Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

I am sure that in the hon. Lady’s constituency as well as in Kettering, we are working very hard to bring down the time it takes, particularly in the tribunals. We have been working closely on the area of mental health, and we will continue to work to make sure that everybody gets a fair deal from the process.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

3. What comparative assessment he has made of the number of people in full-time and part-time employment.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)]

Three in every four people work full-time, and full-time work accounts for all of the significant rise in employment over the last year.

[Simon Hughes]

The Minister has done exactly what I hoped she would do, which is to deal with the fact that whereas the Leader of the Opposition in 2010 said that the Government’s policy would lose a million jobs, my understanding is that since the election there have been more than a million new jobs, and this year more than a quarter of a million new jobs. Will the Minister put it clearly on the record that these new jobs are not all part-time jobs, that there has been a significant growth in full-time employment and that that is predicted to continue?

[Esther McVey]

My right hon. Friend is correct. It is good news that UK business is creating so many new jobs. Since the 2010 election we have seen a rise of nearly 800,000 in the number of full-time jobs and of more than 300,000 in the number of part-time jobs.

Housing Benefit

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

The hon. Gentleman misses the point. He mistakes the issue of empty properties for properties that are currently accommodated. The social housing swap website indicates tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people in smaller properties who want to trade up, while people in larger properties want to trade down.

In response to the hon. Member for Manchester Central, I am rather startled by this figure, but it appears that last year Manchester local authority sent back to the Government £595,000 of unspent DHPs.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and his colleagues for the extra allocation of money. My local authority has bid for an extra £600,000, which I hope it will receive. I supported the motion at the Liberal Democrat conference arguing for changes in this policy. [Interruption.] I will take no lessons from Labour Members. Will my hon. Friend look at exempting those who have applied and are eligible for a smaller property, and are waiting to be allocated?

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for referring to our policy motion, which is a darn sight better than the one we have been asked to consider by the Opposition. The Government are addressing many of the elements in our conference motion. For example, the motion calls for

“an immediate evaluation of the impact of the policy”

which we are undertaking, and

“A review of the amount allocated to local authorities for the Discretionary Housing Payment Fund”.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

Work is going on at the moment to test those descriptors, and we are working closely with the charities. Today also marks the launch of the call for evidence of the fourth independent review of the WCA, which recognises our commitment to improving on the system we inherited from the previous Government.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

Will the Minister examine the way in which people with mental and physical health problems are assessed before they are placed in their WCA, specifically by Seetec in my part of the world? Will he examine how appropriate the placement is after they have started, because in my experience such placements are often inappropriate and therefore do not benefit anybody at the end of the exercise?

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

No, I do not think that a round trip of that long is acceptable. I will look into that case.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

The transition to the personal independence payment is a good thing in theory, but some people are telling me that they are concerned that the threshold for qualification is unacceptably high and they feel unsupported in trying to work out how to make a difficult choice among the variety of suppliers available.

[Esther McVey]

I was not exactly sure where the right hon. Gentleman was going with that question. The PIP was introduced to support the most vulnerable and to make it as easy as possible to do so, and to ensure that people who could not fill in a self-assessment form could see somebody on a one-to-one basis. This is the biggest ever change in welfare. I thank all the people who have helped with it in Jobcentre Pluses, and the stakeholders. Over 1,000 disabled people got involved to make sure that the system was right, and I thank them for making it a good transition to a new benefit.

Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Bill

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

Thank you very much for calling me, Mr Deputy Speaker. I apologise to you, the House and the Minister that I was not hear for the earlier part of the debate. I was in a Select Committee upstairs and then in a meeting. I wanted to contribute to the debate because the Bill troubles me.

I will start by expressing concern about a couple of matters raised by the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris), which are relevant because they are about how we treat the rich as well as the poor. I am not party to what is going to be said tomorrow, but I hope that the Government will go ahead with having a tax system that requires a minimum amount of tax to be paid by everybody. It is planned that that will be in the Finance Bill for the coming year. I share his view that we need a system that does not allow people to escape their tax obligations and that that should be a general principle.

I also share the view of the hon. Member for Easington on who should pay more into the system in times of austerity: it should be those who are better off. As it happens, we disagree about whether the better-off now pay more or less. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) intervened on him to point out the hard truth for a Labour MP that during the whole of the Labour Government, the top rate of tax was lower than it is now and lower than it will be after the change this year. There is no backing away from that. I think that that was regrettable, whatever the explanation. However, I want mainly to talk about the Bill.

I understand why the Government read the judgment from the Court of Appeal and have come to the House. The Court did not overturn the principle that people should do some mandatory work while on benefits, but it found—to put it bluntly—that there was a flaw in the paperwork sent to people requiring them to do that. I would have preferred the Government to go to the Supreme Court and wait for that judgment before seeking parliamentary approval to change the law in relation to a large number of cases. I understand the financing and the logic, but I am always nervous when we do not wait for the courts to adjudicate.

I have not talked about this with the Minister but I assume that the Government are nervous that they will not win in the Supreme Court, which is why they have come before the House now. I am nervous about that, but it is not my principal concern about the Bill. My principal concern is about the system that the Bill will continue, which is—to put it bluntly—bigger than the Bill itself. I am sure that will have been the subject of a speech from those on the Labour Front-Bench, just as I have heard that point in speeches from Labour Members who have already spoken.

Despite difficult economic times, I am happy that over the past few months my constituency, which, as colleagues know, is just over the river, has begun to see a reduction in unemployment, both generally and among young people. It is not a huge reduction—I am not naive about that—and when I checked a minute ago it was still ranked 214th in the country in terms of the percentage of those who are unemployed. We are still in the top half of the table, and 5.9% of the population are still not in work although they would like to be. Nevertheless, the figure has come down from its peak of 6.2% in September and October 2011.

I am concerned that we are still running a system—I would be happy to continue this conversation with colleagues from the Department—that does not work or achieve what the Government wish it to achieve, and I will illustrate that point with four constituency cases from recent months. The first concerns a constituent called Mr RE—I will use initials in all cases because I do not have permission to share the details—who wrote to me in autumn last year. I then wrote to the Jobcentre Plus manager for my constituency, with whom I have a good professional working relationship. Mr RE told me that he wished to dispute a sanction on his JSA claim. He said he had received a letter from Seetec, the providers of mandatory work activity in my constituency, asking him to attend a mandatory work placement in June 2012 at the British Heart Foundation and a charity shop quite near to where I live on the Old Kent road.

On 21 June, the day before Mr RE was due to start, he received a letter from a voluntary organisation for vulnerable adults inviting him for an interview the following Monday—25 June. He told me that he intended to train as a social worker and that a work placement such as the one offered by Sova, the voluntary body, included a requirement to apply for an MA course in social work. He therefore needed to make that interview a priority. He had only a day’s notice, which he needed to spend in preparation and buying appropriate clothing. He telephoned Seetec as soon as possible to advise that he would not be able to start his work placement on 22 June, but said he would be available from 26 June onwards.

[Mr George Howarth]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hughes]

Let me just finish this example. Mr RE told me that Seetec was unwilling to discuss the matter and that nothing was resolved. He found the telephone staff rude, abrupt and unwilling to hold a sensible discussion. He went for his interview with the voluntary organisation for vulnerable adults and—as he said he would—he attended the mandatory work activity the following day. Three days later he received a letter advising him that as he had not started his placement on the date originally requested—22 June—he was no longer required to attend. He then received a letter informing him that his JSA claim, and that of his partner, would be suspended from 1 August until 30 October last year. I protested that that was a completely inappropriate penalty because it seemed to me that he had good reasons for not attending his placement on 22 June that were directly related to finding work. Furthermore, he had telephoned the provider to explain the reasons, and he attended the work placement as soon as he was able. I stated my view that the system was clearly failing. As it happened, in the end, a review found in his favour. Jobcentre Plus said originally that he did not tell it of the work placement, but it gave in when he queried that. Jobcentre Plus has cancelled the sanction.

That was a satisfactory outcome, but it is not the only complaint that has come my way. The second case is of D.P., who contacted me on 25 January. He told me that three sanctions had been applied to his JSA claim for failure to attend appointments at the jobcentre. For the first two sanctions, he had failed to attend because he had not received the letter in the post. His representative had written to the jobcentre but it did not agree to lift the sanction. He does not understand the reason for the third sanction, which applies from 10 November 2012 to 10 May 2013, and feels he has done all he can to comply with jobcentre requirements but is still being punished. He has received such severe sanctions that, effectively, he is no longer receiving JSA. I have not yet received an answer to my letter.

I wrote about the third case on 4 March. C. McC. says she is currently claiming JSA and has been required to attend a work placement at Divine Rescue in Walworth. However, she tells me there is no work for her to do there; that she spends the day from 10 am to 5 pm unoccupied; that no training is provided; and that there are no computer facilities to allow her to work independently.

The fourth case is of a friend of a constituent. A.S. has an accounting qualification and has worked in finance. He has just finished three months’ work experience as an intern in the financial department of a local company, which was appropriate to his career plan. He is a graduate and has a relevant background. He got the placement not through the jobcentre, but separately. He was asked to attend a CV workshop while doing his internship. With the help of my office, we managed to postpone the workshop so he could complete his internship. He was told he was to do mandatory work activities—he was told he had to go and work in a Red Cross shop elsewhere in south London—with no discussion of his qualifications or experience.

[Mr Howarth]

The right hon. Gentleman said earlier in his speech—I tried to intervene at the time—that the problem was with the paperwork. To some extent, I accept that he is right, in that the regulations did not conform with the provisions of the Jobseekers Act 1995. However, is he aware that the Court of Appeal went beyond that by stating

“the Regulations conflict with article 4(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights which provides, subject to exceptions, that…‘No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour’”?

That is slightly more than a departure from the right paperwork.

[Simon Hughes]

I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for delaying his intervention. My understanding—the Minister could be helpful in this respect in her winding-up speech—is that the Court upheld the general policy principle of the employment programmes and ruled that the general principle of such employment programmes did not breach article 4(2) of the convention. The failures to be specific and to get the paperwork right meant that programmes could breach the convention. I am not disputing what the right hon. Gentleman says, but I understand that mandatory work activity is not illegal under the European convention. We need to be clear about that. Labour Front Benchers accept the principle of mandatory work activity, provided that it is decent, and accept sanctions in the benefits system.

[John McDonnell]

Lord Justice Burnton made it clear—I think I quoted him before the right hon. Gentleman arrived—that this is a constitutional issue. It is not just a matter of not informing claimants, but of not informing this House.

[Simon Hughes]

I did hear the hon. Gentleman and I accept what he said.

My fourth constituent was sent to a charity shop. He was required to carry out mundane manual lifting work. He said that he had a problem with a back injury, which meant that the work was inappropriate. He has asthma, and therefore work in a dusty environment was not great. There was a failure to provide sufficient work for people to do, including for other people who had been sent there. There was a clear breach of the rules that state that people are meant to work four weeks for five days a week from Monday to Friday. The person at the work placement said, “You have to work on a Saturday if I say so.” Clearly, that was not in the paperwork. The crude point for the Minister is that I am not sure that a graduate seeking work in finance should be sent to a charity shop to dust shelves and move boxes. This seems to be regular and routine in the current system. The Government are spending taxpayers’ money on providing schemes that should help people back to work. I am not sure, however, that there is any intelligent management of the schemes being offered.

It is entirely reasonable for somebody who has been out of work, and has extremely low qualifications, to do a relatively low-skilled mandatory work activity. It is not reasonable if they are seeking to do something else. The Secretary of State is in his place, and he has always been very courteous and helpful in responding to such issues. I ask him and his team to consider how we can significantly improve the quality of mandatory work activity, monitor it better and ensure that we do not send people to do work that, bluntly, will be of no use to them in enhancing their job prospects. Almost nobody wants to be on benefits all the time. People on benefits struggle to make ends meet and we need to do better.

[Mr Russell Brown]

Is the right hon. Gentleman saying that to impose a sanction over a menial task on a highly qualified individual who may never use those skills again would be wrong?

[Simon Hughes]

We could have a complicated and long debate. Should people in this House, if they find themselves later in life to be unemployed and it is deemed appropriate that they are sent on mandatory work activity, be sent to work in a charity shop moving boxes and dusting shelves? One could argue that it would be good for us, and good for everybody—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am listening carefully to what my right hon. Friend has to say. As the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), has made clear and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will make clear, all of these things are kept constantly under review. We want to improve them and that is what jobcentre staff do. They are brilliant at that, by the way, and they get better and better. My point on mandatory work activity is that it is not just work experience. It is also about changing culture: finding out whether someone is working and not declaring it; and getting people used to the idea of getting out of bed in the morning and attending somewhere where they do what they have been asked to do, because they have so got out of the habit of doing that, that even attending an interview has become a problem for them. This is not just about training; it is about getting people culturally back in line so that they can then be dealt with by advisers.

[Simon Hughes]

I absolutely understand and agree with that point. That is fine for all people of that type. In the case of my last example, the individual had been doing an internship and getting up, always being on time and being there all the time. If anybody had checked, they would have known that he had had a 100% successful record in the previous three months. There was no history of shirking, not getting up or lying in bed. Therefore, it would have been appropriate for an interview to find out about that work history, and assess and discuss what might have been appropriate.

Another constituent—a friend of mine living in Waterloo—had been out of work and claiming jobseeker’s allowance. He went to the jobcentre and was invited for an interview with Seetec, which he attended. It was about to send him to Tesco to stack shelves, but he persuaded it that there was an opportunity of mandatory work activity in a photography shop in the west end. He has photographic skills, and he persuaded Seetec, once it had spoken to the employer, that it would be a better place for him to go. I am not disputing the Secretary of State’s view that some people need to get into the culture of work, but the system fails those who are competent at work, have worked and are willing to do their bit, but get thrown into the wrong place, often to do highly inappropriate activities.

I hope that I have made it clear that I think there are underlying serious issues. I am grateful that the Secretary of State has tabled amendments and new clauses to ensure that this matter does not disappear, but comes back to us through regular reporting. My message to the House and the Government is that we need a better system, because a lot of people who are on low incomes or not working are not being well served by the system at the moment.

Romanians and Bulgarians (Benefits)

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We have had meetings about this issue with about 17 countries, all at the same time. I would list them all, but they include meetings with officials from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Ireland, Germany, France and Poland. We have had meetings with all of them. There is no common position for them all, but a sub-set of those most likely to be affected—I understand that Germany and Spain are where most of the Romanians tend to be going at the moment—are very concerned about what may happen. We are discussing with them exactly how to respond. Reality is now striking many and I think the door is open for us to make a serious move on this issue.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I commend the Secretary of State and the Government for addressing this issue, which has never been addressed before. The principle is simple: UK citizens are entitled to the benefits that come with the contribution system we inherit, whereas EU citizens—those from Ireland perhaps are excepted, because of the common travel area—should not expect greater benefits here than UK citizens should expect in other EU countries. If we could get to that position, everybody would understand it and there would be greater justice and far fewer complaints.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. The point he makes—it is one I have made before—is that there is not an easy solution to what the Commission wants, which is to try to drive free movement as the sole and most important element in this process. However, it fails to recognise that all the nation states have very different social security systems. Many of those nations are finally beginning to say, with us, that this cannot be driven through like a coach and horses, because we control our social security systems. We have different ways of contributing and we use tax differently, so the argument we are making—I believe we will win it—is that we must be left to make those decisions. Obviously when people want to come and work, we want them to do that; the issue is when they come not to work. I think we have a strong position on changing that.

Housing Benefit (Under-occupancy Penalty)

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

Our impact assessment is our best estimate based on what we expect the impact of the policy to be. That is all any Department ever produces. We believe that it is a robust best estimate.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

My hon. Friend knows that his Liberal Democrat colleagues expressed concern about this measure when it went through this House and the other House, and that it was changed as a result of some of those concerns, but does he accept that there is still concern that the message about the facts is not getting through and that pensioners in particular are worried? Will he also accept the need to address other categories of people who need separate rooms—for example, those with disabilities or those with teenage, university or service children—but whose needs are not being adequately met at the moment?

[Steve Webb]

My right hon. Friend has some credibility on the issue of welfare reform, because he has been prepared to vote for difficult decisions on public spending. Neither the Labour party nor the nationalist parties have taken any difficult decisions on anything—they simply oppose everything—whereas he has, quite fairly, been willing to take some difficult decisions and support them and, again quite properly, raise concerns about the detail of policy. He is entirely right. The principle of the policy must be seen in the context of deficit reduction. Given that we have to reduce the deficit, we want to do so in a way that potentially has upsides as well as downsides, such as by making better use of the social housing stock, but it has always been our intention to protect the most vulnerable. The additional £30 million on top of the core £20 million for discretionary housing payments is the key way we want to do that, and I will say more later about how we want to ensure that that system works.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. The point of the policy is not for people to be evicted, which would raise costs for the Exchequer and for the individual, but to ensure that existing housing stock is fully occupied.

Let me try directly to address the issue of the shortfall. There were two ways in which we could have approached the matter, one of which was blanket exemptions, which is what we did for pensioners. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan for making it absolutely clear in opening the debate that pensioners are not covered by this change.

It is clear that we wanted to protect another set of people. Let me deal with the example of foster children, whom my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) mentioned. The position on foster families is, I think, shared across the House. If people need a spare bedroom for a foster child, we want to make sure that they have one, and we want to support fosterers. The question is whether that is done better by some blanket exemption or by what we have done in costing what it would take to meet the shortfall for those families and giving the money to local authorities so that a foster family for which this was an issue—it might not be an issue for all of them—can approach the authority and have the shortfall made up.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I are entirely open to discussing whether that is the most effective way of delivering that support. Our judgment was that discretionary housing payments gave local authorities the discretion we would want them to have. If for any reason that message is not getting through and is causing anxieties to foster families who do not know about DHPs, for example, or if local authorities have not communicated well enough, we would be happy to look at whether this is the most effective way of supporting families. Where there is a shortfall, discretionary housing payments for this and other measures are available. We want to make sure that people use them when they are in genuine need. Eviction is clearly not something that we are seeking to achieve.

[Simon Hughes]

That was really helpful. I want to pursue the issue raised by the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg). The Minister has said that he is willing to look at whether the discretionary funds will meet certain problems. May I take it that he and the Secretary of State would be willing to look at the categories defining which people need a bedroom, as I think some categories that are not currently counted as falling within the definition should be included in it?

[Steve Webb]

I can see the attraction of that approach, and I think there is a balance to be struck. The attraction of the approach for foster families would be that the size criteria could be defined and then categories of people such as a couple, teenage children and so forth could be added to the list. We could say that a bedroom used for a foster child is a bedroom, so no deduction applies, people do not need to go to the council for the DHPs and the Department for Work and Pensions rather than the local authority would meet the bill. That is one way of doing things.

The challenge for us in that approach is defining in Whitehall all the categories of people who ought to have a room. There could be difficulties even within a category, as there might be foster carers, for example, for whom this is more or less of an issue. It could vary from case to case. We have to make the judgment: where do we need to make a blanket exemption or a blanket entitlement to a room, and where do we say that we will give the local authorities money and discretion? Each side of the argument has its attractions. We have to ensure that the money we have given to local authorities is well spent and that people know it is coming.

I have been interviewed on various television programmes, which have featured case studies of people who were obviously distressed—and I do not doubt that some people are distressed by this change. Obviously, however, if they approached their local authority, they would not be affected by it. That is the issue. They would go to their local authority, which has been given money to help them; the authority would help them, so they would not be affected. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark and the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) are right that we must ensure that people are not unduly alarmed, as in many cases money is available to help the most vulnerable.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

Just to be clear, we are talking about women who draw a pension significantly earlier than men born on the same day. The hon. Gentleman is shaking his head; that is a statement of fact. It is the case that present pensioners do not fall under the new system. I have explained why we cannot bring it forward, but I am delighted that the Opposition’s principal criticism is that we are not introducing our reform quickly enough.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

On the Government’s benefit changes for housing, foster carers have expressed their concern to me that they might be inhibited from doing their good work by the extra penalty for having a spare room. Can the Secretary of State or a Minister give me some reassurance that the amount of fostering that we currently have—and need—can continue without financial disadvantage?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We are of course working closely with the Minister responsible at the Department for Education—the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson)—whose record on this is unimpeachable, as my right hon. Friend knows. He also should recognise that we have laid aside £5 million specifically to help with foster carers in the situation he described. However, we are in discussions with local authorities, county councils and the Department for Education about how best the money can be used to ensure that it specifically helps foster carers in this area, so that they suffer no hardship whatever, but can continue, and we can encourage more people to become foster carers.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

The Secretary of State knows that the Liberal Democrats are not comfortable about this sort of Bill, but my hon. Friend the Minister of State argued that, in difficult circumstances, we must take difficult measures. Will the Secretary of State reaffirm the Government’s commitment to taking children out of poverty, to the basic principles of the welfare state and to go on seeking to ensure that all those who cannot work through no fault of their own—carers, unemployed people and pensioners—will continue to be supported? Will he reaffirm that we intend there to be a fairer society at the end of this Government than there was at the beginning?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

That is my genuine intention. My right hon. Friend will know that his hon. Friend the Minister of State and I have worked to ensure that what we do to get the deficit down through universal credit and the other reforms—even those for pensions—will improve the lot of the poorest in society. If we take the figures on that relative income point across the period covered by the spending review, we can see that some 350,000 children net will be lifted out of poverty, even if we take into account the effect of this Bill. I can tell my right hon. Friend that that is absolutely our purpose and one that I believe we can stand by.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I know that the hon. Lady is new to the House—[Interruption.] I will seek to answer her question as soon as those on her own Front Bench calm down a little. I think that she would acknowledge that the economics and the politics of this Parliament are very different from those in the last three Parliaments. There was an important principle at the heart of the debate—namely, that those with the broadest shoulders should bear the biggest load. That is why, when Labour was in power, we put up the top rate of tax. We knew that, as part of the plan to bring the deficit down, those with the broadest shoulders should bear the biggest load. That is why we put up the top rate of tax, and that is why we object to the Chancellor of the Exchequer cutting it and giving £3.4 billion to Britain’s richest citizens when he is taking money from Britain’s working families.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

The hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) was right yesterday, and she is right today. This debate should not polarise people in work against people who are out of work. However, the right hon. Gentleman must realise that those of us who lived through the last Labour Government saw the rich doing better, the bonuses getting higher, the bankers exploiting people more and the pensioners not getting the link with earnings that Labour promised but never delivered. This is a difficult decision, but the Government have got the balance right in these difficult times. I hope that, by the end of this Parliament, they will be vindicated through many more people being in work and many fewer being on benefits.

[Mr Byrne]

I respect the passion with which the right hon. Gentleman made that intervention, but would he mind intervening once again and telling me whether he thinks a top-rate tax cut is the right priority for Britain’s hard-pressed working families?

[Simon Hughes]

No, I do not think that it is the right priority, but it was part of a package deal that will leave the richest paying more than they did under Labour, that will bring the top rate down to 45% when it was only 40% in 12.5 years of the Labour Government, and that will bring in a rise in the tax threshold to £9,440 for ordinary people in my constituency and the right hon. Gentleman’s this year. In this place, we make balanced choices. This is a reasonable balanced choice to get the economy out of the mess that he and his colleagues have clearly admitted they left us in.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—