Let me start with some comments on tone. The Government have been wrongly accused by many on the Opposition Benches of using inflammatory language on this most important issue, but let me refer to some of the inflammatory language that has been used:
“Let’s face the tough truth—that many people on the doorstep at the last election felt that too often we were for shirkers not workers.”
Those are not the words of any Government Member, but those of the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, so let us hear no more about tone from Opposition Members.
I thank all 36 hon. Members who have made contributions to the debate. They have shown how passionate they are about this issue, not least my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State Work and Pensions, who has devoted nearly a decade of his career to this important matter. While he was chairing the Centre for Social Justice and looking for ways to lift the poorest out of poverty, the Opposition spokesperson, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), was at the Treasury, dishing out money like there was no tomorrow. I therefore find it quite bizarre that he, the man who so eloquently summed up the economic legacy in another quote of his—
“I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left”—
has told us from the Opposition Dispatch Box how to spend even more. He has told us to commit more money to public spending—money he knows we do not have.
Spending money is something that the right hon. Gentleman and the Opposition have an excellent record on. In the decade before the financial crisis and despite a growing economy, welfare spending increased by 20% and has continued to rise from 11% of gross domestic product in 2008 to more than 13% by 2012.