Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

I have heard that argument a lot recently, and there is no evidence to support such a contention. It is nice to believe that were we to reduce the amount of money people have—withdraw the subsidy, as the hon. Gentleman would say—some employers would increase their payments to people and wages would go up, but I do not suggest that that is true or that any evidence supports it. Tax credits have been a necessary subsidy for low wages, and I welcome and applaud the decision by the Government to increase the national minimum wage. That is the right thing to do, which is why Labour called for it before the election—the Government could get on with it a little faster and stop spinning it as a national living wage when we know it is not, but it is a welcome step. There is no evidence to suggest that if we withdraw the subsidy at a stroke, employers will think, “I’d better put up wages for my workforce because they will struggle to survive on what they earn.”

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Surely the answer to the first question from the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer) is that tax credits must ensure a decent, reasonable standard of living. Such standards have been defined over many years by large numbers of people in research institutions—I will not trouble the House with those matters now, but they are well understood.

[Owen Smith]

Let me be clear: tax credits are a success. They have kept people in work in this country, and we have seen a shift in the volume of single parents in work.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Redwood]

The problem with welfare reform, as all who have wrestled with it well know, is that we either have a large number of people facing a moderate rate of withdrawal or we have a more limited number of people facing a high rate of withdrawal. All the time that we have means-tested benefits—our system is still riddled with them—means that we will have to make that difficult choice about whether there is a fast move off benefit when people’s income goes up or a slower move. That will mean we either have fewer or more people affected by the taper. Labour never solved the problem of the taper. The Labour Government had lots of difficult tapers and high marginal rates of tax and benefit withdrawal.

That brings me to the second fundamental pillar of the Government’s strategy, which I support, after the promotion of work and better-paid work: taxing people less, particularly those on lower incomes. Both the coalition and this Government have worked away at that, by trying to get more people out of paying income tax. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor thinks about his pre-Budget judgment and his autumn statement judgment later this year—he is rightly in listening mode—I trust he will think about the tax element in his policy mix, because the more he can do to take people out of tax or to lower the tax rate upon them, the more he will succeed in promoting prosperity and the more he will offset the impact of benefit changes.

[Hywel Williams]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about prosperity, but he will know as well as I do that small businesses are one of the chief drivers of it. How does he square that with the cuts to small businesses and single earners’ income from their self-employment?

[John Redwood]

The Government are trying to encourage people to earn more in self-employment—that is the whole point of the policy. The idea is to create better incentives so that it is worth while people working more and longer hours if they have not had sufficient hours of work and not a sufficient income, and they keep more of the money they make by being in self-employment. That is true for them as well as for people in employment.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

rose—

[Hywel Williams]

rose—

[John Redwood]

The hon. Gentleman has had one go and I am sorry he messed up his question.