Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Catherine McKinnell

Monday 31st March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that issue, because under universal credit we will increase the child care level to 85% of the cost. We will be investing a further £400 million a year in a steady state, and 500,000 families will gain. These are positive incentives to go back to work. Child care costs are now paid up to a maximum of £646 per month for one child and £1,108 for two or more children. In universal credit we are removing the 16-hour rule, which exists in tax credits and is a major disincentive for many lone parents and others to take jobs—that has been abolished, and some extra £200 million will help 100,000 families back into work.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

17. What recent assessment he has made of whether the UK will meet the 2020 statutory child poverty target.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

The Government are committed to the Child Poverty Act 2010 and to ending child poverty by 2020. It is not possible accurately to project child poverty figures, but already we are seeing progress in tackling the root causes. Just last week, we learned that there are now 290,000 fewer children living in workless households compared with 2010, and that has a net impact and effect on child poverty.

[Catherine McKinnell]

The Secretary of State mentions reducing the number of children in workless households, but today child poverty is overwhelmingly a problem for working families. Since 2010, the number of parents who work part time but who want to work full time is up 45%. What are the Government going to do about the prevalence of low-paid insecure work that is trapping families in poverty?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The last figures that covered people who were in work and in poverty were misrepresented by those who talked about them. In truth, those figures reflect what happened under the previous Government, when we saw an increase of 500,000 families who were in work and in poverty. That has been flat since the election. We are working on that to ensure that we get as many people out of poverty as possible. The reforms that we are changing and making to get people back to work, which the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) has talked about, will have a huge impact on those who are in poverty now.

People are better off in work. Despite what Labour did, people have more chance now to change their circumstances and more likelihood of coming out of poverty. Let me remind the hon. Lady of one little fact. Labour spent £175 billion of taxpayers’ money on one benefit—chasing a child poverty target that it simply did not achieve. That was wasted money.

Universal Credit

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Catherine McKinnell

Thursday 5th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The costs overall and the savings are enormous. The total benefits to individuals and in fraud and error will total up to perhaps £38 billion. The point is that those savings are real savings. Yes, there is a problem about some wasted money in this programme that is quite unacceptable, but set against the big savings the key point is that it is a big and important programme.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

The use of real-time information is critical to rolling out universal credit across the country and ensuring that it works properly, so will the Secretary of State confirm that the RTI project is on time and on budget at HMRC?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The good thing about the pathfinder is that it has allowed us to test the RTI system. The hon. Lady will find, if she wants to visit any of the sites, that we are getting a phenomenally good feed from the RTI about the payroll. In some areas, they have already discovered that some people claiming jobseeker’s allowance are earning a salary at the same time. They have been able to deal with that, hugely due to the fact that the RTI system is working. I recall that many Opposition Members said that the RTI software would not work, but they were wrong.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Catherine McKinnell

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

Today, I welcome the millionth jobseeker signed up to the universal jobmatch service, launched before Christmas, which is revolutionising how claimants look for work—with online job searching and matching through DWP on a scale never seen before. The system works 24/7 to find jobs that fit with people’s skills, location and working patterns, which means that their CV works for them even while they sleep. The service harnesses new technology to improve their prospects, and was launched on time and on budget.

[Catherine McKinnell]

It would appear that about 430,000 women born between 6 April 1952 and 6 July 1953 will not qualify for the new pension, while men of the same age will. What does the Minister have to say to the 1,700 women in Newcastle potentially affected by this unfair situation?

Living Standards

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Catherine McKinnell

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will give way in a minute. [Interruption.] Relax—I will give way. The point is that there is a choice: we can either let this thing slide, with higher interest rates and all that goes with that, and let our children pick up the debt and the deficit, or we can deal with this ourselves and give our kids at least a fair chance.

Of course living standards are under a squeeze—we know that—but that is something we utterly regret. Nobody wants to stand here and say that that is the purpose of what we do—it is not—but it is part of what we are having to do, and we need to get living standards up again as fast as we can. The forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility show that that will be the case. If Labour Members were being realistic, they would accept that no matter who was in power, standing here, they would have to deal with exactly the same problem.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) talk about the children of the future, but I would like to bring their attention back to the children of today. Is the Secretary of State aware of recent Government figures that show that the number of children in need this past year has risen by 3,600, with squeezed living standards putting vulnerable families further at risk and pushing more cost on to the state?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The children of today are also, more than likely, the children of the future, so we do not want to split hairs about this. Children are children, and as they become adults we do not want them to have to pick up the debt and the deficit that we leave behind. It is all about taking difficult decisions, being honest about what those decisions are, and recognising that if we do not take them now, we will have them forced on us by other people.