Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Mosley Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As I said earlier, what we are trying to do in respect of housing, as in respect of all other areas of public spending in the welfare system, is increase the incentives to work. Something has gone seriously wrong with a housing benefit system that has more than doubled in recent years, from £10 billion to £21 billion, and has locked many people into long-term dependency. It has not created incentives to work, or incentives for house builders to build more affordable homes. We plan to increase capital investment in house building, reform housing benefit, and build up to 400,000 affordable homes over the coming decade.

[Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)]

T5. Given that several major public sector trade unions are threatening public action over some of the announcements in last week’s comprehensive spending review, and given continued attempts by unions to block some of the reforms that the coalition Government are trying to introduce, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is time to reduce the trade unions’ irresponsible influence on British party politics, and to draw up proposals to reform trade union funding of political parties?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I imagine that the hon. Gentleman’s views would be particularly unpopular with the new leader of the Labour party, who secured his position only because of the block and duplicate votes of trade union members.

I hope that, in the coming weeks and months, we will not pitch the country into confrontation between the Government and the trade unions. I believe that—this, incidentally, has applied to local authorities up and down the country under the control of different political parties—there is a means by which we can work co-operatively with trade unions to make the savings that we need to make as a nation, and reduce to the bare minimum the number of job losses that might be incurred in the process.