I must inform the House that I have selected the amendment standing in the name of the acting Leader of the Opposition.

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I am conscious of the fact that many Members wish to speak today and that we have compressed time as a result of the statements. I will take interventions, but I recognise that we need to make some progress so that everybody has a chance to speak. In moving the motion, I wish to make it very clear that Conservative Members are united in support of the Government’s aim to move from a high tax, high welfare and low wage society to a low tax, lower welfare and higher wage society. This Bill lays the ground for that commitment and helps us to continue the job of reversing the Labour’s Government’s failure that led us into the difficulties we inherited.

Let me remind the House quickly, before we get into the details, of what we inherited when we came into office in 2010: nearly one in five households had no one working—this is what Labour left us; the number of households where no one had ever worked had nearly doubled; 1.4 million people had been on benefits for most of the previous decade; and close to half of all households in the social rented sector had no one at all in work. Since then, even through the coalition, we have proceeded to get to 2 million more jobs being created; there are now 2 million more apprenticeships; the number of workless households has reached a record low—it is down more than 670,000 since 2010; and the workless household rate in the social rented sector is now the lowest on record. The recent Budget debate, in which we had a pretty full discussion of many of the characteristics of this Bill, made it clear that we want to go further, delivering 3 million more apprenticeships and moving towards full employment. These are measures that this Government will drive forward and that this Bill requires us to report on each year.

We will also continue to bear down on the deficit and debt, achieving a surplus by the end of the Parliament. We are spending £3 billion on debt interest payments alone every month—the figure is £33 billion a year, which is £1,236 per household. Every pound we spend on paying off the debt is a pound we are paying to others such as overseas investment funds, rather than on the necessary public services such as schools and hospitals or on being able to reduce taxation further. Eliminating the deficit and paying off our debts is the moral and most effective things for a responsible Government to do for people on low incomes, who rely more than anybody on those services.

It is worth pointing out that we also need to drive productivity improvements. The Budget contains some important measures to make that a reality, and our long-term productivity plan sets out how it will boost productivity over the next 10 years. As my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary made vividly clear in launching that plan, if we could, for example, match US levels of productivity, we would increase GDP by 31%—that is £23,000 a year for every household. A key driver to getting us there is the national living wage. That historic reform will give more than 2.7 million people currently on the minimum wage a pay rise of more than £5,000 a year. With the increase in the personal allowance to £12,500 by the end of the Parliament, the national living wage will make work pay and improve people’s living standards. It will also help productivity. The Governor of the Bank of England confirmed last week that the living wage will help increase the productivity of workers and of the country—

rose—

I want to quote what the Governor has said and then I will give way to the hon. Gentleman. The Governor said:

“There should be some improvement in productivity as a consequence of adjustment in the national living wage”.

I thank the Secretary of State for giving way so early on in his speech. Obviously, all of us are supportive of a productive, growing economy—that benefits everybody. But when he drew up proposals for this Bill, did he look at the levels of child poverty in Britain? Did he look at the levels of homelessness, destitution and rough sleeping in Britain? How does he think this Bill is going to improve that situation? Alternatively, will it make the holes in the welfare state safety net rather bigger, with more people falling through it as a result?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I wish him well in his campaign. [Laughter.] I was being genuine and not politically expedient. I must say that being Leader of the Opposition is not all that it is cracked up to be. I have some personal experience of that. He should be careful what he wishes for. None of us wishes him ill.

On the hon. Gentleman’s legitimate question, I say yes to the first part. The measures in the Bill relating to life chances will do more to help us target the kind of work that we should be doing to turn lives around in families and households to ensure that people are able to get into work and to sustain themselves in work. As for the third part of his question, it is also correct that this Bill, with all the other welfare reforms and the things that we are bringing in, will ultimately improve the life chances of people and the numbers in work. We know that the best way out of poverty is through full-time work.

rose—

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), but then I will make some progress. I will give way again a bit later.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, by putting welfare spending on a sustainable footing, these measures are the best way to secure the future of the poor and the vulnerable in our society?

I do agree with my hon. Friend, which is why I want to get to the Bill. This backdrop of rising employment, falling deficit, increased productivity and higher wages brings me to the Bill before the House today. This is a Bill for working Britain, and it is underpinned by three key principles: first, work is the best route out of poverty, and being in work should always pay more than being on benefits; secondly, spending on welfare should be sustainable and fair to the taxpayer while protecting the most vulnerable; and, thirdly, people on benefit should face the same choices as those in work and those not on benefits. I wish to talk about each of those principles in turn.

My focus in government—and the focus of the Government —has been to ensure that it pays more to work than to be on benefits. This Bill builds on that principle. First, it extends the important principles of the benefit cap. The £26,000 cap we introduced in 2013 has been a huge success—

rose—

One moment, please. The cap has been a huge success in getting people back to work and reintroducing fairness to the welfare system. Capped households are more than 40% more likely to go into work after a year than similar uncapped households. It is right to keep the level of the cap under review to ensure that it continues to be fair and that it provides the right incentives for people to move into work.

rose—

No, I will give way to the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) in a second, but I wish to make a bit of progress.

We know that around four in 10 households outside London earn less than £20,000, and the same proportion of households in London earn less than £23,000. To ensure that the cap better reflects the circumstances of hard-working families, the Bill lowers the current cap to £20,000 for households outside Greater London, and the Greater London cap will be set at £23,000. The exemptions will continue to apply to the most vulnerable, which includes people on disability living allowance and personal independence payment, those in an employment and support allowance support group and those moving into work who are entitled to working tax credits.

What assessment has been made of the effect of his welfare reforms on children?

I am sorry, but I did not quite hear the hon. Lady. Will she repeat what she said?

The right hon. Gentleman must listen carefully. What assessment has he made of the effect of his welfare reforms on the children of this country?

The impact assessments are in the Library and the Vote Office. Full assessments have been made.

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. Earlier, he said he would protect the vulnerable. May I remind him that there are 1.4 million people in this country with a learning disability? Has he considered an exemption for the specialist disability housing providers, such as Mencap, from the 1% reduction, so that people with a learning disability have more opportunities to live in the community, especially after Winterbourne and all those terrible scandals?

I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss that and to look at the issue he raises. I know that we have looked at it, but I am happy to look at it again with him.

rose—

I will make some progress, and then I will give way, but many Members wish to speak and make their own points.

We are committed to helping people who have health difficulties and who are capable of taking steps into work to do so, which is why we are putting greater support into jobcentres. For new claims, the Bill will end the disparity between what people receive on the work-related activity component of ESA and on jobseeker’s allowance. We know that the majority of people receiving work-related activity ESA payments want to work, but the current system discourages claimants from making the transition into work. People on ESA receive £30 a week more than those with a health condition on JSA, but they receive far less support in finding work: people on JSA can expect about 11 hours of work coach time per year, whereas those on ESA typically receive only about two hours per year. The Bill will help people to achieve their ambitions. Current claimants will not be affected, and new funding will be provided for additional support to help claimants to move into work.

I was interested to hear the Secretary of State talk about the benefits cap and fairness. Is he aware that his right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) also talked about fairness and the benefits cap, saying that it was only fair that people’s benefits were capped at the level of the average that someone would expect to earn by working? At that point, the cap was £26,000; now, it seems that average earnings are £23,000 and £20,000. What is the reason for the difference?

I just explained, I think, that there are differences between gross and net figures. Now, we are looking at lowering the cap from the original £26,000, as the hon. Lady will know if she uses her intelligence—

Will the Secretary of State give way?

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

I am not going to give way to the hon. Lady again, because I thought it was pretty simple maths. However, I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

Given what the right hon. Gentleman was just saying about ESA, what is his response to Parkinson's UK and Macmillan Cancer Support? They point out that, in the case of Parkinson’s, there are some 8,000 people in the work-related activity group with Parkinson’s and other progressive diseases who are not going to get better but who, under his proposals, will lose £30 a week. How can he defend that?

As originally designed by the Labour Government, the work-related activity group was to be a transitional stage on the way to work. It included people who had conditions that were perceived to be likely to improve, thus enabling them to move into work, and people who could, even while they were in the work-related activity group, do some work, and that had to be assessed. If a person’s condition is such that they are unable to do any work at all, under the existing rules of the work capability assessment, they should be assessed and moved into the support group. That is exactly the point.

The objective of the work-related activity group—its design was, I think, rather faulty, but we have what we have—is to encourage people to go into work. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, there are no sanctions to make them take work. There are sanctions if they are unwilling to make an effort, but if they cannot take the work they are not sanctioned.

The Secretary of State will readily acknowledge that people with Parkinson’s or multiple sclerosis who are in the work-related activity group are not going to get better. Surely he should not be taking £30 a week away from them.

As I said—the right hon. Gentleman should remember this—the purpose of the work-related activity group is that the people in that group are deemed to be capable of some work, or at least to be capable of doing some work very soon. That is the point of the group. My point is that when someone becomes too ill to do any work, at that point they are assessed and they should go into the support group. I am happy to discuss the matter further with him elsewhere, but those are the rules as they stand.

rose—

I want to make some progress. I will give way again later, but I am conscious of the fact that over 35 Members are waiting to speak—

Forty.

Forty Members, so it is in colleagues’ interest to let me make some progress.

I also want to support parents claiming universal credit to get into and stay in work after having a child. We found just last week that the number of children living in households claiming out-of-work benefits is at a record low, down by 450,000 since 2010. That is very good progress, but we want to build on it. The Government are introducing a far-reaching childcare offer: with universal credit, people will get up to 85% of their childcare costs paid from April 2016—up from 70% under the previous system. All three and four-year-olds already receive 15 hours of free childcare a week, as do 40% of the most disadvantaged two-year-olds. On top of that, there will be an additional 15 hours of free childcare available for working parents of three or four-year-olds. Overall, we anticipate that this provision will be worth about £5,000 per child per year. In line with that, we believe it is fair to ask parents claiming universal credit to look for work when their youngest child turns three, and to prepare for work when the youngest child turns two, and the Bill makes provision for that as well.

I want to bring the Secretary of State back to the cap. Lowering the cap is one thing, and it is something that we could probably agree on, but having different levels of the cap across the United Kingdom breaks parity and sets an unwanted precedent for other benefits, and we strongly disagree with that. Will he reconsider and have the cap at the same level across the whole United Kingdom?

The problem with the cap when we set it previously was that it disproportionately affected London without having a great effect on the rest of the country. This process means that of the 92,000 extra people who are likely to be affected, 16,000 will be in London and 77,000 will be outside London, which I think resets the balance. By the way, many people tell me that the cap is set far too high.

rose—

I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman, so I will make some progress. He is more than welcome to try to intervene later, but I want to move on to the next aspect of the Bill. I stand by the fact that the cap will now be more likely to be equal. It will not be absolutely equal because there are variable incomes, as he knows.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I will give way to the hon. Lady, because I have not yet done so.

On the level of the cap, the cost of living for my constituents is very similar to that in London, yet they will have to make do with a much lower cap. Moreover, the Bill will allow the Secretary of State to reduce the cap over time without having to come back to Parliament to seek any kind of agreement. Why is he essentially playing politics with poverty?

The hon. Lady’s question is rather mixed; I thought that she was asking me to impose an even stricter cap on her constituency, with a lower level. The reality is that none of this is absolutely perfect, but we believe that it will reset the balance, which is better than just leaving a single figure at a lower level and making London suffer more than the rest.

As the Chancellor set out in the Budget, the benefits system has to be put on a more sustainable footing, but in a way that protects the most vulnerable. That brings me to the second principle of the Bill, which is sustainability. In 1980 working-age welfare accounted for 8% of all public spending, but by 2010 it had risen to nearly 13%, which is over £200 billion, or almost £8,000 for every household. Nine in 10 families with children were eligible for tax credits when we came into government. It is clear from what we heard last week that many Opposition Members have still not learnt anything from some of the mistakes made during Labour’s 13 years in government. They have not weaned themselves off the addiction to paying for more and more debt with somebody else’s money. They are still not credible when it comes to managing the public finances.

As a result of our reforms, five in 10 families with children will be eligible for tax credits, bringing greater balance to the welfare budget. However, it is also clear in the Bill that we have been careful to ensure that the changes are fair. We are protecting the most vulnerable in society, including the elderly and disabled. Where possible, we are introducing changes only for new claimants so that those who have planned on the basis of what is currently available are not affected.

On that point about protecting the vulnerable, particularly the disabled, our manifesto commitment to halve the disability employment gap is very welcome. Will the Bill’s reporting obligations on full employment include the Government publishing data each year showing to what extent they are meeting that target?

All the data that we have committed to publishing will be open and available to everybody, so everybody will be able to see exactly how much progress we have made. Through the life chances measures, people will be able to figure out whether we are making progress, and therefore what we should be doing about it. I am glad that my hon. Friend welcomes some of the changes, particularly the living wage, which I know he has campaigned on for some time.

We are making provision to tackle social rents, which have increased by 20% since 2010. The Bill will reduce rents in social housing in England by 1% a year for four years from April 2016, protecting taxpayers from the rising cost of subsidising rents through housing benefit, and protecting tenants from rising housing costs. This will reduce average rents for households in the social housing sector by around 12% by 2020, compared with current forecasts. It will also mean that those people not on housing benefit and not subject to “pay to stay” will be better off by around £12 a week by 2019-20.

rose—

I have given way quite a lot and I am conscious that 40 Members wish to make speeches. [Interruption.] I do not think that I can be accused of having not given way, because I clearly have.

Finally, we are reforming the way support for mortgage interest payments will be paid in future. Instead of a benefit, it will be made in the form of a loan. I think that will be welcomed by most Members on both sides of the House, although it is difficult to tell with the Opposition.

Let me turn to the third principle of the Bill. We are ensuring that people on benefits face the same choices as those in work and those not on benefits. Families in work have to make careful choices about what lifestyle the money they earn can support and what their income can provide for. In that context, it is right that people who receive child tax credit should make the same financial choices about having children as those who are supporting themselves through work. Therefore, from April 2017 the Bill will limit the child element of child tax credit to the first two children. The two-child limit will also apply on universal credit in relation to a third child or subsequent new children in the household and to completely new claims. Again, we are ensuring that this charge is fair. It will not affect existing claimants at the point of change. That is the key point.

The Secretary of State knows that the number of those earning over £25,000 now is 800,000 fewer than it was in 2010. The real crisis in Britain today is not the number of people not in work, but in-work poverty. Given that child and family tax credits basically subsidise and incentivise work, will he look at this again and accept that the real crisis is not the number of people without jobs, which is what he has been talking about, but the fact that people in work do not earn enough to put food on the table, and they are getting more and more poor?

I do not agree. If the hon. Gentleman looks at our record over the past five years, he will see that we have increased the number of jobs and that wages are now rising much faster than inflation. The last set of jobs statistics showed that every single one of those jobs was full time. All this nonsense about them being low-earning, part-time jobs is just complete and utter fabricated idiocy.

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The impact assessment for the Bill has only just arrived in the Vote Office; it was not here for the beginning of the debate. Surely we ought to be given the statistics in order to have an informed debate, rather than having to rely on what comes out of the Secretary of State’s mouth.

We will investigate the matter. I would have thought that the hon. Lady would give me a little more warning of her point of order, but there we are.

We released them earlier and they have been available since before the debate began, so I will simply move on.

I would like to turn to how we tackle the root causes of poverty. I believe that the past approach focused on dealing with the symptoms of poverty while completely failing to target the root causes. The Bill will provide a statutory basis for much-needed reform to improve children’s life chances. I have long argued that there are five key pathways to poverty that affect children’s life chances: worklessness, educational attainment, drug and alcohol addiction, family breakdown and problem debt. The Bill will remove the existing measures and targets in the Child Poverty Act 2010 and introduce a new duty to report on worklessness and educational attainment. Alongside the statutory measures, we will develop indicators to measure progress against either of those root causes of poverty.

Our new approach will drive real action, which will make the biggest difference to the most disadvantaged children now and in future. The key point is that this will enable us to measure what Government policy actually does, rather than just how much money we put into it. It is worth reminding the House that we will continue to publish the HBAI—households below average income—statistics so that those who wish to look at them can still do so.

Child Poverty Action Group figures indicate that 21% of the children in my constituency grow up in poverty. As a result of the benefit freeze, a couple with two children earning £400 per week will be £34.20 worse off each week. Does the Secretary of State agree that the Bill punishes families on low pay?

No. The hon. Lady should realise that the main way out of poverty is to get into work and then to progress through work. The vast majority of people progress through work. [Interruption.] The records in Scotland are remarkably good. Employment in Scotland—[Interruption.]

rose—

Order. The Secretary of State has given way quite a lot. We cannot have three people at once shouting, “Will the Secretary of State give way?” The Secretary of State will give way when he feels it is correct to do so, but we cannot have three people hanging loose.

Let me give the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) some figures for Scotland, which are worth looking at. Employment in Scotland is up 40,000 on the year and 179,000 since 2010. The employment rate is 74.3%, up 4.5% since 2010. Private sector employment is up 58,000 on the year and 244,000 since 2010. Just 5.2% of workers in Scotland are on temporary contracts and over 80% of those who work part time do so because they say it suits them. Although there is still much more to do, our reforms to lower corporation tax, get people back to work and create more jobs are exactly the route for her constituents to improve their life chances.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I do not want to intrude on internal fear and loathing among Opposition Members. They will have time for their private argument among themselves about what they should do. I am trying to give a little more time for them to do that, to be fair to the Opposition.

This Bill is an important legislative step in moving Britain from a high welfare, high tax, low pay society to a lower welfare, lower tax and higher pay society. It will ensure that the right support and incentives are in place so that people are always better off in work rather than trapped on welfare. Yes, there are difficult decisions, but it would be wrong to turn a blind eye, as the Opposition did for so many years, and not face up to these difficulties. The Bill puts work first and puts welfare spending on a more sustainable footing for the future, while protecting the vulnerable and those most in need. I commend the Bill to the House.

I beg to move,

That this House, whilst affirming its belief that there should be controls on and reforms to the overall costs of social security, that reporting obligations on full employment, apprenticeships and troubled families are welcome, and that a benefits cap and loans for mortgage interest support are necessary changes to the welfare system, declines to give a Second Reading to the Welfare Reform and Work Bill because the Bill will prevent the Government from continuing to pursue an ambition to reduce child poverty in both absolute and relative terms, it effectively repeals the Child Poverty Act 2010 which provides important measures and accountability of government policy in relation to child poverty, and it includes a proposal for the work-related activity component of employment and support allowance which is an unfair approach to people who are sick and disabled.

In government we addressed all the challenges set out by the Secretary of State. We stand for the right to work and the responsibility to work. We believe the Government have a responsibility to ensure full and fulfilling employment. We believe in making work pay so that people are always better off in work, and that work is the best route out of poverty. The deficit has to be eliminated. We believe in controlling the costs of social security so that it is fair on the working people who pay for it and so that it is there for people who need it because they cannot work or earn enough to live.

We support a number of measures in the Bill. We welcome the reporting obligations on full employment, apprenticeships and troubled families. We are committed to a cap on household benefits to help make families better off in work. We support reforms to mortgage interest support that will strengthen work incentives and deliver savings. But this Bill does some very bad things as well. It abolishes the duty of Government to tackle or even to report on child poverty, it breaks promises that the Conservative party made before the election to protect sick and disabled people, and it comes alongside a ruthless reduction in the support to working families through tax credits that will reduce work incentives and undermine the goals of universal credit—

rose—

I will give way in a moment. Universal credit is a reform which, even though it is running four years late, we still want to succeed.

Was my right hon. Friend as shocked as I was at the response of the Secretary of State to his intervention in respect of disabled people, especially those who have terminal illnesses as well—cancer and Parkinson’s disease were two of the examples that he used? The Secretary of State does not seem to understand the implications of the changes to the employment and support allowance for these very vulnerable people at a very worrying time in their lives.

My hon. Friend raises an important point, which I wanted to return to. The implication of what the Secretary of State said is that, for example, people with Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis should be in the support group, not in the work-related activity group. The Secretary of State needs to follow that through.

Because we support some measures in the Bill, oppose others and want to change yet others to make them workable, we ask the House to support the reasoned amendment in my name and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends.

There seems to be an omission from the list of measures that the right hon. Gentleman supports. Will he clarify whether the Labour party will support the measures to limit child tax credits to two children, and whether that will still be the party’s position in October?

I look forward to coming to that part of my speech. The Bill, as I understand it, says that the limit does not apply in the case of tax credits for children born before 6 April 2017. The limit does apply in the case of universal credit for children born before 6 April. That seems to me a pretty clear unfairness and we will oppose that unfairness, and we will table amendments to deal with that and other unfairnesses in the Bill.

For the sake of clarity for Opposition Members if not for Government Members, will the right hon. Gentleman tell us, as this is missing from his reasoned amendment, whether he supports in principle that reduction of payments for two children for families on child tax credits?

As I told the House, we will table amendments to deal with unfairness in those measures and in others in the Bill, and we will vote on those in Committee in the autumn.

I want to be very clear about this. Is it now the official Opposition’s position that they support the limiting of payments of child tax credit for two children from the date specified in the Bill?

We support removing unfairness from the Bill that the Secretary of State published. For that reason we will tonight table a raft of amendments to that part of the Bill and others where we think there is unfairness.

rose—

I will give way one more time.

The right hon. Gentleman is very generous in giving way. I want to establish clarity for those on the Government Benches as well as those on the Opposition Benches. Putting aside the fact that in Committee he may want to table amendments to make changes, do the official Opposition support the principle that those with more than two children should not receive further child tax credits? Is that the principled position they support? That is missing from the right hon. Gentleman’s reasoned amendment.

The Secretary of State does not need to wait until the Committee because we will table a raft of amendments tonight: if our reasoned amendment fails and the Bill receives a Second Reading, we will table our amendments. He will see in that list of amendments a series of amendments to deal with the unfairness in that part of the Bill. Those amendments will give him the answer that he seeks. They will appear on the Order Paper tomorrow so that the House can consider them over the weeks ahead.

My right hon. Friend is right to talk about removing unfairnesses. There are a number of unfairnesses in the Bill that affect carers. The Conservatives seem blind to the impact of their measures on carers. Can my right hon. Friend say whether we will table an amendment to exempt carers from the benefit cap? Carers should not be affected by the benefit cap and they should never have been affected by the bedroom tax, but the Government would not listen about that either.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That will indeed be the subject of one of our amendments, because at the moment carers who do not live with the person they are caring for are caught by the cap, and they should not be.

I want to turn to the impact of the Budget changes on tax credits and on universal credit, some of which are in the Bill and some not. Of course the increase in the minimum wage is welcome, but it does not make up for the measures in the Budget, though mostly not in the Bill, that cut tax credits for working families. The claim that they do make up for it—the Secretary of State repeated it in his speech—is, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, “arithmetically impossible”. The problem will be especially bad in the next couple of years. The increase in the national minimum wage is phased in over five years, but big tax credit cuts hit immediately next year. Over 3 million working families will lose over £1,000 a year on average, and work incentives will be cut. That is the reason we voted against the Budget. When the Government bring forward the statutory instruments to implement those huge cuts to the incomes of working families, we will vigorously and fiercely oppose them.

Do Labour Members not understand the fundamental idea that being in work should always make people better off than being out of work? If so, will the right hon. Gentleman lead his party through the Lobby in support of the proposals in this Bill that make people better off for being in work?

I fear that the hon. Gentleman did not understand the Budget. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Budget reduced the income of 3 million working families by over £1,000 a year on average, and in many cases it lessens the incentive for the first person in a household to go into work. He need only read the very clear analysis of that point by the IFS.

My right hon. Friend goes right to the heart of one of the difficulties involved. I support the idea of getting away from taxpayer-funded poverty pay to a situation where people are paid a genuine living wage. The IFS analysis shows clearly that the people most affected by this change are working families in the second lowest decile. If it goes through, together with the other changes, I will have to go back to my constituents and explain why I have made them poorer in work.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight this, because the IFS is absolutely clear that the cuts in tax credits target working families. Those people will lose out from the changes not in this Bill but in the Budget—that is why we voted against them. This is not about making work pay; it is about making working families pay. As the party of working families, we will be fighting those changes tooth and nail in the period ahead.

Returning to my right hon. Friend’s commitment to amend unfairnesses in the Bill, will he confirm that one of his amendments might tackle the obscenity of a woman who has been raped having to prove to the Department for Work and Pensions that she has been raped in order to be able to claim tax credits in future?

We will have to hear from the Government how they envisage that part of their proposal working, but I can well understand the concern that my hon. Friend raises.

Let me turn to the individual measures in the Bill, starting with the benefit cap. We support the principle that work should always pay and that people should be better off in work than on benefits. That is why our manifesto supported a household benefit cap and the idea that it should be lower in areas where there are lower housing costs.

Does my right hon. Friend accept that Conservative Members do not seem to understand that two out of three children growing up in poverty are in working households?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. For the first time, the majority of children below the poverty line—quite a significant majority, as she says—are in working families. That is a reflection of how things have gone over the past few years.

To avoid hardship and unfairness with the reduction of the benefit cap, we will press for some people to be protected from the cap. My hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) referred to the position of carers. Under the current cap, carers who live with the person for whom they are caring are exempt, yet 8% of those affected by the cap are carers. That is because carers who do not live with the person they are caring for are included in the cap. We want that to change. We think that those with the very youngest children should not be affected by the cap. We also want protection for those affected by domestic violence. As it stands, those who have been affected by domestic violence can be exempted from job-seeking requirements at the jobcentre, but if they are living in supported accommodation a cap will apply. The amendments that we will publish tonight would exempt them along the same lines as the current exemption in jobcentres.

It is absolutely vital to keep the implementation and the impact of the benefit cap policy under scrutiny. There must be jobs for people to move into and childcare available to help them. We need to be vigilant against increases in homelessness and child poverty. We also need to make sure that the policy does not have knock-on consequences for councils and others which mean that it ends up costing more than it saves. If the Bill goes ahead, we will seek to add a requirement for the Secretary of State to report to Parliament within a year on the impact of the policy.

Will the shadow Secretary of State join me in recognising the unpardonable folly of these proposals and their impact on the entire islands of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? Does he agree that that is felt not only on the front line by children and women but by the staff of the DWP, who in Glasgow and Bolton are considering strike action because of the effects of these proposals and the stress that they are under?

There do need to be some safeguards in place, as I have been spelling out. Indeed, the Government themselves have recognised the need for a fund to protect people in exceptional circumstances. We welcome the extra £150 million for the fund for discretionary housing payments to help mitigate the worst impacts, but it will not be enough. Many local authorities have already exhausted their funds, which are vital in preventing those affected from becoming homeless. With the cap now lower, there will be more demand for discretionary help. We will therefore want to amend the Bill to require the Social Security Advisory Committee to review the funding for discretionary housing payments each year to make sure that sufficient resources are available.

The right hon. Gentleman has talked a lot about child poverty. The benefit cap, according to the Government’s own figures, will push a further 40,000 extra children into poverty, yet he is talking about some amendments around the edges. Will he explain how much extra child poverty is acceptable to Labour Front Benchers?

As the hon. Lady well knows, the big impact on child poverty will come from the huge cuts in working tax credits and other changes not in this Bill but elsewhere. I hope that she will join us in fighting very strongly against those changes when the House has the chance to do so.

The shadow Secretary of State is making a brave effort to defend whatever his party’s policy is on this, but he has very little credibility because the country knows that under the previous Labour Government the number of workless households doubled, so Labour policies not only trap people in welfare but trap people in poverty.

Child poverty fell dramatically under the previous Government; now it has plateaued. I fear that because of measures announced in the Budget, it is going to rocket, and we are determined to stop that happening if we can.

Another reform in the Bill that we support in principle is the provision to turn support for mortgage interest into a repayable loan. That is a sensible step, in principle, given that the benefit enables homeowners to retain an asset and potentially gain substantially from rising house prices. However, it must not make affordability problems worse for people struggling to stay in their homes. Repayments must not tip people into repossession and homelessness. The Secretary of State did not tell us what arrangements are proposed for repaying these loans. We will argue that those who access that support should be able to defer repayment until they sell the property without pressure from the Government to do so. The Budget announced an increase in the waiting period for support for mortgage interest from 13 weeks to 39 weeks. That is too long. As it is a loan scheme, why make people wait, particularly as that could force them into the hands of loan sharks? With support for mortgage interest becoming, in effect, a form of low-risk consumer credit, it should be readily available without nine months of delay to those struggling to make repayments.

We welcome the plans to reduce social rents, which will save 1.2 million households £700 a year, but we have grave concerns about the impact on housing associations and local authorities. They will face a huge reduction in rent revenue, drastically undermining their capacity to borrow and to build. The Office for Budget Responsibility says that many fewer homes will be built; the National Housing Federation puts the figure at 27,000. We will table amendments to address that.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that up to billions of pounds will go missing from local authorities? If we lifted the cap, they could build more homes and thereby help address the terrible housing crisis, particularly in London and the south-east?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Affordable home building is already at a historic low, and the Government need to stop making things worse. We will table an amendment requiring the Secretary of State to produce a plan to make up the shortfall in house building funds that will result from this change.

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I give way to my hon. Friend, whose popularity among Conservative Members I have noted.

Obviously, a reduction in local authority rents is good for tenants—I fully understand that—but does my right hon. Friend know whether the Government have given any consideration to the effect that a consistent drop in rental income over five years will have on the housing revenue account; on housing maintenance, including of the common areas of estates; and, of course, on any future building programme that could have been funded by the housing revenue account?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The proposal will affect not only new house building funds, but funds for maintaining existing stock. The Secretary of State needs to explain how that shortfall will be met.

We support the aim to provide 3 million apprenticeships, but the Government need to do more than just publish a target in a Bill. We want quality apprenticeships. There is deep concern among businesses and others that the quality of apprenticeships is being watered down in order to increase their numbers, so we will table an amendment to require that the UK Commission for Employment and Skills should provide an independent assessment of whether quality is being delivered.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the concern about the impact of the changes to housing rental income relates not just to the immediate shortfall in funding, but to the uncertainty they will create among registered providers, whose business plans are drawn up five, 10 or 15 years in advance?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Attention has been drawn to that issue, not least by the Financial Times, which has reported that housing associations’ business plans and their loan covenants and agreements with lenders could be at risk, and that even some big associations could go bust. The implications are very serious.

The right hon. Gentleman is a reasonable man, so I am surprised that he cannot see the advantages of the housing policy in, first, reducing rents for large numbers of tenants who are among the poorest people in the land; secondly, obliging housing associations to make a 1% productivity saving each year, which is very small compared with other parts of the public sector; and, thirdly, reducing the welfare spend and therefore the budget deficit. Surely they are all advantages.

I think the hon. Gentleman was momentarily distracted, because I have welcomed both his first and third points. We welcome the fact that rents are being reduced, but he needs to recognise the impact that the changes will have. As I am sure he will be aware, housing associations do not share his rather sanguine view of what the changes will mean, particularly for new house building at a time when we all recognise the need for substantial new socially rented housing, which is not being delivered at the moment.

The Bill does not provide a definition of “full employment”. In line with recent research and the previous Labour Government’s definition, our amendment will set the full employment target at 80% of the working-age population. To pick up on a point rightly made in an intervention by the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), in our view the annual report on progress to full employment must also set out progress on the target to halve the disability employment gap.

We will support policies that make work pay and increase opportunity, but where the Government are wrong we will not hesitate to say so. The Conservative party promised in its manifesto that it would

“work to eliminate child poverty”.

It is now absolutely clear that it did not mean it: the Bill abandons any pretence that it did. Instead of eliminating the scandal of child poverty, the Bill attempts to eliminate the term. Labour in government was committed to reducing the appalling levels of child poverty left behind by the Thatcher and Major Governments, and we did so. We introduced the Child Poverty Act 2010, with cross-party support, including from the Secretary of State when he was in opposition and the Conservative party. It contained clear targets to reduce absolute and relative poverty, persistent poverty and material deprivation.

We have known for some time about the debate in the Conservative party about the validity of the relative poverty measure, but now it is not just changing the definition. It is interested not in stopping child poverty, only in stopping people talking about it. It is exactly the same with food banks: the Tories want to stop people discussing them. Clause 6(9) tells us that we should not refer any more to the Child Poverty Act and that instead it is to be known as the life chances Act, but there are fewer life chances for a child growing up in poverty, and poverty needs to be reduced.

Getting rid of the targets and measures leaves the Government with no commitment to tackle child poverty at all, just a requirement to publish a mix of loosely connected statistics. Instead of removing child poverty, the Bill seeks simply to remove it from the lexicon.

My right hon. Friend is, like me, a London MP. The driver of child poverty in my constituency is a combination of low pay and high private rents. When the cap was introduced, the Prime Minister advocated—there was an element of logic in this—the idea that it would reduce rents in the private rented sector. That has failed in my area and right across London; rents have increased significantly. Have the Government produced any evidence to prove that the cap reduced rents in the private sector at all?

I certainly have not seen such evidence. We have just seen the impact assessment, and the figures are in there, so we will have to see what information they provide. I am worried about the proposal—it was made in the Budget, but it is not in the Bill—of a cash freeze in local housing allowance for the next four years, irrespective of what is happening to rents in London and elsewhere.

The child poverty changes are a shameful attempt to brush under the carpet what should be right at the forefront of Ministers’ minds as they make policy and manage the economy. It is, I am afraid, the final nail in the coffin for compassionate conservatism.

It is always a mystery to me why more Labour Members do not agree with the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) and, indeed, Alan Milburn, who think that the Government’s proposal to measure the root causes of child poverty is an improvement on what went before. Why does not the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) agree with them, or indeed with another 50 of his colleagues? Is not Labour a shambles?

I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) will contribute to the debate, but I can tell the hon. Lady that he feels very strongly, as we all do, that this huge hit on 3 million working families—it will take more than £1,000 a year from them, with tax credit changes coming in next year—is a very bad thing to do. It will let down working families, and all Labour Members will fight hard against the iniquitous change being made by the hon. Lady and her colleagues.

Before the election, the Government promised to protect those with disabilities from welfare cuts, but that promise has been broken. As has already been discussed, Parkinson’s UK reckons that there are currently 8,000 people in the work-related activity group with progressive and incurable conditions such as Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis. Macmillan, in opposing the provision, points out that

“thousands…will experience a significant drop in support at some point during their cancer journey.”

As my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) said in an intervention, that group includes people with learning disabilities and many with mental health problems.

The Bill reduces the level of support for new claimants by nearly £30 a week, from £101 to £73. That change introduces a new perverse incentive, because it increases the incentive for people with health problems to get into the support group by providing a higher payment, meaning that even more people will not get help to return to work.

The recent marked increase in the ESA case load, at a time when unemployment has come down, has been sharpest in the support group. Anyone in the support group will be seriously deterred from taking the risk of trying employment, for fear that it will result in their receiving a much lower level of support if they are then reallocated to the work-related activity group. I say to the Secretary of State that a particular worry is that young people with mental health problems, who ought to be getting help to return to work, are being abandoned in the support group at the moment. We therefore want the ESA measures removed from the Bill.

These serious issues are arousing passions on both sides of the House. I am slightly concerned that none of the right hon. Gentleman’s colleagues who are candidates for the leadership has decided to put their name either to the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) or to the Opposition’s reasoned amendment. Are they not prepared to give us their views?

I am glad to be able to reassure the hon. Gentleman that he will be pleased with what happens when the House divides at 10 o’clock tonight.

The Bill seeks to restrict support provided through tax credits and universal credit to families with more than two children. We will aim to amend the Bill in Committee, for example to protect families with multiple births or those whose claim arises because of exceptional circumstances. We do not support locking in a cash freeze for four years for tax credits and benefits. We recognise that reducing the deficit will require savings on indexation, but those decisions should be made annually so that actual inflation can be taken into account. We do not support the accompanying sharp reductions in income thresholds for tax credits and the corresponding cuts to work allowances announced in the Budget, which will be legislated for outside this Bill. They will be a huge setback to work incentives. The whole point of universal credit was supposed to be to improve work incentives; now it is being hobbled even before it has properly got started.

We want progress towards full employment. We want demanding targets for apprenticeships and help for troubled families. We want a household benefit cap, and to make sure that families are always better off in work. We want support for mortgage interest and reductions in social rents that will deliver savings to the taxpayer. We want better economic opportunities, and we want social security to be fairer and more affordable.

However, children who are growing up in poverty—as we have heard, the growing majority of them are in working households—need a Government committed to improving their position. People who because of illness and disability are found by the Government’s own tests to be not fit to work, as can happen to anybody, need social security to assure them of a decent basic standard of living. Families who are doing the right thing and going out to work, often when they are already struggling with low or stagnant wages and increasing insecurity and uncertainty about their future, need a Government who are on their side, not one who will pull the rug out from under them, as the tax credits announcements in the Budget will do.

These are not just matters of morality and social justice, although they most certainly are; this is also about how we secure our future prosperity and stability, ensuring that everybody in Britain can play their part, make the most of their talents and make the most of the ambitions of all.

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I made a point of order earlier about when the impact assessments were published, and I understand that there is an inquiry. When we heard the Secretary of State announce that they had been published, my researcher went to the Vote Office and found that they were not available. A phone call was made to the Vote Office in Members Lobby, which said that they had just arrived. This is not right, and I would like your advice about how we can hold the Government to account when they do not publish impact assessments until after the Secretary of State has got to his feet.

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order. If a mistake has been made by the Vote Office, I am quite sure that Mr Speaker will be annoyed on behalf of the House.

rose—

I can see that the Secretary of State has something to say, and I am delighted to call him further to that point of order.

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise only to say that we sent the impact assessments to the House authorities before 5 o’clock. I gather that there was some technical hitch in the House before they were able to get them to the Vote Office, but that was not a problem of our making. [Interruption.]

Order. The Secretary of State has explained what he and his Department have done. If there has been a mistake in getting the papers between the Secretary of State’s office and the Chamber, that will be investigated. It should not have happened, but there is no point in Members shouting about it from a sedentary position. The Secretary of State has apologised for his part in any mistake, if such a mistake has been made. [Interruption.] No, I will not have any more shouting about this. It is a technical problem, and it is not strictly a matter for the Chair, except in so far as saying that Members ought to be provided with all the information necessary to enable them fully to take part in a debate. If that has not happened, there will be an investigation, but one way or another, there is no point in any further shouting about it.

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance as to whether Members can be given sufficient information even if papers are provided some 10 minutes before a debate, given the nature of the impact assessments. If we are to read them properly and understand them, surely Members, if at all possible, should be given more than a few minutes’ notice.

I simply observe that the debate started at 5.34 pm and it is now 6.36 pm, so it has been under way for an hour. I appreciate that the Chair insists that Members of Parliament should take part in the debate and concentrate on the speech being made at any particular moment, but I am sure it is not beyond the ingenuity of intelligent Members to be able to participate in the debate while also looking at the papers that are now available to them. It would have been better had the papers been here earlier, but I am quite certain that this debate will go on for another three hours and 23 minutes and, if they now have the papers, Members ought to be able to multitask to the extent of listening to the debate and reading the papers at the same time. That does not mean, if a mistake has happened, that I condone it; if there has been one, it will be thoroughly investigated.

It is a pleasure to speak in support of this very important Bill, which is one of the measures we need to move us to the high pay, low tax, low welfare economy that the Secretary of State wants.

I will start with the measures relating to work. From having served on the Work and Pensions Committee, I know that getting people into work is the area of the Department that gets the least scrutiny. The reporting obligations on full employment and apprenticeships are a really important step forward. We all want the 3 million apprenticeships to be created by the end of the Parliament.

I hope that the power the Government are taking to report on the number of apprenticeships will cover the details on the quality of those apprenticeships. I would like the annual report to include the number of higher apprenticeships, because we want apprenticeships that give people real skills and real future careers, not just to be tick-box training schemes that add little value. As we occasionally see in our constituencies, some employees get sold such schemes, and we ought to look at whether they provide any real advantages. The reports will be extremely useful.

Another important thing to strengthen work is to have a welfare system that encourages rather than disincentivises it. Our measures to increase the minimum wage, which will start later this year, and to increase the amount of childcare, as well as the welfare reforms, are the right package to ensure that all people and all families are very clear that work will always pay and, at least in the medium and longer term, is the best way of securing a better financial situation.

Whoever won the election, we knew from the campaign that the welfare reform measures would be the most contentious issue at the start of this Parliament. We all knew that we had to find several billions.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I will give way.

He is not my hon. Friend. [Laughter.] I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker.

How many children in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency will be affected by the cuts in the Bill?

I do not have that number to give the hon. Lady. However, her party is also committed to making large welfare savings. It is very easy to support the theory, but if Labour Members oppose all the large measures that are taken in practice, they are not going anywhere. They have to answer this question. If they are committed to large savings, but they do not support all these measures, which measures would they like to see? That is the challenge. We have to find savings to close the deficit. We have a clear mandate for welfare savings to form a large part of those savings.

The Government have produced measures that are a little less severe and fast than many of us feared they would be. The Labour party thought that they would be a lot more severe only a few weeks ago, when we were told that families would be £1,400 worse off overnight unless the minimum wage went up by 25%. What we are seeing is wages going up by more than 25% and some of the cuts being deferred over several years. The Government have attempted to make the cuts as fair as possible.

The hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way. He made a point about making work pay. I raised a point with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) about carers and the benefit cap. Some 5,000 carers will be affected by the benefit cap. The hon. Gentleman is talking about making work pay, but many carers cannot work. Does he agree that carers should therefore be exempt from the changes?

We need to give carers every possible support. They perform an important and difficult role. Having done a bit of caring in my time, I know how hard and stressful it can be. We can look at that, but I cannot stand here tonight and say I would vote for it.

The reduction in the benefits cap is a hugely popular policy. Everybody I spoke to in my constituency said that the benefits cap was a great idea, but £26,000 a year was far too high. It was higher than the average wage in my constituency, so people did not think that it would affect a lot of people. In fact, the number of people who were affected by it in my seat was extremely small.

It is right to bring the cap down and to have different levels in London and the rest of the country. There are different levels of housing benefit around the country and that is one of the biggest costs that trigger the benefits cap, so it is right to have a different level in London. Twenty thousand pounds is the right level for the cap. It is a bit less than the average wage in my constituency. That will show people clearly that anyone who goes out to work will be better off than those who live solely on benefits.

I support the hard decision to have a benefit freeze for four years. When we have to find savings, perhaps one of the least bad ways of doing it is to freeze what people are already getting, rather than taking more people out of the system completely.

The point that the acting shadow Secretary of State raised about the withdrawal rates for tax credits and universal credit showed how fiendishly complicated the tax credits system is. It is difficult to work out exactly who will be hit at what level and by what amount by the new withdrawal rates and the new starting position. That reinforces the case for universal credit. Everyone will be able to see from every pay packet they get that when they work more hours in a month, they are better off than in months when they work fewer hours. We need that system to be in place, rather than the incredibly complex, slow and clunky tax credits system, which applies a year behind or a year ahead. Nobody quite understands how what they get in tax credits bears any relation to the work that they have done in the year.

Even with the changes to universal credit, the taper remains exactly where it was, so every hour in work will mean better pay. That principle still stands.

I was not doubting that for a second. With the tax credit changes, we need to be sure that the people who are still claiming tax credits understand that they will be better off doing more hours and earning more than they would have been otherwise. That is why universal credit needs to be rolled out. Everyone will be able to see that they are better off month by month, rather than having to work out if they might have been better off a year ago if they had worked a bit less in a complex way through online calculators. That cannot be a sensible system.

On the child tax credit limit, it has to be right that people who spend a life on welfare have to take the same decisions as people who are going out to work. It is therefore right to draw the line at two children for where the welfare system stops helping. There will still be a lot of help through child benefit and the Prime Minister confirmed that we would not seek to limit that. I think that we have got the line in the right place. It should be clear to people that from 2017, if they have more than two children, there will not be more tax credits.

We agree that people in work and people not in work should face the same choices, but does the hon. Gentleman not accept that the proposals on limiting access to child tax credit to the first two children will affect working families and those who are out of work?

Yes, but clearly the principle is that people should have to make the same choices if they are claiming benefits in work or are in work and not claiming benefits. It is not entirely clear whether the Labour party supports limiting child tax credit to the first two children. It sounds like it might support it, but that it dare not quite say so tonight.

Finally, the hardest issue in the Bill is the level of welfare for people in the work-related activity group. We have to get work capability assessments right. We have to get people in the right group, and people must believe themselves to be in the right group. I have seen constituents who have been through the assessment and have accepted the WRAG as a compromise on the basis that they will get much the same as they would get in the support group, but will have some requirements put on them. However, they thought that they should be in the support group. People who ought to be in the support group, but have chosen to be in the WRAG need support to put their situation right.

We need people to get the support that they need. Those who can never and will never work again need the right support. It is not in their interests or ours to put them in a different group. Clearly, we have to get the system right so that those who are in the group where they are meant to be able to work at some point in the future have the right incentives to take the support, undergo the training and get into work, rather than trying to stay on benefits claiming the slightly higher rate. We need to see the detail of how we can get that right and make it fair, so that we do not end up with perverse incentives.

Overall, I welcome the Bill. It is an important step forward in sorting out our deficit and making our welfare system fair for those who are claiming from it and those who are paying for it.

rose—

Order. It is obvious that a great many people wish to speak this evening and that there is a limited amount of time. I am afraid that I will have to impose a time limit of five minutes after the SNP spokesman.

I rise to urge the House not to give the Welfare Reform and Work Bill a Second Reading.

On the day of the Budget announcement, I, like many of my colleagues on the SNP Benches and many in society, watched in horror at Conservative Members jeering and cheering as the Chancellor announced swathes of cuts that will hit the poorest and most vulnerable in our society hardest. When I was elected by the good people of Livingston to this House, I anticipated some aspects of Dickensian tradition, largely framed around the traits and traditions of Westminster, but not for one minute did I expect that we would be taken back to Dickensian times by a Government hellbent on dividing our nation in such a regressive way.

The Conservative Government have claimed that they have

“a long-term economic plan to move the nation back to where we should be. This offers that and will reward hard-working families.”

We are certainly going backwards. The rhetoric that the Conservatives use in this Chamber about hard-working families and aspiration is fast wearing thin for many of us. Apart from anything else, when we delve into the detail, what we find is deeply worrying.

Let us look at exactly what the Government plan to do for our so-called hard-working families. The Conservatives will rename the Child Poverty Act 2010 the life chances Act. I spent a number of years in the marketing industry and recognise that this is rebranding on a grand scale. Perhaps the Chancellor is in the wrong job. I have taken the advice of the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) and looked at the impact assessment that came out very recently. Paragraph 33 says of the life chances Act:

“The proposed changes enhance the life chances of children as they ensure that households make choices based on their circumstances rather than on taxpayer subsidies. This will increase financial resilience and support improved life chances for children in the longer term.”

Let me explain why SNP Members do not believe that to be the case.

The Scottish Trades Union Congress says that the “so-called” living wage is

“simply a cheap gimmick aimed at undermining…a meaningful living wage”

and that

“continuation of the public sector pay gap is…a kick in the teeth for hard-working public sector workers.”

The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations said that the Budget was an attack on the poorest and most vulnerable communities by an “economically illiterate” Chancellor who has admitted that this is not about tackling the deficit, as he said that it was part of his push for a low tax, low welfare society. In SCVO’s view, he was

“demonstrating a cruel disregard for the impact this will have on hundreds of thousands of people’s lives.”

Barnardo’s has stated that renaming the Child Poverty Act 2010 the “life chances Act” sends the message that eliminating child poverty is no longer an aim of this Government. It is clear that the Bill will push more children, families and vulnerable people across Scotland and the UK deeper into poverty. Rebranding child poverty plans as “life chances measures”, and completely removing any legal obligation to meet those targets, only proves how badly this Government are failing our society on welfare. As indicated by the House of Commons Library, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission’s “State of the Nation” report from October 2014 stated:

“Modelling for the Commission illustrates the scale of the challenge. It projects that—based on current OBR forecasts for employment and wage growth—relative poverty (before housing costs) will rise to 21 per cent by 2020, 11 percentage points above target, and absolute poverty will rise to 24 per cent, even further behind the target of five per cent. This is likely to be an optimistic view as it ignores the impact of the further cuts to welfare benefit entitlements that are pencilled into current plans for deficit reduction in the next Parliament.”

Those plans are no longer pencilled in; they are in black and white for all of us to see. It is crystal clear to me that the Conservatives cannot meet their targets or fulfil their promises to folk across the UK, so instead they will just rebrand and repackage swathes of cuts to make it sound as if we are getting a better deal. It simply will not wash.

Another genius rebranding exercise by the Tories has been the introduction of the so called “living wage”—which, in reality, is a small increase in the minimum wage, up to £7.20 and to £9 by 2020—and the Chancellor has blatantly stolen the terminology used by the Living Wage Foundation that has set the living wage rate at £7.85 outside London and £9.15 in London. Rhys Moore, director of the Living Wage Foundation said:

“Is this really a living wage?...The Living Wage is calculated according to the cost of living whereas the Low Pay Commission calculates a rate according to what the market can bear. Without a change of remit for the Low Pay Commission this is effectively a higher National Minimum Wage and not a Living Wage.”

He went on to say that, to add insult to injury, the current calculation is based on workers receiving tax credits, which are also being cut.

Let us move on to tax credits and universal credit. The four-year freeze starts in 2016 and will affect around 577,000 families in receipt of child benefit in Scotland, and an overlapping 468,000 in receipt of housing benefit. More than a third of a million households in receipt of tax credits will also lose out. The Conservatives claim to be the workers’ party, but that claim could not be further from the truth as they lower the total amount that a household can receive in benefits to £20,000 outside London, and £23,000 in Greater London. In the words of charity Barnardo’s:

“This will significantly reduce the income of some very poor families.”

Worse still, in the Trade Union Bill—yet to be debated by this House—the Government plan to introduce standards for unions when voting for a strike that not even we as politicians are required to meet.

Let us consider the proposals for lone parents and other “responsible carers” in receipt of universal credit. We know that they are not currently subject to “work preparation” requirements until their youngest child reaches the age of three, and they do not have to be available for and look for work until that youngest child reaches five. The Bill reduces the age thresholds for work preparation to two, and for full work-related requirements to three. Let me be clear: the SNP is abjectly opposed to the capping of benefits such as carer’s allowance, child benefit, child tax credits, severe disablement allowance, and widow’s pension. The people who receive those benefits are some of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, and it is abundantly clear that there is no level to which this Conservative Government will not stoop as they attack those vulnerable groups.

Instead of considering how we can properly protect and support folk who have already faced significant challenges in their life, we have a Government who cannot see past reducing a deficit, and will do so at all costs. This is an “at all costs” attack on the sick, the poor, the disabled, the elderly, and the many families who are working and trying their best to get to the end of the month without getting into debt. This Government’s cuts will affect the working poor, so that instead of being supported to better themselves, those in work will be further marginalised and have their benefits cut. Barnardo’s has noted that:

“A lone parent working full time on the minimum wage for 37 hours a week with two young children would lose £1,200 a year as a result of changes introduced from April 2016, even after accounting for the increase in the minimum wage.”

The hon. Lady is making an important point. Does she think that all lone parents are able to work 35 hours a week?

I believe we must have benefits that are suited to the situation, and the Conservative proposals will not do that.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

I will not; I will make some progress.

I am one of those children from a single parent family. My own mother worked all the hours in the day to provide for my brother and I, at a time when single parents were demonised by the Thatcher Government.

At the moment, 1 million more children are expected to grow up in poverty by 2020 across the UK. That would mean 5 million children in poverty in one of the world’s richest nations. Does my hon. Friend agree that those children need support, not savage cuts to the security of their families?

I could not agree more.

As I was saying, there was limited support for single parents, and although my mother held a good job in academia, finances were always close to the edge. I recall Lady Thatcher famously saying not long after she left office:

“It is far better to put these children in the hands of a very good religious organisation, and the mother as well, so that they will be brought up with family values.”

She told the audience in the Commonwealth convention centre in Louisville, that the spread of illegitimacy

“devalues our values and our community”.

She said that Governments had made things worse by providing social security benefits for single mothers, and it feels to me as if this Bill and the Conservative proposals are taking us back in time. We have come a long way since the dark days of the Thatcher Government: please do not let us return. All Opposition Members should be uniting against these pernicious Tory cuts—perhaps even a few progressive Government Members will join us to say no to a Second Reading.

Let me turn to the two-child policy. This part of the Bill makes changes to universal credit and tax credits, including a two-child limit for new claims and births after 2017. The Budget documents say that there will be protections in cases of rape and exceptional circumstances such as multiple births, but there are no details in the Bill. The limit will reduce the value of tax credits for future claimants with three or more children. There are currently 50,000 households in Scotland with three or more children receiving tax credits. Many of them are in Livingston and I have heard already from a number of constituents who are deeply worried about the impact that this measure will have on their finances.

To suggest for a moment that a woman who has been raped will have to justify herself to a member of the DWP is as sickening as it is unworkable. I have to hope that this grave error in policy making is a matter that the Conservatives will rethink and completely remove from the Bill. Either it is a deeply insensitive afterthought, or it is a proposal that shows utter disregard for a woman’s privacy and basic human rights.

How on earth can that policy work? What criteria will be applied to women justifying whether or not they have been raped? Will the criteria require a conviction—numbers of which, as we all know, are notoriously low—and what if a woman’s first or second child was the result of a rape? Will she be asked retrospectively to justify herself if she goes on to have a third child? What kind of training will staff have in dealing with women who have been raped? I simply do not want to believe that anyone in this House would want a woman to be subjected to this kind of regime. Asking a woman to relive such an abhorrent crime, simply to get enough money to keep a family going, is surely one of the most ill-conceived policies any Government have ever proposed. We deplore this policy and ask the Government to rethink it as a matter of urgency. As Sandra Horley, the chief executive of domestic violence charity Refuge, said:

“Women experiencing domestic violence are often completely controlled by their partner, including their access to birth control. Some women are also raped and sexually assaulted on a regular basis. Will this tax credit exemption mean vulnerable women who have been raped are forced to re-live their ordeal to prove they deserve support?”

We need detail and a rethink on this policy urgently. Similarly, for people who have had multiple births, the details and parameters of this policy are not clear. Much more clarification is required.

I will turn now to other aspects of the Bill, including the abolition of the employment and support allowance work-related activity component. Under the Bill, employment and support allowance for claimants in the work-related activity group will see their payments reduced to jobseeker’s allowance rates for new claims from April 2017. People affected are therefore set to lose up to £1,500 a year under current rules.

My hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) described eloquently the pernicious nature of the changes to housing benefit for young people when she highlighted the fact she was now the only 20-year-old in the country the Chancellor would be helping with her housing bill. We now know that, from April 2017, those out of work aged 18 to 21 making new claims to universal credit will no longer be entitled to the housing element.

Listening to my hon. Friend talk about women having to prove they have been raped and about 18 to 21-year-olds having to move back in with their parents when housing benefit is removed reminds me of when I was a welfare rights officer in the late ’80s and the Tory Government decided that 16 and 17-year-olds were no longer entitled to any benefits unless they had exceptional reasons. I had to advise a frightened 17-year-old girl sitting in front of me that, yes, if she wanted to stay in her own not very nice house, which was at least safe, she would have to tell a stranger that her dad regularly raped her. What does my hon. Friend think of progress under Tory Governments?

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. It is very clear from her experiences that these cuts are pernicious and unfounded, and we must, must oppose them.

The Scottish Government are protecting people from Westminster cuts. To be properly supported to live a full and meaningful life, be that in employment or otherwise, we have to look at a different way of doing things. In Scotland, the Scottish National party Government are providing £104 million in 2015-16 to protect as many people as possible from the damaging impact of the welfare reforms imposed so far by Westminster. That includes £35 million to mitigate the bedroom tax and the council tax reduction scheme, which has protected 500,000 Scots.

Does the hon. Lady agree that the changes on conditionality to three and four-year-olds are an interference with Scottish and Welsh Government policy? They impose an obligation to provide some form of childcare for those policies to be in any way humane. That is above and beyond the way in which a UK policy should affect Welsh or Scottish Government policy.

I agree with the hon. Lady wholeheartedly. We will certainly have to look at that. The Joint Ministerial Committee met today. Hopefully, it will have discussed this matter and we will hear further information on it.

The SNP believes that having socially progressive policies is the key to unlocking our society’s potential. That is why our First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, wrote in yesterday’s Sunday Herald:

“The UN General Assembly in New York will provide the backdrop for national governments to agree the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Sustainable Development Goals themselves offer a vision of the world that I believe people in Scotland share. From ending poverty to combating inequality, the aims set out by the UN form an agenda for tackling some of the world’s greatest problems.

I am delighted to confirm that Scotland has become one of the very first nations on Earth to publicly sign up to these goals and provide leadership on reducing inequality across the globe.”

Michael Green, from the Social Progress Index, said:

“The term Gross Domestic Product is often talked about as if it were ‘handed down from god on tablets of stone.’ But this concept was invented by an economist in the 1930s.”

He says that we need a more effective measurement tool to match 21st century needs: the social progress index. We absolutely agree that GDP is the internationally recognised benchmark, but we have to take into consideration much wider aspects. Michael Green asserts that economic growth has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and improved the lives of many more over the last half century, yet it is increasingly evident that a model of development based on economic progress alone is incomplete. Economic growth is not enough. A society that fails to address basic human needs, to equip citizens to improve quality of life, to protect the environment and provide opportunity for many of its citizens, is not succeeding. We must widen our understanding of the success of societies beyond economic outcomes. Inclusive growth requires achieving both economic and social progress. If we focus solely on GDP and reducing the deficit at all costs, we will store up significant problems for the future.

The SNP was very clear in its manifesto proposals about the aspects of policy that could be introduced to help bring people out of poverty. We want a vote for child tax credits and child benefit to be uprated in line with the consumer prices index and to support an increase in free childcare up to 30 hours a week by 2020. We propose an increase in carer’s allowance to bring it in line with JSA, which would see more than 100,000 unpaid carers in Scotland better off by almost £600 a year. We support increases in the personal tax allowance, but will back an increase in the work allowance—the amount people are allowed to earn before their benefit is cut at 20%.

The Bill is an attack on civil society. It is an attack on our poorest families. It is a regressive Bill that takes us back in time with cuts that will hit women and children the hardest. It will stigmatise and marginalise women who have been raped, and put conditions on the most needy in our society. At a time when we should be looking outward and forward, when we should be progressive and look to give our people a bright future and something to hope for, this Government are instead looking inward to attack their own people and turn them against each other in a way that even Thatcher’s Government would not have dared. The people of Scotland will not stand for this and neither will its democratically elected politicians. If the Bill and the Budget succeed, going our own way in Scotland and building a society that is progressive and for everyone, not just the rich, will be increasingly attractive. I urge the House to reject the Second Reading of the Bill.

As a member of the workers’ and one nation party, I am very proud to support the Welfare Reform and Work Bill.

rose—

No, we have heard enough from the SNP for now.

Unlike the previous speaker, I am going to talk about the Bill. It shows the Conservative party and the Government full of head and heart. We care passionately about mobility and aspiration. We also care about security and solidarity, helping the vulnerable and the disabled. Our head says that we have to live within our means. Finally, we are grasping the nettle and recognising that we have to live within our means. The welfare budget has to be sustainable. What the Chancellor has said has to be said again: we have 1% of the world’s population, 4% of the world’s GDP and 7% of the world’s welfare spend. We have to deal with that to make sure we can help the most vulnerable and ensure they have a sustainable future.

This is the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, but as the Secretary of State said, it could also be described as the “Catch you when you fall” Bill or the “Lift you when you can rise” Bill. That is what it is all about. We are spending more than £33 billion on welfare for the sick and the disabled. That will continue. What does that mean? Compared with the previous Labour Government, we have spent £7 billion more on disability benefits. We will continue to spend just shy of £7 billion more than the previous Labour Government on disability and sickness benefits. That matters.

The hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) prayed in aid Margaret Thatcher. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher said:

“Our aim is to provide a coherent system of cash benefits to meet the costs of disability, so that more disabled people can support themselves and live normal lives.”

The hon. Lady was right when she said the Government are following in the tracks of Margaret Thatcher, because disability payments increased under her Government by 21%. This Government are continuing to increase disability benefits, despite the £12 billion in welfare cuts. The difficult cuts to the work-related activity group payments represent one twenty-fourth of the welfare cuts that are being made. We are protecting the disabled. We heard all the scaremongering, particularly from Labour during the election, about our plans to cut carers’ allowances savagely and to means-test and tax disability benefits, but the Bill shows that that is not happening.

Does my hon. Friend agree that, while the most vulnerable must be protected, welfare must be a safety net rather than a lifestyle choice?

I agree that it is a generous safety net, and that will continue under this Government. Despite the challenging decisions that have to be made, it is clear that we will have a generous safety net.

However, we need to act with great care. Clause 13 deals with payments for those in the work-related activity group—the WRAG. The proposed reduction of £30 will be significant for those who are assessed as not yet fit for work, and we need to deal with that issue with care. Disabled people and those who are sick have additional costs. Macmillan Cancer Support says that 83% of people living with cancer are £570 a month worse off. One in five in the WRAG have a mental health condition, and 50% of those with one of a number of characteristics will have a mental health characteristic. We have to deal with those people with care.

The Bill must be a reforming measure. Much has been made of the need to cut costs, with cuts of £450 million rising to £620 million by 2020, but it needs to be a reforming measure. The problem is that far too few disabled people are getting into work—only 1% per month. That is a scandal. We must ask ourselves whether the WRAG is really fit for purpose. Rather than just looking at the spend, let us look at the outcomes. We want more people to get into work. We have a system with nine-month delays in assessing people, and we agree that the system has to be improved. It is also not good enough that 58% of people are still in the WRAG after two years. Those people are getting an average of only 130 minutes’ coaching a year to help them to get work, compared with 710 minutes for those on jobseeker’s allowance. That disparity will not be bridged by this reforming measure.

We must ensure that the fit-for-work services and the access-to-work mental health services come on stream now. I welcome the fact that there will continue to be support for that group of people, but when we consider the £60 million of investment in 2017-18, going up to £100 million, we must ask whether there will be a gap now.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, when dealing with the work plan and Jobcentre Plus, the most difficult-to-place people with disabilities are unlikely to have time spent on them, because the payment is designed for those who are easy to return to work? We need to re-orientate the support and the finance to get them into work, but the jobs just are not there in most parts of the country.

The hon. Lady makes a valid point. This is about outcomes and about giving tailored support. We must recognise the concerns about the loss of payment, but those who are not yet fit for work but who are on that journey should be encouraged to cut that journey short. One per cent. per month is not good enough. We need to provide tailored support through Jobcentre Plus, but we also need to consider the many other organisations, particularly small businesses, that do not use Jobcentre Plus.

We all need to be involved in Disability Confident events and to take up this cause in our constituencies to ensure that tailored support can be provided to those hard-to-reach groups that are finding it difficult to get work, whether through the WRAG or in other ways. We need to provide tailored packages of support to ensure that this reforming—and cost-cutting—measure really works for that particular group.

I look forward to hearing the Minister and others say that we are very much on the side of those people, and that we are pretty much keeping up the overall spend on disability. However, we need to get more people back into work. That matters to all of us. I look forward to hearing the Minister say that she is deeply committed to investing in tailored support for those people, to show that this is a one nation Bill encompassing two traditions: that of Margaret Thatcher but also that of Winston Churchill. We often pray in aid Winston Churchill in our speeches, and he said that we must have an ambition to have the best social ambulance in the world when it comes to welfare support for people with disabilities. The Bill meets that ambition for us to have the best social ambulance in the world.

Madam Deputy Speaker, if I leave the Chamber shortly after my speech, I shall come back immediately afterwards to listen to the rest of the debate. I know that there is a huge amount of interest in the Bill.

We now have a more political Chancellor than any I can remember in the whole of my time in the House of Commons, and he has laid traps for us in the Bill. I make a plea to my very hon. Friends not to fall into them. The Government have, however, exposed their soft underbelly in one respect, and we should attack them in that spot. There is a huge difference between giving notice that the terms of a contract will be changed at some point in the future and changing the terms for people who have already bought into it. In the long build-up to the election, as well as during and after it, we heard that the one group of people about whom the Conservatives, as a party and as a Government, cared most were the strivers, yet it is the strivers who will feel the worst effects of the Bill.

In tonight’s debate, I want us to unite and launch an offensive against part of the Bill that the Government will not be able to carry in the country. By doing so, we can change the debate on welfare, on work, on productivity and on all the other parts of the Government’s programme. There are more than 3 million people in this country who are in work but whose income is being supplemented by tax credits. They are among the strivers in our society who are going to be walloped by the Bill. Many of them will be a minimum of £1,000 a year worse off. Some will be much worse off than that. We should not be at sixes and sevens in voting for the various amendments tonight. The one message we need to hammer home is that the Government use one language outside the House and a different one to enact legislation inside it. They talk about strivers outside, but the Bill will affect 3 million in-work strivers and make them worse off.

Worse still, it is going to be difficult for us to vote against that particular measure in the Bill, because the Government could well try to enact it by means of a statutory instrument upstairs. If they dare to take the cuts against 3 million strivers outside this main Chamber, I hope we will all learn from the new contingent from Scotland, who do not accept the conventions of this House, and that we will crowd into that Committee Room and make it very difficult for them to get the measure through. We must send a message to the rest of the country that we are united in our opposition to this unbelievably vicious move against people who have responded to the Government’s plea to become strivers, who are in work and who will find themselves much worse off as a result of the Budget.

My plea to my very hon. Friends is this: please do not have what Aneurin Bevan might have called an “emotional spasm” and try to feel better by simply voting against this, that or the other. The one message tonight is that we must get behind the reasoned amendment tabled by the Leader of the Opposition. Later, we can discuss all the other disadvantages that the Government have put into the Bill, and we can vote against them if we wish to do so. The one message that must go out from the Chamber tonight is that the Government talk loudly about supporting strivers but, when it comes to it, they are proposing to make that group worse off without a second thought. It will be difficult for us to oppose what I see as by far the worst measure in the Bill, but I hope that we can send a united message and not be at sixes and sevens voting to our hearts’ content on all different aspects of the Bill. That is my plea. I shall return to the Chamber as soon as I can to listen to how others develop their own themes on the way in which the Government are making strivers worse off.

It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), who, despite many of his remarks being concerned with his own team, as it were, made an important point.

I wish to refer to six measures in the Bill that I welcome because they are about work. First, I welcome the proposal for an apprenticeship levy. We are setting out the right ambition to create 3 million more apprenticeships in this country, and it is right to take a look at quality as well as quantity as we do that. Although the details are yet to be fleshed out, I welcome measures to encourage higher quality apprenticeships. I look forward to discussing with businesses in my constituency—I am sure Ministers will be doing the same up and down the land—ways to achieve that goal and the goals set out by others, such as the noble Baroness Wolf of Dulwich in the other place.

Secondly, I wholeheartedly welcome the provision on full employment. The task of selecting the measure to be used will follow later, but none the less I welcome that, because it marks out the kind of ambition that we should all have and that my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) rightly mentioned.

My hon. Friend is the chairman of the all-party group on youth employment, the name of which was recently changed from “youth unemployment”. Does she, like me, welcome the title of the Bill, with its emphasis on work?

I do, and I thank my hon. Friend for that point. It is important to reflect on what we can do to help people be in work rather than rely on welfare.

Thirdly, I turn to the measures in the Bill about work and disability and a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate made. Let this not be a taboo topic that we find too difficult to deal with. There is a case for making the best of everybody’s talents in this country. My right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench are right that we all ought to be disability-confident, and we should all encourage businesses in our constituencies up and down the land to be disability-confident. Why should we do that? According to Mind, the mental health charity, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and many other reputable sources, work can be extremely beneficial to a person’s health—in the case of those two organisations, mental health. The measures in the Bill range from mental health to other aspects of health, but let us understand that we can and must offer chances to everybody in the country. We can all look at ways to do that in our constituencies.

rose—

I am afraid I will not give way. Out of fairness to other Members, I must finish and then allow others to speak. I have already taken one intervention.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate said, we need to ensure that the support provided in jobcentres is proportionate to the distance claimants have to go to find work, and to the height of the barriers in their way. That is the right thing to do.

Fourthly, I turn to the measures on child poverty. I referred earlier to the comments of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead—I think in his absence, I am afraid to say. He noted that the definition of poverty, and everything that is needed for someone not to be regarded as poor as defined by academics and politicians, can be utterly bewildering. I agree with that, and we are right to attempt to improve on a measure that the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission and others readily say is unattainable. It makes no sense to press on with something that is unattainable when we have the opportunity to improve the situation and do better for children by referring to educational attainment and being in work.

Fifthly, a measure connected to the Bill is the national living wage, which is a crucial part of serving the strivers in this country. No doubt the right hon. Member for Birkenhead knows far more than I do about the difficulties of encouraging high pay at the same time as the Government are effectively subsidising pay with a high welfare net. Nevertheless, I support the measures in the Bill and the Budget for turning Britain into a higher wage economy and a lower tax society, and for creating a more reasonable approach to welfare.

Finally, my constituents in Norwich, where the gross median income is £23,000, will welcome the measure in the Bill to reduce the welfare cap one step further to £20,000 outside London. That is the right thing to do and will support work over welfare.

We are very clear: we cannot and will not support the Bill. If it did what it said on the tin, there might be much to commend it, but it does not. The Government pledge a living wage that even they know is not one, they want a welfare state that is anything but good for our country’s welfare, and they use the guise of economic necessity to cover up ideologically driven cuts. Tonight, we will vote against the Bill because we know that the depth and character of the proposals are unfair, unwise and inhuman, and anything but economically necessary.

In truth, the Government do not have to take £12 billion from the poorest families in the country, mostly working families, but are choosing to do so. No amount of political spin will protect the individuals who have to live with the reality, not the words. Calling something a living wage when it is not does not make it a living wage, calling housing affordable when it is not affordable does not make it affordable, and labelling the Bill as progressive does not make it progressive. In the end, the consequences of these actions for Britain will speak louder than the Chancellor’s attempts to change the definition of his words.

The proposals on employment and support allowance—support designed to help people who, through no fault of their own, face more barriers to work than most—will not help into work people with depression, fluctuating conditions, schizophrenia or physical conditions that make more difficult the ordinary tasks that many of us take for granted. In fact, they will act as a ridiculous disincentive. Almost 500,000 people will see their vital support cut by one third once they apply to the new system, meaning that if they are on the existing support, they will lose it as soon as they get a job, even on a short-term contract. It is a disincentive to work and will trap people on welfare, not liberate them.

The Chancellor has chosen to implement a counterproductive policy that demonises people with disabilities and mental health conditions. I am disappointed by Labour’s confusion over the Bill. To give in to the narrative that the answer to our country’s needs is to pit the working poor against the temporarily-not-working poor is shameful. Cutting tax credits, tightening the benefit cap and ramping up the right to buy is not just morally wrong but economically wrong; widening inequality is not just against British decency but economically stupid.

Of course, we accepted some of the changes to welfare in the last Parliament, but this goes too far. Does my hon. Friend share my concern about the effect on young people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in need of housing benefit? Why should they be excluded from the same rights that any other citizen in this country has if they have need of the safety net?

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. In many ways, young people are the biggest victims of the Bill. I think of young people being supported by housing benefit—for example, in the location of a Foyer, such as the wonderful Foyer in Kendal—and who thereby have access to work, training and further development opportunities. Taking housing benefit away from young people is not just morally wrong but utterly counterproductive, because it will prevent them from accessing work and other life opportunities.

We will stand for the thousands of people in work and yet in poverty, and for the millions of people who might not be personally affected but who do not want to see inequality grow in Britain. Instead, we want a direction for the country that combines economic credibility with truly socially progressive policies, which is why we will continue to make the case for using capital investment to build houses and strengthen our economy for the long term, and for a welfare system that understands the needs of people with mental health conditions and helps them back into work, rather than putting them under the kind of pressure that simply makes them worse.

The reduction in the incomes of poor families in work comes at the same time as the Government are giving inheritance tax cuts to millionaires, cutting corporation tax for the richest firms and refusing to raise a single extra penny in tax from the wealthiest people—for example, through a high-value property levy. We will continue to speak for the millions of people who are young, who suffer from mental health problems, whose parents have no spare rooms or spare income, who do not have parents at all, or who have more than two children. The Liberal Democrats will stand up for families, whether they are hard working or just desperate to be hard working. We will not let the Conservatives through choice, or the Labour party through its silence, unpick our welfare system.

Let me take this opportunity to welcome the vision of welfare reform that has been set out by the Government, and by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in particular. I think we all agree—certainly those on this side of the House—that we have a problem with the amount of money spent on welfare. When Gordon Brown first became Chancellor and introduced tax credits, he promised they would cost £2 billion. They now cost £30 billion, which is a fifteen-fold increase. We have been in a ludicrous position: people have been in work, on the minimum wage, and paying tax, only for those tax payments to be recycled through the welfare system and returned to them in the form of welfare payments.

According to the Government’s rhetoric, work is the best route out of poverty, but is this not the reality of their proposals: it does not matter how hard those who live in poverty work; their poverty will remain stubbornly present in their lives owing to cuts in child tax credit and low pay? Is this not about ideology rather than necessity? Is it not about rolling back the frontiers of the state?

No, it is not about rolling back the frontiers of the state. The points that the hon. Lady has raised are addressed by our introduction of universal credit, which gives people who are in work a progressive route out of poverty by helping them, as they earn more, not to have all their benefits removed. Moreover, by introducing a national living wage, we are ensuring that everyone who is in work and has a low income will be given a pay rise.

Faced with the current problem, a Government might be tempted simply to salami slice benefits across the board. However, this Government have set out a coherent vision of welfare, which has a number of elements. First, if we are to move from a low wage, high tax, high welfare economy to a higher wage, lower tax, low welfare economy, we must deal with the tax problem. The last Government, with their coalition partners, set about massively increasing the amount of money people could earn without paying tax. We are continuing that agenda, so that as people earn more they keep more

Secondly, we have grasped the problem of people who are in work but do not earn a sufficiently large wage, which is why, for the first time, we are able to increase the minimum wage significantly. Our increase is far greater than any increases that were made by the Labour party when it was in power.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his honesty. Having claimed, as his colleagues have claimed, that this is a living wage, he himself has now used the phrase “national minimum wage”. Is it not the case that all the Government are doing is increasing the minimum wage without making it enough for full-time workers to live on?

I do not accept that. I hope that Members will forgive my slip of the tongue. The increase in the current minimum wage, which is less than £7 an hour, to a minimum wage of well over £9 an hour by the end of this Parliament is huge. It is not in line with the standard increase in the minimum wage. This is a step change that reflects the introduction of a national—

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will give way once more, but I am subject to the time limit.

I assume the hon. Gentleman knows that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has noted that it is “arithmetically impossible” for the increase in the minimum wage to

“provide full compensation for the majority of losses experienced by tax credit”

—and universal credit—

“recipients.”

Is it the members of the IFS who need to go back to school, or is it the hon. Gentleman?

I invite the hon. Lady to note the analysis showing that the income of a typical renting household receiving tax credits, consisting of two people working full time with two children, will increase by 12%. That is exactly what we are seeking to achieve.

The third element comes into play once we have ensured that wages are higher—and I should point out that we are able to do that only because our welfare reform programme has been so successful that it has brought about a massive cut in unemployment. Because 1 million fewer people are receiving unemployment benefit and 2 million more people are employed, the labour market can withstand a significant increase in wages. Had it not been for those developments, the whole package would have fallen apart. Our measures reflect a more coherent vision.

Once those first two elements are in place, it is only right for us to consider reducing welfare benefits. There is a clear principle behind this. People in my constituency, and in many other constituencies, face tough choices, and those choices should also be faced by those people who are receiving welfare benefits. For example, one of my constituents will have to decide whether he or she can afford to have another child; we are saying that, similarly, child tax credits should, in due course, reflect what is appropriate for a family with two children.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I am afraid that I cannot, because I am subject to the time limit.

We concluded that it should not be possible to earn more on welfare than a person who had gone out and worked every single day could earn after tax. We also concluded that it should not be possible to leave school and immediately start claiming benefits. I think that those are fair principles, and I think that principles are better than mere salami slicing.

All this has given rise to a need to change the measure of child poverty. It was absurd when Gordon Brown spent huge amounts of time and money showing people one side or the other of an arbitrary line. We are looking at more fundamental principles and measures of what drives poverty. Living in a workless household is one of the biggest drivers of poverty, and I think it right to take account of the massive reduction in workless households that has taken place under our Government. Lack of educational attainment is another huge driver of poverty. I know that such opportunity-based measures are dismissed by Opposition Members—including, as was clear from his speech,. the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms)—but I think that they are vital if we are to establish whether we are merely putting a sticking plaster over poverty, or addressing the fundamental causes.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I have some time left, so I will.

That is very gracious of the hon. Gentleman.

In my constituency, 3,900 working families will have lower incomes as a result of the Government’s changes, and 7,100 children will be pushed into poverty. Can the hon. Gentleman tell me how that encourages people to think that working is a good idea?

First and foremost, we are introducing a national living wage, which will deal with the current problem and give people a massive pay rise. Ultimately, however, there is a wider point to be made. Opposition Members are decrying every single measure in the Bill, but if they oppose our welfare reform measures, they must be able to tell the House and their constituents what measures they themselves plan to introduce. Which other welfare costs do they intend to cut, and which other taxes do they intend to increase—or do they intend to continue to borrow, thus forcing our level of national debt ever higher?

That is the contrast between Labour and the Conservatives, who are willing to make difficult decisions. None of us enjoys making those decisions, but we make them in a principled fashion that sets the economy and the country on the right track.

I listened with great interest to the Secretary of State’s attempt to reinvent himself as the workers’ friend. In fact, the Bill contains hugely regressive measures that will make many working families much poorer. It is no wonder that they include measures that will effectively repeal the Child Poverty Act 2010. From now on, there will be no income-based measure of child poverty; instead, the Secretary of State will have to report on worklessness and educational attainment, although two thirds of the children who are in poverty come from families who are in work. The problems to which the Secretary of State has referred, such as family breakdown and addiction, are indicators of poverty, but they are not a measure of it. Those problems can occur across the whole income spectrum.

As for educational attainment, the Secretary of State knows, or ought to know, that the biggest predictor of failure in education is poverty. It is not family breakdown, addiction or anything else; it is pure, material poverty. He should not confuse indicators and measurements.

Secondly, this Bill will make many working families much poorer. We have already heard that the increased minimum wage that the Chancellor is introducing is not a living wage, and many people will be excluded even from that increased wage: 21 to 25-year-olds. These people are adults and may have families, but under this Government they will pay a penalty for being poor and working. Where is the incentive to work in that?

As a result of this Bill’s measures, 13 million families will lose £260 a year or £5 a week. That might not sound much to those on the Government Benches, but for families on the margins it is the difference between getting through to the end of the week and not getting through.

The measures to restrict child tax credits and the child element of universal credit to two children are based on the assumption that people are always on tax credits or on benefit, whereas in fact there is a revolving door.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

No, I am afraid I do not have the time.

Life does not proceed in a straight line. Let us take the example of a family with three children. They are doing all right; they can afford it. Then one partner falls ill or dies. The other partner might have to work, and take a part-time or low-wage job. Under this Government’s proposals that third child becomes superfluous—one that they should not have had. Not every child matters under this Government.

Let us say a family improve their prospects and get more hours or get a better job. If that job lasts for more than six months and they have to make another claim, that is treated as a fresh claim and they lose the credits for their third child. Where on earth is the incentive to work in that?

We have also heard about what might happen in cases of rape, and I hope the Minister will be able to answer that point when she sums up. Many women do not report rape for reasons that we understand. When they do report it, the prosecution rate is very low and the conviction rate is even lower. What will be taken as proof—reporting, prosecution or conviction? How will a DWP official, not trained in investigation or used to dealing with rape cases, decide on that? Not since Mao Tse Tung has there been a proposal to limit families that is more degrading to women.

This Bill is a purely regressive Bill. It will make millions of families in this country worse off. That is why I will not support it in the Lobby tonight.

There are many measures in this Bill, but I shall discuss just one or two aspects of it.

I am the vice-chairman of the all-party group on youth employment and I am delighted that under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) its name has been changed from “youth unemployment” to “youth employment”, showing a more positive outlook. Likewise, this Bill is called the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, which also shows a welcome direction of travel.

Clause 1 has the welcome ambition of reaching full employment and a reporting obligation to ensure that we here in Parliament are regularly updated on progress. Over the past two and a half years I have had the pleasure to run a jobs club in my constituency, from the Pilot pub in Canford Heath, and I pay tribute to its landlady, Lisa Ballet, for being so community spirited and permitting that jobs club to exist.

The claimant count in Mid Dorset and North Poole is down to 312. Of course I do not claim credit for that entirely, but I do welcome the ambition to lower the claimant count in my constituency. Although I would ordinarily guard against targets and a target culture, if this is simply an ambition, then I welcome it, and I look forward to the numbers in work in my constituency increasing over the coming Parliament.

Does my Dorset constituency neighbour agree that we have to view alongside the tax allowances measures the increase in the minimum wage with the aspiration of going to the living wage? For areas such as those in Dorset that we represent where median or average wages are quite low, those are real incentives to get back into work.

I agree with my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour.

Clause 3 sets out the reporting obligations for the troubled families programme and I pay tribute to that programme in Dorset, which is aimed at the hardest-to-reach families. There are potential long-term cost benefits because these are the families that cost the country the most, but more importantly these are the families that are most likely to benefit from this measure, and I welcome it.

Opposition Members have from the outset expressed concerns about scrapping the current child poverty measure, and they have done so again this evening. However, scrapping that measure is not the same as scrapping the route out of poverty; it is quite the opposite in fact, as that child poverty measure was flawed and did not provide a proper test of whether children’s lives were improving. For example, in the aftermath of the recent recession the number of children in poverty went down significantly under the old measure; in one year it fell by 300,000. Does that mean that those children’s lives were really altered in such a way as a result of the recession? Of course not; a shrinking economy is not the way to raise children out of poverty.

A second example, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden), is the arbitrary line introduced by the last Labour Government. Does tipping a family that falls just below an arbitrary line up above it really mean poverty has been alleviated? Of course not.

I encourage Opposition Members to support this Bill, as it is aimed at the real causes of poverty. It addresses family breakdown, school attendance and attainment and levels of work within the family. It focuses on ways to make a real improvement to children’s lives rather than offering illusory measures.

As I have said, the most vulnerable must be protected. There must be a safety net but, by removing disincentives to work, introducing a living wage and reducing the benefits cap, this Bill will encourage more people away from a life on benefits and towards the real benefits of getting into work—better health, greater wellbeing and the self-esteem that comes from being in work. Work really is the best way out of poverty.

We support many of the measures in the Bill, which will be important in the debates we will have on it, but my role today is to highlight the things that cause us concern.

This Bill probably spells the end of the Northern Ireland Assembly, because the current welfare reform measures have not been introduced, which has left a £600 million hole in the budget. I say to the Members from Scotland who are keen to have welfare reform devolved, that there is a cost in that because every measure that is not introduced means money is taken off the block grant. People should be aware of that. It is significant that Sinn Féin, who are not here, will probably claim that they will block these measures.

Does the hon. Gentleman not understand that the very firm view in Scotland is that those additional costs are a price well worth paying if they give us the fair and just society each and every one of us was elected to deliver?

My point was that there is a cost. How people decide to distribute it is another matter. The one thing I do know—

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No, I will not give way.

The one thing I do know is that the people who will complain most about this measure in Northern Ireland—Sinn Féin—are not even here to defend the vulnerable, whom they will claim they wish to protect.

Government Members have talked about the measurement and recording of child poverty. I would have thought—indeed, the DWP review indicated—that the most important source of short-term child poverty, and of the length of time people are in such poverty, is the level of income. It stands to reason: you don’t have to be a genius to know that if you don’t have money, you’re poor. If you want to lift people out of poverty, what do you do? You ensure that they get more money. If we remove that as a measure, we ignore the most fundamental aspect of what causes poverty and what puts children in poverty. Yes, in the longer run, as the review says, educational qualifications, family stability and so on are important, but in the long run, as Keynes said, we are all dead. If we want to deal with the problem now, we cannot ignore the level of income.

Members from all parts of the House should be concerned about the way in which the Bill divides the cap into two. But that is not the end of the matter, because the Bill makes it clear that the Secretary of State can review the caps at any time. All he or she has to consider is “the national economic situation” and

“any other matters that the Secretary of State considers relevant”.

Then the Government can introduce changes by regulation.

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his point about the difference in the cap on welfare and benefits between London and the rest of the country. That measure is very clearly the thin end of the wedge, and, if we are not careful, what will eventually happen with benefits and public sector pay will be the introduction of regionalisation.

Indeed. The Policy Exchange think tank, which prepared the welfare manifesto for the Government, talked about the introduction of a two-tier cap, stating:

“The first stage in creating a regionalised system would be to create two levels of Benefit Cap, one for London and the South East where average incomes within the UK are highest, and one for the whole of the rest of the UK.”

The measure before us is the first step towards regionalisation, and we ought to be aware that in this Bill is contained the embryo of further cuts to the poorest regions of the United Kingdom, because that is where we are likely to find the pressure to try to reduce the welfare bill further.

On tax credits, I support the Government’s desire and objective to get people into work—to make work pay, to give people an incentive. That is why the proposals on apprenticeships, full employment reporting and so on are all good. But the change in universal credit, the freezing of benefits and the change in tax credits are, as the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) pointed out, an attack on aspiration. It is an attack on people who are in work.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I am running out of time. I would be happy to give way if I could get an extra minute out of it.

As has been pointed out, many people will not even be subject to the safeguard of the higher national living wage. Many of those who are in work will still find that the reduction in their benefits and tax credits is not compensated for by the increase in the national living wage, so the Government will not achieve what they are seeking to achieve. We are talking about people who are already on low wages and who are not in the best employment.

My final point is on the changes in employment support allowance and the work-related activity group. There are many people who do require support, but if the Secretary of State is right, he is not going to create an incentive for those people to get back into work. In response to the shadow spokesman, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), the Secretary of State said, “We’ll put those with Parkinson’s and MS into the support group.” The idea may be to get people into the work-related activity group and to give them the support they need to get into work, but, if the Secretary of State says, “No, we’re going to move them to the support group”, they will not get the support they need to get into work, and he is defeating his own objective.

There are contradictions in the Bill which need to be teased out. While there may be things in it that we can support, there are many aspects which I believe will be detrimental to our constituents, which will have a disproportionate impact on regions of the United Kingdom and which, therefore, should be voted against.

Thank you for calling me to speak in this important debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. I shall start by focusing on one or two comments that Members made earlier and then return to a central issue—getting those with disabilities back into work.

The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) said that 3 million strivers will be hammered. I am a great fan of his—he is the Chairman of the Select Committee of which I am a member, and I am sorry he is not in the Chamber to hear this—but his gloom tonight was focused on two things. The first is the big problem of unity and what approach to take to welfare and work within his own party. The second is an underlying belief that the only way to help the poor is ultimately to increase benefits from taxpayers, and that the only way out of poverty is to grow a tax credits bill that is already, at £30 billion a year, far greater than in the similar populations of France or Germany, and is, in the words of the former Chancellor, previously the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West,

“subsidising lower wages in a way that was never intended”

when it was first introduced by the Government of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead.

The reason the right hon. Gentleman and his party are discombobulated on the issue is that they rightly feared a reduction in benefits before an increase in wages and did not expect that my party, the party of compassionate conservatism, would implement precisely that: a national living wage considerably above that mooted by their former leader, plus an expansion of the tax-free allowance that will take the amount one can earn without paying income tax to almost double by 2020 the £6,500 allowance of 2010. They know that higher wages, lower tax and less welfare is the right way forward, because there was no social justice in spending over £170 billion more than we received in tax revenues, leaving the interest on Labour’s debts alone—the interest alone—costing us more than the entire education budget. There is no social justice in spending more on benefits—on the interest on all that debt—than on helping our children with education and giving them the chance to attain and to go on to good jobs.

Some of Labour’s leadership candidates have realised that point and seen that there are no more sweeties in the sweet bag and no credible alternative to this overall philosophy of higher wages, lower tax and less welfare— unless one believes that living within one’s means is always for someone else and not for us, and one wishes to follow an anti-austerity programme that has led a country like Greece to the brink of disaster. That is a political option, but it is not one that the city of Gloucester would ever want this country to follow.

I turn briefly to the second part of my speech. The Chancellor promised in his Budget speech that we would always support the elderly, the vulnerable and the disabled.

Our hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) said that £30 billion a year is being spent on disability living allowance and on similar allowances. Does my hon. Friend agree all Government Members welcome that?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point out that the current welfare bill is unsustainable, but he is also right—I have heard him say this in Select Committee meetings—to say it is vital that we support the elderly, the vulnerable and the disabled. It is true that the Work programme has been far more successful for those on JSA than for those on ESA. The question therefore is: how do we help those people with disabilities who are currently not getting a job and not benefiting from the Work programme in the same way as those on JSA?

Some 61% of those in the ESA work-related action group say that they want to work, and the evidence is that they do. I have heard from charities and from people with disabilities in my constituency how passionately they want to have the same working opportunities as the rest of us, so what can we do to help them? The Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), in his role as the Minister for disabled people, has the ambitious task of halving the number of people with disabilities who are out of work. He will need some innovative thinking to help him, so let me make a couple of suggestions.

Should the hon. Gentleman not recognise that if these people want to work, it is the lack of support and the lack of jobs that is preventing them from getting into work. Why punish them by taking money away? It is like removing the crutches from someone who has just lost a leg before we give them the new limb. Let us get them into work—then they will not need the support.

The hon. Lady raises a perfectly valid point. There is a philosophical difference here: do we take the difference between what they currently get on ESA and JSA and use that money to help give them the greater support that should get them into jobs, or do we just carry on as we are, knowing that the current programme is not that successful? We have to do something different. We have to do more in the Work programme to make it more likely that people with disabilities will get jobs. The jobs are there; all the statistics tell us that more jobs are available than there are people looking for them, but those with disabilities are not getting them at the moment. They need more help with resilience and confidence—the things that make a difference when people go to an interview. They need employers who understand, so the Disability Confident programme is important. They need—we need—providers to understand that they must do more to help, and in return we probably need to give more cash up front, rather than depending solely on payment by returns for those in the ESA category. We MPs need to do our bit. When we hold job fairs, how many of us focus on those on ESA? It is time to tilt our jobs fairs away from those on JSA and towards those with disabilities and on ESA. We can do that, with the help of the Department for Work and Pensions.

There is much to be done, and I believe Ministers are aware that when they review the Work programme they will have to innovate to make sure that those with disabilities and on ESA stand a better chance of winning jobs in a competitive marketplace. We need to do more to help employers realise the importance of this. All of us need to do more as Members to inspire our residents and our businesses to apply for those jobs and to help them win them. That will be vital in reducing the working age welfare cost from 13% of all public spending at the moment to a more reasonable figure.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I regret that there is no more time.

Above all, we need to inspire those with disabilities into a job. The Leonard Cheshire Disability charity said:

“We believe that disabled people should have the freedom…to contribute economically and to participate fully in society.”

I believe that all of us agree with that. Now we must do our bit to make sure it happens.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham). Unfortunately, the £640 million that is being saved on ESA is not going to go to work-related activities; it is going to go to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

In the last Parliament, I had the privilege, along with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), who made a characteristically excellent speech, to take the Child Poverty Act 2010 through, and we had all-party support at that time. It is therefore very disappointing that this Government are abandoning that Act and even the aspiration to end child poverty. Furthermore, it is ridiculous of them to attempt to airbrush the whole concept from the statute book.

I do not believe this Government have a mandate for the changes they are making in this Bill. Throughout the election campaign the Tories refused to say how they were going to save £12 billion from the welfare bill, because they knew that the measures would be unpopular and it would hit them in the ballot box. Indeed, the Prime Minister went on national television to say that he would not be cutting tax credits. In any case, the truth of the matter is that 9 million people did not vote Tory on 7 May. The most obnoxious part of the Bill is the proposal to cut tax credit support for families with more than two children. When we were in government, Labour had a principle that Every Child Matters, and I believe that was the right principle.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I will. [Interruption.]

We are friends, I believe. I think we are all friends in here—I hope we are.

Absolutely.

Thank you. I do not have children, so I often tread carefully in these sorts of debates because I do not want people to point the finger and say, “Well, you don’t understand.” But I am certain of one thing: a choice between one, two or three children is a choice. If you cannot afford it, why should the taxpayer subsidise you? Can she answer that? [Interruption.]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) described, people’s circumstances can change. People do not have a complete and perfect forecast of how their life is going to pan out, which is why we need a safety net. The problem is that a child living in a family with more than two children is 50% more likely to be living in poverty than the average. Some 35% of the children in this country who live in poverty live in those families, so these measures are precisely targeted at those children. The measures will increase the number of children affected and deepen the poverty they face.

Does the hon. Lady recognise The Children’s Society’s comments? It said it supports plans to add additional reporting requirements on parental employment and educational attainment as these are important in contributing to children’s welfare. I know she would say that these were additional, not a substitute, but does she recognise that they are important measures to study?

I used to work for The Children’s Society and it does some excellent work. What I am concerned about tonight is that rather like a child who has broken a toy and hides it under the bed, the Chancellor tried to hide the impact of this Budget by not presenting the distribution tables in the normal and proper way after the Budget. Fortunately, the IFS told us the truth, which is that people at the top are losing 0.2% of their income and people at the bottom are losing 7% of theirs. This is a phenomenally regressive Bill and a very regressive Budget. It will take £10 million out of the local economy every single year in my constituency. As hon. Members have said, one of the worst things about the tax credit cuts is that they affect in-work families, who are struggling in low-paid jobs to do their very best for their children. They are being given what my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) has called a “work penalty”. The Bill worsens work incentives. A top-rate taxpayer who earns an extra pound can take home 55p whereas a lone parent on tax credits can take home only 25p.

The Chancellor believes that his rabbit—a rise in the national minimum wage—solves the problem. Of course we all welcome that increase, but it does not solve the problem. It does not compensate by the right amount, it does not compensate enough people and it does not compensate at the right time. Overall, 13 million people are losing from these measures. Some 3 million are losing £1,000 and 2.7 million people will gain from the national minimum wage. The mismatch is shown by chart B3 on page 208 of the report by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility. It says something that surprised me and is very pertinent:

“around half the cash gains”—

from the increase in the minimum wage—

“may accrue to the top half of the household income distribution”.

It shows that people at the bottom gain less than £600 and those at the top gain more than £1,000. Furthermore, in evidence to the Treasury Committee last week, it told us that only 14% of people in the bottom decile receive the national minimum wage.

I have concentrated on the issue of children and tax credits, but I have also had many messages from carers, sick and disabled people, and lone parents who are worried that the 30-hour condition is coming in before the extra childcare provision is in place. There are so many serious issues here, and it is a shame that we do not have time to address them.

Recently, Professor Amartya Sen said:

“Democracy should be about preventing mistakes through participatory deliberations, rather than about making heads roll after mistakes have been made.”

He is right. I have been in this House for 10 years, and I have never voted against my party’s Whip. I think that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham made a good case for the Front-Bench amendment. I shall vote for the amendment, but there are so many issues in this Bill that are deeply worrying that I cannot avoid going into the No Lobby against it tonight.

rose—

I will try to get everyone in, but I now have to reduce the time limit to four minutes. Let us stick with it. Interventions, if we must have them, must be short.