Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

May I start by thanking everybody on the Opposition Benches for all the contributions they have made not just today, but during the passage of this enormously important Bill? May I also thank the Secretary of State for gracing us with his presence today? I would like to be able to thank the Minister for offering some detailed answers to the questions put to her throughout the Committee stage and today, but there were not many answers, so I will not be able to do that, I am afraid.

Labour will be opposing the Third Reading of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. Combined with the other measures in the summer Budget, this package of tax credit and benefit reforms penalises millions of working families and will risk pushing hundreds of thousands of children into poverty. It is a cruel, pernicious Bill that breaks Tory promises in almost every clause and will hit more than 10 million families in Britain. It is also indiscriminate: it hits the young, the old, those unable to work and those working every hour they can.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I am pleased we will be opposing the Welfare Reform and Work Bill on Third Reading. Is not the real problem for the Government that their record so far on welfare reform has been entirely counterproductive? The facts speak for themselves: on this Government’s watch welfare bills have shot through the roof. They have cut welfare, but the bills have gone up.

[Owen Smith]

This is the first Government who have ever spent more than £1 trillion in a Parliament on social security. That is an extraordinary rise, and it has happened on the watch of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

In this Bill we are seeing the Government break their promises repeatedly. They are breaking their promises to older people, for example. Before the election, the Conservatives’ manifesto said they would “maintain all pensioner benefits”, but after the election it appears that there is a different story. Some senior Conservatives have talked about this being a “great opportunity” for deep cuts to pensioner benefits. The Minister for Community and Social Care said that pensioner benefits should not be cut immediately, but that raises the question: when are they going to cut them?

The answer appears to be that the Government are cutting pensioner benefits now, in this Bill, because 70,000 pensioners are being hit by more than £1,000 a year through the changes to support for mortgage interest. That support is a vital lifeline for many, but through this Bill the Government are chipping away at pensioner benefits and charging a 2.9% interest rate—profiteering from pensioners. By refusing our amendment 24, the Conservative party is breaking its promise to our pensioners. We will act as the watchdog for our older people on that, as we will on pensioner freedoms. A scathing report from the Work and Pensions Committee has warned that the next great mis-selling scandal will be coming soon, after the Tories introduced pension freedoms. We will be watching that, as we are watching tonight.

Just as with older people, the Conservative Government are tonight letting down young people and our children. Before the election the Conservative manifesto spoke of

“boosting the self-esteem of young people”,

but after the election the Government are failing our children, failing young people and failing the next generation.

This Bill will push 600,000 children into poverty over the course of the Parliament while fiddling the figures and hiding the Government’s shame by abolishing the child poverty target. It is a scandal that any Government can seek to withdraw income—the money people have—from a measure of poverty. If it were not so disgraceful, it would be laughable. They are stripping housing benefit away from 18 to 21-year-olds, patronising our young people with “earn or learn” boot camps and introducing a so-called living wage that kicks in only when people are 25, and the Business Minister is running down young people, saying that they do not deserve a living wage because they are not as productive.

What about the Tory promises to the sick and disabled people of Britain? Before the election the Tory manifesto said that the Conservatives would

“aim to halve the disability employment gap: we will transform policy…so that hundreds of thousands more disabled people who can and want to be in work find employment.”

But what is the truth? After the election, they are cutting support for sick and disabled people. Half a million people in the ESA WRAG are set to lose £1,500 a year. That will reduce the likelihood of a return to work, increase the number of long-term unemployed and act as a work penalty for sick or disabled people seeking to get back into work.