I am very pleased that the Bill is in front of us. The Select Committee has been clear in the past few weeks that, without a big measure on this kind of scale, low-income families would be in very serious trouble indeed in the coming months. I echo the tribute that has just been paid by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) to Jack Monroe and her campaigning on this. She gave very compelling evidence to the Select Committee at our meeting on 9 March.
The package that has come forward has been widely welcomed. We put out a call for evidence on the cost of living in May. In response, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that,
“the package provided much-needed support for households, which will protect many of them against rising costs over the coming year.”
Citizens Advice welcomes the targeted support to low-income households and hoped that it would
“start to reverse the worrying trends we have seen in our data, including record-breaking food bank referrals.”
Unlike the previous announcements, this May package is properly targeted on low-income families, as it needed to be. The Resolution Foundation described it as offsetting
“the poor targeting of previous announcements.”
It also described it as “serious redistribution”. It is, I think, a serious response to a serious problem. I also welcome the Chancellor’s change of heart over the windfall tax to fund some of the help that is needed.
However, we need to be clear: the reason the Bill is needed is that the system for social security uprating has failed. It is a long-standing system. There is nothing new about the way it is done, but the unforeseen burst in inflation means that it simply has not worked this year. On this occasion, the decision has been taken to replace adequate uprating with ad hoc payments from the Treasury, which will certainly help us through the next few months. We need now to rethink the uprating system to make sure that it does not let us down again.