Yvette Cooper
Main Page: Yvette Cooper (Labour - Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley)Department Debates - View all Yvette Cooper's debates with the HM Treasury
(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
It is an improvement on the situation under the previous Government, where there was absolutely no contact between the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the Chancellor. The two Departments are working very well. Obviously the Treasury is interested in financial management and control: that is a proper part of our function. My right hon. Friend has inspirational plans that he has worked on to reform welfare and get people working, and the two of us are working together with colleagues in the Cabinet to make that happen.
Let me finally say something about the tax gap and people who do not pay their taxes. Later this week, figures will be produced—independent figures, not produced by me—which will show the latest situation on the tax gap that we have inherited: in other words, the gap between what should be collected in tax and what is collected in tax at the moment. Judging by previous figures I have seen, I think that the House will be pretty staggered by this number. [Interruption.] Labour Members seem to forget that their people were in power for 13 years. We have inherited this situation, and we will be taking steps to reduce tax avoidance, including tax avoidance by the richest people in our society, so that everyone makes a contribution.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
The shadow Chancellor and the shadow Chief Secretary are not in Westminster today, Mr Speaker, and you will be aware that I had asked a similar urgent question of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, so it is good that the Chancellor is replying, although very unfortunate that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has chosen not to come to respond.
On Thursday, the Chancellor told the BBC that the Government were cutting an additional £4 billion from out-of-work benefits. The BBC website says:
“The government is planning to reduce the annual welfare bill by a further £4bn, Chancellor George Osborne has told the BBC.”
Today, he has refused to tell the House what he told the BBC. Did the BBC correspondents just get it wrong? Did they mishear what he said? Will he now come clean and tell us what he has in fact got agreed and planned for the additional cuts that he wants to make to the welfare bills for the spending review? Will he tell us whether the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has agreed to £4 billion of additional cuts? Will he admit that the timing of this interview had nothing to do with reaching agreement on the spending review with the Work and Pensions Secretary and everything to do with getting Andy Coulson off the BBC headlines for the day?
In June, the Chancellor wrote to the Secretary of State:
“I am pleased that you, the prime minister, and I have agreed to press ahead with reforms to the ESA as part of the spending review that deliver net savings of at least £2.5bn by 2014/15.”
His Chief Secretary said yesterday that this was not agreed; well, is it agreed or isn’t it?
The Chancellor is not being straight with the House—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) is normally a pretty equable fellow; he is getting a little over-excited. I must ask the right hon. Lady to withdraw that term. No Minister would be other than straight with the House. She will find another word, I feel sure.
Yvette Cooper
I certainly accept your point, Mr Speaker. I am sure that no Minister would want not to be straight with the House, and I am sure that the Chancellor will be. I withdraw any suggestion that he was not, because I am sure that he will be.
Will the Chancellor confirm, therefore, that saving an additional £4 billion from getting people into work will require new jobs for 800,000 people, at a time when his own Office for Budget Responsibility says that far from creating an extra 800,000 jobs, his Budget will cut 100,000 jobs from the economy in each and every year?
The Chancellor has also said that he plans to target the workshy and those who are fit for work. Will he confirm, however, that savings from getting those who are fit for work off sickness benefits are already built into the Treasury figures, and that cutting an extra £2.5 billion from employment support allowance would hit only those who have been through the new, tougher test and who even his Ministers agree are genuinely too sick or too disabled to work? Is it not the truth that he is planning to cut the level of support for some of the most vulnerable people in society? Will he confirm that someone who is on employment support allowance, and has been through the test, is already facing a £285 cut in the value of their ESA and an average £650 cut in their housing benefit as a result of his plans?
The Chancellor claims to support jobs and to be progressive, but he is doing the opposite. The truth is that his plans hit the poorest harder than the rich, women harder than men and children and pensioners worst of all. Now he has shown that he is targeting those who are most sick and disabled in society. Is it not the truth that he has decided to hit those who he knows will find it harder to fight back? This is not progressive; it is a nasty attack, and he should withdraw it now.
Mr Osborne
First of all, I note that there has still not been a word of apology about leaving this country with the worst public finances in its history. Nor, by the way, has there been an apology for the complete failure, by the right hon. Lady and her predecessors as Secretary of State, to reform the welfare system, despite all those promises.
In the Budget speech, I made it very clear that we were looking for additional savings from welfare. If the Labour party wants to propose some ideas to make up its £44 billion part of the savings package, perhaps it will contribute to this debate. Sadly, at the moment, we have had absolutely no ideas from it. It opposed the VAT rise; the pay freeze; the in-year savings; the housing benefit reforms; the tax credit reforms; the switch to the consumer prices index for benefits; and the abolition of child trust funds. It opposed all those things. They are £33 billion worth of cuts.
Where are the Labour party’s numbers? Where are its ideas? If it wants to engage with us in a real debate about how we reform welfare, protect the most vulnerable and help people who can work into work, we will be all ears. But at the moment there is a deafening silence from the Labour party.
The right hon. Lady talks about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions not being here. He happens to be at a conference in Europe about international labour market reforms. The shadow Chancellor is not here, and nor is a single one of the Labour party leadership contenders. That is because instead of talking about the national interest, they are courting the votes of vested interests.