Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, when we introduce a single state pension there will be no more contracting out, so clearly those who were in contracted-out schemes will be contracted back in. However, the annually managed expenditure costs of the scheme are being met by the reduction in means-testing and paying of savings credit to new claimants only, and by an increase in de minimis provision, so that people who have spent only a few years in the country do not build up a state pension as they would currently do. Those are the two main ways of meeting the costs, but they will also be met through the non-accrual of additional second state pensions after 2016.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

2. What assessment he has made of the effect of changes in funding for childcare support on unemployment among women.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)]

I refer the hon. Lady so the answer that I gave the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) last Thursday. In case she was not able to read Hansard, however, I can tell her that the Government fully recognise the importance of child care in helping parents—not just mothers—to move into or stay in work. Through universal credit, we will for the first time extend help with child care costs to those who work for less than 16 hours a week, which will benefit 80,000 families who formerly had no entitlement to such support.

[Julie Elliott]

Is the Minister aware that since the cut in the child care element of benefit in October 2011, 44,000 people have stopped claiming? How many of those people does she think have simply left work because it does not pay to work any more?

[Maria Miller]

I think the hon. Lady is referring to some statistics about the reason why individuals are not in work, but I do not think she can quite draw the conclusion she has drawn that those particular individuals are out of work. As she will know, the Government are absolutely committed to making sure more women are able to move into work, which is perhaps why there are some 61,000 more women in work now than when Labour left office.