Housing Benefit

Debate between Steve Rotheram and David T C Davies

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

Let me return to what I was saying. The BBC took me to meet three groups of people, whom it had chosen. The second lady whom I met was looking after four children. They were not her own children; she was their grandmother. The mother, because she was not the main carer for the children, was going to lose out on housing. What those people wanted were two large houses to look after the same family. While I felt sorry for everyone involved, including the children, I have to say that the state is not there to provide not one, but two sets of very large houses for people with large numbers of children.

Another question arose while I was meeting that lady, and it is a frank question. I never use the term “single mother” because I think that it is pejorative, and it has affected people in my own family. I think it is a generalisation. However, I have absolutely no hesitation in talking about feckless fathers. Those children had been brought into the world by a group of different males, and those males, having brought those children into the world, had disappeared and left the two ladies to try to bring them up themselves.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[David T. C. Davies]

No. I said that I would give way only once to an Opposition Member.

I think it absolutely outrageous that so many young men in our society feel that they can go out, get women pregnant, allow them to have children, make them bring up those children by themselves—often on benefits—and then just disappear. That is utterly shocking. I hope that Ministers will note what I am saying, and that they will get hold of some of those feckless fathers, drag them off, make them work—put them in chains if necessary—and make them pay society back for the cost of bringing up the children whom they chose to bring into this world.

I also met a young couple, 17 years old, both of whom had never worked in their lives. They were living in a two-bedroom or perhaps a one-bedroom flat, and were being expected to suffer some inconvenience—perhaps to move into a studio flat. Let me say to Ministers that, in many instances, they are being far too generous. Why should the state pay for two people to set themselves up in what is frankly a teenage love nest? When I was 17 years old, if I wanted to see my girlfriend I would go and see her on a park bench in Newport. Why are the Government paying for those young people to have a flat all by themselves at all, regardless of whether it contains one bedroom or two?

I got into a lot of trouble, because I suggested to the young man that perhaps he should go out and find himself a job. He said that there were no jobs, which, incidentally, contradicted the example of the lady whom I had seen before him: she had found work. I said, “Why do you not move to where the work is?”, and immediately received a whole load of criticism.

I was even sent an e-mail from someone who wrote “You are a Christian. You should be serving the Lord. One day you will stand by the Lord and account for this hardship.” I wrote back to him saying, “I read my Bible. I do not see anything in the Bible that says that 17-year-olds should be given a flat, but I see plenty of examples of people who have had to move to find a better way of life: Abraham going off to the promised land, or Moses, or the disciples, who toured all over Europe. They all moved.”

Victoria station is a prime bit of expensive real estate. There is Boots, Costa Coffee and Starbucks, and there is an office which is recruiting people to work for Pret A Manger. I went there one day last week, and saw that there were 100 vacancies at Pret A Manger in central London. It was just waiting to take people on. Young people with an attitude and an ability to go out and do a bit of work can find a job with no problem whatsoever, and I do not think that we should be supporting them in the way that we are.

Opposition Members have heard a few anecdotes from me, because they have liked giving anecdotes themselves. What we have not heard from them is anything with much substance. They do not want to talk about the fact that they introduced a measure like this for the private sector. None of them will answer the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey). They do not want to talk about their disgraceful record on house building, which has led to a disgraceful level of overcrowding. Most of all, they do not want to talk about the fact that by borrowing hundreds of millions of pounds which they did not have, they created the financial crisis that forced us into this situation in the first place.

I am very happy to be here supporting the Government —the coalition Government—on this important issue today. I have only one criticism of the Front Bench, and that is this: the next time we are expected to come here and defend a policy with which all of us on these Benches agree, they should issue us with umbrellas, so that we can shield ourselves from the shower of crocodile tears that are raining down upon us from Opposition Members.

Contaminated Blood and Blood Products

Debate between Steve Rotheram and David T C Davies

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Appropriately, I am wearing a black tie today both to acknowledge the fact that many people have died because of contaminated blood products before they had the opportunity to see a full debate on the subject in this Chamber, and to pay respects to a constituent of mine, James McVey, who died tragically at the weekend at the age of just 18. His death is not related to this issue, but I am sure that all Members on both sides of the House would want to join me in sending our condolences to his family and friends.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for bringing this long-neglected issue firmly back on to the political agenda. It is to our great shame that it is necessary to have a debate on it so long after the original events, and it is an indictment of previous Administrations that many of the issues surrounding the contaminated blood disaster remain unresolved to this day.

The case for making adequate reparations to the victims and their families has been eloquently made both today and on previous occasions in this House and in the other place. However, I have never heard a more stirring description of the tragedy and its effects on individual lives than the emotional personal account of one young gentleman in Committee Room 7 yesterday. His words will stay with me for a very long time.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

In common with many other speakers, the hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case for compensation, and I think all Members have sympathy with that. However, given the pain being caused by the £1 billion saved by getting rid of child benefit for higher rate taxpayers, where does he think that £3 billion will come from? Does he have the courage to tell the House which budget we should cut to pay that compensation?

[Steve Rotheram]

I am being encouraged to make a party political point, but as my mum used to say, “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” and, believe me, if I were sitting on the Government Benches now I would be saying exactly the same thing. On this issue, it does not matter what political party we are in.

The NHS failed almost 5,000 people. Through using contaminated blood and blood products, it made ill people more ill, sometimes fatally so. It made perfectly healthy individuals—accident victims requiring blood transfusions, for example—unwell for life. Indeed, as many have said this fiasco was, in Lord Winston’s words,

“the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS”.

The state should have gone out of its way decades ago to compensate victims financially and in kind, not only to accept responsibility, but proactively to alleviate the adverse impact of its mistakes. Instead, successive Governments have prevaricated; they have been reluctant to acknowledge fault and loth to carry the can financially.