No, I am not going to give way any more.
That ideology is to demonise people receiving benefits, creating antipathy and resentment and an “us and them” culture. Through the withdrawal of universal benefit such as child benefit, the Government show an irrelevance of the welfare system to non-welfare-recipients; meanwhile, they are dismantling the welfare state.
I am proud of our model of social welfare, born of the second world war, when we were literally all in it together. I want to retain that model, with its principles of inclusion, support and security for all, protecting any one of us who should fall on hard times and ensuring our dignity and the basics of life to help us get back on our feet.
Fortunately, the British public are seeing through the Government. As British social attitudes surveys have consistently shown, they want not a divided society but a fairer, more equal one. That has been reflected in recent opinion polls on benefits. When the Government’s myths are exposed to people, most do not support them.
I do not want ours to be a country where we impoverish children and rob them of their futures. We need to get the economy moving again and I hope that the Chancellor and Secretary of State will listen to my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State’s proposals about how we do that. If they do not, we are in danger of losing a generation, storing up health and social problems for the future—and seeing a divided Britain, not a one nation Britain.