credit and the points about respite care and young carers, and I do not think anyone has even mentioned kinship carers. I hope that this review will take account of all these things so that we can deliver a fairer deal for Britain’s army of unpaid carers.