Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Toby Perkins and Charlie Elphicke

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke]

The hon. Gentleman makes the case better than I could about the extent of the mess left by the previous Government, which was such that recovery has been choppy. As the whole Committee knows, a recovery from a debt crisis is always much tougher, particularly when we also have the eurozone plunging into crisis because of its years of mismanagement. Unless we have sound money and ensure restraint in the public finances and growth in the private sector, we will not be able to turn the corner and get the economy growing and the nation’s finances in place. The economy is now starting to heal, but part of that involves building in an extra incentive to ensure that work pays—universal credit is part of that—and ensuring an extra incentive for those who are out of work and on benefits to go into work. We do that by not continuing with the over-generous benefits or over-uprating of benefits, as compared with what people in work have received, that we have seen in recent years.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making the point strongly that it is important that we make work pay. On that basis, is he concerned that 60% of those affected by the clauses we are discussing today are in work, and that this Bill is making precisely those hard-working people on low and middle incomes worse off by being in work?

[Charlie Elphicke]

The hon. Gentleman well knows that this Government have taken many people on low incomes out of tax altogether. That is not something that his party did. Labour froze the personal allowance and, over time, had more people in the tax system relatively speaking. We have taken people out of tax, because we do not see the point in taking money off people in taxes and then handing their own money back to them. It is better not to take it off them in the first place.

The key point is that the Opposition are proposing to impose a cost of £3.5 billion. I ask them: where are they going to find the money? How will they pay for their spending pledge? If they want to pay for it through more borrowing—which always seems to be their policy—all they will do is raise interest rates for hard-pressed mortgage holders, small businesses and borrowers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Charlie Elphicke]

More than 30,000 people in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency have seen their pay go up in recent years by just 10%. They are in work and striving to get by. How can he justify asking them to pay more taxes and provide more money for people on benefits when the latter have had a 20% increase in the same period? Is that not unfair on working people?

[Toby Perkins]

One point I have laboured is that hon. Members cannot compare in percentage terms the difference the Bill will make for someone on £70 a week and someone on £35,000 a year. The hon. Gentleman seems to be attempting to make such a comparison, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) related previously—

The Economy

Debate between Toby Perkins and Charlie Elphicke

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke]

Employment has gone up in my constituency, and unemployment has been falling, which is welcome. We are going in the right direction: across the nation, there are 520,000 new private sector jobs, while public sector employment has fallen by 143,000, so we see a net rise. The most recently announced figures show unemployment falling sharply by 88,000.

[Toby Perkins]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Charlie Elphicke]

No. Time is pressing, and I need to allow time for the wind-ups.

Youth unemployment has also started to move strongly— although perhaps not as strongly as wider unemployment —in the right direction. Surely the House must welcome that. Manufacturing output is also moving more in the right direction, after being halved in the Labour years, and now being about 11% of our economy. I hope that the economy will rebalance under this Government so that we are less dependent on banks and fat cats—for party donations, frankly—on handing out knighthoods and on bonuses, and more dependent on much more productive service and manufacturing industries. We need less of financial services and housing, and more of making things, producing things, servicing things, and—yes—education.

The narrative of what this Government are doing is to ensure that our economy is stronger, that our work force are more incentivised to work by making work pay through universal credit, and that they are not only incentivised to work but given the skills to work under the Government’s skills and education agenda. We can have a country that is more productive, where more people want to be in employment, where we do not suck in people from overseas to do the jobs, and where we ensure that our countrymen are encouraged to get into work, do their part, fulfil their potential and have more of a sense of dignity, happiness and well-being. That will allow us to build a Britain that is fit for this decade, and it will ensure that we steam ahead, further ahead, of our European colleagues, and do well. The Government are working on that, and deficit reduction is part of it, but the growth, rebalancing, welfare reform and skills and education agendas are parts of the narrative that add up to a much stronger, much more vibrant economy—a much more exciting Britain-to-be where people will be able to benefit from much more success, much more money and much more good fortune, built on a solid foundation for the long term.