Department for Work and Pensions

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

The hon. Gentleman asks about the 2017 manifesto. I simply remind him that before the publication of the manifestos in that election most people expected the Conservative party to get a stonking great majority so that it could push through its version of Brexit based on the quality of their manifesto as opposed to ours. I point the hon. Gentleman to the historical facts, as it did not turn out at all like that.

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

To return to the point about the WASPI women, I completely accept that we all want to make sure that people have dignity in retirement, but does the hon. Lady acknowledge that the Government’s figures show that reversing the impact of the decision to raise the state pension age in line with rising life expectancy would cost £181 billion? Where on earth would we find such a sum of money?

[Alison McGovern]

The hon. Gentleman is a fellow member of the Treasury Committee and I thank him for his intervention. That is an interesting forecast. I do not think that dealing with the injustices would cost anything like as much, but if he wishes to have the discussion, we have many hours on the Committee together and I will happily discuss his spreadsheet any time he wishes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

It is a privilege to take part in today’s debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) on opening it. This is an important issue, and we all know that the DWP goes to the heart of so many of our constituents’ lives.

I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), to the Front Bench. He has done important work on all the issues surrounding bereaved parents over the past few weeks, and I think everyone on both sides of the House welcomes the Government’s new position.

Over the two years I have been an MP, I have seen at first hand the hard work, considerable commitment and personal dedication put in by the staff at Loftus jobcentre. I have seen it in the context of the redundancies at the Boulby potash mine in my constituency, which were caused by the move from mining potash to mining polyhalite. The way in which the emergency response team moved, and the work it did to support the workforce into productive and fulfilling jobs was impressive.

That speaks well for the professionalism of the men and women in our jobcentres, many of whom are sometimes unfairly miscast as people who either do not know or do not care about the lives of the people they help—that is certainly not my experience. I do not recognise the Opposition’s characterisation of so much of the front-facing work of the DWP. I tend to find that, if anything, the jobcentre workforce are unbelievably adept, graceful and kind.

[Alison McGovern]

To be clear, not one thing that I or any Opposition Member said criticised the work of the people on the frontline for the DWP. It is the Conservative party’s policies relating to the DWP that are at issue.

[Mr Clarke]

I would not ascribe it to the hon. Lady’s speech, but I have heard speeches in this place from Labour Members that have come very close to blurring the line between the policy and the people. There is sometimes a real determination to make people afraid of their experience of programmes such as universal credit by stoking up concerns, rather than pointing out the progress on rolling out this fundamentally important reform, which originally enjoyed the Opposition’s support—mainly because it is the right thing to do.

The hon. Lady rightly referred to the Beveridge principle of a welfare state that acts as a strong safety net to help those in need when the chips are down. That is not what we had under the last Labour Government, when the cost of welfare benefits rose by some £84 billion—an enormous sum of money. Welfare has to be fair to the taxpayer, as well as to recipients. This is an important issue. The balance was lost, and the public knew it was lost.

That was one reason, among many, why we won the 2010 general election. There was a widespread perception that the welfare system had strayed from its moorings and was no longer necessarily about helping people into work, or helping them to stay in work longer. For too many, it allowed a lifestyle based on the trap of dependency—my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison) referred to that trap. For too many people, the logical incentive created by the system was not to work, or not to work more hours. There was nothing kind or moral about that. It was, in fact, profoundly the opposite, as the system did not help people take the true route out of poverty, which is, of course, work.

[Alison McGovern]

The hon. Gentleman is being characteristically generous with his time. Will he answer a simple question? How does the two-child policy provide an incentive to work when children, by definition, cannot work?

[Mr Clarke]

Child benefit is, obviously, a sensitive issue, but the point is that a family not in the welfare system, perhaps just above the entitlement level for welfare support, has to make rational choices in their life. All families have to make rational choices in their life about the size of the family they can afford. Lots of people find it wrong that the system would allow people to have any number of children, whereas those people not in the system have to make budgetary choices. That is not a principle I am uncomfortable defending.

Let us go to the wider point, as we need to go back to first principles on this. I do not doubt the sincere differences we have and Labour Members’ concerns, but they have to justify the fact that under their Government 1.4 million people spent most of 2000 to 2010 trapped on out-of-work benefits, with some receiving more than the average wage. Some 50,000 households were allowed to claim benefits worth more than £26,000 a year. I represent a low-wage constituency in the north of England and I simply cannot justify a situation whereby the logical thing was for people to stay earning that amount of benefits rather than to be in work. That has profound and adverse social consequences.

[Debbie Abrahams]

I think what we are trying to do with this debate is look at where we are now. The hon. Gentleman is right, and we did not get everything wrong, but what we need to do is look at the system now. It is clearly not fit for purpose. The way he was talking made it sound as though he also had concerns about the number of children, and the number of sick and disabled people, living in poverty. I am sure he was not suggesting that all the sick and disabled people who require support are shirkers or scroungers, and that there is nothing wrong with them. So what do we do now?

[Mr Clarke]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right; of course, there are lots of people who, for reasons that are totally out of their control, need our support and compassion. No Conservative Member would argue with that. I would argue that we get more money for those people by ensuring that the system has the resource available to devote to those families and those individuals, rather than to those who do not need that support and need to be in work. We have seen a record number of people come into work. We are seeing record female employment. We are seeing a record number of disabled people move into work. We should celebrate all those things. Just as those on the other side are quick to point out the problems with the system—and any system run by Government that is as Byzantine as the welfare system will always throw up hard cases that need to be looked at carefully—we also need to recognise the considerable social policy success that has been represented by helping the equivalent of the entire population of Wales, more than 3 million people, move into work during this Government’s time in office. That is a really important shift and we do not want to see this go backwards because we have changed the incentives in the system.

That is one reason I was so profoundly opposed to the amendments tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) in this debate. I do not think it was appropriate for this debate and these estimates to be drawn into the context of the Brexit debate. That was profoundly unwelcome. No matter which side of the House someone sits on, we have to try to keep certain aspects of the debate separate. It will be interesting to hear from the shadow Front Bencher what the Labour party’s position would have been had the amendment been accepted and what it would be were a future such attempt to be made. It is important to put on the record that there are some aspects of this debate that are simply more important than the issue of the UK’s membership of the European Union—or not. In truth, the two things are fundamentally discrete.