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Welfare Reform Bill

Volume 526: debated on Monday 28 March 2011

20. What estimate he has made of the likely effects on welfare expenditure of implementation of the provisions of the Welfare Reform Bill. (49057)

In real terms working age welfare spending climbed by 54% over the past decade from £48 billion in 1999-2000 to £74.7 billion in 2009-10. The explanatory notes to the Welfare Reform Bill report that there will be savings of some £960 million in 2012-13,rising to around £3.9 billion in 2014-15. We have also set aside £2 billion to cover the costs of implementing the universal credit.

This Government inherited a record Budget deficit, which rightly requires the re-examination of every Department’s spending. Instead of getting constructive suggestions from the Opposition, we too often get opportunism, including a demeaning comparison this weekend between protesters, civil rights marchers, people who fought for women’s rights and anti-apartheid campaigners. Does my right hon. Friend believe that the best way to bring down our welfare bill sustainably is to get people back into work by giving them the right work incentives?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The key is to get people back into work, to reform the system so that it is simpler and to ensure that work always pays. As we approach April, when the Darling plan was meant to start, I have yet to hear one single figure for anything that the Opposition say they would have reduced, had they introduced it. Instead, apparently, the Leader of the Opposition now lines himself up with Pankhurst, Mandela and Martin Luther King. Miliband does not quite work, does it?

What account does the Secretary of State take of arguments by disability campaigners such as my constituent, Mr Rhydian James, who points out that much of the increased cost of the system is due to demographic matters and to reduced under-claiming?

The hon. Gentleman will therefore be pleased with the design of the universal credit, because the one thing that it will tackle hugely, which is why there is an extra cost to it, is under-claiming, which will stop. Those who are eligible and who should have their money will be able to get it. Better still, that will improve the level of those coming out of poverty, as opposed to what happened under the previous Government.

The Secretary of State may recall a row that broke out when a family on benefits was moved into a house in Acton worth well over £1 million, which people on average salaries would only dream of. Does he agree with those constituents who tell me that these reforms are fair not only to those in work, but to the taxpayer? Why has it taken so long for common sense to prevail?

Most people who work hard and who are on marginal incomes will consider it reasonable that the benefits system does not pay more than average earnings, which turn out to be about £36,000 gross. Most people who are in work would consider that to be a reasonable level of income. Those who complain about that complain about something that they should have resolved anyway.

Of course, the Secretary of State will have received many representations from carers’ organisations about the Welfare Reform Bill and its likely impact. In reply to a written question I tabled last week, the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller), who has responsibility for disabled people, stated that she did not yet know what impact the new personal independence payment will have on carers, yet the Bill is now in Committee and PIP will be decided in just a matter of weeks. Will the Secretary of State confirm that PIP will remain a passported benefit from carers’ allowance, how many carers will be affected by the change and how many carers will lose as a result of the changes being introduced by the Government?

I can say to the hon. Lady, much as my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has before, that we are reviewing all of this. The purpose is to ensure that those who are involved in caring will get greater and better support and that they will be better cared for themselves. The reality is that we chose for that reason not to take carer’s allowance into the universal credit, which the hon. Lady has not touched on, because that would have meant that some people might have lost out.