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Mr. Robert G. Hughes (Harrow, West) : The hon. Gentleman was misquoted.
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Mr. Field : I was quoted accurately. As the quotation was accurate, does the Secretary of State agree with the first part of my argument : that we should move towards a lower target, with all the safeguards ?Mr. Howard : Of course I do not. The fact is that the hon. Gentleman has totally failed to persuade his party to remove even the second part of the target from its policy--it remains in all the policy documents. I have always acknowledged that the strictures of the hon. Member for Birkenhead applied to the second stage of the policy, yet that is still the second stage of the policy to which the Labour party remains wholly committed.-- [Interruption.] That is the fact of the matter, and I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman must find it frustrating indeed.
Mr. Blair : The right hon. and learned Gentleman takes the biscuit. He assumes that the two-thirds calculation will apply immediately--not over time. Will he confirm that that is the assumption on which his estimate of 2 million is based, together with the assumption that everyone in the work force, including the Governor of the Bank of England, will get a 25 per cent. pay increase as a result of the minimum wage policy ? Are not those assumptions absurd ?
As the Secretary of State has just quoted from the Fabian Society pamphlet, let me tell him that, like everyone whom he quotes in his support, the author of that pamphlet had something to say about that. In common refrain of those whom the Secretary of State quotes, a couple of days ago the author said :
"Michael Howard persists in misrepresenting my Fabian pamphlet. All three of his quotations from it are used to support the opposite of their plain meaning in the pamphlet."
Mr. Howard : Naturally, the hon. Gentleman has gone to extraordinary lengths to try to persuade his friends to wriggle off the hook on which they are firmly impaled. The passages that I have quoted from the Fabian Society document are accurate--
Mr. Frank Field rose
Mr. Howard : I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman when I have finished what I am saying about the Fabian Society.
The Fabian Society document quoted an estimate that up to 880,000 jobs would be lost as a result of the minimum wage policy pursued by the hon. Member for Sedgefield and his party. It is true that the Fabian Society says that it is in favour of a minimum wage, but it means a different kind of minimum wage. It does not favour the policy clearly and unequivocally set out in Labour party policy documents. Mr. Field rose--
Mr. Howard : I shall give way in a moment, but I must first deal with the red herring introduced by the hon. Member for Sedgefield. He has raised it several times before and he is entirely mistaken. The hon. Gentleman has repeatedly said--he has said it now across the Dispatch Box and he says it in letters to The Independent and elsewhere--that my estimates of job losses are based on the immediate introduction of Labour's national statutory minimum wage at the rate of two thirds of the median wage. That is absolutely untrue. Whether the minimum wage is introduced immediately or not has nothing to do with the calculations. The hon.
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Gentleman's objection would be relevant had I said that 2 million jobs would be lost immediately, but I have never said that. I have said that, whenever the policy were introduced, it would lead to the destruction of up to 2 million jobs.If the hon. Member for Sedgefield is seriously saying that it will be of some comfort to the people of this country to be told that 2 million people will not lose their jobs immediately but may have to wait six months, a year, 18 months or even two years before losing them, he is living in even more of a fantasy world than I had assumed.
Mr. Blair : Everyone who has heard the Secretary of State talk about the minimum wage has been under the impression that he is saying that 2 million will be lost. If that is based on an immediate adoption of the two- thirds calculation and everyone getting a 25 per cent. wage increase, that is what I would call wriggling of a high order.
Let me tell the right hon. and learned Gentleman what my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) will no doubt tell him in a moment. I have not put pressure on my hon. Friend to write the letter to the Financial Times ; he wrote it of his own accord. In a letter to The Independent a few weeks ago, the right hon. and learned Gentleman said that Labour Members of Parliament--in the plural--had condemned Labour's policy, but the only hon. Member whom he has ever cited is my hon Friend the Member for Birkenhead, who has denied it. If there are any others, will the Secretary of State let us know now?
Mr. Howard : The whole House will have seen the speed with which the hon. Member for Sedgefield abandoned the argument about the loss of 2 million jobs in relation to the timing of Labour's pledge. If the minimum wage were introduced at a rate of two thirds of the median wage, whether immediately or subsequently, it would cost up to 2 million jobs. The hon. Gentleman cannot criticise those calculations.
Mr. Field : The Secretary of State said earlier that my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) had leant on his friends so that they wriggled on the hook of their commitment or non-commitment to the minimum wage. I can answer only for myself. Will the Secretary of State now withdraw that accusation in so far as it applied to me? Will he accept that my hon. Friend did not communicate with me, nor did he ask anyone else to communicate with me? I wrote and then sent my hon. Friend a copy of the letter.
Mr. Howard : Naturally, if the hon. Member for Birkenhead says that, I unreservedly accept it. I did not refer specifically to the hon. Gentleman-- [Interruption.]
Let us get to the guts of the argument-- [Interruption.] The Opposition do not want to get to the guts of the argument. They do not want to hear about the people who support my strictures on their disastrous policy. Let me remind the Labour party of what was said by Gavin Laird of the Amalgamated Engineering Union and Eric Hammond of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union. The hon. Member for Sedgefield issued a press release last week in which he claimed :
"the AEU is in favour of a minimum wage. Both Mr. Jordan and Mr. Laird are concerned to ensure that it is not used as a means of introducing wage restraint, a different matter altogether".
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Mr. Laird was speaking specifically about the minimum wage when he said of any plans to introduce it in the private sector : "there's no logic for it, it doesn't work in any other country and it certainly will not work in Great Britain".If those are the words of a man supporting a policy, it is hardly necessary for me or my hon. Friends to oppose it. Even the hon. Member for Sedgefield would not dream of claiming that the EEPTU is anything other than totally opposed to the introduction of a national statutory minimum wage. No policy so strikingly illustrates the economic illiteracy of the Labour party, its determination to put its public sector pay masters before the national interest and its total unfitness to govern.
I suppose that Labour Front-Bench spokesmen may have believed that the tide of condemnation of this policy was at last turning when earlier this week an article appeared in a national newspaper defending the minimum wage. At least, they may have thought that, until they saw the article was by Mr. Ron Todd and that it appeared in the Morning Star --
Mr. Frank Haynes (Ashfield) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You know that this is a short, half-day debate. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is abusing the system. He is going on and on. It is time you got him to sit down.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean) : The Secretary of State has given way a good many times and I get the strong impression that he is approaching the end of his speech.
Mr. Howard : Of course the Labour party does not like hearing any of this or being reminded of the idiocy of its policy.
Mr. Ron Todd defended the policy, as I say, in the Morning Star. He is a doughty defender of lost causes, but I agreed with one point in his article. He said that the minimum wage was
"exactly the opposite of everything the Tories have imposed on our country over the last 12 years".
He was right. It is the exact opposite of everything that has occurred since 1979--the exact opposite of policies that have created 1.3 million jobs since then and 3 million jobs since 1983. It is the exact opposite of polices that took Britain to the top of the European growth league tables in the 1980s and of the policies which have given the British people record living standards, record prosperity and a record number of opportunities. The Labour party stands for the exact opposite of the achievements of this country since 1979. That is why the Opposition have lost, lost and lost again in the past 12 years, and it is why they will lose yet again when the people of this country next have their say.
5.1 pm
Mr. Frank Field (Birkenhead) : I want to make one observation about what I think has been happening to Britain under this Government and, if I can, to introduce a note of urgency on behalf of our low-paid constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) has given us many important figures from the Select Committee report and I shall repeat none of them, but I want to use that information to describe how I and others see Britain today.
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There have always been important income differences in Britain. Some say that they are class differences ; others believe that that is not a meaningful term. An analogy is perhaps useful. Until 1979, Britain was like a railway journey. There were first-class, second-class, third-class and fourth-class compartments and differences depending on which compartment a person occupied. Despite that, all were part of a single train journey. Since 1979, however, the end carriage containing the poorest people has been de-linked. We want to introduce urgency to the debate so as to hold out some hope to people in the fourth compartment.My second point is intended to introduce a sense of urgency on behalf of the constituents of hon. Members on both sides of the House, and to explain why we should debate this issue. One of the greatest thrusts of Government policy has been to sell the idea of the market economy. There is not much difference between our parties on that now, and I am pleased about that. But if we have a market economy in which everything can be bought and sold and everything has a price, that price is important, particularly if the only thing that a person has to sell is his labour, and the price for it is miserably low. On behalf of those of our constituents who are single wage earners and who earn appallingly poor wages, I must point out that they look to this place for some redress. This is a doubly difficult task, the more so if these earners are responsible for families.
In our surgeries and as we move about our constituencies, we come across constituents who put to us very simply what it means to them to be low paid. They share the Government's idea that it is important to be in work. They strive to be in work, but they feel humiliated by the level of wages that they are paid. The Government have tried to turn this debate into a debate on Labour's policy, which is designed to hold out some hope to people who are continually humiliated by what the market pays them for what they can do best.
The Government and the Secretary of State have the cheek to talk about our ideas destroying jobs. I want to tell the right hon. and learned Gentleman what it means to have a job destroyed by privatisation. Imagine a man who thought it important to get up early in the morning before the buses and trains start running to travel through the wintry weather on his moped for miles to the local hospital, only to be told that his job and his mates' jobs have been privatised--that in future he can have a job but no longer a full-time job ; that he will not be able to keep his family on the wages or even be able to claim family credit, given the hours that he will be able to work. So what he thought was sure has been torn up in his face.
What is more, that man has been paying for an occupational pension, responding to Government urgings not to rely on the state. But the firm that came in and tore up the full-time jobs and the dignity that went with them also destroyed the man's pension rights.
This debate has been about holding out hope to those who are in the fourth class carriage, which has been de-hooked from the rest of Britain and from the increases in income which--thank goodness--many have enjoyed under this Government as they have under others. When we come to introduce a statutory minimum wage, we shall bear in mind what people say. I rejoice at the sight of the Secretary of State wriggling on his hook--about stages 1 and 2. He put across the message more clearly than we could have. He gave a clear statement to
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those who expect hope from the Labour party as we approach a general election. The minimum wage will be introduced at a modest level and it will be linked to our other policies on training and investment. Ours will be a policy not only of dealing with individuals who earn low pay, important though they are to us, but of eradicating low-paid jobs.Mr. Howard : Does the hon. Gentleman agree that nothing that he has said absolves him or anyone else from the need to make a careful examination of what the consequences of that policy would be? If a consequence of that analysis and of the analysis made by many independent experts is that a minimum wage would destroy so many jobs, does not it behove us all to take these points seriously and to put them across vigorously?
Mr. Field : Of course it does. That is why early in my time in Parliament I took a year to write a book calling for the distinction between stages 1 and 2 to which the Secretary of State has drawn attention. Indeed, he has had more success in drawing attention to it than I have had in my book and subsequent articles, and I am grateful to him for that.
Let no one try to detract from the urgency that binds us together in the Labour party in seeking ways to eradicate low pay, not to punish low-paid workers still further. We are mindful, of course, of the fact that tax policy, education, training and investment have important parts to play, too. In a way it is a tribute to the Government that, in their market-led economy, in which everything has its price, and in an age in which people can be pushed into work to bring home a wage packet, however small, we should press for a minimum wage in an attempt to bring some dignity to those people who are ashamed when they open their wage packets each week.
That is bad enough if one is a single person in Birkenhead earning low pay. I also bring to the attention of the House what is said by parents who bring home such a wage packet and who are still eligible for family credit. They say that the most humiliating part is the look in their children's eyes which says, "You've failed again." Our desire is to bring hope to those people, so that there will be a limit to the humiliation that the low -paid have to endure. 5.10 pm
Mr. Lewis Stevens (Nuneaton) : I listened carefully to the points that the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) made so well. He made a case with which many of us have become familiar over the years. Although I agree with much that he said in respect of the feelings of those who have low incomes, we must acknowledge that some will remain low-paid whatever we do. In the early 1960s, I worked in the car industry, which was then one of the most prosperous in the country. A large proportion of unskilled workers in that industry received high wages by national standards, but still felt inferior and unable to cope in comparison with skilled workers who earned much more. The hon. Member for Birkenhead is right to stress the urgency and importance of reviewing how the problems of the low-paid should be tackled by central Government. The present Government can take considerable credit for doing just that. One of the factors that makes it difficult for
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people to move from a low to a high income is the extent of the skills they possess and their relevance to the areas in which they want to live and work.The present Government, uniquely in our history, have pursued a training policy that benefits those of 16 years of age and older. Previously, a large amount of training was not Government-inspired, but was provided by industry to the extent that it felt was necessary--and even then, it was not particularly well supported by the Government, except in terms of general education.
Today, Labour shares more than it did the belief that training is a major element in the development of an individual's skills and of his income. We should congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State and the Government on their approach to the breadth of training now available. I refer to such innovations as the training credit system and to the provision by training and enterprise council-type institutions of a broader curriculum, which embraces not only those who have already displayed considerable abilities but others who have been frustrated by the limited facilities available to them at school. Today, the means to achieve higher qualifications are open to a much wider group, and, under Government policies, there availability will increase still further in future.
I remember sitting on a number of Committees on which the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) was opposed in his arguments by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler), when he was Secretary of State for Employment. The hon. Member for Oldham, West usually acquitted himself well in those debates, but I had forgotten the extent to which that hon. Gentleman sticks to many old Labour party views.
Labour says that it will give extra money to one group, such as pensioners, and to another and another--but pays little regard to the source of that money and to whether it can ever be found. The hon. Gentleman made the same promise this afternoon. Labour is essentially saying, "We will give extra money to those on social security, and also introduce other measures such as a minimum wage." Where would that money come from?
My right hon. and learned Friend costed some of Labour's proposals at more than £30 billion. Even if Labour were ever in a position to try to implement its promises, it would be unable, within the constraints of a responsible economic policy, to do so at the speed that Labour suggests. If it did, it would create the inflation that we saw under the last Labour Government, with their high-spending approach to various sectors of society.
People in low-income groups have considerable problems, but how can they best be helped? The present Government have taken a realistic approach. After considering those most in need, the Government established a structure that makes it possible to distribute assistance in a better way. The Social Security Act 1988 provided considerably more help to many groups than they received before. Labour likes to knock the family credit system, arguing that it is impracticable and inappropriate, but it extends assistance to many low-income families.
Mrs. Sylvia Heal (Mid-Staffordshire) : Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that the 1988 Act took away entitlement to any form of benefit to young people between the ages of 16 and 18? By cutting their training
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programmes, the Government also denied those young people the opportunity to achieve better qualifications and thus make themselves more eligible to obtain employment.Mr. Stevens : A training place is available to all 16 to 18-year- olds, and the 1986 Act enabled more to be done also for the disabled, who traditionally suffered from low incomes. The Government's general principles have shown a better way forward. The Opposition attack what they call the quality of life today, but we have seen a tremendous increase in health service investment. The hon. Member for Birkenhead pointed out that a low income can affect diet, education, and many other aspects of a person's well-being. The Government's investment in education and in the health service has provided so much more to the advantage of the low-paid. The Government have also provided better access to education and training, with the result that opportunities have spread through to the lower income groups.
One must also put poverty into perspective. We have had reference to the EC recommendation of half average wages. That may be a fair measure, but any suggestion that poverty today bears any resemblance to that which had such a dramatic effect on health and mortality rates in the past is misleading. It is true that difficult circumstances affect health. However, thank goodness, very few people here live below such a poverty level even if it is below the level suggested in the EC measure.
The minimum wage is a policy that the Labour party will live to regret. It is not a practical proposition. It has been criticised by trade unionists and many others outside. I think that it was the hon. Member for Oldham, West I apologise if it was not--who accused us of being the party of low wages. That is not true. The Tory party has been trying to create a situation in which wages can increase and there can be growth in real wages and the economy.
The Labour party used to be the party of low differentials in industry, and that was a cross that industry could not bear beyond the 1960s. As the effects of that approach took hold, many companies became unable to compete in both the wider European market and further afield. If there was anything that discouraged people from training for better jobs, it was the lack of differentials between skills. A school leaver given the choice of a comparatively unskilled job at a wage nearly as good as that for a skilled job after training would be likely to reject training.
The Opposition still have a great bias towards cutting differentials--and I am not saying that to justify the high wage increases of which we have heard recently. That bias is not only a detriment to training, but discourages people who should be flexible in their skills, rather than going into employment at the earliest opportunity, and it is a great disservice to the industry and commerce of the future.
Mrs. Maria Fyfe (Glasgow, Maryhill) : The hon. Gentleman is surely aware that some three quarters of those who are on low pay are women, many of whom are looking for work that enables them to maintain their family responsibilities as near to home as possible. At that stage in their lives, many of them do not want to undertake training. Why should they be paid hourly sums of less than
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£3.40--in some cases much less? Why should they have to sell their labour at such a ridiculously low level that their families are living in poverty?Mr. Stevens : I take the hon. Lady's point, but, since 1978-79, the real take-home pay of single people and married women on half average male earnings has increased by 38.6 per cent. There may still be cases such as those that the hon. Lady quotes, but there are many fewer of them.
The concern of all of us must be to support those on low incomes and to provide opportunities for those who, in some cases by no fault of their own, are in difficult situations. We have provided many facilities to enable development away from low incomes for many people.
I have another concern. Some people are still doing their A-levels when they are 19, perhaps because they started later, perhaps because they have to do a third year before starting further education, or perhaps because they are doing a different course. When they reach 19, child benefit for them ceases.
In such cases--for example, a one-parent family in which the mother is unable to work and so is on income support--there is no automatic right for child benefit to continue and there is no other benefit for that child in full-time education. This affects only a comparatively small number of families, but there is a case for continuing child benefit in such circumstances, until the end of the academic year in which the child is 19. It would be helpful to some families if that anomaly were sorted out.
In general, the Government are to be congratulated on the approach that they have taken to help all people to raise their incomes and standards of living.
5.25 pm
Mr. Archy Kirkwood (Roxburgh and Berwickshire) : My original intention was to congratulate the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) on tabling the motion. Perfectly properly and rightly, it expands on some of the debates that we have been having on income equality to embrace some other important issues such as combating poverty and improving
"health, diet, educational achievement and individual opportunity."
It is sensible to have a broad-based discussion on this topic. Therefore, I was disappointed when the Government hijacked the debate by tabling their amendment, which enabled the Secretary of State for Employment to make the speech that he did.
Mr. Newton : Why should he not?
Mr. Kirkwood : Because, while I usually find social security debates fairly depressing, it is a long time since I have heard such cynical low- grade abuse being shovelled across the Dispatch Box from a Minister of such seniority. I agree with the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) that we are trying to give people opportunities, but nobody who listens to the debate or reads it in Hansard will understand that the Government have anything like the appreciation of the problems that they need to make progress. I do not say this lightly, but the Secretary of State for Employment did himself no good by adopting that approach to this important debate. My party does not agree with the Labour position on a national minimum wage, although I appreciate the problems from which the idea is philosophically generated.
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I agree with the analysis of the hon. Member for Oldham, West, although I do not think that a national minimum wage will help. Our idea, to move more in the direction of a partial basic income, is a different approach to the problem.I was disappointed by the tone adopted by the Secretary of State for Employment and I hope that, in future, he will be kept out of social security debates. At least when the Secretary of State for Social Security insults people, he does it with some flash and style. He is entertaining, if nothing else.
People get frightened by the detail of social security policy. There is an essential difference between the two sides of the House. The Conservative Government have always done everything they could to maximise individual opportunity. However, certain consequences flow from that. That policy was encapsulated by the previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) when she talked about there being no such thing as society. She thinks that there is no responsibility or duty on the Government to provide collectively, beyond maximising the opportunities for the individual.
That stance is perfectly reasonable and understandable, but neither I nor my colleagues or the official Opposition take that view. There is a case for collective provision, but one has to be careful about setting priorities for action. In the general election campaign, we shall argue that education and training should have priority for new resources. In addition, we shall have to try to find extra resources to address some of the social security problems.
I shall now consider the directions in which we should move. I welcome the increase in child benefit in October, but it should be paid now. It should be increased immediately to £9.25 for the first child and to £8.25 for other children. Initially, the benefit should be linked to prices, but over three or four years the difference in benefit between the first and second child should be phased out. The Government should consider the possibility of ending the clawback for child benefit, especially after recent increases and the troubles that were caused by the reduction in child dependency allowances. Clawback should be removed, even if it means changing the rates for child premiums, so that the poorest families can be targeted. A net increase of £2 a week for the poorest families could be obtained by ending clawback and adjusting some child premiums. That would help to target resources, and it would not be too expensive.
Maternity grants should be increased to solve the problem of the additional cost of a first child. It should be about £200 a week for the first child and £75 to £100 for the second child. The changes to low- income benefits, apart from child benefits, could embrace immediately increasing the family premium for income support and family credit. The lower rate of income support for those under 25 should be abolished and we would redress the balance for 18-year-olds. There is a case for abolishing the 20 per cent. contribution to the poll tax, which is causing dire hardship. A substantial reform of the social fund is required to introduce clear criteria of eligibility. That fund is failing in its role as a safety net of last resort for people on the lowest incomes. The Secretary of State for Social Security may wonder where the money for those proposals is to come from. Our policy document "Common Benefit" sets out a
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comprehensive scheme which would, over time, integrate the tax and benefit system so as to release benefits and resources.Mr. Newton : I do not intend to launch a verbal assault on the hon. Gentleman, because he is delivering a thoughtful speech--more thoughtful than one that we heard earlier--but I am puzzled by his suggestions on child benefit. He appears to say that he would not knock it off income support in the traditional way, which is to set supplementary benefit and now income support against child allowances paid for by income-related benefits. The hon. Gentleman suggests what can only be an income-related form of child benefit. I do not understand the logic of that.
Mr. Kirkwood : We are advised that it is possible to end clawback of child benefit from families claiming income support, while at the same time adjusting child premiums to target the benefit more specifically. That is what we were told, although whether people are in favour of it is a different question.
Pension increases are necessary and our document suggests financing those increases by the long-term abolition of SERPS. Obviously, existing contracts and benefits would be retained for people on SERPS. We suggest recycling resources to give immediate help. That would enable us immediately to increase the state pension from £52 to £57.50 per week for single people and from £83.25 to £90 per week for a married couple. We could also afford an extra £2.50 a week for people over the age of 75 and £5 per week for those who are over the age of 80. That would obviously take time to phase in, because the benefits from abolishing SERPS would not appear for some time. We think that we could increase pensions dramatically.
The Government should turn their attention to carers. Invalid care allowance could be converted to some sort of carers' benefit and indexed to earnings. The restriction that the invalid care allowance is not paid to those who are above pensionable age should be phased out. It is quite wrong that such carers do not have access to that benefit. Such a change would be expensive and would have to phased in.
Many imaginative changes could be made at no cost, and that is the basis on which we have tried to approach some of poverty's difficult problems. The scourge of unemployment must be tackled more robustly than the Government seem to be set on doing. We have produced a package of measures which could quickly combat a rise in unemployment. They include energy conservation programmes, funding for more places in higher quality training programmes, and measures to release some of the capital receipts held by local authorities to enable them to decide, if they wish, to invest in such matters as housing repairs and school repairs. That would also have the benefit of insulating houses and reducing fuel bills. A cycle of improvements would reduce the problem of poverty and deal with other difficulties.
As I have said, in the long term, the tax and benefit systems should be integrated. The first step on that road would be to abolish the contributory principle. That argument has been around for a long time, but it is important for it to be advanced as an alternative, viable option to what the Government and the Opposition propose. It would take some time to integrate national insurance contributions and income tax. Tax and benefits
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could be integrated in a way that would ensure 100 per cent. take-up of benefits, and it would enable them to be targeted to the sections of our society that need them most.A more towards partial basic income would benefit the system of delivery. A partial basic income or a citizen's income could effectively support needy families. We have calculated that, at 1991 prices, we could start with a partial basic income of £12 a week. That is in addition to child benefits and other basic benefits. Those who would gain most would be people such as non-working spouses and caring parents who, in addition to child benefit, would receive their own income as individuals. The main losers would be those on the top rate of tax, who effectively would have their national tax allowances restricted to the basic rate of tax.
These are other ways of approaching the problem. I accept that they are fairly radical and that they would take a long time to introduce in full, but we must make a start and embark on some of the routes that I have set out if we are to make any real progress. The ideas that I have canvassed have been costed, and I believe that they bear examination. I look forward to the debates that will ensue when the general election is called, because they will provide an opportunity to argue relative merits.
Whatever may be said about the mechanics of my party's scheme or those of the scheme proposed by the official Opposition, I think that the public recognise now that the balance of advantage in favour of the rich has gone too far. They understand now that public investment is necessary in our infrastructure and education and that the Government's policy of maximising opportunities for individuals and doing just about nothing else is a policy that has run its course and has run out of time.
I urge the Secretary of State to consider all the options and to examine ways of delivering help that is needed urgently by the constituents of every Member of this place who are on low incomes. If he does that, he will be able to produce better solutions than the Government have arrived at to date.
5.41 pm
Mr. Simon Burns (Chelmsford) : I have attended many social security debates over the past four years, and my maiden speech was directed to social security. It is always a pleasure and a privilege to listen to the speeches of the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), and his speech this afternoon was no exception to the rule.
I listened with care to the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher). Rightly or wrongly, I gained the impression that he felt that everything was the fault of the Government and that poverty began on 3 May 1979. I believe that that is a genuinely unfair characterisation of what has happened over the past 12 years, or what has happened in our country's history over the past century or more. As I have said before, I believe that no one in this place wants poverty. Sadly, it is a fact of life, however, that there are less well-off people and less fortunate people than others in our community. I believe also that the aim of the Government, whether it be Conservative, Labour, Liberal or whatever, is to try to improve the position of those who are genuinely less well-off in our society.
I suspect that the divisions between the Government and the Opposition are based not so much on attaining the
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end of a policy that is designed to improve the position of the less well-off, as on how to arrive at the right policy. There can be some fairly fundamental differences of opinion when it comes to determining the right policy, and at least I have the reasonableness and decency to accept that there are differences of opinion rather than to try to blame everything that goes wrong on the Opposition, whether that is related to social security policy, foreign policy, defence policy or whatever.I have open-mindedness to examine and accept the point of view of others at a time when I do not believe that there is that much openness in the views of Opposition Members. I do not want to go through a host of statistics to compare 1974-79 with the current Conservative Government, but I shall refer to five figures to present the other side of the coin following the selective figures that were used by the hon. Member for Oldham, West. If anyone casts his mind back to the 1970s, he will accept that it takes some nerve to gloss over that period in our history and to try to portray that Government in the light that is presented by Opposition Members. I have in mind the humiliation of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey), who had to leave an aeroplane before it flew out of Heathrow to take its passengers to an International Monetary Fund meeting. There then followed many genuine cuts in public spending.
I remind the hon. Member for Oldham, West that during 1974-79 pensioners' total incomes increased less than a fifth as fast as they have under this Conservative Government. I remind him that spending on benefits for the family during the same period was cut by nearly 8 per cent. and that the average annual increase in benefits for the disabled was only £325 million compared with £555 million since 1979. I remind him also that single people and married women on half average earnings suffered a 1 per cent. drop in incomes during 1974-79 compared with a 39 per cent. rise under this Government. Married men on half average earnings enjoyed, if that is the right word--I somehow doubt it--a 2.4 per cent. rise in incomes under the Labour Government compared with a 34 per cent. increase since 1979. Finally, a married couple with one earner on half average earnings with two children had a 4.2 per cent. rise under the Labour Government compared with a 29 per cent. rise under this Government.
Ms. Short : We can all quote partial figures about the Labour Government. The entire House must accept, however, that since 1979 Britain has become more unequal than it has been for a long time. Inequality has increased and therefore there is more poverty. That is what the Government have produced.
Mr. Burns : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman--
Mr. Burns : I apologise profusely. I of all people should not have made that mistake.
I do not accept the hon. Lady's proposition. Under this Government the economy has developed and wealth has been generated so that we are now spending a record amount on the social security budget. We are spending over £50 billion a year, over £1 billion a week.
Mr. Graham Allen (Nottingham, North) : Unemployment is increasing.
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