Welfare Reform and Work Act

Debate between Margaret Greenwood and Mike Gapes

Wednesday 21st March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Hon. Members]

Where is he?

[Mike Gapes (in the Chair)]

Order. We can do without the heckling.

[Margaret Greenwood]

The Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016 is having a profound impact on the lives of many of the most vulnerable in our society—the disabled, single parents, pensioners and children growing up in poverty—through a range of policies, accompanied by severe reductions in social security introduced in the 2015 Budget and what we are seeing with the roll-out of universal credit. There is the cut to employment and support allowance for disabled people, which is falling by £30 a week to the same level as JSA, leaving them with just more than £70 a week. There is the abolition of the family element of child tax credit and the equivalent in universal credit, which is worth up to £540 a year for new claimants.

We have a cut in the level of the benefit cap; the four-year benefits freeze; the abolition of targets to tackle child poverty, which Labour had introduced; the two-child limit on new claims for child tax credit and the child element of universal credit; the change in support for mortgage interest from a benefit to a loan that will be particularly hard on pensioners and disabled people; and the cuts to work allowances in universal credit in the summer Budget of 2015, which we call on the Government to reverse. So we see that the claims that the Act rewards hard work and is fair to working households simply do not bear scrutiny.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Gray]

rose—

[Mike Gapes (in the Chair)]

Order. It is quite clear that the hon. Lady is not giving way. She is coming to the end of her remarks, so I will be grateful if people do not try to intervene when it has been made clear that she is not giving way.

[Margaret Greenwood]

Even the impact assessments for each part of the Act are out of date. Civil society organisations such as the IFS, the Resolution Foundation and the Equality and Human Rights Commission have done the hard work and the evidence is damning. If the Government do not like the figures that other organisations publish, they should make sure they publish their own and that they are up to date. The Act uses language such as fairness to working households, a sustainable welfare system and life chances, but it is punitive, not progressive. The groups hit time and again by the Act are those most at risk of poverty: lone parents, larger families and disabled people.