Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will say two things about child poverty. First, we want to ensure that the figures published concern the years that this measure covers, and the year in which I will be introducing secondary legislation. The figures will be published next week in time for the debate—the Committee stage will be on the Floor of the House and everybody who is here today can take part.

Secondly, child poverty was calculated based on the median income line, and the previous Government lost control of it. Tax credits rocketed because they were chasing a moving line. As upper incomes rose, so did average earnings, and that is why they had to spend so much money. I remind the hon. Lady that they missed their targets in 2010 by 600,000 children in poverty. Since we have come in, the figures published this June show that child poverty fell by 300,000. I am not going to stand here today and try to claim credit for that fall. The figure fell because we saw the biggest fall in earnings for many years. Does that mean that because earnings fell child poverty has been solved? No, it does not. That is why we are consulting on a better way to measure child poverty.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The Secretary of State brandishes the figure of a 20% increase in benefits in the past five years. In cash terms, jobseeker’s allowance has gone up from just £59.15 in 2007 to £71 in 2012. In other words, in each of those past years JSA has gone up by just £2.50. Is it not the truth that this is a mean and miserable piece of legislation from a mean and miserable Government?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I hear the hon. Lady’s point; I have to say that I do not agree with her. Benefits have risen, but if she would like to talk to those who are in employment on lower incomes in her constituency she would find that many have seen absolutely no rise in their incomes at all, and some even less than that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The Bill is part of a war on the poor, waged largely by the very rich, who are deliberately doing all they can to divide individuals and set communities against each other. It is a reckless and dangerous measure that is likely to be massively counter-productive and to destabilise already struggling groups in society, pushing them into greater despair and desperation.

The Bill is not only hugely socially divisive, but is likely to be entirely counter-productive, even in the economic terms that the Government say are driving this set of policies. It will be counter-productive because as people are pushed into greater desperation, they are more likely to be forced to make greater calls on the state, for example as those who are struggling to pay rent are finally pushed into homelessness or as those who are struggling with mental disability or mental illness are finally tipped into greater ill health. It will be counter-productive because, as many hon. Members have said, if we want to get the economy moving again, the best way to do so is to put money into the pockets of the poorest, because they are the ones who will spend it in the local economy, not the very rich.

This is a mean and miserable Bill from a mean and miserable Government. I hope that it will be reversed at the first opportunity. I apologise if I have missed this, but I would love to hear a firm commitment from Labour that if it forms the next Government, it will reverse this Act, as it will then be.

I have been asking myself how this wretched Bill has got any currency at all. It is, of course, because of the deliberate lies, myths and misinformation that have surrounded it. There is the picture of the shirkers on benefits who have apparently enjoyed a lavish 20% income increase over the past five years. What a neatly seductive and simple picture that paints, but what a false and unfair one, particularly to the 2,136 jobseeker’s allowance claimants in my constituency, who come to me on a regular basis, desperately searching for work.

What does this lavish 20% increase mean in cash terms? I checked with the House of Commons Library. It means that in 2007, JSA was £59.15 a week and that five years later in 2012, it had gone up to just £71 a week. That is hardly a princely increase. The truth is that 20% of very little is still very, very little—but how useful it is to the Government to spin this attack on the poor! No wonder they never say what the 20% actually represents in cash terms.

Similarly, there is the 10% increase in average earnings for people who are in work. Again, the Government never say what that percentage means. For people on average earnings, that 10% increase means an increase in their weekly take-home pay of about £11 in each of the last five years. That is not enough and I oppose the public sector pay freezes, but it is still nearly four and a half times more in hard cash terms than the £2.50 annual increase for those on JSA.

It is therefore an outrageous and disingenuous attack on people who are seeking work to suggest that they are getting more than people who are in work when, in cash terms, they have got more than four times less. As the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) said so eloquently, it is cash terms, not percentages, that mean the most to ordinary people.

Getting tough on welfare is lazy, mean politics. It relies on misleading people and on conning the public into thinking that the system is more generous than it is and riddled with fraud. A poll commissioned by the TUC shows that, on average, people think that 27% of the welfare budget is claimed fraudulently. The Government’s figure is 0.7%. Instead of feeding those misconceptions, the Government should be challenging them. Instead of penalising the poor, the Government should be supporting them.

I say again that this is a mean, miserable Bill. I hope that Members will reject it and I hope that I hear from Labour that it will reverse the Act if it gets into government next time around.