The Chancellor’s statement last autumn was an admission that the Government were failing in their economic policy. They had failed on their two fiscal targets and they now say that they will need two Parliaments to meet those targets. The Chancellor needs to divert attention from his economic policy and is doing so by the crudest of politics. The Bill is a wedge between one party and another for electoral advantage. It hits the low paid, the unemployed, of whom there are 2.5 million, and the under-employed—many, many people on low wages, decent, hard-working people, including nurses, primary school teachers and armed forces personnel—and to play politics with them through the Bill is wrong.
Part-time workers need help and support, yes, and I would support a reform that helps them, but to penalise them at this time is completely and utterly wrong. The Chancellor is not known for his consistency. In his autumn statement in 2011 he said:
“I also want to protect . . . those who, through no fault of their own, have lost jobs and are trying to find work”.—[Official Report, 29 November 2011; Vol. 536, c. 802.]
Those are the very people who, 12 months later, he is going to hit hardest.
I can understand some of those on the Conservative Benches thinking that the wedge is very clever, but I cannot understand the Liberal Democrats supporting it. There are not many of them—