Fairness and Inequality

Debate between Stephen Crabb and Sheila Gilmore

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore]

The Minister is very quick to talk about taxation issues, but surely the net effect of the Government’s policies on tax, on payments of benefits and tax credits, is that people on lower incomes have suffered a loss.

[Stephen Crabb]

I simply disagree with the hon. Lady’s argument. The Government are determined that, as the economic recovery emerges throughout the country, people on the lowest incomes should be at the front of the queue to benefit from that recovery.

We recognise that for those on the lowest pay things remain challenging. Wage levels are not where we want them to be. That is why we need a strong minimum wage. I am proud that the coalition Government have not only implemented the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission in full, but that last year we were able to go beyond its recommendations and increase the apprentice rate too. We can afford that only because we have taken difficult and responsible financial decisions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

In some ways this is a triangular debate, because there so many different views across the House.

We were treated to what I can only call a reprise of the 1930s from the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who is no longer in his seat. Many of his arguments were made in this place in the 1930s on issues such as unemployment benefit. Many people said then that unemployment benefit, such as it was, was holding people back from working because it made them lazy and they did not try very hard to get jobs, and it was a very bad thing. Indeed, we could probably go back even beyond the 1930s. I suspect that the hon. Gentleman’s great, great, great, great ancestor in the early 19th century was probably saying something similar about the poor law—that provisions had to be made really tough and that people should not get out-relief but in-workhouse relief, because it was making them lazy and unwilling to work for low wages. This argument is constantly reproduced. Nobody—I think nobody—would say now that high unemployment went on for so long in the 1930s because unemployment benefit was too generous. Blaming the problem of unemployment on the unemployed is no new thing, but it is, frankly, wrong, and it is too simple an explanation.

At the other extreme, we have the “wouldn’t it be nice if we could do everything” brigade, which is how much of the yes to independence campaign is being waged in Scotland. This is the idea that we can do it all and can have everything: a lower retirement age, better social security benefits and lower taxes all at one and the same time, and that this is the solution to all our problems. Back in the real world—which, I have to say, will be the world facing a Scottish Government whether under independence or not—there are real challenges and we have to consider how we can deal with them properly.

Other myths have been perpetrated. The hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) wanted us to feel that he and many of his colleagues would like to reduce inequality, too, and that the way to do it is to get the economy back on its feet; there would be no reason why inequality would not then be reduced. The problem—he is no longer in his place to intervene to tell me I am wrong—is that I suspect he thinks that the Conservative Government in the years between 1979 and 1997 were right in the way they ran the economy. The trouble is that during those years inequality rose at a very fast rate. In these debates, Members frequently say that it continued to rise under the Labour Government, but it rose far less and the big rises in inequality came during the years of Conservative government. During those years—when, in the view of Members such as the hon. Member for Bedford, the economy was getting back on the right path—inequality rose substantially, so if some of us are less than convinced that this Government want genuinely to deal with inequality, we have historical precedents on which to base that opinion.

[Stephen Crabb]

We have had some discussion about income inequality. Let me put it on the record once again that income inequality reached record levels during the previous Parliament and under the previous Labour Government. Income inequality is falling under this Government.

[Sheila Gilmore]

The big increase in income inequality was clearly between 1979 and 1997. Any graph will make that quite clear.

There is a danger in perpetuating the myth mentioned by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards). I apologise to the House for missing some speeches, including the one by the Member who represents the Western Isles—I am sorry, but as a lowland Scot I genuinely find it difficult to pronounce the name of his constituency in Gaelic so I shall just call it the Western Isles. I missed his virtuoso performance because I was sitting on a Public Bill Committee, not because I did not want to hear what he had to say.

The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr said that there was no difference between a Labour Government and the current Government. As I have said in some of my interventions, that is not correct. It is dangerous to say so, too, because it makes a lot of people think that there is no point in voting or trying to change things because Governments do not make any difference and because there is no difference between the parties.

For example, the reduction in pensioner poverty during the years of Labour government should not be forgotten. Many pensioners will not forget that. A lot of what that Government did created the base on which this Government propose to build with the single-tier pension. As I have said before, it was not the triple lock that produced the highest cash payment to pensioners but inflation—an inflationary rise made necessary by the Government’s own—[Interruption.] I apologise to the Chair of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, of which I am a member, for not seeing her try to intervene.