Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Catherine West and Nigel Mills

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in support of this very important Bill, which is one of the measures we need to move us to the high pay, low tax, low welfare economy that the Secretary of State wants.

I will start with the measures relating to work. From having served on the Work and Pensions Committee, I know that getting people into work is the area of the Department that gets the least scrutiny. The reporting obligations on full employment and apprenticeships are a really important step forward. We all want the 3 million apprenticeships to be created by the end of the Parliament.

I hope that the power the Government are taking to report on the number of apprenticeships will cover the details on the quality of those apprenticeships. I would like the annual report to include the number of higher apprenticeships, because we want apprenticeships that give people real skills and real future careers, not just to be tick-box training schemes that add little value. As we occasionally see in our constituencies, some employees get sold such schemes, and we ought to look at whether they provide any real advantages. The reports will be extremely useful.

Another important thing to strengthen work is to have a welfare system that encourages rather than disincentivises it. Our measures to increase the minimum wage, which will start later this year, and to increase the amount of childcare, as well as the welfare reforms, are the right package to ensure that all people and all families are very clear that work will always pay and, at least in the medium and longer term, is the best way of securing a better financial situation.

Whoever won the election, we knew from the campaign that the welfare reform measures would be the most contentious issue at the start of this Parliament. We all knew that we had to find several billions.

[Catherine West]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Mills]

I will give way.

[Catherine West]

He is not my hon. Friend. [Laughter.] I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker.

How many children in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency will be affected by the cuts in the Bill?

[Nigel Mills]

I do not have that number to give the hon. Lady. However, her party is also committed to making large welfare savings. It is very easy to support the theory, but if Labour Members oppose all the large measures that are taken in practice, they are not going anywhere. They have to answer this question. If they are committed to large savings, but they do not support all these measures, which measures would they like to see? That is the challenge. We have to find savings to close the deficit. We have a clear mandate for welfare savings to form a large part of those savings.

The Government have produced measures that are a little less severe and fast than many of us feared they would be. The Labour party thought that they would be a lot more severe only a few weeks ago, when we were told that families would be £1,400 worse off overnight unless the minimum wage went up by 25%. What we are seeing is wages going up by more than 25% and some of the cuts being deferred over several years. The Government have attempted to make the cuts as fair as possible.