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Madam Speaker: I think that I appreciate the feeling of the House on this issue. I quite understand that that period is for Back Benchers. I thought that what the Prime Minister had to say to the House today was important to the country and should be placed on the record. For the House's information, let me say that although there is only 15 minutes, six Back Benchers were called, three questions came from the Leader of the Opposition and one question came from the leader of the Liberal Democrats. With answers from the Prime Minister, that was not bad at all. I would like to see more, but I think that it was quite a good score today.
Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham): Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. My question to the Prime Minister was also on the Order Paper today, and I share the hon. Gentleman's disappointment, but is not a large part of the problem the fact that every week--Tuesday and Thursday--the Leader of the Opposition makes three long statements during Prime Minister's Question Time?
Madam Speaker: Some of the problem, quite frankly, is that Back Benchers on both sides of the House ask questions that are far too long. I sit here and listen to questions that are inordinately long; they really should be Adjournment debates.
Mr. Paul Flynn (Newport, West): Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. Of course, I accept what you say on this matter, but may I point out that my questions appeared on the Order Paper today and last Thursday, although they were unlikely to be called? Our best chance as Back Benchers of being able to ask questions comes from the shuffle. On the rare days that it turns out in our favour, we find ourselves in a position like today, when question 2 was not reached until four minutes before the end of Question Time. What happened today was definitely an abuse. Given the way in which the answer
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was supplied, it was clear that a statement--of great importance--had been prepared, which denied us as Back Benchers the opportunity of asking the Prime Minister questions. The belief that what occurred today was an abuse and a denial of Back Benchers' rights is widely held on both sides of the House.
Mr. David Shaw (Dover): Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker--
Madam Speaker: There are no further points of order--I am taking none at all. Some Departments of State do not get much further than 10 or 11 substantive questions in something like 30 or 45 minutes. Six supplementary questions from Back Benchers and four from Front Benchers--10 questions to the Prime Minister--in 15 minutes is not a bad score at all.
Madam Speaker: I am taking no more points of order, so sit down. I have taken on board the flavour of the House.
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Orders of the Day
WAYS AND MEANS
Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [26 November].
Motion made, and Question proposed,
Question again proposed.
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The Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Peter Lilley):
Given the enormous size of the social security budget, which accounts for nearly a third of total expenditure and more than 40 per cent. of central Government spending, it is right that we should devote a day of the Budget debate to that subject and I welcome the new format this year. Throughout the 50 years since the welfare state was established, spending on social security has grown at a rate of 5 per cent. a year compound, or almost twice as fast as the economy. It has taken an ever rising share of national income and it has been the main cause of rising taxes and increasing burdens on business and employment. Indeed, the cost of welfare has risen to a level at which it contributes to the burdens on business, destroying jobs and putting people on to welfare. From being the cure, it has become through its cost part of the cause of unemployment. But as the result of the reforms in this and previous Budgets, we have turned that position round.
Social security is now set to take a declining share of national income, leaving scope for reducing taxes and burdens on employers, creating a more dynamic economy, generating more jobs, and getting people off welfare and into work. That is a tremendous achievement and the major contribution to that achievement has been our success in getting people off welfare and into work. Unemployment is down by nearly 1 million from its peak. It is now lower than in any major European country and it is falling. There are now 750,000 more people in jobs than four years ago. A higher proportion of our adult population is in work than in any other major European country, and the figure is rising. That success is the direct consequence of our welfare-to-work measures and our economic reforms.
But there are still upward pressures on my budget including, above all, the result of more people happily living longer than expected and more generous benefits for disabled people. I have to tell the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman), the Labour party's spokesman for social security, that when she describes the continued growth in social security spending--as she did the other day--as
Mr. John Garrett (Norwich, South):
Never mind the elderly and the disabled. What about the fact that since 1979 the number of children living in poverty--as defined
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Mr. Lilley:
The hon. Gentleman may not mind the elderly and disabled, but I do and I think that it is monstrous to describe increased spending on them as the result of social and economic failure. As for children living in poverty, the hon. Gentleman knows that the biggest single contribution to that is the breakdown of family life, which is an issue to which I shall return later in my remarks.
As I told the House on Monday, if we are to maintain a decent level of provision for those in genuine need--as the Government are determined to do--we must maintain the momentum of our reforms, and that is what my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor's Budget statement does. I shall not go through the figures in detail, but they show that we are protecting the real value of all major benefits. Uprating in line with inflation will alone cost £1.7 billion next year, so Department of Social Security spending next year will reach £93 billion. In round figures, despite unforeseen pressures, that is actually the same figure that I announced a year ago and a year before that. As a result of our reforms, we expect in subsequent years to keep growth down to about 1½ per cent. in real terms. That moderate growth reflects the beneficial impact of the measures taken under the programme of reform that I initiated four years ago.
I have introduced a total of 12 Bills--including two in this Session--reforming sickness benefits, incapacity benefits, child support, pensions and jobseeker's benefits. The Budget contains a number of further measures to maintain the momentum of reform. They will help curb fraud, improve efficiency and increase fairness.
In addition to the new powers that we are seeking in the Social Security Administration (Fraud) Bill, Tuesday's Budget measures propose a further spend-to-save package on fraud. We will invest £470 million over three years in tackling fraud. That will finance 1.3 million more home visits to new claimants and 300,000 extra visits to existing claimants next year.
Mr. Malcolm Wicks (Croydon, North-West):
The Minister cut home visits.
Mr. Lilley:
It is true that there were 3.5 million home visits during first half of the 1980s. They were an intrinsic feature of supplementary benefit and entirely different from the sort of visits that we will initiate. They were not for the purpose of establishing fraud, but to establish entitlement to benefit under a system that had many special needs payments on heating, rent--which was paid out of supplementary benefit--extra clothing and so on. Visits were necessary for all those payments. We also had one-off, exceptional needs payments and visits were usually required in those circumstances. There was also a welfare provision in supplementary benefit that required visits for welfare purposes, often as frequently as every six weeks, to families who were incapable of managing their budget or if there was a danger of neglect of children. Those visits duplicated the work of social services and were better undertaken by them. The need for that type of visit disappeared with the simplification of the system when we changed from supplementary benefit to income support, replaced single payments with
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The sort of visits that we will introduce now are designed to establish that people are genuinely entitled to benefit and that their circumstances are what they say they are. That is an important measure to cut out fraud and abuse.
We are also taking strenuous action to reduce the running costs of my Department. Much unnecessary work arises from incomplete, erroneous and late claims. The CHANGE programme has revealed that a high proportion--60 per cent.--of applications for income support are incomplete or incorrect and some 30 per cent. of our work involves chasing up information. So we propose to put the onus on claimants to furnish the evidence that can be reasonably required before their claim is assessed and we, in turn, will make it as clear as possible what information is required.
Late claims and backdating are especially costly, not least because the rules are so complex. I also propose, therefore, to reduce the confusing and inconsistent set of rules covering backdating of benefits to just two basic rules for most benefits. In future, if a claim is late, we will backdate the payment date by up to three months, provided--in the case of income-related benefits--that the claimant has good reason for making a late claim. If the claimant is already on benefit, we will backdate a claimed change in circumstances for up to one month.
I also propose to clarify the boundary between disability living allowance and attendance allowance. DLA is intended for people who suffer disabilities during their working life and so have less opportunity to earn and save. Attendance allowance is for those who come to need care in retirement. We intend to remove the current concession that allows a claim for DLA to be made for a year after the age of 65 and that change will come in from October 1997.
In the longer term, once it is possible to make further changes to the computer system from April 1999, people will have to wait seven days before receiving jobseeker's allowance, rather than the three days now. Waiting days have always been a feature of social security. Unemployment benefit was not designed to provide cover for moving between jobs, or for brief spells of unemployment. Other countries have similar waiting periods--Ireland's vary between three and 18 days, even Sweden's period is five days and New Zealand has the same seven-day wait as we propose.
Apart from the main growth areas of age and disability which I mentioned, spending is still growing in two other areas. The first is benefits for lone parents. Total spending is now about £10 billion on benefits for lone parents, which is equivalent to 5p on income tax. That is a problem that we have to face.
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The hon. Gentleman went on to point out, rightly, that the Labour Government
That it is expedient to amend the law with respect to the National Debt and the public revenue and to make further provision in connection with finance; but this Resolution does not extend to the making of any amendment with respect to value added tax so as to provide--
(a) for zero-rating or exempting a supply, acquisition or importation;
(b) for refunding an amount of tax;
(c) for varying any rate at which that tax is at any time chargeable; or
(d) for any relief, other than a relief which--
(i) so far as it is applicable to goods, applies to goods of every description, and
(ii) so far as it is applicable to services, applies to services of every description.--[Mr. Kenneth Clarke.]
"the result of social and economic failure",
she is in effect insulting millions of elderly and disabled people, whose only fault is to live longer than expected. We count their long lives a success and we count our record, in giving four times as much help to sick and disabled people as Labour ever did, as a source of pride.
"For decades politicians would not talk about the issue. Tax and benefit policy was squeezed to help single parents so that single parents gained more help than two parents. That policy has got to be reversed."
Those are not my words, but those of the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Social Security.
"introduced One-Parent Benefit--never part of any strategy, merely an attempt at a quick fix."
He was quite right.
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