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Mr. Stephen: What are Labour's proposals?
Mr. Robinson: If the hon. Gentleman cannot read, I am sorry. If he does not want to read them, I understand that, but the proposals are quite clear. I am not speaking to the hon. Gentleman; I am speaking to the House, most of which is better informed than the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Stephen: Come on, tell us what they are.
Mr. Robinson: I am coming to them. Do not worry. Keep calm.
We have made it clear that we shall fund our proposals for youth employment from a very modest levy on the privatised monopolies, which is all they are. The programmes will be directed at getting youngsters back into work.
Mr. Robinson:
We will pay a subsidy to private sector employers. Many distinguished private sector employers welcomed our proposals only last week. We have made it clear that they can have a role with the voluntary organisations on the same benefit. We have made it clear that they can be part of our youth employment plan for
I ask the hon. Gentleman to reflect on one simple fact: in many inner urban areas, in London in particular, black youth unemployment can be as high as 60 per cent. He might believe that that is acceptable, that it is something that, in the quiet of his conscience, he wants to live with, because he is defeatist and he has been there far too long--we all know that--to do anything about it; but for us it is not an acceptable position.
Mr. Stephen:
Of course I believe that there is a problem with youth unemployment. Every hon. Member knows that. What I do not believe is that the Labour party has any constructive policies to do anything about it, and all that the hon. Member has said is just the vacuous nonsense to which I referred in my speech.
Mr. Robinson:
The vacuous nonsense was the hon. Member's own speech, and because it was such vacuous nonsense, he could not understand anything in it or after it, and he still does not want to. We have heard no proposals whatever from the Government or Conservative Back Benchers. We have to live with what we have and make peripheral savings where we can, some of which may be welcome--I shall not comment on that at the moment--but nothing goes to the heart of the problem.
The next thing we say is that we must provide opportunities to upgrade skills for all those who are in employment, but, as I have made clear, it must be a two-pronged attack. We have to believe that we can improve our economic performance and not just accept decline in the way in which current Government and Treasury thinking do. We need measures that improve economic performance.
That is why we continue to place overriding emphasis on two aspects: first, investment and the overriding need for it; and, secondly, improving skills. We have set that out in document after document, and in policy statement after policy statement. We await the opportunity to enact them.
Why do the Government do nothing about the poverty trap? It is more in individuals' interest in so many cases to remain on benefit than go to work. That is not something that has just happened in the past two or three years or in this Parliament. It has been growing and getting worse over the last decade or more. Yet the Government still cannot find any innovative or imaginative policies do deal with it. Why not? Because we all know that they are tired, worn out and without ideas. [Interruption.] I challenge the hon. Member for Croydon, North-East (Mr. Congdon) to give us a single idea for dealing with the poverty trap. I shall willingly give way, but he does not have one, so he will not rise.
I now come to the personal tax and benefit rates of people at the lower end of the scale. I happen to believe that, at the top end, one cannot impose penal tax rates. I think that that was a mistake. [Laughter.] I agree, and I have no personal interest. I do not necessarily believe that they should stay where they are, and that is a view that I can present on another occasion, when we discuss tax policy.
Equally, I do not believe that we can expect people at the low end to accept in effect 80 per cent. marginal tax rates, which can occur in some situations. That is why we
have come up with a series of proposals to restructure the tax system to give a much greater incentive to those who are at the bottom end.
Those are our policies. They are clear, they are coherent, and they address the heart of the issue. We want to deal with the long-term unemployed, youth unemployment, the poverty trap, the enormous disincentives of high marginal tax rates for those who are at the bottom end of the scale. We say that because the structure of work and employment in this country have so radically altered, which, in themselves, probably have nothing to do with the Government over the past 20 years.
In the past, long-term unemployment was rare. It was hardly known. Jobs were long-term. Jobs were pretty much at standard rates. It was largely men who were at work. Each one of those definitions of the economic situation our country was in some 20 years ago has quite dramatically changed over the last period of the Government in office. I do not attribute that to them, nor do I try to blame them for it. What they have to be blamed for, however, is not realising what is happening and adjusting their policies to take account for it, and to have left us now with the heavy burden of a welfare state that is not attuned to the needs of those who are living off it.
Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley):
I am not so sure about all that. Again and again, it comes down to perception and reality. I am not certain whether we have sunshine and apple pie, but if we listen carefully we can hear the thunder--and a great deal of fudge from the hon. Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Robinson).
It is a shame that Labour Members are concentrating on documents leaked by potential Labour candidates rather than looking at the reality of the social security budget, which has been hurtling towards £100 billion. The extra costs imposed on taxpayers are already running at an enormous £15 a day for every working person. We must get to grips with the budget--and that is exactly what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been doing since he took up his post, with the full support of not only all Conservative Members but the 92 per cent. of people who are working and paying taxes. Those people expect the Government to spend their money responsibly, and to ensure that they are not paying too much.
As we know from announcements already made, we shall be curtailing social security expenditure by £5 billion by the end of the century, and by £15 billion by 2030. The hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne) said that there was no crisis and no need to worry, but we must act now to ensure that we do not waste money that we should be passing back to taxpayers. We must not put that off for another 10 or 15 years, as the hon. Lady seemed to suggest.
Ms Lynne:
I said that it was time to plan now, but not to panic. I wish that the hon. Gentleman would get my words right.
Mr. Evans:
Now is the time both to plan and to act. No one is asking us to panic. If we waited until the time when the hon. Lady suggested we would start to act, we would be in a panic--and so would every taxpayer who opened his wage packet and discovered how much extra money the Government were having to take for non-essential social security spending.
As I have said in the Chamber before, I hope that there will be no changes in expenditure on child benefit, especially for those whose children--16 to 18-year-olds--are in further and higher education. We want to encourage such youngsters to take advantage of further and higher education. If changes were made, thousands of them would be affected, in all our constituencies. They would be deterred from attending schools such as Clitheroe Royal grammar school in my constituency, and sixth form colleges.
Seven million families receive child benefit for 13 million youngsters. More than 1 million of those youngsters would be affected if child benefit were taken away from them. The last thing we want is for the Government to raid the child benefit kitty to save money so that it looks as though they were being careful. Youngsters who could not proceed to further education could be damaged for life. We should encourage them to take up the opportunity. In effect, a tax of £560 would be levied on all those 16-year-olds, and a tax of more than £1,000 would be levied on 16 to 18-year-olds in further education.
If we accept the principle that child benefit should be taken from that age group, we are attacking the very soul of the child benefit system that has proved so effective over the years. If we accept that principle, there is no reason why child benefit should not be means-tested--or, indeed, removed from children in education per se and replaced by some form of income support. Is this the real agenda behind some of the proposals that we are hearing from Opposition Members?
Currently, 72 per cent. of 16 to 18-year-olds stay at school; in 1979, the figure was only 59 per cent. The number of youngsters with unskilled parents has risen from 20 per cent. in 1979 to 56 per cent. The hon. Member for Coventry, North-West talked of a skilled and educated work force. Would it not be a tragedy if some of those youngsters were denied the opportunity to stay in education just because their parents could not afford it, and if those parents ordered them to go out and get a job irrespective of how low paid it was?
For many families--especially low-paid families--child benefit, as a percentage of their incomes, is far more important than it is for those who earn a great deal more; but they would be hit. The "nearly poor" would be hit. The hon. Gentleman spoke of the poverty trap. If his party implemented its proposal, a fresh poverty trap would be created for many families with youngsters wishing to proceed to further and higher education.
I know that not all Opposition Members believe in the policy. Not all of them believe in clobbering 16 to 18-year-olds and their families. They must speak now: they must not remain silent. During today's debate, there has been a conspiracy of silence among Opposition
Members who are not prepared to make real spending commitments. From so many of them, it has all been apple pie and sunshine, but we need to get to grips with real commitments from the Labour party. We need to know exactly what its spending pledges are. There is no point in being presented with a menu with no prices; we need to know all the items and all the prices, so that the public can be made aware of what lies ahead.
One justification that has been advanced for withdrawing child benefit from 16 to 18-year-olds taking advantage of further and higher education is that a number of people benefit who ought not to--youngsters in private schools, perhaps, receiving the sort of education that is frowned on by Opposition Members. Those Opposition Members fail to recognise that a number of youngsters who attend private schools have assisted places, or are receiving bursaries or grants. It would be spiteful to damage such education and deprive youngsters of it.
It is no wonder that the Child Poverty Action Group is against the Labour party's proposal. Child benefit as it is currently paid has proved extremely beneficial and effective. Labour's proposal would mean a tax increase of 5p in the pound for families during the two years in which their youngsters continued in full-time further education.
When we are considering ways of reforming the welfare state, we should not attack child benefit for 16 to 18-year-olds. We have been very productive in saving money in other areas. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have mentioned fraud, and I agree that we need to get to grips with that problem, but we are talking about expenditure of more than £90 billion. Various estimates are thrown around about the true level of fraud--it has been estimated at between £2 billion and £9 billion--but paying more attention to the problem would certainly pay greater dividends, and would have the full backing of the public.
The telephone number on which people can ring the Department of Social Security when they know that fraud is taking place should be more widely available. Every pound saved in that way can be targeted more efficiently towards those who desperately need benefits, or returned to those who paid in the first place--the taxpayers. I hope that more benefit claimants will use identity cards bearing photographs, so that they can show that they are entitled to benefit.
Housing benefit has been mentioned time and again. It seems to have gone completely out of control. More checks are needed on claimants to ensure that the money goes to those who genuinely need it. We must end the scams that we read about in the newspapers, in which thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money is ripped off every week by people who ought to be put away rather than allowed to steal money from taxpayers and those who deserve benefit.
We have again heard much about all the wonderful sights that Opposition Members expect to see if the nightmare happens and the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) gets his hands on the key to No. 10. We want to control expenditure through the reforms that have already occurred in the social security and welfare systems, but we also want as much encouragement as possible for the economy to grow. I think that is what the hon. Member for Coventry, North-West spoke about. He is a business man, and if he
took an honest, stark look at the proposals by his leader, he would see that they will merely add to the welfare system and the social security budget.
The social chapter, the 48-hour directive, a minimum wage and the differentials that people would start to claim would have an effect. It is not just a question of £4 or £4.50, or whatever the figure per hour would be, because differentials would grind their way through the system. No wonder the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) has talked about a massive shake-out in the economy if a minimum wage is introduced. That will be the real problem.
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