My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We are not talking only about people on out-of-work benefits either, as many of the families affected are working families that are struggling to survive.
As I have mentioned, the Chancellor’s own distributional analysis shows that the cumulative impact of tax, tax credit and benefit measures means net reductions in income for the poorest 40% of households in the country. Although there is strong evidence to show, as other countries have shown, that increasing the spending
power of the poorest families helps to boost economies, the Chancellor has done nothing to help them or the economy.
In the short term, the Child Poverty Action Group has estimated that between 2010 and 2015 absolute child poverty will have increased by 600,000 as a result of the Government’s spending plans. Two wards in my constituency have child poverty levels affecting nearly one in two households. That is absolutely unacceptable in a society such as ours. It leads one to question what the Government mean when they say they are committed to child poverty, let alone how they are fulfilling their obligations under the Child Poverty Act 2010.
I also have deep concerns about the impact, particularly of the new benefit changes, on people with disabilities. One in four disabled people already live in poverty, and with the recent welfare changes that is set to increase. I fear that this could be enough to drive people over the edge.
Many of us have already said that these measures are ideologically driven. In tandem with the downgrading of equality and human rights in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which we debated on Tuesday, it is clear that this coalition Government have no commitment to a fairer society. As we have heard before, this is all about choices, and it is quite clear where this Government’s priorities lie. Their response to their failing economic policies is to give tax breaks to the wealthiest in society—£3 billion to more than 300,000 people earning over £150,000 a year, with an average gain of £10,000. What is there for people on low pay? Absolutely nothing. When we take the tax and tax credit benefits into account, we realise that it is not just the poor who are being hit. We know that the average loss to households for this coming financial year is £891.
The Chancellor said in last year’s autumn statement that we needed a welfare system that we could afford. Tax credits and benefits form part of the “automatic stabilisers” that help dampen economies in booms and boost it in recession. That is what we have seen. In spite of the disappointing employment figures yesterday, the effect on unemployment has been less during this recession and in the past because of these stabilisers.
The choices the Government make are underpinned by their ideology—to create an “us and them” culture with power and wealth retained by the wealthy and powerful. By attacking universal benefits such as child benefit, they hope people will start to see our welfare system as irrelevant—and then quietly dismantle it. I am proud of our model of social welfare, born out of the second world war when we literally were “all in it together”. I want to retain this model with its principles of inclusion, support and security for all, protecting any one of us, should we fall on hard times, assuring our dignity and the basics of life, and helping us all back on our feet. It is often said that the mark of a civilised society is how we care for our most vulnerable. It is a mark of this Government, their ideological priorities and their economic incompetence that they are singularly failing to do that. Fortunately, as recent opinion polls have shown, the British public are seeing through this Government. They are exposing and seeing through the myths peddled by this Government. I shall leave it there to allow more hon. Members to participate in the debate.