Controlling Migration
John Bercow Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. A great many Members are seeking to catch my eye, and I should like to accommodate as many as possible, so brevity from the Back Benches and the Front Benches alike is required.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. She correctly mentioned student visas, and then mentioned consultation. Given that we have had 10 years of almost mass immigration, will she assure the House that that consultation will be swift?
Mr Speaker
I call Paul Uppal. [Interruption.] Order. I am quite worried about Opposition Front Benchers. They are in a state of quite extraordinary excitement, but I want to hear Mr Uppal.
Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Immigration cases take up most of the case load at my weekly surgery, particularly during the summer months, when the wedding season and many other family occasions take place. Will the Home Secretary and the Minister for Immigration, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), consider pinning down responsibility for sponsorship when people come here to visit their families on such occasions? That would tackle head-on the problem of absconding, fraud and overstaying. The last Labour Government examined the matter when immigration was an issue, but they ducked it and chose not to do anything about it.
Mrs May
I have said in some of my conversations with businesses that it is important that they look to ensure that they encourage and provide the training for skills growth and development here in the UK. That is important, as it is in the UK’s interests, the individual’s interests and the interests of those businesses.
Mr Speaker
I must thank the Home Secretary and colleagues for their co-operation, as a result of which in 40 minutes of Back-Bench time we managed to get through 44 Back-Bench questions and answers. It shows what can be done when we put our minds to it.
Mr Speaker
Well, I am always grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his unfailing support and I heard what he said.
Points of Order
John Bercow Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Of course, I commend your chairing. Given that we have just witnessed a U-turn on a U-turn, I am tempted to ask whether you might allow the Home Secretary to start again, but I fear that that might be ruled out of order.
On a more serious point, may I ask whether the Home Secretary contacted you today about the leak of her statement to the BBC? Did she explain why the statement was leaked to the BBC, and do you think it would be appropriate for her to explain to the House why the details of her statement were leaked to the BBC this morning?
Mr Speaker
I sometimes wonder whether these generous initial remarks are a ruse by Members to get me on their side, but I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I was not contacted by the Home Secretary about the matter to which the right hon. Gentleman refers, but he makes his point with force and clarity. I am always concerned that the House should hear key announcements first. However, I would say that when different numbers are being bandied around that is sometimes a sign of a matter for debate rather than a point of order. However, I shall keep my eyes and ears focused firmly on these matters because the House must hear first.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. As you have more or less indicated, I think that the Home Secretary—
Mrs May
After 13 years in opposition, as the right hon. Gentleman will discover, one sometimes makes these mistakes. The information that the BBC had was wrong and I am happy to say to the House that any information on the BBC first thing this morning was nothing to do with the Home Office.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the Home Secretary, and I am glad that we are not going to suffer an identity crisis for any length of time. I would simply say to the House that I think we will leave it there. We have had an exchange, concerns have been expressed and the Home Secretary has made her position clear.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
If the hon. Gentleman has a totally unrelated point of order, I am happy to hear it.
Pete Wishart
The BBC may or may not have got the Home Secretary’s statement, but the smaller parties most certainly did not get a copy of it in advance. The Government have been pretty good at getting statements to us recently. Will you ensure that the smaller parties, such as the Labour party, get a copy of the statement in advance of its being given?
Mr Speaker
In so far as I could fully hear the hon. Gentleman—I apologise if I failed to hear him, but there was quite a lot of noise in the Chamber—I would simply reiterate that there are certain requirements of courtesy on Ministers. Generally speaking, the requirements are complied with and I know that it is always the intention of Ministers to do so. Generally speaking, that happens and if it did not in this case, that was a mistake.
Mr Speaker
The Home Secretary nods assent to that proposition. I hope that such a mistake will not happen again.
Mr Speaker
The right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) is insatiable today.
Ed Balls
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Having heard the Home Secretary’s remarks, I fully accept that it was not her or her Department who made this leak. I hear you saying two things from the Chair: first, that these leaks are undesirable and, secondly, that they are even more undesirable if people get the numbers wrong when they are doing the leaking.
Mr Speaker
The question of whether it was or was not a leak remains undetermined. All I can say is that I am Speaker of the House, but I am not Sherlock Holmes. Moreover, as usual, the right hon. Gentleman has used his ingenuity to put his point firmly on the record. If there are no further points of order, perhaps we can come to the ten-minute rule Bill, for which the promoter and some of his supporters have been eagerly waiting.
Socio-economic Equality Duty
John Bercow Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Speaker
Order. The Minister really cannot go into the subject of housing benefit caps. She can give a reply on equality if she wants, but she cannot talk about that, I am afraid.
Lynne Featherstone
That is such a shame, Mr Speaker, but I will restrain myself.
Of course legislation is important, but it must be effective legislation, not gesture legislation.
Mr Speaker
Order. May I just say gently that people are perfectly entitled to vent their views, but questions must relate to the socio-economic duty? That is the matter that we are discussing.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
The Government’s dilution of the previous Government’s equality legislation is just one of a series of betrayals of women. They failed to undertake a gender impact assessment of the emergency Budget—[Interruption.] Maybe the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice would like to take this seriously, because it is a serious matter. The Government have failed to sign up to new measures to combat human trafficking of women and children, and they have frozen the pay of the lowest-paid public sector workers, whose actual salaries are less than £21,000 and many of whom are women. When exactly will they stop taking measures that have a disproportionately negative impact on women?
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
I welcome the Minister’s reply, but will she go further? The Government are consulting on related regulations to force up to 27,000 councils, schools, police forces and other bodies annually to audit their work force on age, disability, sexuality, sex changes, religion and other beliefs. Can she explain how, according to the departmental answer I received this week, those requirements will not cost public—
Mr Speaker
Order. That question suffers from the disadvantage that it has absolutely nothing whatever to do with the socio-economic duty.
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
The Minister came to the Chamber and said that the duty was “weak” and a “gesture”, and that substantive legislation is required. When will she introduce that legislation?
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman is getting a little carried away, which is not an uncommon phenomenon in the House. He has resumed his seat and we are grateful to him. He knows, because he has been in the House for, I believe, 18 years, that he should not ask a Minister about the policies of the Opposition.
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman must contain himself. We will leave it there, and we are grateful to him.
Immigration
John Bercow Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Robert Halfon
As I have said, I apologise for not giving the hon. Lady advance notice of my comments. I was not aware that I should have done, and I will make sure that I do in any future instances. However, all I did was publicly to quote from what the BBC said. I accept that you were a former Minister, but in being a former Minister, you actually give more prescience to your remarks—
Mr Speaker
Order. Let me say to the hon. Gentleman that I am not a former Minister, I have never been a Minister and I have no aspiration to be a Minister.
Robert Halfon
I apologise again, Mr Speaker. However, what the hon. Lady said, as reported by the BBC, is one reason why immigration officers are viewed as “s***s”—because some people decide that if one is like that, all of them are like that. She made no attempt to distinguish between them, and by her remarks she has tarred every immigration officer with the same brush.
Robert Halfon
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) implied that I have misled the House. I am quoting directly from the BBC article. The part that is in quotation marks reads as follows:
“One of the reasons immigration officers are”
s***s—
“is actually because some people cheat and they decide everyone is like that”.
It is a direct quotation, and that is all that I wish to say about the matter.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that attempted point of order. What I would say is simply this. A comment was made earlier, and subsequently there was a series of points of order. The hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) offered an apology; the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) has now made a speech. As a matter of courtesy to the hon. Gentleman whom I am about to call and the right hon. Gentleman whom I shall ask to wind up to the debate, I suggest that we leave it there. There are now considerations of courtesy to other Members.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Bercow Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)
On the subject of reforms to the immigration system and the particular point of deportation, the death of Jimmy Mubenga a few weeks ago was the first time that an escorted individual has died during deportation. My right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) has twice requested a briefing from the Home Secretary regarding the circumstances of that case, and both requests have been refused. Will the Minister now make a statement to the House, updating Members on the progress of any internal investigation into Mr Mubenga’s death and the use of restraint during enforced deportation more generally? In particular, will he state whether the use of restraint on children during deportation is also being reviewed?
Damian Green
I welcome the hon. Lady to the Front Bench and congratulate her on her very rapid promotion. May I repeat what I said to the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz)? There is a police investigation going on at the moment. It would clearly be inappropriate for me or my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to give any details about this case while the police investigation is going on. I am surprised that the shadow Home Secretary asked the hon. Lady to do that while a police investigation was going on.
Nick Herbert
The previous Government would not give any guarantee on police officer numbers. Indeed, in many forces police officer numbers were already falling when this Government came to power. The test is about what those police officers are doing, and whether they are visible and available to the public. We will accept no lectures from the Opposition, who have put this country in the position of having to cut police officer funding. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I am not quite sure what Members had for either breakfast or lunch, but I think I had better steer clear of both.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
6. When she plans to publish her proposals to amend the Licensing Act 2003.
Mr Speaker
Order. I hope that the Under-Secretary recovers her voice before very long. We wish her better.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
T4. Does the Home Secretary agree with the views of the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change on control orders? Having now had five months in office, does she accept that those of us who exercised such powers on behalf of the Home Office when we were in government did so because we tried to secure the safety of the British people, and we were, indeed, right to do so?
Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)
Is the Minister aware that a pioneering partnership between North Yorkshire police and the local community in Sherburn in Elmet in my constituency has seen the public inquiry desk at the village police station reopen? The desk is manned completely by volunteers. Does he agree that this is a great example of the big society in action? Will he join me in congratulating the local volunteers and North Yorkshire police—
Aviation Security Incident
John Bercow Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Andrew Bridgen
In other words, what we need to do is avoid UK-only measures.
Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. May I join him in commending the work of all those at East Midlands airport, including the police and others working there, for the way that they dealt with the incident? It is one thing to stand here in the House of Commons and talk about such an incident; it is quite another to approach a device that one knows may be explosive and to deal with it on behalf of others. I certainly thank them for their work, and I commend them for it.
On the second part of my hon. Friend’s question, I would simply say that it is not in our gift to mandate the response of others on such issues. However, the work that we will be doing—and that we have been doing as a country over the years—which involves talking to international partners, airlines and airport operators about security levels and the measures that need to be put in place, is part of the process of trying to ensure that, as far as possible, we see enhanced security in other places.
Mrs May
I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the coalition Government as a whole are governing in the national interest, and that we are very conscious that the first task of government is to keep the public safe. As I have said, and as I also said earlier this afternoon in Home Office questions, no final decisions have been taken on the counter-terrorism legislation review, but at such time as they are taken they will, of course, be brought before the House.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Does this event not undermine the British Government’s justification for continuing to demand that our brave British soldiers continue to risk their lives in Afghanistan—that that keeps Afghanistan free of terrorist camps—and ignore the fact that the terrorist threat is not the Taliban but al-Qaeda, which is free to operate in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia?
Mrs May
I simply say to the hon. Gentleman that this is not a zero-sum game: it is simply not the case that if we are able to take action against a group of terrorists in one place they just move somewhere else and we then deal with them there. In recent months and years we have seen the sources of terrorist threats become more diverse. Our troops have been doing a remarkable job in Afghanistan with great courage—great bravery—in order to ensure that al-Qaeda is unable to regain a foothold in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda is, however, starting to operate from other parts of the world; that is the diversity of the threat, rather than simply an alternative one. I therefore say to the hon. Gentleman that it is right that we commend the important and vital work our troops have been doing in Afghanistan, but we must also be aware of the al-Qaeda threat growing in other parts of the world.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the Home Secretary and other colleagues for their co-operation.
Mr Speaker
We were about to proceed to the main business, but not before we have had a point of order from Chi Onwurah.
Crime and Policing
John Bercow Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Nick Herbert
The right hon. Gentleman says that he would have protected police spending. So which budget would he have cut more deeply? Would it have been health? Would it have been defence? Of course Labour Members will not tell us, but we do know that HMIC has said that £1 billion a year—12% of the budget— could have been saved through better and wiser spending. We will not know the availability of resources until the outcome of the spending review on 20 October, but we are determined to protect front-line services.
When he was Home Secretary, the right hon. Gentleman would not guarantee police numbers. Perhaps that is not surprising, because we know that police numbers across the country were starting to fall on his watch. He knew that he could not guarantee the funding, and he knew what was around the corner.
The second part of the shadow Home Secretary’s contention was that we should make no attempt to protect civil liberties. His entire attack was based on what we planned to do in relation to the restoration of those liberties. The Labour party’s position is straightforward: the DNA that is taken from innocent people should be retained. The shadow Home Secretary based that on the argument that crimes would be solved, so why should he stop there? If the end justifies the means, why not take DNA from everyone? If the Labour party is suggesting that all people are potential criminals, they should believe that that would deal with crime. In fact, the end does not justify the means. Labour, the party that proposed 90 days’ detention without trial, still does not understand that if we undermine liberty and erode public confidence in law enforcement—if we take away freedom—we do not make people safer at all.
The third part of the right hon. Gentleman’s contention was that we should not accept the need for reform of policing. The Government believe that we must replace the bureaucratic accountability and top-down targets of which the last Government were so fond with democratic accountability, rebuild the bridge between the police and the public and reduce Home Office interference, so that we can give local people a real say over policing in their areas.
Labour Members raised various spectres. The hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) spoke of the risk of politicians being in charge of police forces. Who else should be in charge of police forces, other than elected people? Police forces must answer to someone, and I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that it might be right and proper for them to answer to democratically elected people. The shadow Home Secretary raised the spectre of extremism. That is a constant cry from the Labour party. The British national party won just 2% of the vote in the last election, but it suits Labour’s argument to suggest that extremists will be elected. We on this side of the House say, “Let us trust the people when it comes to who will be elected to these positions.” The people will decide who should represent them and hold the police to account.
We are determined that local authorities will still have a role on police and crime panels, and are determined to press ahead with this reform. The shadow Home Secretary said that the reform simply was not necessary. Why? Why, in 2003, did the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), propose directly elected police authorities?
“For many people”,
the Labour Government said then,
“the question of who is responsible for what in terms of keeping communities safe is simply unclear. We must rectify this. Strong, transparent accountability is vital for community confidence.”
In 2008 the Labour Government made the same proposal for introducing a form of direct elections into the governance of policing. The then Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, said:
“We are…committed to introducing a stronger link between those responsible for delivering policing and the public they serve. We will legislate to reform police authorities, making them more democratic and more effective in responding to the needs of the local community.”
Do Opposition Members think these arguments have changed? If they were right in 2003 and 2008, why are they not right now? Indeed, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) simultaneously said we should reject further restructuring—his motion says that—and proposed a third reform. He suggested just a few hours ago at the Dispatch Box that we should have directly elected police authority chairs. I say to the right hon. Gentleman, “Three strikes and you’re out. You’ve reneged on your promise to reform police authorities twice; why should we believe your latest back-of-the-envelope proposal to do it again?”
We, however, are determined to drive forward with our programme of reform, and it is reform that does not end at the greater accountability of local police forces. It includes measures to deal with serious and organised crime, the creation of a national crime agency, and placing police forces under strong duties to collaborate so they can cut costs and tackle crimes that cross force borders. It also includes a serious programme to tackle bureaucracy and to give the public more information through crime mapping and information about crime that is really happening in their streets—not statistics, which, frankly, the public no longer believe. It includes, too, proposals to reform the pay and conditions of police officers, and we start from the position, as we do across the public services, that we trust the professionals. That is why we want to return charging decisions to police officers, as was mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) and for South Swindon (Mr Buckland).
The reforms move beyond policing, too. There are reforms of the licensing laws to deal with the problem of 24-hour drinking and reforms to the toolkit of antisocial behaviour measures to ensure the police and local authorities have the ability to deal with that problem.
We do not accept the right hon. Gentleman’s rose-tinted view of the years of the last Government. We do not accept what he described as the “glorious year of Johnson”. Where did that glorious year end up? It ended up with 10,000 incidents of antisocial behaviour every day, 100 serious knife crimes every day, 26,000 victims of crime every day and 1 million victims of violent crime a year. That is not a glorious record. Five million to 10 million crimes a year is not a glorious record; that is not a record about which the Labour party should be remotely complacent, yet Labour Members rise from the Opposition Benches and suggest nothing more needs to be done to deal with crime other than the ineffective remedies they proposed before.
What did the Labour Government spend their time doing? They spent it wasting money by amalgamating forces, creating bureaucracy with reams of guidance, introducing a policing pledge and spending £6 million a year on doing so, and, of course, creating new laws: 50 Acts of Parliament and 3,000 new offences, and not just offences that would help deal with crime. After all, did these offences make people safer? No, they did not. With their new laws, the Labour Government introduced 24-hour drinking and the so-called café culture, and they downgraded cannabis. They also released 80,000 offenders early under their end-of-custody licence scheme, which, of course, they scrapped just before the election was called. Above all, they spent and wasted industrial sums. They are in double denial: they created the deficit and they are failing to deal with it. We say that we cannot go on like this, spending more than three times the entire budget of the criminal justice system—that of the police, courts and probation service—on debt interest every year. We are determined to deal with the deficit and it is our responsibility to do so. That is the difference between the two sides—we are driving radical reform and they are stuck in the past.
Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.
The House proceeded to a Division.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Bercow Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Nick Herbert
What is clear is that the Opposition still have not faced up to their responsibility for bequeathing us the fiscal deficit. They left us with £44 billion of unspecified spending cuts. The shadow Home Secretary told “The Daily Politics” show on 20 July, in debate with me, that they would have cut by £1 billion, by 12%. But Labour voted against a spending cut of 0.5%. It demonstrates that it—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am grateful to the Minister. “The Daily Politics” is a fascinating programme, but I do not want to hear about the dilations of Opposition spokesmen on it, because the purpose of Question Time is to hear about the policies of the Government.
Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
10. What discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Health on steps to ensure that the standard of English required of migrant health professionals is adequate for the purpose of safe clinical practice.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is tempting me down a route that I do not think is appropriate—to agree the outcome of the review in respect of its assessment of the current extradition treaty. That is not appropriate as it would undermine the whole point of having a review—details of which will be announced shortly—which is to ensure a proper process for considering the issues—
Mr Speaker
Order. I understand the natural temptation to do otherwise, but if the Home Secretary would face the House when she replies, it would help all of us. I think that she has concluded her response.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
12. What the recorded crime rate was in (a) 1997 and (b) 2010.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
T8. Has the Home Secretary had an opportunity to take forward the suggestion of the anti-terrorism expert, Dr Marc Sageman, that the transcripts of trials where terrorists are convicted should be published in full, in order to educate communities of the stupidity, moral poverty and criminal hatred of the people convicted in such cases?
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend join me in offering the warmest congratulations to the Prime Minister and his wife on the safe delivery of their daughter, Florence Rose Endellion, at the Royal Cornwall hospital in my constituency? Will she join me in thanking the staff at the hospital for their kindness and care, given not only to the Camerons but to all those visiting Cornwall for their holidays who find themselves in need of the NHS?
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sure that somewhere in that eloquently and elegantly phrased question the hon. Lady wanted some sort of response on police matters—perhaps police attendance, police security or something of that sort.
Mrs May
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am indeed very happy to join my hon. Friend in congratulating the Prime Minister and his wife Samantha on the safe delivery of their daughter, Florence, who as my hon. Friend said has a Cornish name as well. I am sure that the Prime Minister and his wife were very pleased to have been protected and kept safe while they were in Cornwall by the appropriate local constabulary.
Phone Tapping
John Bercow Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Mrs May
I will take first the issue that the shadow Home Secretary raised about the number of people involved who may or may not have had telephone calls intercepted. Assistant Commissioner Yates made it clear in his interview on the “Today” programme this morning that there are—[Interruption.] Labour Members may tut, but Assistant Commissioner Yates was interviewed on the matter this morning and made it clear that there is often a misunderstanding between somebody’s name appearing on a list and that person assuming that they have therefore had their phone intercepted. He made it clear—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. The House must exercise a degree of self-restraint. I am trying to help the House by facilitating an exchange on this important matter. The responses of the Home Secretary must be heard.
Mrs May
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can quote from that interview, where Assistant Commissioner Yates said:
“There’s a misunderstanding here which suggests just because your name features in a private investigator’s files, you have been hacked.”
He went on to explain that that was not the case.
The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) also raised the issue in relation to Mr Coulson. As my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) has made clear, when the Culture, Media and Sport Committee investigated the matter, it concluded:
“We have seen no evidence that”
the then editor
“Andy Coulson, knew.”
That was the decision taken by the Select Committee of the House.
As the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle said, he looked at the issue last year. He looked at what had happened and the way it had been handled, and he said that he was reassured.
Public Expenditure Reductions (Women)
John Bercow Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
It gives me great pleasure to introduce the first Adjournment debate after the recess. There could be no more important subject for it than that of women and the economy. Such a debate could not have taken place 50 years ago, when women’s contribution to the economy was seen as marginal, temporary and time-limited. In the 21st century, however, women play a huge role in the economy, and it is right and proper for us to examine the impact of the Government’s “cuts Budget” on women, the family and children.
This Budget—this package of public expenditure cuts—will bear most heavily on the poorest, on women and on children. Our Chancellor has cut and frozen too many programmes that were aimed largely at women, in one of the most unfair and regressive Budgets that I have seen in 23 years in Parliament. His decision to freeze child benefit, scrap the child trust fund, end Sure Start maternity grants, abolish the health in pregnancy grant, cap housing benefit and freeze public sector pay will have a greater impact on women than on men. Women will shoulder fully three quarters of the burden. Research findings in our own House of Commons Library prove that they will shoulder the biggest burden of the cuts. As a result of changes in the revenue raised through direct tax and cuts in benefit, women will contribute £5.8 billion of the £8 billion that the coalition seeks to raise by 2014-15. They will contribute three times as much as men. More than 70% of the £8 billion that Government Members are so proud of raising will come directly from the pockets and wage packets of female taxpayers.
No Labour Member is a deficit denier, and no Labour Member does not believe that we need to take action against the deficit in the long-term interests of society, the country and our economy. However, we are united in believing that the Government’s proposals are uniquely unfair, and will also prove to be ineffective. The research findings in the House of Commons Library take into account changes in tax allowances, capital gains tax rises and changes in tax credit, benefits and pensions, but they do not take into account the £560 million-worth of cuts in the child trust fund, which suggests that women will be hit even harder than the Library figures suggest. Nor do the figures take into account the cuts in public spending and the effect that they will have on women who work in the public sector.
I am an inner-city Member. Most of my constituents work in the public sector. Many of them are women, and many of those women are in female-headed households. They do not have private sector jobs to step into, and they do not have a man to keep them at home. When families lose their major wage earner it is a huge blow to them, and I fear that it may take years for those families and communities to recover. Women will lose out whether or not they are mothers. Support for children has been cut by a huge £2.4 billion, but even when that is discounted women without children will still pay more than men. When we discount all the benefit changes that will affect mothers, women will still pay £3.6 billion towards the deficit compared with £1.9 billion for men—that is twice the amount—and, as we know, the cuts in benefits will only exacerbate existing inequalities in income between men and women.
Underlying the Government’s package—this Government who claim to be new, warm and inclusive—is a very old-fashioned view of society. I was very struck to hear Iain Duncan Smith, who has looked at poverty issues—
Mr Speaker
Order. May I gently say to the hon. Lady that she should not refer to other Members by name?
Ms Abbott
I was very struck to hear the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who has paid a lot of attention to poverty issues, saying that he thought it was important that people were prepared to move around the country from estate to estate in search of work. What family model is he thinking of? The family model he is thinking of is one where only the husband works. It did not seem to occur to him that many of these families also have women who work and who are not willing to pack up and follow their husband around the country. There are some very old-fashioned views of society here.
The Budget, together with the likely changes to the welfare system, seems to me to be more supportive of an outdated male breadwinner and dependent female carer model than the dual earner, dual carer model, which is more representative of society whether in Hackney, inner-city Newcastle or middle England. In short, it suggests that the Government are, for all the window dressing, out of touch and unwilling to move with the times.
The House will not need to be reminded that women rely more on benefits and tax credits than men. A larger share of women’s income is made up of benefits and tax credits. More women than men earn too little—because women are largely among the lower paid—to benefit from the change in income tax thresholds. Women are also more likely to work part time or unpaid, meaning they rely on benefits, particularly tax credits, to boost their income. These changes and the cuts to benefits have been dubbed the worst for women since the creation of the welfare state. I have therefore called this debate in order to put on the record the fact that I think this Budget is not just bad for Britain, but bad for women in Britain.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer insists that his Budget is a progressive Budget but, sadly, that only proves to me that this distinguished product of St Paul’s school does not understand the technical meanings of “progressive” and “regressive” in respect of economic matters. Under any analysis this is a regressive Budget because, in relative terms, it takes more from the poor than from the rich.
Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)
I am delighted that the hon. Lady has raised this issue in the Chamber tonight, because I have worked with women in business for the past 10 years. On everything that she talks about—every consequence, every dilemma and every situation that women are in—she has to look to her Government and ask why we are in this disastrous economic state, and she has to bear the responsibility for what is happening. The picture for women in business is mixed. The latest results coming out this week say that a third of women are now the main breadwinner, 39% earn more than their partners and 19%—
Mr Speaker
Order. Could I just very gently say to the hon. Lady that if this is an intervention—and it is—it needs to come to a conclusion very soon?
Esther McVey
My point is that we have to move forward, and the Conservative party is looking at how to get the 150,000 women who are not setting up businesses—when compared with the number of men who are—to do so. That would be worth £7 billion to the economy. What would the hon. Lady’s advice be to women on how to even out the economy?
Mr Speaker
Impugning integrity is neither desirable nor orderly. Perhaps I did not hear as clearly as the hon. Lady heard, but I shall listen intently. To my knowledge, nothing disorderly has occurred, but the hon. Lady is a long-standing—I will not say old, because she is not old—campaigner, and she has put her view forcefully on the record.
Lynne Featherstone
Thank you, Mr Speaker. No integrity was being impugned, but the Library itself notes that its research paper is not a detailed assessment based on individual tax and benefit data and, therefore, remains a rough and ready approximation.
Fiona Mactaggart
The hon. Lady promised earlier that she would tell the House her assessment of the equality impact assessment.