Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Stephen Timms and Margot James

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms]

We will announce uprating policy in the normal way on the normal timetable, not on a date chosen by the Chancellor for his own partisan purposes.

I think the Minister knows that I have been looking back at his speech in the Child Poverty Bill Second Reading debate in July 2009—fewer than four years ago. It was an autobiographical speech, as he said at the time. He explained that his first job was with the Institute for Fiscal Studies, where he had the task in the 1980s of compiling its poverty statistics. He said that

“year after year the level of child poverty would remorselessly grow. A majority of people would do relatively well, enjoying tax cuts, and the people at the top would do exceptionally well, but year after year more and more children would find themselves in poverty.”

He said that he decided to become a politician because he

“was appalled at what was happening in our country to the most vulnerable people”—[Official Report, 20 July 2009; Vol. 496, c. 625.]

Now here he is, three and a half years later, arguing in this Committee for exactly the same combination of policies he condemned at the time: tax cuts for the highest paid and benefit cuts for the most vulnerable. Exactly as in the 1980s, as he knows better than anybody, the result is certain: child poverty rocketing. With the extra rise as a result of the Bill, if current policies are maintained it will go up by 1 million by 2020—right back up to the level he was logging at the IFS in the 1980s.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the most recent data demonstrate a reduction in child poverty last year of 300,000? If he disputes that, does he have any comment on the way the previous Government measured child poverty, and whether that measure should be changed?

[Stephen Timms]

Absolutely right—the policies of the previous Government have continued to have beneficial impacts, but as soon as this Government change the policy the numbers will rocket back up again. According to the IFS, child poverty will rise by 400,000 by 2015 and by 800,000 by 2020. On top of that, there will be an additional rise of 200,000 as a result of the Bill. That is what the Government’s policies are doing.

Equitable Life (Payments) Bill

Debate between Stephen Timms and Margot James

Tuesday 14th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms]

Sir John has, in fact, reported. He did so in July. That was rather later than he was going to report; he would have reported in May, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) said that we would have produced a scheme within two weeks. As I have said, our view would have been that we should proceed as we had intended, and as we set out before the election, on the basis of the report that we commissioned.

The new Government delayed publication of the report until July, and we still do not know what the scheme will be. We know almost nothing about the timetable, but I am afraid it will not be what EMAG has been demanding, which it thought current Ministers were signing up to when they signed all those pledges. A great many people feel very let down indeed.

[Margot James]

The ombudsman has found much to welcome in the Bill and this Government’s proposals, such as the independent commission, the compensation scheme, the enabling mechanisms to be set up, the transparency and the progress made. She has welcomed that. Are not Opposition Members therefore getting ahead of themselves in writing off what the Government are proposing? It is one thing for long-suffering members of EMAG to be in that frame of mind because they have been let down so many times, but Opposition Members are getting ahead of themselves. The compensation pot has not yet been fixed, and we are all keen to see the maximum allowance made within the context of the state of the public finances. Opposition Members are being far too negative.

[Stephen Timms]

The ombudsman has said that the Chadwick approach is no longer relevant because the Government have fully accepted her recommendation, yet the Government are saying that they accept that recommendation but that Chadwick is the building block for the future scheme. There is a fundamental contradiction in the Government’s policy.