My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in today’s debate. It is an issue about which all participants feel passionately and I can well understand why. I will try to respond to as many questions as possible, but let me begin by reminding the House of the purpose of the Bill. As my noble friend Lady Stowell pointed out in her opening speech, this Government inherited an exceptional fiscal challenge. The financial crisis of 2008-09 resulted in the largest deficit since the Second World War and the UK experienced one of the deepest recessions of any major economy. Even before the recession began, the UK had the highest structural deficit of any country in the G7. This level of public spending was simply not sustainable. There are still tough choices to make. The savings from this Bill provide a significant contribution towards delivering the savings needed to ensure that
spending is on a sustainable path. It is, of course, never an easy decision to take action on welfare spending and I understand only too well that the welfare system provides vital support to millions of people. I also understand that while benefit rates will rise in cash terms, they will be fall in real terms.
In these tough economic times, people have seen significant restraints in their pay across the public and private sectors. With welfare expenditure accounting for £1 in every £4 spent, it is simply unrealistic to think we can achieve the savings we need without taking further action on welfare. We have already had to take tough decisions on welfare spending in this Parliament, yet despite these, more than £200 billion was spent on welfare last year. Under the previous Government, spending for working-age people and children increased by around 60%—equivalent to an extra £1,400 cost per household in Great Britain. This is the context against which this Bill must be judged.
However, in making what we believe are necessary limits in welfare spending, I cannot stress enough that our motivation is not, to quote various noble Lords today, to “demonise”, to “stigmatise”, to brand the poor as undeserving, to impose a harsh ideology on them or to divide and rule. It is simply to help—albeit painfully—provide a sustainable platform for the public finances and the economy going forward. This is something that every citizen of the UK will benefit from in the longer term.
The right reverend Prelate, the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, asked me for an assurance or statement that the vast majority of benefits claimants were not skivers. I am extremely happy to give such an assurance. Nobody in your Lordships’ House believes that to be the case; all of us know only too many people who are working extremely hard to make ends meet. I particularly acknowledge the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, about people on low incomes often having several jobs and still struggling to make ends meet. I acknowledge that that is the reality for many people in Britain today.
We have to return to the main point. If the savings from this Bill were not delivered here, they would have to be found somewhere else. That would mean additional pressure on other public services. To put this figure into context: £1.9 billion is equivalent to the salaries of about 45,000 nurses or around 40,000 teachers. To put it another way: it is equivalent to 500,000 primary school places. Anybody opposing the Bill needs to explain where the money is coming from.