Social Security

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

If it is true that, as we heard from the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen), tax income outstripped public spending by £14.9 billion this January—giving the Government their biggest surplus since records began—we have to ask ourselves why on earth we are doing this. There can be no persuasive economic case to support it. Why is there a need to persist with another year of benefits freeze? Why are we holding most working benefits and tax credits to their 2015-16 value?

Pensioners, as we have heard, can expect a 2.6% increase, which I welcome, but the Minister’s persuasive argument for the triple lock to maintain income security for vulnerable pensioners could just as easily be made for all the other people who are about to lose out. Benefits aimed specifically at disabled people and carers are also set to rise, and I welcome that too, but how are those people fundamentally different from young children in their needs?

I will not go over all of this, but we have heard about the range of frozen benefits—in particular, child and working tax credits and child benefit. The attack on those benefits is about the meanest of all. If they were not frozen, those benefits would be rising by about 2.4% in today’s announcement. That might make the difference in whether someone can buy their kid a pair of shoes or guarantee that they have their breakfast before they go to school in the morning. Over the past four years, the most exposed, the most vulnerable and those at the poorest end of our society have suffered the loss of about 6.1% of the value of their benefits. It looks as though this is a deliberate strategy to punish people for being poor and vulnerable. It is hard to equate that with the idea that austerity is over.

As we have heard, the ending of this benefits freeze would lift 200,000 people out of poverty, but as things stand this Government are on course to plunge a record number of children into poverty, and it sends the signal that they do not care. They could do something about it—there is no economic case here—but they do not care. If the Prime Minister had been sincere when she stood on those steps outside No. 10 Downing Street, we would not be listening to this uprating today. The social security uprating that has been announced tells us all we need to know about this Government. They are not only incompetent but mean-spirited and punitive towards the very people in society who should be most able to rely on our help.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve McCabe]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I know that this Government are tempted to play with rules as if they did not really exist, but is there any precedent for a set of orders of such importance to be placed on the Order Paper in the fashion that the Government have done this evening? I cannot recollect that ever happening in the 21 years that I have been in this place.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Again, I am happy to answer the hon. Gentleman’s point. It is quite normal for there to be several such orders on the Order Paper, to come up after the end of the business. I agree with him in saying that it is unusual to have such a large number, but he will not need me to tell him that this Parliament is currently dealing with a great many matters of secondary legislation in pursuance of the leaving of the European Union. If he notices that there is something unusual, then my guess is as good as his that that is what is unusual—we have not dealt with something of that kind before, and it does require a lot of legislation. As we have now passed the point of interruption at 10 o’clock, the matters before us will not be put for immediate Divisions—I think hon. Members had worked that out.