Oral Answers to Questions

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

I am very much looking forward to going to the Work and Pensions Committee to discuss this very topic this coming Wednesday. It is disappointing that the hon. Member does not recognise that, despite the unprecedented challenges of covid, we once again saw an increase in disability employment over the past year. The figure now stands at 1.5 million since 2013, with the disability employment gap continuing to close. This Government are absolutely committed to their target of 1 million more disabled people in work by 2027.

[Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

Could the Secretary of State—or the Minister for Pensions, who is doing such great work in this area—explain what they are doing to ensure that when pensions are invested, the environmental, social and governance agenda is about incentivising high-quality sustainable products across the world, for instance in Africa, and not just becoming a box-ticking exercise here at home?

[Guy Opperman]

I will take my right hon. Friend’s compliment. The UK is the first country in the world to address the social elements of ESG. We have produced a call for evidence, “Consideration of social risks and opportunities by occupational pension schemes”, and I would encourage everyone to get involved with that. That will genuinely transform the supply chain, access to finance and investment in all parts of the world, but particularly in respect of Africa.

Disability Benefits and Social Care

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

One day, Mr Deputy Speaker, you, like me, God willing, will grow old. I want to concentrate on the UK’s care system for the elderly. We have heard much today about benefits and changes to Remploy, but I want to focus a bit more on something that was touched on earlier—the need to provide social care for our elderly and for those with permanent and long-term disabilities, and the urgent need for reform.

I am motivated in this by thinking not only of my own growing old—I hope—and of all those in this Chamber, but family experience and my experience of supporting a friend of my age who, at the age of 28, sadly had a stroke and is now confined to a wheelchair and has to live with permanent care. Supporting him, and starting a trust to support him, gave me the personal experience of trying to navigate the care system for those with permanent disabilities, and it brought into sharp relief the difficulties that that brings to many people who support disabled people, whether they are of what would otherwise be working age or in old age.

The Dilnot commission has been the most important step forward in this area for many years. Criticisms of inaction can be levelled not only at the previous Government but at previous Governments. This is an area where cross-party support and a lack of political tension is necessary.

Over the past decade, 200,000 people have sold their homes to pay for their care. Yet more people, who did not have assets, have had to survive with substandard care. BUPA has estimated that in a decade, there will be a shortfall of 100,000 care home places unless action is taken. In the same period that spending on the NHS has risen by about £25 billion, spending on social care for the elderly has risen by only £43 million. Given that 400,000 elderly people are in care homes and that more than £7 billion was announced for this area in the spending review, we need to ensure that Government support is focused and that financial support is brought in from wherever possible to strengthen this crucial sector.

I pay tribute to the work that the Minister has done to bring forward proposals and ensure that we are moving in the right direction. The introduction of carers breaks is a welcome step forward. I warmly welcome the linking of social care and health care budgets in the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which will tie together what have too often been disparate functions.

It is clear that there is also a need for reform in self-funding. There must be support for vulnerable elderly people who do not have access, but we must also ensure that those who do have access do not have to lose their home to pay for their care. The problem is the lack of an insurance market. We can insure all sorts of things in life. The moustache of Mervyn Hughes, the great cricketer, was once insured for £200,000, Kylie Minogue’s rear was insured for $5 million, Heidi Klum’s legs for $2 million and Cristiano Ronaldo’s legs for €100 million. However, I cannot take out insurance for the possibility that I will have to spend many years in social care. Nobody in this country can insure against the small chance that they will need very expensive care in their old age.

The problem is the uncertainty over the cost. For many of us, there will be no care costs at all. For most of us, the costs will be relatively small. For a small proportion of people, however, there will be very high and uncertain costs. There is a role for Government in ensuring that the market works in tackling the uncertainty. There is uncertainty over not only what the cost will be, but who will be hit with the cost.

That brings me to the final point about why this matter is so important. This is not only a practical problem, but a problem of values. Those who save hard and work hard for their whole life feel that they are penalised by a care system that takes away what they have worked for. Those who put money aside and save for their retirement look for a something-for-something system in which people get out according to what they put in. We must look after our most vulnerable and end the scandal of people being forced to sell their homes to pay for their care. I hope that we will come forward soon with serious proposals to take this injustice away.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

I am delighted to welcome the contributions to this afternoon’s debate of my hon. Friends the Members for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran), for Islwyn (Chris Evans), for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) who just spoke so powerfully, for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore), for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) and for Westminster North (Ms Buck). They all made their contributions in their own distinctive ways. We have covered some of the areas identified in the motion.

I kick off by talking about the social care crisis, identified by the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) and highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North. I hope that we are now at a point in discussion where we can reach a cross-party consensus on social care. Both those Members identified the major difficulties. I think we should remember that it was my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition who invited the Government to come into those cross-party discussions, having had a pretty bruising experience prior to the last general election when we thought we might have had a basis for moving forward. I certainly welcome the fact that we are treating this issue with the seriousness and urgency that it deserves. However, my image of the contribution of the hon. Gentleman is that he goes around working out how much people’s bottoms and legs can be insured for. He is not normally prone to humour, but I thought that was a bit of light-heartedness on his part.

The Minister with responsibility for disabled people paints a picture that, frankly, bears no relation to the reality of the lives of disabled people and their families and carers. When I heard her contribution, I wondered which world she was living in. She is a quiet and impressive speaker, although she showed today that she can sometimes be provoked. She somehow gives the impression that it will be all right on the night and that tens of thousands of people out there can be expected to say, “Well, that’s fine, Minister for Disabled People. We know that we are suffering”—as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington identified—“but we do not know what is in front of us; we have been vilified in the press, not just by media reporters, but by some ill-considered briefings from some politicians.”

The words of the Minister do not chime with the reality of what people are feeling out there. Over the past couple of years disabled people have been undermined and their confidence shattered, and they are living in a climate of fear. There has been an increase in hate crime. According to a recent report by the university of Glasgow for Inclusion London, the amount of negative reporting of disability in the print media has increased dramatically. People out there who are not claiming disability benefits now think that everyone who is claiming a disability benefit is a skiver. I hope that one day the Secretary of State will rebut the comments that are being made in some tabloid newspapers.

Let me dispel one or two of the myths that have been perpetrated here today. One is that lifetime and indefinite awards will never see the light of day again. In fact the lifetime award was replaced in 2000, because we recognised that it conveyed a mixed message. There has also been a dodgy use of statistics on all sorts of disability benefits, particularly by the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). He said that 75% of incapacity benefit claimants were fit for work, but when the position was examined properly, the figure proved to be as low as 37%.

An image or background has been created to justify a welfare reform programme that is flawed, at least in its implementation. We talk in general terms about disabled people and those who receive disability living allowance, but hundreds of thousands of people who have arthritis, learning disabilities or psychosis rely on the additional cost payment provided by DLA for their everyday lives.

Let me deal very briefly with Remploy, which has already been dealt with extensively today. Yes, we had to wrestle with some of the difficulties—I am certainly not going to run away from that—but the Minister gave only part of the picture. Any Member who was in the House before the last modernisation programme for Remploy knows that we engaged in an extensive and lengthy consultation. All Members of Parliament had all the figures in front of them from the moment that we embarked on that modernisation programme. What we did not do was organise a 90-day consultation involving people who were already feeling vulnerable because of all the other stuff that was going on around them, and embark on a factory programme without building elements of support into it.

Particularly important is the cumulative impact, which has not been addressed today. The Joint Committee on Human Rights said in its report:

“Given the breadth of the current reforms, the Government should publish a unified assessment of the likely cumulative impact of the proposals”.

The Government replied:

“The ability to undertake cumulative analysis is limited because of the complexity of the modelling required”.

So a Government who have tens of thousands of civil servants in the DWP are telling disabled people that, despite all that expertise, they cannot put together a cumulative assessment of what is happening to their lives. I think that it is to the shame of the Secretary of State that he is not prepared to put the big picture out there in front of people. The Joint Committee also said that we were in danger of breaching our commitment under the United Nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities by posing a threat to their right to independent living.

Let me put a very brief cumulative impact assessment before the House. The DWP’s own analysis concluded that the benefit cap would have a disproportionate impact on households containing a disabled person, which were

“more likely to be affected”.

The Prime Minister has always dodged and weaved on this, but the reality is that the sum will be reduced by half under the new universal credit. The “Counting the Costs 2012” report by Contact a Family found that it costs three times more to raise a disabled child, and 73% of its respondents said they believe welfare reform will make them poorer. Mencap says 32% of local authorities have cut day care services in the past three years. The cumulative effect is growing. Some 57% of people with a learning disability currently receive no services at all, despite being known to their social care departments. Disability Rights UK has highlighted how losing DLA will impact on disabled people’s opportunities to get a job.

[Matthew Hancock]

The right hon. Lady talks about the need to see the big picture. Will she therefore correct something the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) said in his opening speech? He said unemployment is rising, when today’s figures show a fall in unemployment and a rise in employment, and that should be welcomed.

[Mrs McGuire]

I know the hon. Gentleman from our days serving together on the Public Accounts Committee, so I know how good he is with figures, and how he can bandy them around. The reality is that £9 billion more will be needed to pay for unemployment benefit. That is the real statistic.

[Matthew Hancock]

indicated dissent.

[Mrs McGuire]

That is the real statistic. We in this House bandy figures around, but the reality is that we are talking about people who are finding themselves—day after day, week after week, month after month—being unable to get a job. That is the reality: 2.5 million unemployed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Lady is right. I personally intervened as Minister to say that that offshoring should not take place. It is important that we do not see Government-controlled employment move offshore. We have a job to try to maximise employment in this country, and I pay tribute to all those involved in that work force for drawing our attention to the issue and the challenge. It is by far the best option to see people investing in the UK. It is particularly gratifying to see the contact centre industry around the UK increasingly reopening centres, recognising that British workers are far better at delivering good customer service than their counterparts in other parts of the world.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

6. What assessment he has made of the effect of work experience programmes on employment prospects.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

8. What assessment he has made of the effect of work experience programmes on employment prospects.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

Early indications show that the work experience programme is proving extremely successful. The first figures we published for the period up to August show that more than half the young people starting a work experience placement under the scheme are off benefits within three months. As the scheme is extremely cost-effective, that is welcome news.

[Matthew Hancock]

Will the Minister visit one such successful work experience programme in Haverhill in my constituency, where youth unemployment has fallen by 15% since the programme started? Some 40% of young unemployed people are on the programme and, as with the national average, half of them are going into full-time jobs, even where there were no vacancies.

[Chris Grayling]

I pay tribute to the staff of Jobcentre Plus in my hon. Friend’s constituency for their part in delivering a successful scheme. I will be delighted, the next time I am in Suffolk, to drop in with him to meet and pay tribute to them for what they have done.

Oral Answers to Questions

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but I would have thought he would welcome the idea that as we move to the new benefit, we are planning to cash-protect those who are already in receipt of other benefits. I do not think I really need to take too many lessons from his party, because when it scrapped the 10p tax band, it did not cash-protect anybody.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State accept that in ensuring that the transition means that people are cash-protected, he is managing to introduce the universal benefit, which would otherwise be almost impossible to do? That universal benefit will be of benefit to the work incentives of people up and down the country.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am glad that my hon. Friend is more welcoming of the policy than the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain). Cash protection is there to protect those whose circumstances mean that they may have lost out slightly in the change to universal credit. They will not, because we will ensure that they are smoothed into the universal credit system unless there is a significant change in their circumstances. That is a positive gesture from the Government, and as I said, we do not need any lessons from Labour Members, who did not cash-protect people who were damaged when they scrapped the 10p starting rate.

Welfare Reform Bill

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Uppal]

I accept the hon. Lady’s point, but I go back to the corrosive effect that that is having on society. There are people living cheek by jowl with the 20,000 families that she has mentioned, who are aware of the situation.

A constituent spoke to me who comes from one of the handful of families on her road who actually work. The rest of the families on her street have made a conscious life choice to live off benefits. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) may nod, sigh and take a deep breath, but I am faced in my weekly surgeries by people who live in the real world—people who have to deal with the hard reality of life. My constituent had to face ridicule for going to work. That is the situation that we have.

As I have said before in this House, I have experienced poverty in my life. I have not read about it in a book or dealt with it at arm’s length from behind a desk; I have seen it with my own eyes and experienced it in my family. That is why I am passionate about it and why I was proud to sit on the Committee. Too often, the issues that we talk about are detached from the reality of life. This legislation is not about appealing to red-top newspapers or making grand-standing statements, as was said in Committee, but about tackling the issue head-on. Hon. Members have talked about the number of jobs created over the past decade that were taken by foreigners who came to these shores with an ethos of working. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy mentioned eastern Europeans. My family have gone through that experience. We came to this country with an ethos of working; that was our aspiration. The idea that we could claim benefits and use the system to support us was anathema to us. That idea is what this Bill tackles.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

I have been listening carefully to my hon. Friend’s powerful speech. Does he agree that 20,000 families who have never worked is simply 20,000 too many?

[Paul Uppal]

Absolutely; the intervention from the hon. Member for Westminster North was very telling. It missed the point about the message that Governments send out. Let me make it absolutely clear that I am not criticising individuals and families; it is the system that is corrosive. If the system is corrosive and, to quote my constituent, rewards idleness, what do we expect of human beings? I have faith in the British public. We have budding entrepreneurs and young people who have aspirations to achieve the best that they can. However, through unintended consequences, aspiration has been undermined, particularly over the past 10 years. I have seen that so often when I meet young people. They have a choice between work and a life on benefits. They have looked me in the eye and said that a life on benefits is not such a bad option.

Oral Answers to Questions

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Monday 14th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

One consequence of the reforms to housing benefit will be that the local housing market will change. We anticipate, for example, that some of the larger properties might find themselves converted into houses in multiple occupation, although we do not know exactly what will happen. One problem is that over many years we have seen inadequate house building taking place under the hon. Lady’s Government.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

In the Public Accounts Committee, we heard from civil servants about the impact of housing benefit and other benefits that make for an extremely complex and complicated benefit system. We have also heard about the enthusiasm for having a universal benefit as a way of cutting through that. Talking of representations, would not these changes have been easier had we not had representations on where the money was left?

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is quite right that Labour Members’ answer to most questions is “More money,” but when we asked where the money had gone, we were told that there was none. Housing benefit is probably one of the most complicated benefits in the system; it is at the end of the line when everything else has been worked out. The sooner we can integrate it into universal credit, the better.

Welfare Reform

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Thursday 11th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We are introducing the Work programme as fast as we can, and the summer target for that is critical. It will make a huge difference. However, I must tell the hon. Gentleman that the biggest gap is the one left to us by the last Government, as a result of the major deficit and their failure to fund any of the programmes that they said they would.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

I warmly welcome today’s announcement, like Members on both sides of the House. I also welcome the rhetorical conversion of the Labour party to the importance of incentives and marginal withdrawal rates. It is a pity that they have not been a part of the discussion over the past decade. Once the programme is fully implemented, how many people will benefit from lower marginal withdrawal rates?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I can give my hon. Friend the exact figures later. I can tell him now, however, that there will be a huge uptake, because the marginal withdrawal rates will be so much better for those going back to work. I hope he will forgive me if I cannot give the figures on the spot. However, they will be significant, and people going back to work will benefit enormously. That will be a real incentive for those going back to work. He talked about how the Labour party has been converted. Sometimes, listening to Labour Members’ questions, I wonder whether they have been converted or just hate the idea that somebody is doing something they should have done 10 years ago.

Housing Benefit

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Alexander]

I am keen to make a little progress.

According to a study commissioned by Shelter from the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research—I wonder if the Government will dispute the integrity of that body—more than four in 10, or 42%, of landlords currently letting to LHA claimants planned to scale back. Shelter estimates that that will equate to 100,000 landlords. Liz Peace, the chief executive of the British Property Federation, said:

“Landlords might decide to abandon the social sector.”

The Conservative Mayor of London—I wonder what the Government will say in relation to this evidence—says that the Government’s proposals will lead to

“the loss of the private rented sector as a major safety net for London boroughs”.

He continued:

“We expect landlords to leave the housing benefit market due to the perceived instability of housing benefit in the short and medium term.”

Those are the words not of the Labour Front Bench, but of Boris Johnson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alexander]

My right hon. Friend’s expertise is well revealed in his question. I have been told to avoid hysteria and be careful and measured, but any of us who recollect the impact of the community charge, when a number of poor people started with a small but rapidly accumulating debt and ended up owing significant arrears to local authorities—which ultimately had to write off those debts—have reason to be very cautious before endorsing these proposals.

[Matthew Hancock]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Alexander]

No. I am keen to make a little progress, by looking at the individual measures that the Government are advancing.

When the Secretary of State speaks, will he explain why the Department for Work and Pensions is not producing an impact assessment on the whole package of changes to housing benefit before the House? An assessment has been made of the introduction of the LHA measures during 2011-12, as the Social Security Advisory Commission requires, but that is partial, and of course does not take account of the effect of the consumer prices index cap on LHA rates from 2013.

We would also expect a separate impact assessment of the jobseeker’s allowance measure and social sector size limits to follow once the secondary legislation is published. At this stage, however, it is unclear whether an assessment will be made of the CPI changes. The fact that no comprehensive impact assessment has been completed before the announcement does nothing to reduce the widespread anxiety about this package of reforms. I therefore hope that the Secretary of State will now accept the concerns of his colleagues and undertake to publish an assessment of the whole package.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alexander]

I will come to the issue of the cap. The hon. Gentleman does a disservice to the importance and seriousness of this debate by simply reading out the questions the Whips have given him. In terms of the cumulative effect, which is what we were talking about, this package involves £1.8 billion-worth of cuts. The measure that he identifies accounts for £65 million of that £1.8 billion. One of the many attributes missing on the Government Benches is a sense of proportion.

Let us look at some of the individual measures. Labour Members do not have any objection in principle to asking younger single adults to live in a shared house or flat—after all, that is what has happened a great deal in the private sector. Yet it is revealing that the Chancellor, in his spending review statement to the House, described this as a chance to limit the ability to live on housing benefit as a lifestyle choice. So why have the Government not produced an impact assessment for these proposals? How can we be reassured that there will be sufficient supply to accommodate additional people and that the specific needs of young people in special circumstances, such as the disabled, will be addressed before this measure is introduced?

On the social sector, even the Government themselves seem to be struggling to understand some of the proposals. The June Budget promised to change housing entitlements for people of working age in the social sector. Can the Secretary of State explain what that means, and whether it will mean forcing people to move out of their council homes when their children turn 18? The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate, who has already contributed to the debate, recently said in an answer to a written question:

“The detailed policy design of this change is still being developed.”—[Official Report, 1 November 2010; Vol. 517, c. 565W.]

In that case, why are the Government so confident that it will save £490 million?

Let us move on to the issue of the CPI. The shadow Chancellor has made it clear that we would support changing the uprating of benefits for a time-limited period, but this is not what the Government propose in relation to housing benefit. Index-linking local housing allowance to the CPI, which does not in any way reflect housing costs, means that the LHA’s value will drop substantially against rising rent levels, and households will increasingly find themselves priced out of all but the poorest-quality accommodation.

The impact is clear if we view the decade from 1997 to 2007 and then project forward. During those 10 years rents increased by 70%, while the CPI—the new inflation index that the Government have chosen—increased by only 20%. On that projection, by 2020 housing benefit based on CPI will have fallen so far behind private rents that it may cover only 10% of the available property. In Manchester it would cover only 5% of available two-bedroom flats, and in parts of Winchester, within 10 to 12 years not a single two-bedroom home would be affordable on housing benefit.

I ask Ministers in all seriousness whether it is coincidental that in evidence to the Select Committee on Work and Pensions last week, Lord Freud suggested that the coalition Government now saw it as

“quite valuable to rewrite the homelessness legislation”

Can the Secretary of State confirm whether that is indeed the case, and can he further assure the House that the Government are not simply seeking to rewrite the rules for those threatened by homelessness as they rewrote the rules for the unemployed in the 1980s and ’90s, parking a generation of people in the unemployment figures?

[Matthew Hancock]

The right hon. Gentleman is being careful not to set out the Labour party’s position on the cap. Does he agree with his leader, the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), or does he agree with the shadow Health Secretary, who said nine days ago:

“Those top level benefits do need to be capped”?

[Mr Alexander]

I will answer the hon. Gentleman’s question directly. The former Chancellor of the Exchequer, my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), introduced an option for dealing with extreme cases in the March budget—excluding a proportion of the highest rents from the calculation of the median. I am sure that given his past employment, the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) will be aware of that change. As I have previously stated, I have no objection in principle to a cap, if it is introduced on a staged timetable. I commend to him the speech that I gave at the Institute for Public Policy Research as recently as Friday. However, we have to ask whether a national cap is the most appropriate plan, or whether a regional cap would target the very highest claims in all regions.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Wharton]

I will not give way again.

In the context of the understanding of fairness, let us look at what the Government are doing. We have heard talk about the cap, and it is abundantly obvious that it is not fair for a family or an individual to be able to claim more in housing benefit than an average family takes home in earnings in any given week, month or year. If we set the cap at £20,000 a year, that will still be a very high level. That is the equivalent of earning just over £26,000 a year, as that is what someone would need to earn to have the income to pay that amount of rent without claiming housing benefit support. That is more than the average wage of my constituents, and more than the average wage in the north-east generally. It is also more than the average wage in many of the constituencies of Members on both sides of the House. We cannot expect people who work hard but do not earn large sums of money to pay tax to subsidise individuals and families who are unable to work, for whatever reason, to live in homes that those taxpayers themselves could not afford.

This is an important issue, but there are many other measures involved. The shadow Secretary of State asked whether it was fair to use the 30th percentile to set the level at which housing benefit would be paid in any given area. The Department’s research has shown that, in any given area, just over 30% of properties would be available within that price band, and I suggest that that makes it abundantly obvious that this is not an unreasonable step. Given the difficult financial situation in which we find ourselves, this is a way of finding some of the necessary savings while ensuring that those who need help will still get it. It will ensure that support will be there for those who will benefit from it most, while not unfairly disadvantaging the people who work hard to pay their taxes to enable this to happen. It is important to look at these points in the round, and in the context of the world in which we live today.

Many Opposition Members are not keen to talk about discretionary housing payments because, for many of those who hit particular hardship, such payments will increase. This will help individuals who are in danger of losing their homes, who fall through the gaps between policies or who find themselves in difficulty through no fault of their own. The Government are increasing the provision to £140 million over five years to ensure that, when people are in particular need or when their circumstances are particularly difficult, help is there to ensure that they can stay in their homes and communities. People should not be made homeless by the steps that are being taken, and the Government are taking steps to ensure that that does not happen.

Another measure that Opposition Members often overlook relates to overnight carers. At the moment, the fact that someone has an overnight carer, because they have a disability or for any other reason, is not accounted for when calculating the amount of housing benefit they receive. The Government will change that, and 15,000 people who currently have overnight carers but are not entitled to have the need to provide accommodation for them taken into account in their housing benefit allowance will be better off as a direct result. Their needs will specifically be catered for in a way that, disgracefully, has not been the case for many years.

Lots of changes are taking place in housing benefit, as well as right across the Department for Work and Pensions and other Departments. Opposition Members are right to raise concerns, when they have them, and to call for a debate when that is appropriate. When I look at the motion today, however, I find it most striking that they have suggested no alternatives. This is not an Opposition who are here to put forward alternative proposals or an alternative plan to deal with some of the problems we face. It is an Opposition who are opposing for opposition’s sake.

[Matthew Hancock]

I compliment my hon. Friend on his extremely fluent speech. In talking about the tone of this debate, does he agree that it is important not to make scaremongering comments that make people ill at ease when the changes being made are very important to get a grip on this particular budget?

[James Wharton]

As ever, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The point has been raised a few times already—that the tone of this debate in public and in the media has not necessarily been as it should. When we are talking about people’s homes, people’s allowances and changes that will affect people’s lives, it is incumbent on all of us to ensure that we do so in a careful, measured and sensible way.

Jobs and the Unemployed

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Rushanara Ali]

The Labour Government made every attempt to help people into work. There are great challenges and complex circumstances in helping and enabling people to work, but at least the Labour Government did not shirk their responsibility. At least they tried to support people, as Labour Governments will always do. I appeal to the coalition Government to try to provide support, so that people can achieve their potential. This is not about handouts; it is about giving a helping hand. That is the progressive route to supporting communities.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

rose—

[Rushanara Ali]

I am short of time, so I would like to make some progress and share the following example. At a recent employment fair in my constituency, 10,000 people were queuing up for jobs, but there were only 1,000 places at the work fair. That does not show that people are not interested in jobs or that people will sit idly by waiting for opportunities to come to them; they want to work, they want opportunities and they need support from the private sector, the Government and the voluntary sector. I hope that that is the spirit in which this Government will seek to work.

The cost of unemployment is ill health, depression and anxiety; it is many social consequences that we cannot afford. I regret that unemployment remains high for some sections and that some people continue to feel left behind. I acknowledge that my party did not achieve as much as it would have liked, but the fact is that my party never walked away from people who needed support in constituencies such as mine.

[Matthew Hancock]

I thank the hon. Lady for a very thoughtful speech. Will she join me in welcoming the new Government’s proposal to increase the number of apprenticeships, because she mentioned that earlier?

[Rushanara Ali]

I welcome any effort to try to help people to get work but, as I said in my earlier intervention, it is important to ensure that training programmes are meaningful. I would say that to my own party and my own Government—in fact, I lobbied my Government to keep making progress, because that is the right thing to do. The point is that there is no guarantee of a job at the end of this. Young people, with whom I have spent some years working, need to be convinced that when they get involved with these programmes, there will be a result and the programme is meaningful, not a fudge. That must be our focus. I welcome the 50,000 apprenticeship opportunities, but people will have to wait until next spring. What am I meant to say to my constituents, who have been waiting for help from this Government? We contributed support. The problem is that the recent announcements, whereby all this is to be left until next spring, are not good enough.

I wish to conclude by saying that we must not fail the challenge of trying to help people get into work. We must give them hope, we must realise their potential and we must help them to meet their aspirations. We have not seen evidence of investment in the aspiration that the Prime Minister talked so much about when he was campaigning. I hope that we will see that, and that this Government will not turn their back on the people who want to contribute to this society and this economy, and whose potential we need for economic growth. I hope that this coalition Government will deliver a progressive solution, not one that leaves people behind.

Capital Gains Tax (Rates)

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I will give way in a moment, because I want Government Members to hear this: far from the absence of detail in the Budget, the Budget prepared by the then Chancellor of Exchequer and presented to the House in March set out to the last penny £19 billion-worth of tax rises and, yes, £20 billion-worth of spending cuts, including £1 billion in cuts from the reform of public sector pensions, £1.2 billion in savings from welfare, £3.5 billion in holding down public sector pay, £5 billion in cuts to lower-priority programmes and £11 billion in savings through the biggest shake-up of Whitehall in a generation. That was on top of £15 billion of efficiencies in this year alone—all carefully broken down by Department.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Byrne]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman. Does he accept that the nonsense about there being no plan that we have heard in the debate was complete rubbish?

[Matthew Hancock]

Does the right hon. Gentleman think that there is no money left, or does he no longer agree with himself?

[Mr Byrne]

We can see at whose feet the hon. Gentleman has been training.

Our plan was different from the one the Chancellor presented. Unlike the plan that we heard last week, our plan really did have fairness at its heart. Last Monday night, the Chancellor’s spin doctors made fairness his key Budget test, and by Tuesday lunchtime he had failed it. The night before the Budget, we are reliably informed, Lobby journalists were equipped with an analysis of the Budget’s impact on different groups of citizens, yet somehow, someone forgot to tell the press that the picture was only fair because it included Labour measures. The Government would not dare to present a Budget to stand and fall on its own merits; they had to borrow ours. It did not take long to hear why.

What was the Budget’s impact on pensioners? Age UK says:

“Our research shows that cuts of this scale will be disastrous for older people”

and warns that thousands of lives will be lost. What is the impact on children? Save the Children says:

“Freezing child benefit…will hurt the poorest parents most, rather than their richest peers”.

A 20% VAT rate means driving some of the poorest parents into the arms of loan sharks. The Child Poverty Action Group said:

“This is a disappointing budget for child poverty…The increase in VAT is a regressive measure which will impact hardest on poorest families.”

Perhaps the final word should go to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. In a phrase that will come back to haunt Government Members, it said that the cuts to benefits will

“hit the poorest hardest and keep on hitting them harder year on year”.

Six days on from the main event, the Government’s progressive credentials already lie in ruins.

The price of keeping down unemployment in the worst global recession for 60 years was a price worth paying. It was the price of a national defence in a global storm. When we left office, unemployment was 500,000 lower than people expected a year ago. Repossessions were half the level of the 1990s, and company insolvencies were just a third of the rate they reached in the recession of the early 1990s. We are proud that we got the country though the recession in one piece and that we have delivered a return to growth.

It is true to say that no Government would have had an easy time in this Parliament, but the difficulty of the task demands that we do not take gratuitous bets with the nation’s hard-fought recovery and that we pay down the debt in a way that is fair. The Budget fails both those tests, and we will campaign for a plan that is better in this House and beyond.