Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tony Baldry and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 9th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

T9. In the past five years, how many people have moved from benefits into work? Is there any comparable five-year period since 1945 when so many people have moved off benefits into the world of work?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The record now for people moving from benefits into work is remarkable. Some 600,000 have moved back into work. Peak to peak, the figure is over 800,000, and we have many, many more people back in employment. There have never been as many people in work and that number is still growing, with some 700,000 vacancies in the jobcentres every week.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tony Baldry and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 26th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am afraid I simply do not recognise the kind of case the hon. Lady raises. She knows that if she wants to raise a case directly with me or with the Minister for Employment, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), she should do so, but there is no such rule in jobcentres or in respect of sanctions. [Interruption.] Yes, I am very happy to see the hon. Lady, but let me bring her to the wider issue, which is simply this: the report made it very clear that there are multiple issues. What the Opposition have tried to do non-stop, as they have with the spare room subsidy and other matters, is try to scare everybody up and down the country into believing that there is a magic wand. Let me remind her that under her Government the number of food banks doubled. The reality is that long before the coalition came to power, they were already delivering a failed economy and forcing people out of work and into difficulty beyond whatever we may have done.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

One of the reasons for using food banks—a reason given by those who use them—is delays in benefit payments. Am I right in thinking, however, that the average time for sorting out benefit payment disputes has been reduced to under two weeks?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My right hon. Friend is correct. The reality is that delays in benefit payments have fallen under this Government. There are now fewer delays. The Opposition say that we need to speed up the payment of benefits. I remind them that under Labour benefits were not paid until two weeks after the claim, so unless they are now saying that benefits should be paid earlier than that, I really have no idea what the Opposition’s policy is on this. We pay benefits as quickly as possible. There is no determination to delay payment. Jobcentres and benefit offices do their level best to ensure that people get money when they need it, and hardship funds are available if anybody has any difficulty.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tony Baldry and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am interested in the hon. Lady’s question because in the report Alan Milburn brought out as part of his commission he recommended that we should

“supplement the existing child poverty targets with new measures to give a more rounded picture of those in poverty”,

and I agree with that. That is what we have set out to do. We took a consultation, and we are now considering that consultation and we will be bringing forward recommendations.

May I just say to the hon. Lady, however, that many of the forecasts about child poverty proved to be wrong? Child poverty has actually fallen, and, interestingly, I notice that the figures for her area show that Tower Hamlets has seen the largest fall of any local authority in England, down 7.1%, and down 9.6% since 2010 for those on tax credits and below the poverty line.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

I am sure that when I voted for the welfare cap I was surrounded in the Division Lobby by large numbers of Labour Members of Parliament. Does my right hon. Friend agree that one can only have an effective welfare cap, and cap the welfare bill, if benefits do not rise faster than wages?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right and he is approaching this from the logical perspective, which is that we have a responsibility to make sure that the economy is in balance, that we get the deficit down and that we are able to afford what we want to do to support the most vulnerable. What the Opposition fail to recognise time and again is that the economy that they left in a totally wrecked position has got to be sorted out; we cannot just go spending what we do not earn.

Affordable Homes Bill

Debate between Tony Baldry and Iain Duncan Smith

Friday 5th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Tony Baldry]

The hon. Lady and other Labour Members are refusing to acknowledge some fundamental points about the Bill. She voted for the welfare cap and the Minister has said that the Bill would cost the Treasury £1 billion. If it were passed, therefore, and if, by any mischance, a Labour Government were to be elected next spring, they would have to find £1 billion of savings elsewhere in the welfare budget. If Labour votes in support of the Bill, it will behove Labour Front-Bench team, given that the Labour party is governed by collective responsibility just as much as the Government are, to tell the House and the country exactly where they would find £1 billion of savings elsewhere in the welfare budget to compensate for the cost of the Bill.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

For clarification, all the figures were adjudicated by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, not the Government. The Opposition and the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), who is promoting the Bill, have said they want the figures checked, but the OBR is an independent body and therefore the figures stand and include all the costs and savings.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

I am sure the whole House is grateful to my right hon. Friend for that clarification and confirmation.

I thought it would be interesting to go back and read the Committee proceedings of the Welfare Reform Bill in 2006. Hon. Members might not recall, but, interestingly, when the proposal for limiting housing benefit for those in the private rented sector was first mooted, the original consultation paper also consulted on a proposal to limit housing benefit for those in social housing on exactly the same basis. Nowhere on Second Reading or in Committee did the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire), the then Minister, ever explain to the House or the Committee why the then Labour Government decided only to focus the housing benefit changes on the private rented sector and not to include social housing.

In Committee, various hon. Members sought to make exactly the same proposals and changes as are being proposed today. For example, Members were keen to know whether alterations could be made for under-25s in the private rented sector, and the Minister said that the changes were

“part of a package that is intended to make housing benefit more transparent and more understandable to people….I hark back to our short debate on Tuesday evening: the new local housing allowance applies only to those in the private rented sector.”—[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 2 November 2006; c. 424-45.]

In other words, the changes were being introduced entirely because the last Government thought it necessary to save money.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tony Baldry and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Let me explain to the right hon. Gentleman that the reality is that we have agreed—I can run through the list for him—all the spending that is relevant to the plan that we set out at the end of last year. The final point relates to the full lifetime of that programme, which will take it all the way through, probably beyond all the years that anybody present will be in government. [Hon. Members: “Certainly you!”] To be fair, I do not think Labour will be in government given the way its Members behave. That is now being agreed and the reality is that it has to be done very carefully. I genuinely believe, from my discussions, that it will be signed off very shortly. The result will be that the programme will be seen for what it is: a programme that will deliver hugely to those who have the toughest lives and need the most support and help.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

22. One can see the advantages of the introduction of universal credit to those whose lives are toughest, but will my right hon. Friend tell the House what the benefits to both employers and businesses might be once universal credit is fully implemented?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I invite anybody in the House to visit areas where universal credit is rolling out—across the north-west, and even here in London—not to talk to the likes of me but to the staff who operate the jobcentres, who will say that it has allowed them to get people started into work far quicker, so that they are taking work earlier and staying in work longer. It means that businesses on the high street can afford to take people on, to begin with for lower hours than they might otherwise have been able to do—in other words, not creating a job—and then expand it into a much fuller-time job, so improving the economy and improving lives.

Universal Credit

Debate between Tony Baldry and Iain Duncan Smith

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I take full responsibility for everything in the Department and there will progressively be an IT system that rolls out this programme. It will deliver, and I rather hope that by the time of the next election the Opposition come back and say sorry.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Did my right hon. Friend listen to the “Today” programme yesterday, when the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) repeatedly made it clear that the Opposition support the introduction of universal credit? Does he not consider it strange that not once did she make that clear in the House today? Does he not think it strange to support universal credit on the airwaves but seek to rubbish it here? If the Opposition really do support the introduction of universal credit, surely they want to see it introduced properly.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend is right. The problem is that the hon. Lady went touring around all the studios, also saying that we would be writing off hundreds of millions of pounds. She is wrong on that. I see she has dropped that today, but the point is that the Opposition have nothing to say about this, so they want to pick away at a plan which, apparently, they support. [Interruption.] When you support something, you support it. They actually oppose it. [Interruption.]

Universal Credit

Debate between Tony Baldry and Iain Duncan Smith

Thursday 5th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend not feel that every time Labour Members snipe at him they simply show that they are not serious about welfare reform? Does the National Audit Office report not show that universal credit can substantially benefit society and, indeed, can benefit society by some £38 billion by 2022-23?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The reality is that this NAO report is very clear about the benefits and very clear that if we get the resets right—it gave us a list of them—and every one of those items has been done, it will save £38 billion. More than that, it will help improve the lives of the least well-off as they are delivered back into work. We should remember that I inherited from the previous Labour Government a chaotic system costing billions—and we are putting it right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tony Baldry and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 10th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I agree. The hon. Lady raises an important point about an area of work—I was just talking to my ministerial colleague about it—that universal credit should help to rectify and improve dramatically, because putting everything into one location will allow us to target it correctly on the intended recipients. One of the biggest problems is that the complexity of the system does not allow that to happen, meaning that lots of people fall through the cracks.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Universal credit will be the greatest revolution in the benefits system for more than a generation. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that every Member has the opportunity, between now and the introduction of universal credit, to get to grips with its minutiae, so that we can be confident of ensuring that our constituents understand how it will work?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will follow through on that very good suggestion. We are already consulting. My hon. Friend might be aware that in July we had a series of consultations in the Committee Rooms with Members of the other place and of this House. We intend to continue that consultation and to set up demonstrations of how it works at the front end and of what they will need to do. We are determined to ensure that Members understand how to claim it—I hope that some of them may have to use it in due course.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tony Baldry and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 10th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We will strengthen the role of the independent decision maker to ensure that decisions are made for the right reasons. The hon. Lady can rest assured that we will ensure that is the case. If she has any concerns, she should raise them with us, and if she has any thoughts, we are open to dispute.

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that one implication of this question is that jobs are not available in the marketplace? Just before Christmas, we conducted a survey in my constituency, where there were more than 700 job vacancies. People from Swansea are as welcome to take up those job vacancies as people from anywhere else in the country.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend is right. Over the past nine months, we have seen a huge increase in part-time work with more than 400,000 new jobs. [Interruption.] The answer to Labour Members is that jobs are being created even though we are coming out of a recession, which was brought on by their policies.

Welfare Reform

Debate between Tony Baldry and Iain Duncan Smith

Thursday 11th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I made no such assertion. What I was demonstrating was that if you put a check in place and ask people to demonstrate their situation, those who are bent on a different purpose will naturally fall out. I used the last Government’s work capability assessment programme to illustrate how that affects new entrants. I was by no means casting aspersions on anybody who is going through the programme, because they deserve what they get.

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Many of those who are out of work will need to update existing skills or acquire new skills to help them get back into the world of work. What is my right hon. Friend’s Department doing to try to ensure that people who are out of work can access skills through the further education sector and other means?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

This comes back to the Work programme, because it will be about drawing in mentors from the private sector to advise people on setting up businesses and to give other support and advice. The mentoring programme will allow us not only to get people into work, but to mentor them until they get the work habit. That is the critical point. Once they get the work habit, they will be capable of looking after themselves.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tony Baldry and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 18th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The greatest form of measurement that we can use is that which will apply to the Work programme, whereby bodies will essentially be paid by results. In other words, if they do not get people back to work, they will not receive the money that will allow them to make any kind of profit at all. The best way of measuring them is to pay them when they are successful, and not, as happened with one scheme under the last Government, before they are successful.

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

4. What support his Department plans to make available to people on incapacity benefit to enable them to take up employment.