Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Yvette Cooper. I had thought that the right hon. Lady wanted to come in on this question.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Speaker]

Perhaps there has been a change of plan. Never mind.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend asks an important question. In the past 14 years huge sums of money have been narrowly focused on different groups, and we have forgotten that in households with families, far too many are out of work. That is one reason why child poverty has been so difficult to tackle, and why we must change the system. We want to consider how to make work pay for those on the lowest incomes, and how work can be distributed more among households and less just among individuals. Most particularly, we want people to recognise that it is more important and more viable for them to be back in work than on benefits. The complicated system that the previous Government introduced, with all its different taper rates and withdrawal rates, meant that people needed to be professors of maths to figure out whether they would be better off going to work or staying on benefits. Our job is to ensure that the system is simpler and easier to understand. Unlike the previous Government, we will value households that take a risk and try to go to work.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will know that many young people get fantastic help from the voluntary sector through, for example, the future jobs fund, the youth guarantee, the working neighbourhoods fund, and also through small contracts with the jobcentres to help people into work. As he is cutting those programmes by more than £1 billion, does he think that the funding from his Department for the voluntary sector to help young people and others into work will increase or decrease in the next 12 months?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I would say to the Secretary of State—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] I mean the shadow Secretary of State; I nearly made a mistake there. I would say to the right hon. Lady that we will provide sufficient funds as necessary for the voluntary sector. She should know from all our previous work that the voluntary sector is a vital part of finding people work and putting them in closer touch with their local communities. She goes on about the future jobs fund, and she must understand that we are continuing with the programmes that have already been let, but getting rid of those that have not yet been let. She knows that those programmes are incredibly expensive—far more expensive than the guarantee. We simply cannot afford them, because of the mess that the previous Government left, so she must understand that we will get people back into work through ensuring that the economy is back on track, providing apprenticeships, which offer real opportunity for young people, and ensuring that the national insurance hike that she was about to make will not happen.

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that the consequence of his party’s Budget is to cut, not increase, the number of jobs in the economy. He will also know that he is cutting 90,000 planned and funded jobs from the future jobs fund. He did not answer the question about whether he would increase or cut the support for the voluntary sector to help get people into work. As he well knows, the Minister in the Lords has told voluntary sector providers that they are too small to get contracts under the Work programme. The Government have quadrupled the size of the contracts, and are locking out the voluntary sector for up to seven years. Is not the truth that all the right hon. Gentleman’s talk about the big society is simply a big con, to hide cuts in jobs, in help for the unemployed and in support to get people back to work?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is ridiculous for the right hon. Lady to stand there, two and a half months after leaving government with the finances in a total shambles, and try to lecture us about youth unemployment. [Interruption.] I remind her that in the whole time for which Labour Members were in government, there were only three years in which they reduced unemployment for 16 to 17-year-olds. Youth unemployment rose throughout 10 years, and the Labour Government left it worse than they found it. No lectures from the right hon. Lady, please; only apologies will do.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are 2.2 million people on incapacity benefit and an additional 400,000 on employment and support allowance, and under the previous Government a very large number of them heard absolutely nothing from the state; they were simply left to rot on benefits. I think that is wrong. Many of those people could benefit enormously if we helped them back into the workplace. That will be a central goal of the Work programme. My one regret is that the Labour party did not do that years ago.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

May I ask the Secretary of State particularly about the overall impact of the welfare changes announced in the Budget and since then, because he will know that, for instance, the value of carer’s allowance is being cut by about £135 a year over the next few years, which particularly hits women, and that the value of attendance allowance is being cut by about £185 a year over the next few years, again particularly hitting women? Has his Department done any assessment of the overall impact of the £11 billion of welfare cuts on women—yes or no?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We are assessing all the impacts of every change we are making. As the right hon. Lady knows, we will be publishing those relating to housing benefit, and as and when we have the full details, I will quite happily let her know.