Universal Credit

Debate between Ruth George and Mark Harper

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

I want to start my remarks by noting the presence of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), whose decision to drive through this policy was very far-sighted. He was motivated by a desire to make the benefit system fundamentally focus on enabling people to get into work and to make sure that work pays. I think that is incredibly important, and I will say more about that later in my remarks.

I suspect that many of the Members who will speak in the debate will compare the situation under universal credit with some mythical universe of perfection where there are no problems. I was first elected to the House in 2005, in the aftermath of the introduction of tax credits. They had been introduced with a big bang, which was a disaster. Nearly half the recipients were paid the wrong amount of money—nearly £2,000,000,000 was paid in error. I had constituents who had been reassured over and over again that the money was theirs to spend, but then Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs came to take it away. I had constituents in tears at my surgery. Let us not pretend that the legacy benefit system is perfect, because that is not what we are comparing universal credit with; we are comparing it with a legacy benefit system that is flawed and needs to be improved.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the problems with tax credit overpayments resulted from a low excess income level, which was then raised by the Labour Government to £5,000 a year, meaning that we did not get overpayments? The previous Government reduced it back to £1,000, so we are again seeing overpayments because people earn more. That is the problem: we had a Government that did listen and learn, and now we have one that will not.

[Mr Harper]

I was in the House at the time, and I am afraid that the Government were pushed into action and threw huge amounts of taxpayers’ money around in a way that did not target the problem.

Finance Bill

Debate between Ruth George and Mark Harper

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am very pleased that the measures in this Bill, which Opposition Front Benchers seem so unwilling to support, raise something like £1.6 billion—I am sure that the Financial Secretary will correct me if I am wrong—on top of the £1 billion we have raised from non-doms. Put together, that is £2.6 billion, which is more than the Labour party raised in all the time it was in government. If the hon. Lady compares Labour’s record in government with ours, she will see that we have been much more effective in raising taxes from non-doms to spend on our public services than her Government ever was.

[Ruth George]

How does the right hon. Gentleman think that the estimate of £1.6 billion to be raised by increased taxes on non-doms will be affected by the increase to two years in the time they have to transfer their funds into offshore trusts, thereby avoiding that increase in taxation? How will that impact on the figures?