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Mr. Lilley: How things have changed since the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) was replaced by the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith). The former was always careful to leave us entirely confused as to whether he was supporting or opposing what we had suggested. There is no doubt today that Labour has opposed every measure that we have introduced. The hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury has just chalked up a bill of
£1 billion of savings forgone. How the Labour party can honour, "Vote in favour of our tax cuts" while opposing our savings remains to be seen. It is old Labour with a vengeance.
The hon. Gentleman began by referring to the Joseph Rowntree trust report. He clearly has not read the subsequent Institute for Fiscal Studies report which showed that, far from the poor getting poor and the rich getting richer, the poor have also got richer in the sense that the bottom 10 per cent. spend substantially more now than they did in 1979, and a high proportion of them move each year to higher deciles in income distribution.
The hon. Gentleman criticised our measures to restrict housing benefit for the under-25s to the sort of accommodation that most people who are paying for their housing when in work choose to occupy. I cannot see the logic of his position there.
The hon. Gentleman was worried about the danger of properties in multiple occupation. The answer to that is proper regulation and enforcement, not to try to manipulate the benefit system, which already leaves many people in such properties.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the difficulties that young people might have getting back to work. He clearly does not understand the run-on scheme, which I announced last year and which is being introduced from April. It will allow people to keep, for four weeks after returning to work, the maximum housing benefit even though they are in work and may no longer be entitled to it. That will be a major help for young people and others returning to work. There will, of course, be special provision for the more vulnerable groups, as there is in the changes that begin in January.
The hon. Gentleman does not seem to recognise that
The hon. Gentleman does not seem to realise that one-parent benefit, when it was originally introduced by Barbara Castle--as both the Chairman of the Select Committee and Barbara Castle herself made clear--was
never part of any strategy. It was merely an attempt at a quick fix. Barbara Castle said that it was an interim benefit for the one-parent family "for a year" and that it would cease when the child benefit scheme came into effect.
The hon. Gentleman argued that one-parent benefit is necessary as a work incentive. Since we are treating lone-parent premium--which is the counterpart to the out-of-work benefits--in parallel with one-parent benefit, there is no problem with any change in work incentives. We believe that the right approach is to encourage people back into work. We are doing that by increasing the child care disregard and by the range of other measures that I have announced today. Indeed, I calculate that the expansion of nursery care vouchers will almost cost more than the savings that we are achieving initially from our lone-parent measures. Once again, the Opposition would not be able to finance desirable schemes because they refuse to make the savings necessary for them.
The hon. Gentleman was completely silent on what Labour proposes to do about long-term care. He hinted that the Labour party was proposing to spend billions of pounds more of public subsidy. We believe that it is right to try to achieve as much success in enabling people to finance long-term care as we have had enabling them to finance decent pension provision. That is the burden of the various measures that the Chancellor and I are introducing.
The reduced earnings allowance, as its name suggests, is a compensation for people who have suffered injuries that have reduced their earning capacity. The allowance is intended to apply to people during their working lives. Because of some anomalies, it does not stop for all people when they reach retirement age. We are trying to ensure that, in the majority of cases, the allowance will stop and be replaced by the retirement allowance, which is appropriate in retirement.
Mr. Smith:
When they have less income.
Mr. Lilley:
Of course most people have less income when they retire than when they are at work, but they none the less get some compensation through the retirement allowance to acknowledge the fact that they have been able to make less provision during their working life because of the industrial injury.
A fair structure of benefits has been agreed by Parliament and we are now trying to implement that properly through regulations.
The hon. Gentleman says that all we should do for asylum seekers is to speed up the process. The Home Secretary is doing a great deal to that end. I understand that the Opposition are opposing the measures that would enable my right hon. and learned Friend to speed up the process. As long as we are a honeypot attracting people for benefit reasons, we will find it impossible to give proper consideration to the genuine refugees who reach our shores--whom we all want to help.
I am not surprised that the hon. Gentleman chooses to try to ridicule the changes that have been made to assist detection of fraud. He said that our previous targets have not been achieved. He is wrong. Our target for the current year was about £648 million of fraud detected and stopped by the Benefits Agency. The actual figure was
£717 million, just by the Benefits Agency. Fraud savings have also been made by local authorities and by the
Employment Service's fraud department, which has now merged with my Department. That is why there is an apparent disparity in the figures that the hon. Gentleman quoted.
There will be a substantial increase in the fraud savings because of the extra resources that I have devoted to it and the strategy that I am pursuing, which the Labour party appears to oppose. I remind the hon. Gentleman that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) has said that Labour has too long been associated with the freeloaders.
Madam Speaker:
Order. That initial exchange has taken 37 minutes. I must now insist that hon. Members put brisk questions. I equally insist on brisk answers because we have other business to conduct in the House today.
Sir Andrew Bowden (Brighton, Kemptown):
I welcome the announcement on long-term care. Will my right hon. Friend enlarge a little on partnership schemes?
Does he foresee those schemes including the ability to purchase a room in a residential home or some sort of equity in a residential home so that a person who moves into a home can retain some capital for his or her family in the future?
Mr. Lilley:
My right hon. Friends and I will issue a paper to consult on the possibility of proceeding with partnership schemes. It would be wrong to speculate now on the full extent of them, but I note the point that my hon. Friend has made. I know of his great interest in this matter and I am sure that we shall receive helpful and extremely well-informed contributions from him once the proposal is in the public domain.
Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark and Bermondsey):
My question, too, is about how the Secretary of State's announcement affects older people. Why has not he altered the insulting additional 25p payment for over-80 pensioners, which has remained in place for so long?
Why, after 23 years, has he still not adjusted the Christmas bonus, which remains at £10? Was not the Chancellor's residential care announcement yesterday a giveaway, as it increased capital allowances? Will not we have a takeaway from the Secretary of State for the Environment tomorrow when he announces that local authority funds will be cut? Is not this an attempt at a getaway by the Secretary of State for Social Security because he is not increasing the special transitional grant for community care?
Mr. Lilley:
I can answer that question briskly. Unlike the Opposition, we are in serious government and cannot afford to hand out money like confetti.
Mr. Tim Smith (Beaconsfield):
May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the meticulous and patient way in which he has carried out his comprehensive review of social security spending since 1992? What would total spending have been if none of the changes had been made, and what would have been the cost to the taxpayer?
Mr. Lilley:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. If none of the changes had been made, expenditure next year would have been about £3.5 billion higher than it will be; by the
Mr. Frank Field (Birkenhead):
As every statement by the Secretary of State is incomplete until he has announced new anti-fraud measures, when does he expect to have an adequate anti-fraud programme in place? When will it be safe for taxpayers to trust him with their
"For decades politicians would not talk about the issue. Tax and benefit policy was squeezed to help single parents and childless couples. Single parents gained more help than did two parents. That policy has got to be reversed."
Those are the words of the Chairman of the Social Security Select Committee in September this year, and I agree with him.
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