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Ms Eagle: Has the hon. Lady noticed that regulation 18(4), to which she refers, introduces a new criterion for disallowing benefit--that of an inability to fill in the application form properly? Is not that worrying, particularly when there is the problem at the lower end of the labour market of people being unable to read or write properly?
Ms Lynne: I totally agree and share the hon. Lady's deep concern. People who are now denied incapacity or invalidity benefit and who go to a jobcentre to sign on for the jobseeker's allowance may encounter extreme difficulty in completing the necessary form.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Roger Evans): Perhaps I may end that controversy by directing the hon. Lady to regulation 18(4)(b). The act that causes disallowance to be triggered is spoiling the application--not something due to disability, but a deliberate act for the purpose, of not getting a job. We are not talking about people who are unable to complete the form or who have difficulties with it.
Ms Lynne: I am grateful to the Minister, but is there a reference to "deliberately" spoiling? I believe that there is not. Unless there is such a reference, the provision could be interpreted to apply to anyone who is unable properly to complete the application form. If the Minister intended the provision to mean deliberately spoiling the application form, surely he should have made that clear. He did not.
Mr. Evans: I did not read the whole of the relevant provision to the hon. Lady. If she reads the concluding words, she will find the clear proviso:
- "unless those circumstances were due to reasons beyond his control."
In other words, spoiling must be intentional. It cannot arise "due to reasons beyond" someone's "control", such as inability to write.
Ms Lynne:
I do not want to delay the House because I know that many hon. Members wish to speak. I do not think that the provision to which the Minister has referred gives a guarantee. I would like to see "deliberately" inserted. I shall move on because time is short.
One of my most serious concerns is that the regulations will force claimants into taking low-paid work. Claimants will not be able to say that they will work for a certain wage. They will be debarred from taking that approach even if the wage on offer is inappropriate to their skills and financial circumstances.
The idea of a public employment service matching individuals to appropriate vacancies has now been abandoned. We are seeing an attempt to drive more people into low-paid employment.
It is right, of course, that some people should take work with lower wages than those that they were receiving before becoming unemployed.
Ms Lynne:
Of course some people should do that.
I am concerned that individuals will not be able to opt out. That is entirely wrong. We know that individuals could give specific reasons for being unable to take a job at a certain wage level.
The regulations will encourage more employers to pay low wages. They know that the unemployed person will be forced to take their jobs whatever the wage. With the abolition of the wages councils, the position is even more serious.
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cirencester and Tewkesbury):
I am glad to have the opportunity to speak briefly on the regulations, especially on the Jobseeker's Allowance Regulations 1996. I was delighted to hear the speeches of the hon. Members for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney) and for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Purchase). They prove that the old Labour party is still alive, kicking and well. Employers throughout the country should be wary of the prospect of a future Labour Government when a social security spokesman makes a speech of that sort.
There is a fundamental difference of philosophy between the two sides of the House. We believe that the social security system should provide for those in need. But those in need, and genuinely claiming it, need to help themselves, so that they can organise their affairs and do
not claim benefit indefinitely. The Labour party is content for the present system to remain in place so that claimants can remain on benefits for as long as they want, or for the rest of their lives.
Under the present system, a millionaire can claim unemployment benefit for up to a year without being means-tested. That is daft. I recently participated in an audience-contribution television programme. The spokesman who appeared on behalf of the Labour party defended her party's wish--this was her interpretation of it--to have universal benefits available for all. Half the audience was unemployed and the other half consisted of floating voters. When I said, "It is you people who deserve benefit if you are eligible for it, not every millionaire in the country," they fully agreed with me.
I think that the country will agree with that approach. We should target the huge amount of benefit we pay to those who genuinely need it, not to millionaires. It is--
[Laughter.] Labour Members laugh, but the country will make a judgment in due course. If Labour Members oppose the regulations, they must tell us how they will find the extra £4 billion to pay for the present system. Implementation of the regulations will save £4 billion. If Labour Members do not like them, what will they put in their place?
According to the Red Book, we shall spend £98 billion on the social security system this year. It so happens that income tax raises £68 billion and corporation tax
£20 billion. The two taxes raise about the sum that we spend on social security. Without the present system, we would not need income tax or corporation tax. That demonstrates the scale of our expenditure on social security.
We are not advocating, of course, the abolition of the social security system, but we want to ensure that what we spend on it is directed to those who really need it. Surely--[Laughter.] Again, I do not know why Opposition Members laugh. The regulations make eminently good sense.
We are channelling two benefits into one. In other words, we are simplifying the system. The process will be of benefit to claimants, because they will have to complete only one form and go to only one office to obtain their benefit. The regulations will simplify and reduce the cost of administering the system. That is also important. We shall need to have only one office, as it were, one set of regulations and one set of annual upratings under the new system. That must make sense.
Conservative Members are all keen on reducing social security fraud. If we simplify a system, we are bound to reduce fraud. I believe that I have common cause with the hon. Member for Makerfield and others, because I accept that the vast majority of our people want to work. Unfortunately, a few are prepared to work the system. That being so, we must do all we can to ensure that the system cannot be defrauded.
It must be right that those who are unemployed for more than 12 months must be made to go on one of the myriad of schemes that are set out in the regulations. Indeed, the regulations propose an element of coercion to embark on such schemes. It cannot be in the taxpayers' interests or those of claimants that they, claimants, should be able to sit at home, go to the office once a week to draw money and have to do nothing else for the rest of their lives. That culture is not in the interests of the country or of claimants.
I welcome the raft of extremely sensible schemes set out in the regulations. I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends carefully to examine the Labour party's proposed windfall tax and the changes that it presages in introducing a workfare system. I have worked closely with my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Sir R. Howell), and I know that the idea of a community job creation programme is not a new one, although the Labour party claims it as its own. He produced two papers in the early 1980s, called "Why Work?" and "Why Not Work?", long before the Labour party had even begun to think about the subject.
I would like to see a more general element introduced into the community workfare scheme. Two such schemes have been introduced in north Norfolk, but at large cost, because they are trial schemes. I believe that, through the private sector, we could introduce a workfare scheme that would benefit both the unemployed and the country. We would all be a lot better off morally and spiritually, if not economically, because such a scheme is not cheap, as the Labour party has proved by its windfall tax.
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