Rachel Reeves
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Living Standards
Rachel Reeves Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House believes that next month’s Budget should include a real plan for jobs and growth in order to boost the stalled economy, help hard-pressed families, pensioners and small businesses, bring down unemployment, and so ensure that the deficit is brought down and done so in a fair way; notes that while the banks are receiving a tax cut this year, the Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis shows that families with children will lose an average of £580 per year from tax and benefit changes coming into effect in 2012-13; further notes that up to 200,000 couples with children who work part-time face losing all their working tax credit of up to £3,870 per year from April 2012 if they cannot increase their working hours to 24 hours per week, further squeezing family living standards; further recognises that, in addition to ending the principle of universal child benefit, the Government’s unfair and ill-thought-through changes to child benefit will mean that a family with two earners each earning £40,000 would keep all its child benefit, but a single-earner family on £43,000 would lose it all, at a cost of £2,450 per year for a family with three children; and calls on the Chancellor to use extra revenue from tackling tax avoidance to cancel his changes to eligibility rules for working tax credits and announce in the Budget an immediate and urgent review of his changes to child benefit, to report before they come into effect in January 2013.
The Opposition have called this debate to draw attention to the injustice of ill-considered changes to benefits and tax credits, which are about to hit hard-pressed hard-working families across the country. We urge the Government to take this chance to review and rectify the pressure they are piling on families who are already under huge strain.
The debate takes place against the backdrop of the biggest squeeze in living standards in a generation, which is made all the more painful because of the Government’s failure to generate jobs and growth, and to deal with the deficit fairly. This year, they have chosen to take more from women and families with children than they are taking from the banks—they are refusing to repeat the tax on bank bonuses that the previous Labour Government introduced, with banks benefiting instead from a cut in corporation tax. At the same time, the average family with children faces a £580 cut in their annual income next month, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Those families will get a Budget bombshell from the Chancellor this year.
Today the Opposition are calling attention to two ways in which the Government are clobbering families with children. The Government’s lack of competence or care when it comes to fairness for families includes a crude cut to child benefit planned for 2013, meaning that while two-earner families with incomes up to £84,000 will keep all their child benefit, a single-earner family with an income of more than £43,000 will lose all theirs. Families will be asking: “Is that fair?” We are also about to see a punitive withdrawal of working tax credits for couples with children, meaning that unless a family on £17,000 can increase their working hours from 16 to 24 by 1 April, they will see their income fall by almost £4,000. Families will be asking the Government: “Is that fair?” I look forward to the Minister’s answers.
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is appalling that in Liverpool, Riverside alone, more than 520 children from families who are working, but in low-paid jobs, will suffer as a direct result of that measure?
Rachel Reeves
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, who makes the point about her constituents. All hon. Members will have heard at our surgeries from people who are beginning to realise that in just a few weeks’ time, they will lose all their working tax credit, despite the fact that they are working and doing the right thing.
Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend put it to those on the Treasury Bench that when child benefit came in, it replaced family allowances and child tax allowances, and therefore played a crucial part, because whatever level of income people with children were on, we in some way maintained equity with tax-free income? The Government are abolishing that for the sake of higher rate taxpayers. How can they maintain that the tax burden is being shared between single and childless people, and those with children, if they abolish child benefit?
Rachel Reeves
My right hon. Friend is entirely right. This country will be one of the few that does not support families with children across the income distribution. Having children is expensive, and it is right that when people bring up a family, and when they retire, the state is there to provide that bit of extra support when they need it. The Government’s changes go entirely in the wrong direction.
That is a shocking illustration of the Government’s failure to come to grips with the crisis that our country faces—the crisis that is putting families under strain is the crisis in jobs, incomes and living standards. The cost-of-living crisis does not hit the headlines like a banking crisis or a currency crisis perhaps because it is a crisis from which those with the loudest voices can too easily insulate themselves. For the vast majority of people, however, trying to keep going and keep their heads above water is one of the toughest challenges that they have ever faced. Every day is a battle in a long war of attrition.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that those at the top of the income scale do not mention the crisis because they are not facing a crisis? The RBS bonus pool was £785 million.
Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend is right to say that those on the lowest incomes and modest and middle incomes are being hardest hit by the changes to taxes and benefits that the Government have instituted.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady acknowledge that the Government’s proposals to take more than 1.1 million people out of tax, through the personal allowances, represents a tax cut for more than 25 million people? On the motion, will she confirm that the Budget is this month, not next?
Rachel Reeves
The changes come into effect next month, but the Budget is in 16 days. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), who is a Liberal Democrat, says that he was going to vote for the motion. Perhaps he was thinking of before the election, when he agreed with progressive policies.
Every day, families are struggling, while the Government demand more from them, and there is no end in sight, no light at the end of the tunnel, just the fear that one day, sooner or later, they will not be able to pay the mortgage, rent or gas bill. We have called this debate because the Government seem unaware of what is happening, unable to understand what people are going through, unwilling to do what it takes to get our economy growing and unemployment falling, and uninterested in taking the trouble to find out what impact their decisions are having.
The choices that the Government are making are hurting but not working. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Taunton Deane says that we are wrong. It is the Government who are wrong because they are hitting hard-working families harder than anyone else, and giving the banks a tax cut while penalising families and young children trying to do the right thing and stay afloat. The choices that the Government are making are hurting but not working. They are penalising those trying to do the right thing. In response to the crisis in living standards hitting families, the Government are piling on the pressure with badly designed and badly targeted cuts to benefits and tax credits.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
Although, of course, it is desirable to lift more people on low wages out of tax, is it not the case that this is not a particularly well-targeted measure in difficult times because it applies exactly the same tax advantage to higher paid people?
Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend speaks with great knowledge, having formerly worked for the Child Poverty Action Group, and what she says should hold great sway with the House.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
In response to the question from the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) about people being taken out of tax, will my hon. Friend agree that more people are being taken out of tax—and put on the dole? What is that costing us? Some 700,000 public sector workers have gone on the dole in this country. Not only will they not be paying tax but they will not be paying national insurance, which will make things even worse for this country.
Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As we all know, unemployment is at a 17-year high and youth unemployment at an all-time high. That is taking more people out of tax and costing taxpayers more and more every day, as the bills of this failed economic policy add up.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend consider the point that the people affected by the change to working tax credit who work 16 hours a week—probably on the minimum wage—already fall well below the tax threshold, so however desirable it is to raise the tax threshold, it will not help those people at all?
Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The most by which someone affected by the changes to working tax credits could benefit from next month’s increase is £125. That pales into insignificance compared with the £3,800, which is the amount by which these families will be worse off because of these changes.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Having highlighted the anomaly with one and two-earner families regarding child benefit withdrawal, does the Labour party have a suggested solution to sort it out?
Rachel Reeves
I am looking to the Government Front-Bench team for their solution, given the words that we have heard from Ministers over the past couple of days. The Labour party supports child benefit as a universal benefit. At the very least, the Government must iron out the anomaly that means that families earning £84,000 a year can still get child benefit, while a one-earner family on £43,000 cannot.
One month tomorrow, on Good Friday, 212,000 families stand to lose up to £4,000 because of changes to the working tax credit. The Government will say that people need only to increase the number of hours they work from 16 to 24. If they were in touch with working families and businesses, they would know that this is simply not an option for many people because the jobs are not there, and employers are laying people off and cutting hours, not increasing them.
Mr Sam Gyimah (East Surrey) (Con)
The hon. Lady is demonstrating to the House that she is a very good Opposition politician. What exactly would she do to address the problem that she is highlighting?
Rachel Reeves
I thank the hon. Gentleman for saying that I am a good Opposition politician; I hope, in due course, to be a good Government politician, so that we can put into practice measures to help families, pensioners and businesses facing the squeeze. But it is this Government’s mistakes and wrong-headed policies, which are callous, incompetent and unfair, that are penalising families trying to do the right thing. As I said to the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), I would like child benefit kept as a universal benefit to help all families with the cost of bringing up a family. At the very least, however, the Govt must address the anomaly.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that this devastating cut in tax credits, which will take £800 million away from families in Wales alone, is not only a tragedy for each family but economic madness, because these are the very families who have to put the money immediately back into the local economy? That money will be sucked out of the local economy, resulting in fewer opportunities for growth and economic recovery.
Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend is right. Government Members would do well to listen to her point. We also know that because of the changes to working tax credits, many families will be in the crazy situation whereby they would be better off on benefits than in work, as the Government’s own figures show.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
The hon. Lady is moving on to some of the complexities of the benefits system. Does she support the coalition Government’s policies for a universal benefit as a way of simplifying this process? Did she vote for that?
Rachel Reeves
This has nothing to do with universal credit. Those changes take effect in about one and a half years. In the meantime, families will be £74 worse off a week because of what the Government are doing, and would be better off on benefits. That is totally inconsistent with what universal credit is supposed to do, which is to ensure that everyone is better off in work. This policy goes in totally the opposite direction.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) mentioned universal credit. That is designed to ensure that work pays in 18 months, but what would my hon. Friend say to my constituents, the parents of 1,700 children in Slough, who currently work between 16 and 24 hours and who will lose £3,800? That is in no way compensated for by the measly £200 resulting from raising the tax threshold.
Rachel Reeves
I will come to that very point. Hours are being cut at the moment, so many people working part time who will be hit by these changes to working tax credits are working part time because they cannot find full-time work. Numbers from the Office for National Statistics show that the number of people working part time because they cannot find full-time work is at a record high of 1.35 million—a 13% increase on a year ago. It is therefore not the case that families can simply increase their hours to keep their tax credits. They are being penalised, first because of the lack of economic recovery, and secondly because of this Government’s decision to cut working tax credits.
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
Government Members keep asking what a Labour Government would do. I was a Social Security Minister when the Labour Government put together effective welfare-to-work policies. What is needed to make them effective is a macro-economic policy that creates jobs and allows people in part-time work to increase their hours. Under the Labour Government, the number of jobs in York increased from 40,000 to 57,000, many of them in retailing. It is precisely those people—1,600 in York—who look set to lose family income as a result of this Government’s policy.
Rachel Reeves
Like my hon. Friend, many of us will have spoken to constituents in jobs whose hours vary—for instance, those working in retail or call centres, or those working as cleaners. However, at the moment, their hours are varying in one direction: downwards, because employers are cutting hours and cutting staff.
In addition to the changes to working tax credits, next January more than 1.5 million families will lose every single penny of their child benefit. The Government are saying, “Well, we’re only cutting child benefit for rich families.” However, if they talked to working families, they would realise that many families are heavily reliant on a single earner, because there is only one parent or because one parent is staying at home to bring up the kids. Those families are being hard hit by the changes.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
I am listening to the hon. Lady’s speech carefully, and she has made several references to the crises in various parts of our society. The greatest crisis facing the Government, I hope she would agree, is the debt crisis, a huge contribution to which was made by the previous Government. We would all appreciate it if the hon. Lady told us whether the response to the issue being raised today is simply to add to that debt crisis or to find some other way of dealing with it.
Rachel Reeves
I would like to know how the hon. Gentleman would explain to the 348 kids in his constituency who will be affected by the changes to working tax credits how it makes sense for their families to be better off on benefits than it is for their parents to be in work. That will surely add to the debt, not reduce it. It is this Government who are borrowing an extra £158 billion, because of the costs of their failed economic policies; it is they who are adding to the debt.
A Government who believe in fairness—a Government who say, “We’re all in this together”—are straining at the leash to cut tax for individuals with incomes over £150,000, while one-earner families on £43,000 stand to lose £2,500 of child benefit and families struggling on just £17,000 stand to lose around £4,000 because of changes to tax credits. Instead of worrying about the top 1%, this Government should start thinking about the other 99%.
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)
The hon. Lady says that she cares about our children. Those of us on the Government Benches also care about our children and our grandchildren. Does she think it right to saddle them, generation on generation, with debt, racked up by the previous Administration?
Rachel Reeves
As for caring for children, the Government’s own figures show that child poverty will increase under this Administration. As I said in answer to an earlier question, there is nothing helpful about throwing more people out of work and on to benefits, either for those families or for taxpayers, who have to pick up the bill of extra benefits and lower tax revenue.
Rachel Reeves
The hon. Lady has had her chance; I will carry on.
When it comes to child benefits, a Government who say that they believe in rewarding work are creating a perverse and damaging incentive for people near the higher-rate tax threshold to limit their hours or pay, because of the crude cliff-edge effect that their policies will create. At the same time, changes to the rules for working tax credits will mean that some families could end up £728 better off on benefits than in work, according to a written answer from the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling).
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
The Chancellor said when he took office that he did not intend to balance the books on the backs of the poor. Is that not now exactly what he is intending—and failing—to do? That is the real answer to the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry).
Rachel Reeves
It is even worse than that, because the Chancellor is not even balancing the books.
Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the 1,200 people in Stoke-on-Trent earning just under £17,000 a year who will be worse off under these changes desperately need the Government to listen to this debate and do something in the Budget about the comprehensive spending review, so that they do not have to pay the price for these unacceptable changes?
Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend is right when she sticks up for the people of Stoke, who, like many of our constituents, will be hard hit by the changes, which do nothing to encourage people to go back to work, and instead encourage people to stay on the dole, because they will be better off on benefits than in work.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I hope I can add some weight to what my hon. Friend is saying. I was contacted by a local small business owner in my constituency—Keith Bannister, who runs Harley’s pub, which people in Staveley will all be aware of. He told me that three women on his payroll are threatened with the loss of their tax credits. They have told him that they will have to give up work if that happens, but he knows that if he increases the hours of two of them, he will have to lay off the third. It just does not make sense, does it?
Rachel Reeves
It would be better if he was advising the Treasury, rather than the people who are currently doing it, because that is absolutely right, and it gets to the heart of the problem.
Indeed, that seems symptomatic of a wider problem with this Government: rushing out announcements to generate headlines before the costs have been counted; dreaming up the next big idea, when they should be focusing on the impact of their policies in the real world. We heard over the weekend that the Prime Minister had lost his blue-skies thinker. However, it might not be such a bad thing, because in tough times such as these, our constituents need a Government with their feet on the ground, not with their head in the clouds. I hope that this debate gives the Government a much needed reality check, because it is not too late to change course and protect hard-pressed families from further hardship and strain, inflicted on them by this Government.
It is the job of this House to ensure that our constituents’ voices are heard and their struggles taken into account, and that the impact of Government policies on their lives is fully understood. Labour Members hear every day from our constituents, and from the people we talk to around the country, about how hard it is to make enough money to pay the bills, find work or keep businesses afloat. It is not too late for the Chancellor to correct the mistakes that he is making with child benefit and working tax credits. I urge the Government to commit now to an urgent review of the child benefit changes and to use the money from a crackdown on stamp duty avoidance to cancel the damaging cut to working tax credits.
There is still time to listen to the families who will be hit by the restrictions on working tax credits, 78% of whom said in a survey for USDAW—the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers—that they would be unable to find the additional hours needed to keep their tax credits. There is still time to listen to the many families hit by the change who cannot work extra hours because they have disabled children or other caring responsibilities. The Government have refused to exempt those families where one parent is a full-time carer. There is still time to listen to the Child Poverty Action Group, which warns that the change will
“cause a surge in child poverty of hundreds of thousands”.
There is still time to listen to the children’s charities and organisations speaking up for hard-pressed families—including Barnardo’s, Carers UK, Citizens Advice, the National Children’s Bureau and Working Families—which today wrote to the Prime Minister urging him to think again. There is still time to listen to one woman—Mary, from Belfast—who said:
“I can’t get my employer to give me the extra hours I need to qualify. There are people in my work who have had to take redundancy or cut their hours from 36…to 12 hours a week…Where does he think we are going to pluck the extra hours from? It’s a joke.”
Frankly, Mary is right.
On child benefit, there is still time to listen to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which says that the Government’s proposals will
“create a bizarre and economically damaging set of incentives”.
There is still time to listen to the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who said that the Government’s plans would lead to
“a lot of unfairness and injustice”.
He is right. There is also still time to listen to the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), who said that the Government’s policy was “barmy, tokenistic and unfair”. He, too, is right. I look forward to both of them, and others on the Government Benches, joining us in the Lobby this evening to tell the Government what they think of their policies.
All day, we have been getting smoke signals and spin from the Government. The Deputy Prime Minister says that they are thinking again, yet the Secretary of State for Justice says that they are not. Who is right? I look forward to getting an answer on what the Government’s policy on tax credits and child benefit actually is. It is a shame that no member of the Cabinet is in the Chamber tonight to give that answer and to talk about Government policy.
With 16 days to go until the Budget, the families that are about to be hit by the changes need certainty and commitments. The motion gives Members on both sides of the House an opportunity to dispel any doubts about the seriousness of our commitment to families and to fairness, and to show that we have listened to our constituents and our consciences. We have an opportunity this evening to stand up for fairness in tough times and to vote to protect family incomes by supporting the motion.
Rachel Reeves
Can the Minister tell us whether the measures introduced by his party are progressive or regressive?
Mr Gauke
All the measures that will be put in place in 2012-13 are being implemented by this Government. That is the point. It is impossible to disaggregate those measures. They are all going to be put in place, and we are responsible for all of them. If we had wanted to reverse some of them, we could have done so, but we did not.
Of course, none of what we are doing ignores the fact that this will be a tough year for households across the board. We know that that is the case, and it is our reason for going even further to support families and businesses throughout the country.