Romanians and Bulgarians (Benefits)

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will, and I am at the moment. Since last year, we have been talking to colleagues in various countries, including Germany, about the need to deal with the Commission’s view. In a sense, the Commission is using free movement to enter the realm, I think, of social security, which has never been within its remit, and we have to challenge that. Up until now, Germany has been a little more ambivalent, but interestingly in the past two or three weeks it has suddenly begun to change its tune, and other countries, such as Spain, are coming into the group too. We have asked for urgent meetings immediately with that group—in the next two weeks—and I will raise this matter with it.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome the urgent question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), but I am sorry that the Secretary of State answered it in such partisan terms.

The benefits system needs to be fair, and to be seen to be fair. Over many decades, people have come to the UK and made a huge contribution to our economy and our society. The Government now need to look at the benefits and services to be provided, given the prospect of future European migration. We need a sensible and serious debate about credible changes, but the Secretary of State seems only to be floating some rather vague ideas without any sense of whether they can be delivered.

The Secretary of State plans to introduce universal credit from October, but roll-out has already been drastically delayed and fundamental questions are now being asked about the deliverability of the IT. If, as he suggested a moment ago, the Government are to change the rules in the system ahead of implementation, they risk making the delivery of universal credit even more chaotic than it is already set to be. Will he explain how the changes he now envisages will fit in with what is supposed to be being introduced already?

Over the weekend, we were tantalised with hints from Ministers that they wanted the system to be more contributory, but the changes they have made so far, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, are making it less contributory. Has the Secretary of State had a change of heart in favour of a more contributory approach? One other suggestion floated is for the introduction of ID cards. Are these the same ID cards that Ministers announced were scrapped straight after the election? Furthermore, will he and his colleagues do a much better job of enforcing the minimum wage? There have been no prosecutions for minimum wage infringements over the past two years, which has been part of the problem. Will he now put that right?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The changes are long overdue, and I would like to know why the right hon. Gentleman did not explain why the last Government did nothing about resolving the issue. He says that we should not be partisan, but he just has made a very partisan statement when an apology was all he needed to make. He needed only to say that he was sorry for the mess Labour left us in.

What we are talking about will have no practical effect on the implementation of universal credit, which, by the way, is proceeding exactly in accordance with plans. On the contributory principle—this is the point I wanted to make to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead—there is no magic wand. Let us bear it in mind that if it was a blanket contributory principle, we would end up paying a lot of benefits, such as winter fuel payments—an issue that, as the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) knows, was not resolved by his Government—to lots of people who had long since departed Britain. We are considering the matter, and universal credit will give us an ideal opportunity to embrace tax credits and, through this requirement, to start the process of change so that we can resist the pressure of paying tax credits—because they would no longer exist—to people who come to the UK for the first time and claim to be self-employed. That is the area I am looking at.

We need no lectures from the right hon. Gentleman about prosecutions for minimum wage infringements. The last Government’s record on this was so bad I wonder why the Opposition bother mentioning it at the Dispatch Box. We are trying to change it, and will change it, whereas the last Government gave way on every single issue in Europe from the moment they arrived.