Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be called to speak in this Budget debate.

In these debates, we normally have a chance to pick over the elements of a Budget of which we particularly approve, to consider and discuss them and to draw conclusions, and normally by the Monday the devil in the detail has been uncovered. I think we can safely say that this year that has largely been the case: we have found the devil, and the devil has been chased out of the room.

I would love to speak for the remaining five minutes about the importance of the northern powerhouse, about why it is about more than just transport infrastructure projects—important as they are—and about why devolution has the opportunity to be a visionary policy and how the Chancellor deserves immense credit for persisting with it. Owing to the pressures of time, I will focus on the elements that I think form a golden thread running through the Budget and the Government’s approach.

We can call it compassionate conservatism, one nation, social justice, a preferential option for the poor—the title does not really matter—but running through everything we do as a Government and a party should be a concern for the people the state has failed; those who face challenges we might not face ourselves; those at the bottom of the pile, the low-earners; and those who might not always be at the forefront of our minds as we go about our regular business. If we want to be a party that can look itself in the mirror and believe it is doing its best for everyone in our country, we must meet that challenge.

We have to make sure that our values and principles apply equally across the generations, which is why it was so important that this was a Budget for young people as much as for old people. Focusing on every generation, and on the balance and links between them, and ensuring that the next generation has the chance to exceed the achievements of its parents’ generation have to be the fundamental tests of every Conservative policy in every manifesto we put out. They should be at the centre of what we seek to do.

I heartily welcome the Government’s decision to rethink PIP. I had real difficulty understanding how the limited technocratic changes to the points-scoring system in the PIP assessment could be squared with the large saving the Treasury was seeking to derive from the PIP changes. I am glad we are not going down that path now.

I welcome our remaining a party committed to halving the disability employment gap, but I am realistic enough to recognise that it will require some radical policy reform to ensure that the complex needs of people trying to find work are adequately assessed and met so that we help them back into work. Moreover, we have to recognise that a significant number of people on a benefit such as PIP will never be able to return to work, and we must be ultra-careful in this place not to fall into some inadvertent utilitarian trap that sees those who cannot return to work as somehow being less deserving of our sympathy and financial support. Many who are in work rely on PIP to stay in work—it is a working-age benefit; it is not means-tested. Equally, however, many are not in work and never will be. They will face a life reliant on the state, but that is not necessarily a bad thing or something to be ashamed of.

We need to do more to ensure that money is spent in a way that is aligned with incentives and that the most vulnerable within a vulnerable group are looked after. Those with every chance of returning to work are no more worth while than those who are not. There is no hierarchy of human value in our welfare state. The benefits system should not be seen as a greater opportunity for savings among the economically inactive.

It genuinely staggers me, though, that the Labour party is a bystander in this debate. Labour Members talk the language of welfare reform, but they have no ideas at all, other than to get out the national credit card, time and again, to pay for every U-turn. I have said in the past that to make real progress on disability policy, there needs to be cross-party agreement. I look to the Labour Benches to try to decide who might be brave enough to make that step—to dispense with the ill will and malevolence and to come forward with some real proposals to find that cross-party support. I do not see it yet.