Over the past hour and a half, the parties on the Government Benches have thrown various lines of argument into the mix, but possibly the most absurd is that the whole agenda and the Bill are about deficit reduction. That argument is already in tatters. We have seen the economic recovery deferred and a double-dip recession possibly turning into a triple-dip recession. The rate of reduction of unemployment has been so slow since 2010 that it will not return to pre-recession levels until 2019, and we have seen a systematic and structural increase in under-employment. It is no wonder that total expenditure on welfare, despite the protestations, has been going up.
Let us take one example about which there has been a great deal of sound and fury over recent years—the housing benefit bill. Over this comprehensive spending review period, this Government will spend £12 billion more on subsidising private tenants than was spent by
the Labour Government during the previous CSR period, so let us not hear anything from the Government about their successes on welfare reform and reduction and our failure.
For the first time in decades we see more working than workless people in poverty—now a record 6.1 million. It is no wonder that the new head of the Secretary of State’s favourite think-tank, the Commission for Social Justice, told an interviewer:
“I would say we have missed in-work poverty”.
Yes, the commission did, and yes, the Government did, but rather than the Government facing the evidence, we have been subjected to a barrage of rhetoric about the people behind the closed curtains and the shirkers rather than the strivers.