Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

I wish to take the Secretary of State back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hal...

I stand by what we said originally, and I say it again: in this Bill we have protected people on ...

Will the Secretary of State confirm that inflation can be particularly tough on people on low inc...

Exactly. Mortgage rates are a critical component of what a household spends each year. Under Oppo...

I want to ask the Secretary of State about the people who are moving into low-paid work. Of the i...

I will make two points to the hon. Lady. First, the vast majority of people who take part-time wo...

The Secretary of State has used the word “denial” twice. In previous Budgets and autumn statement...

I will say two things about child poverty. First, we want to ensure that the figures published co...

The Secretary of State brandishes the figure of a 20% increase in benefits in the past five years...

I hear the hon. Lady’s point; I have to say that I do not agree with her. Benefits have risen, bu...

On that point, I was approached by a member of Manchester constabulary in my advice surgery recen...

I agree with my hon. Friend. I want to make some progress because he is absolutely right. The rea...

Has my right hon. Friend pondered this question? The Government are trying to ensure that the soc...

It is in its DNA, so I am not sure when it started, to be honest. The tax credit system was out o...

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No, I want to conclude. The right hon. Gentleman will have plenty of time to speak .

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Okay, I will give way in a second.

I want to remind the Opposition of what they have done. ...

The Secretary of State has the temerity to criticise proposals we launched on Friday, when he is ...

Our record on getting people into jobs is better than theirs. The difference is that Labour spent...

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No, I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman. I think he has a few apologies to make before I gi...

I beg to move,

That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Welfare Benefits Up...

The Chancellor told me earlier he was in Berlin making a speech—a long-term commitment —but he wi...

I think it is surprising that the Chancellor is talking to people in Germany, rather than to MPs ...

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I am sorry to drag him back to the Bill, but wha...

I want incomes to rise faster than benefits. That is why I think it was wrong that the hon. Gentl...

To respond to the issues raised by Government Members, I point out that a lady on £72 a week in j...

Once upon a time—back in 2004 and 2005—when the Secretary of State was making speeches about pove...

The right hon. Gentleman is perhaps not willing to address the issues put to him by Government Me...

I spoke to the former right honourable Member for Redditch yesterday and I set out—[ Interruption...

I share the concern about the Bill’s impact on public service workers. Has my right hon. Friend s...

My hon. Friend is already speaking very eloquently in the House. Some 40,000 soldiers, 300,000 nu...

We have seen the failure of the Work programme. In my constituency, unemployment is now 10% highe...

What we need from this Government is the right combination of compassion and competence, and righ...

We were told that this Bill was about fairness. How can it be a fair when a young mother in my co...

My hon. Friend is exactly right. What her constituents need is a job, but what they are not getti...

On inflation uprating, which is at the heart of this Bill, there is a widespread belief that hous...

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He is also right that the Department’s incompetence in ...

Does the right hon. Gentleman think it right and fair that benefits should have gone up by 20% at...

I repeat: there are 6,800 people in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency on tax credits—we have rehe...

The right hon. Gentleman refers to 6,700 people in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member ...

The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do—he is a numerate man and he understands the figures invo...

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way again. However difficult these decisions...

That is complete nonsense. This Government are taking £14 billion out of tax credits and the Bill...

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I am going to make a tiny bit of progress once I have given way to my hon. Friend the Member for ...

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. What Government Members do not seem to understand is that ...

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When the Chancellor came to the House back in December, he wa...

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I shall give way to people who were here at the start of the debate, rather than to those who hav...

Is the right hon. Gentleman going to acknowledge the 1 million extra jobs that have been created ...

I look forward to coming to Stourbridge and helping to explain to the 6,500 people there who are ...

I should like to bring the right hon. Gentleman back to the Bill, and to tell him that when he vo...

I would contrast that money with the £3 billion a year that the Chancellor is giving away to Brit...

I would be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman will now acknowledge that all the OBR’s latest fi...

Like me, the Secretary of State will no doubt have seen table 2.1 of the Budget, published in Mar...

I asked the right hon. Gentleman a simple question—[ Interruption. ] Actually, the shadow Chancel...

We put the top rate of tax up. It is this Government who are cutting it, at a cost of £3.4 billio...

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree or disagree that the OBR figures show that, under this Govern...

I am saying that we should be raising more from Britain’s richest citizens, not giving them a £3....

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I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, even though he could not be bothered to get here for the b...

My question to the right hon. Gentleman is about the honesty with which he delivered his message ...

I think that, at a time like this, those with the broadest shoulders should be carrying the bigge...

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I will give way to the hon. Lady, who I believe made an important intervention yesterday about th...

I certainly feel that the tone of this debate is important, and that we should not be talking abo...

I know that the hon. Lady is new to the House—[ Interruption. ] I will seek to answer her questio...

The hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) was right yesterday, and she is right today. This debat...

I respect the passion with which the right hon. Gentleman made that intervention, but would he mi...

No, I do not think that it is the right priority, but it was part of a package deal that will lea...

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Order. Interventions, even when invited, need to be relatively brief.

At least the right hon. Gentleman is honest, unlike that lot on the Conservative Benches. We will...

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I shall give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), but then I will make som...

The argument coming from the Government Benches is wholly founded on misinformation, particularly...

My hon. Friend is right: sometimes things are not all that they seem to be.

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I will give way later, but I want to move the debate on a little. It is time that we debated who ...

Is there not another real problem? In many constituencies where there is profound deprivation and...

My hon. Friend speaks eloquently, and his remarks cut to the quick of the values now on show in t...

Does my right hon. Friend agree that child poverty in London remains stubbornly high, and that th...

Many unemployed people in my hon. Friend’s constituency are young people. These are the people wh...

Of course we welcome the Labour party’s last-minute pre-election conversion to increasing tax for...

Order. It was only a few moments ago, I remind the hon. Gentleman, when I said interventions on a...

I am grateful for the intervention because I think the hon. Gentleman, like us, is concerned that...

In view of that and given that the welfare budget is £220 billion, does the right hon. Gentleman ...

I have been very clear about where I think the savings can be made. I just think it is wrong that...

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Let me deal first with the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. I think it is wrong that millionaires w...

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I shall give way a couple more times, but then I want to conclude.

The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that the public do not want false distinctions between s...

I suspect the hon. Gentleman feels that very keenly, as 7,500 people in his constituency are on t...

We have heard many interventions from Government Members about the unsustainability of tax credit...

I note that the impact assessment is based on assumptions very different from those that formed t...

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Order. I remind all Members that there is a five-minute time limit on Back-Bench speeches.

...

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker.

If they re...

Research carried out recently by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that no such culture of wor...

Where we have a culture in which it sometimes does not pay to take a job or to work more hours, w...

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Does the hon. Gentleman think that the number increased, or does he think that it fell? Perhaps h...

If the hon. Gentleman is concerned about an increase in long-term unemployment, why will he not g...

The hon. Gentleman is living in cloud cuckoo land. He will not answer the question that I asked. ...

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point about the legacy of the last Government. Perhaps he a...

That too was an excellent point. What we have seen is total fiscal irresponsibility. The whole id...

My hon. Friend has made a very good point about Labour’s past record of fiscal irresponsibility, ...

I am afraid that the Labour party’s proposals on so many matters are completely inconsistent. The...

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I will happily give way to the hon. Lady if she explains to the House what she will cut. I assume...

What I want to do is return the hon. Gentleman to the subject of the Bill. Does he agree with Dis...

I am taking a lead from the Labour Front Benchers and touching on some of the reasons why we are ...

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I will make some more progress.

That is what we are hoping to do. That is what we are doing...

Over the past hour and a half, the parties on the Government Benches have thrown various lines of...

Does my hon. Friend recognise that in half the workless households the adults are under 25, which...

That is correct; I recognise that figure. We have seen from the Bill and the debate behind it a p...

Did my hon. Friend notice that the Secretary of State accused Labour of having a new idea with ou...

We have indeed been discussing these ideas. The future jobs fund demonstrated value for money in ...

People who come to my constituency office these days for help with some kind of error in their be...

Does the hon. Lady not recognise that the nub of the whole argument is that if we allow benefits ...

I will return to that point in a moment, because I want to make another point about public attitu...

I thank the hon. Lady very much for giving way. I have sat for three or four minutes listening to...

The fourth disingenuous point is probably that cutting the incomes of those at the bottom of the ...

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather).

The truth is ...

Will the right hon. Gentleman elaborate on the statistic he gave? Do immigrants not have a lower ...

I do not want to give the hon. Gentleman a maths lesson—I did not get good marks in maths—but per...

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I will come to the hon. Gentleman in a moment.

The Government have made a great deal of the...

The right hon. Gentleman gives a very powerful speech in which he mentions lots of facts and stat...

Forty thousand soldiers are not on out-of-work benefits but they are being hit by this Bill. Eigh...

Answer the question .

I will address it directly; I am very happy to do so. If a couple on £5,500 a year or someone on ...

rose —

Let me make some progress and I will come to the hon. Gentleman if I have time.

The truth i...

It is never a pleasure to support any Bill that will leave some people worse off, but Members of ...

If the hon. Gentleman is saying that that is the problem, why is he supporting a Government who a...

Put simply, the total amount of tax that we are taking from the rich has increased, as my right h...

It might be worth reminding Opposition Members about the 10p tax fiasco that they imposed on some...

I should also like Opposition Members to recognise the economic truism of the Laffer curve, which...

As someone who has been in this House for two and a half years and who in the past has been unemp...

Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem is not just with the 1% cap? A constituent came to see...

I could not agree more. My surgery in Gateshead is regularly populated by people with similar pro...

Surely the way to help people on incomes of just above £20,000 is to reduce the amount of tax tha...

What is shocking for low-income families is the impact of VAT on their real income. Rises in VAT ...

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I am afraid that I will not, because I need to make progress.

The shocking statistic is tha...

This is obviously a difficult debate. Any debate that discusses cuts or limits to payments is dif...

The Bill is not about restructuring the tax credit system but about placing a limit on an uprate....

I wish that the hon. Lady would at least allow me to create a context and develop an argument, an...

Will my hon. Friend remind the House what steps the Labour party took to bring benefit increases ...

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that useful reminder that the Labour party did nothing on the...

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will in a moment but I want to develop my argument a little further. Presumably in an effort to...

Given the political manoeuvring and increases in tax credits that my hon. Friend describes, which...

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The previous Prime Minister knew exactly what he was doi...

If the hon. Gentleman is so worried about helping people further down the income scale, why does ...

That is right on cue because I remember the 50% tax rate as being temporary. Is the hon. Gentlema...

I would rather see people who earn more than £150,000 make a contribution than take money off the...

I would have much more respect for the hon. Gentleman if he told the House that that will be his ...

We will announce our policies for the next election but they will not be to give tax cuts to the ...

It is obvious that there are two options. Either that will not be a commitment going into the nex...

I have sat through a lot of annual debates on benefits uprating, but I have never seen a turnout ...

An additional problem is that low-income families—some working, some not—will be faced with a dec...

I thank my hon. Friend, because she sets up my point on how the proposals undermine the Governmen...

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point about the impact of universal credit. I am sure she i...

Indeed, and Barnardo’s has just published a report which says that families that depend on child ...

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), who brings ...

What would the hon. Lady say to the 59-year-old gentleman who came to see me on Saturday at my co...

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and he takes up the case on behalf of his consti...

It is always worth saying that there is no Government money, only taxpayers’ money. It behoves us...

I agree with my hon. Friend and thank her for her intervention .

The welfare budget has inc...

Today, we are debating an uprating Bill that will result in a real-terms cut in support for peopl...

Given what the hon. Gentleman has said, is he comfortable that welfare payments are rising at twi...

This point has been done to death this afternoon. It says a lot about the quality of the hon. Gen...

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the individuals receiving those types of benefit do not save t...

Clearly, the hon. Gentleman is blessed with clairvoyance, because that is my next point. People o...

This is not a difficult one for me. I believe that benefits are far too high—I think most people ...

Too high?

Yes; as a nation, our payments on benefits are, without a doubt, far too high. However, what we f...

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the fiscal cliff deal made last week in America, which took th...

We all know that. We know about the multiplier effect on consumer demand. It is not a secret; it ...

The Bill is without doubt an attack on the living standards of those who are in work and on low o...

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making some strong points. Does he agree with me that one oth...

I agree with my hon. Friend, who makes a valid point, and I repeat that people, families, childre...

My hon. Friend mentions primary school teachers and nurses. Does he acknowledge the figures in la...

My hon. Friend makes a strong point: many people in work are being hit, and many of them would no...

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will not, because I have already given way to two Members and others wish to speak.

Let m...

About 40 years ago, I used to walk through a really run-down council estate on my way to school. ...

The hon. Gentleman talks of dependency. Does he not realise that the Bill will create a food-bank...

I do not think that it will. I think that the 900,000 or 1 million new jobs created by the Govern...

I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying about the dependency culture—he thinks that if he ...

No, obviously not, because they are going out there to seek a job. That is the key thing. I thank...

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No, I will not give way.

I have great sympathy for all the people who go out there, graft h...

I rise to speak on behalf of the many constituents who come to see me every week in my constituen...

Can the hon. Lady say what proportion of primary school teachers are covered by those statistics?...

I cannot because I do not have the figures to hand, but I am happy to provide them later. The evi...

Will the hon. Lady give way?

I will not give way at the moment. I will finish my point and then make some progress.

The ...

In addition to the scenario my hon. Friend is outlining, these cuts come on top of the fact that ...

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that nearly half a...

rose—

No, I am not going to give way any more.

That ideology is to demonise people receiving bene...

rose—

Order. In a bid to accommodate more colleagues, I am afraid that I am reducing the time limit for...

In the short time available, I want to nail a couple of myths that have come up in the debate and...

I am not sure whether that anecdote should lead us to any wider conclusion. The only worklessness...

I have been here since the beginning of the debate, waiting patiently to speak.

I move on t...

Order.

The Opposition have argued that this uprating of 1% will impact on working people and not just th...

rose—

Order. Before I call the next speaker, let me say that shouting back and forth really does not he...

I apologise for being absent for part of the debate while attending duties at the Home Affairs Co...

For the record, 42,654 people in the Peterborough constituency will be better off under the tax c...

I cannot wait for the hon. Gentleman to have to meet all those people who are better off at his a...

The problem with this debate is that nobody has gone back to the idea of what the social security...

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Just give me two ticks. The constant mocking that has gone on is shameful political posturing.