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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)
I commend the hon. Member for Telford (David Wright) on securing this debate, which I am sure is important for his constituents. He covered a wide range of issues, and I hope that I can set out some of the action that the Government are taking. I absolutely understand his concern about the challenges that families face. I am sure that he welcomes the swift action that the Government have taken to address many of those underlying concerns. As my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) said, if we are to provide the long-term stability that families need, the first thing that we must do is secure the public finances. The truth is that the Government inherited from Labour—the party that the hon. Member for Telford represents—the largest public budget deficit in peacetime history: it was some £156 billion, which is more than the deficit in many other developed countries, and it accounts for around 11% of our country’s annual income.
Mark Pritchard
The hon. Member for Telford (David Wright) set out five points for growth, but he could have had a sixth point: stop taxpayers’ money being used to fund unions in local authorities. Most people in Telford and Wrekin would rather see their taxpayers’ money spent on a weekly bin collection than on full-time union officials who will possibly campaign in local elections.
Maria Miller
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Councils have a real challenge in ensuring that they are using their money most efficiently. An important recent report by Scope showed a huge divergence in how councils are approaching their budget challenges. By making decisions on what is most important for our constituents and local residents, we can ensure that the money goes where it is needed most. I have great sympathy for his point about weekly bin collections. Ensuring that public finances are secure is at the heart of what our Government are all about.
Let me set out for the constituents of the hon. Member for Telford some practical ways in which the Government are taking account of the pressure on families’ finances. The cut in fuel duty made by the coalition counters some of the measures of the previous Administration. Rather than recognising the problems faced by families, the previous Government put this country on an ever-increasing fuel duty escalator, creating some of the problems that we are dealing with. Rather than continuing on that escalator, the Government decided not to implement Labour’s planned increase of 5p per litre in April this year and, in the Budget, announced a further 1p cut as well, recognising the real challenges faced by families.
The other important issue that the Government have taken into account is the real financial problem that council tax causes families. A council tax freeze recognises the financial challenges that the hon. Gentleman rightly outlined. Our measures recognise those challenges and try to help families to make ends meet in these difficult times.
As a Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, I very much feel that employment is the way out for many of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, and would enable them to achieve the standard of living that I know he wants them to enjoy.
Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that the fantastic recent news that Jaguar Land Rover has decided to invest in my constituency will create an awful lot of employment, and not only in South Staffordshire? It will benefit many people working in the supply chain industry in Telford and across the region.
Maria Miller
I thank my hon. Friend for mentioning that very real example of how British industry—indeed, the manufacturing sector—is benefiting from the stability that the Government have achieved by getting our public finances in order and ensuring that people feel that it is right to continue to invest in our country. It is not only large employers, such as the one that he cited, but smaller employers who look to the Government to ensure that Britain is a great place to do business. The work undertaken by our colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills shows the Government’s commitment to the issue.
We are improving support for new businesses with a 40,000-strong network of experienced business mentors. We are working to strip away regulations, and we are cutting corporate taxes. We will bring the headline rate down to 23% by 2014, making this country one of the most attractive places to set up a new business. We are giving micro-businesses a three-year exemption from all new domestic regulations from April 2011, and we are helping small and medium-sized enterprises to create new jobs by investing £180 million in 250,000 new apprentices. Those are the sorts of practical ways in which the Government are supporting the constituents of the hon. Member for Telford, so that they are not, as perhaps happened under the previous Government, consigned to unemployment, but given the opportunity to get into work.
If we look at the unemployment figures for Telford from 2008 to 2010, the sad truth is that the rate nearly doubled. Even more tragically, under the previous Administration, the number of young people who sought jobseeker’s allowance increased from a little more than 500 to more than 900. At a time when the economy was growing, the previous Administration did not do enough to help individuals get into work, and the recession has made a difficult situation worse for the hon. Gentleman’s constituents. That is why my Department has been looking at a wide-ranging set of reforms. The universal credit will ensure that work will pay, and the Work programme will ensure bespoke and individual support to get people into work in long-term, sustainable jobs. That practical support will give his constituents the sort of job that will secure them the standard of living that he is fighting for them to enjoy. I hope that he will support the introduction of the universal credit and the Work programme, which will benefit his constituents in the way that I outlined.
As the Minister with responsibility for disabled people, I note the challenges that many of the hon. Gentleman’s disabled constituents will face, so the Department has been looking very carefully at how we can support and help disabled people into not just short-term but long-term employment, and help them to retain jobs that they may already have. I was pleased to note that Remploy Employment Services has supported almost 200 individuals in the past year in the hon. Gentleman’s area. It has helped individuals with disabilities or in challenging circumstances to get into work, and throughout the Shropshire area it has helped more than 500 people to get into employment. That practical help will really make a difference to the residents of Telford. That success story applies to the broader employment market as well.
Telford jobcentre has around 1,000 new vacancies every month. I hope that the individuals whom the hon. Gentleman represents will be able to get skills under their belt through the Work programme and take advantage of that job market. No one is saying that it is easy or straightforward. It is a challenge, particularly in an area that has had a great history of industry that has evolved and changed. I speak with a little knowledge, having been born and brought up not far away. The communities face real challenges. However, through the Work programme and the support that we can give people to get the right sort of apprenticeship training, we can help many of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents. Perhaps they have felt that they did not have the relevant support to get into employment before, but we will provide support to help them get the sort of jobs that will give them the standard of living that I know the hon. Gentleman wants them to be able to enjoy.
I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern about fuel prices and the challenges that families face, but I hope that he is reassured by my earlier comments on the actions that the Government have taken, particularly around fuel duty, to ease the burden on motorists. We know that the challenge goes further than that, and that the problem falls particularly on our older constituents. We have therefore prioritised the importance of the winter fuel payment, which will be £200 for those born before 5 January 1951, and £300 for those aged 80 and over. Indeed, we have gone further than the previous Government by permanently increasing the cold weather payment, which is a very targeted way of getting support to vulnerable constituents, about whom I know he will be concerned when he is talking about fuel duty. We are increasing that payment from £8.50 to £25. Again, in a practical way, we are recognising the challenges facing families, and particularly the most vulnerable in our communities. I hope that I have been able to draw together the issues that we are putting in place to help the hon. Gentleman’s constituents.
It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman brought up the issue of VAT. There is nothing fair about the deficit that the Government and the people of Britain inherited from the Labour Administration. It is not fair that so many families were trapped in a cycle of dependency. Our decisive dealing with the deficit has ensured that those with the broadest shoulders bear the greatest burdens and support the most vulnerable and those facing the biggest challenges in society. We have made sure that those on the highest incomes contribute more towards the entire fiscal consolidation, not only in cash terms but as a proportion of their income and consumption of public services combined. That is why we introduced the new fairness premium.
On the hon. Gentleman’s analysis of the role that VAT could play in trying to redress what he called an imbalance in fairness, I draw his attention to the fact that fairness is very much at the heart of the Government’s approach to addressing the fiscal deficit, and across the whole piece we are making sure that those who can pay bear the biggest burden.
Child poverty is an area for which I have direct responsibility. I hope that the hon. Gentleman welcomes the child poverty strategy that the Government introduced in April. I also hope that he welcomes our evolving idea for a commission to look not only at child poverty but social mobility. I am sure that he wants to ensure that his constituents have social mobility, so that they can enjoy a better quality of life and standard of living. By drawing those two important issues into one commission, the Government can be held to account, and there can be the right level of scrutiny of our policies. The child poverty strategy underpins the Government’s ambition for children to be able to realise their potential throughout the country, whether they live in the north, south, east, west or, indeed, the midlands—the area that the hon. Gentleman represents.
The universal credit is one of the most potent tools for addressing child poverty. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have followed very closely the debate in this place and the other place. The introduction of universal credit, which tries to simplify our overly complex benefits system, will help around 900,000 individuals, including more than 350,000 children, out of poverty by making sure that work pays. People will understand that our very complex benefits system can be simplified and made to work for them, rather than there being a jungle of different benefits, as is the case at the moment.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the importance of child care in making sure that work pays. I agree that that is important. I know from my constituents—I am sure that this is true of his as well—that the costs of child care can make all the difference to being able to get into work. The Government have recognised the difficulties that families face. We have reaffirmed our commitment to helping parents with the costs of child care by investing an extra £300 million in child care support under the universal credit system. Individuals who perhaps found it difficult to stay close to the labour market when they had children, because they were not able to do a full-time job, will for the first time have access to child care cost support. Individuals working fewer than 16 hours a week will be able to get the support that will enable them to do a few hours’ work a week. That will keep them close to the labour market, and perhaps when their children are older, they will be able to take on more work. The Government are trying to help families through difficult times in practical ways, so that they can build better lives.
I have covered many of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised. If I have left any out, I am sure that he will raise them with me separately. I hope that I have reassured him and his constituents that the Government absolutely understand the pressures that families are under at the moment. We are taking very practical steps to alleviate some of the financial pressures that families face. We are looking to the long term and putting in place the sorts of building blocks that will help families, individuals, and parents, and will help children to get the right start in life. We will help people to get the support that they need to get good jobs and keep them in the long term. We are trying to give them the standard of living that the hon. Gentleman and I want them to enjoy.