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Sir Graham Bright: With your support.

Ms Lynne: Another hon. Member brought that up in another debate. If the hon. Gentleman considers the facts, he will find that there was no Lib-Lab pact when the bonus was abolished. He should consider the timing of it. After the previous debate, I looked it up and I wanted an opportunity to tell Conservative Members that they were wrong. The hon. Gentleman should check his facts before he makes seated interventions. Yes, the Labour party cancelled the bonus, but what have the Government done? They are miserly to pay pensioners £10 as a Christmas bonus. What can £10 buy? It would barely buy a frozen turkey.

Mr. Anthony Coombs (Wyre Forest): How much would you pay?

Ms Lynne: If the hon. Gentleman had been listening, he would know that I suggested that, in the first week of December, there should be a double pension for every household: a double single person's pension and a double couples' pension. He really must pay attention instead of making seated interventions when I have already told him the facts. At least the Government did not cancel the bonuses.

Turning to housing benefit, earlier this year the draconian rule was introduced for people under 25 whereby they had either to find accommodation in a multi-occupancy house or not receive housing benefit. That rule has now been extended to those under 60. I hope that the Government have done their research properly and determined whether sufficient bed-sit accommodation is available, because I know that there certainly is not enough such accommodation in Rochdale, and there is not enough in other areas.

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Over the years, landlords have been persuaded by the Government to offer self-contained accommodation--which means with a bathroom and a kitchen included. What are landlords now supposed to do--rip out those facilities and put in shared bathrooms and kitchens so that they can get tenants? That is what will have to happen, because people will not be able to find that type of accommodation.

What about 55-year-olds who are thrown out of work and who have lived in a property all their lives, until they were made redundant? They had rented it--probably a one-bedroom flat, or perhaps a one or two-bedroom house--because they knew that they could afford it, and they could not find another job because they were too old. They took on that accommodation because they were able to afford it, but now they will be thrown out. They will be made homeless if they cannot find bed-sit accommodation. That is my fear. We shall see not only 16 and 17-year-olds and under 25-year-olds on the street; we shall see under-60s on the streets, and that will have an absolutely devastating effect on the country.

I can understand why the Secretary of State has changed the qualification rules on the jobseeker's allowance, so that people will have to be unemployed for seven instead of three days to qualify. However, he will have to appreciate the fact that--although we hope that a person who is newly out of work will try in the first week to find work, go for interviews, make those telephone calls and write those letters--they need extra money then, if we want to get them back into jobs quickly. It would be cost-effective to let them have that extra money then and not to extend the qualifying time to seven days.

To sum up, the Budget and social security uprating have done nothing for pensioners. It was an absolute insult that pensioners were not mentioned by the Government--although they have frozen the Christmas bonus. The Government have done a tremendous amount for single parents--they are destroying single parents' lives. They are also destroying the lives of single people under 60 who will be thrown out on the street.

It is a miserly Budget, and all that it will do for the Government in the short term--because it will not save money in the long term--is perhaps save them a bit of money. It will certainly not help the most vulnerable in society.

7.3 pm

Mr. Bernard Jenkin (Colchester, North): I am most grateful to have caught your eye this early in the debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I must apologise to the House in advance that I will not be able to stay for the conclusion of the debate, as I shall be attending to other duties, but I crave its indulgence.

I am most grateful to have the opportunity to follow, as I sometimes do, the hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne) in debates on social security. I should like briefly to make a comparison between her speech and that of the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman). There seems to be a race between the two Opposition parties in which can promise the most, make the most spending commitments and produce the glossiest promises to try to seduce some of the most vulnerable electors in our constituencies to vote for them.

I have some news for both hon. Members: this is not a race in which Conservative Members intend to participate. If we did, not only would we be participating in a fraud

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upon the electors--because the Opposition cannot possibly keep those promises--but we would be giving up the credibility that we possess and they lack on the fundamental issue at the heart of the Budget judgment: the levels of public expenditure, borrowing and taxation.

Ms Lynne: It is absolutely amazing that the hon. Gentleman says that he will not participate in the race to protect the most vulnerable in society. That is what he is saying: that those vulnerable people can be left at the bottom of the heap. If he would like to examine our alternative Budget, he will find a fully costed programme. We have said how we will raise money and how we will spend it.

Mr. Jenkin: I am very glad that I gave way to the hon. Lady, because it gives me an opportunity to clarify her misunderstanding of what I said. I said that we will not participate in the race to produce big and glossy promises that we know we would not be able to fulfil. The important aspect of the Government's promises on spending is that we not only make promises but we keep them.

Mr. Mike O'Brien (North Warwickshire): On credibility and promises, the hon. Gentleman, during the most recent general election, gave his constituents 10 good reasons to vote Conservative. Those were his promises. No. 4 in his personal election address was lower taxes. What price his promises and what price his credibility to his electorate now?

Mr. Jenkin: It is a basic tax rate that is now 23p--which is 10p lower than when the Labour party was last in office. I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing attention to my promise to my electors, which we have been able to keep.

As I said, the key concern in the Budget was the level of public borrowing. There is no doubt that there is disappointment that borrowing has remained so stubbornly high. It is instructive, referring to paragraph 1.06 of the Red Book, to make a comparison between the projected borrowing figures in this year's and last year's Budgets. This year's outturn was meant to be 3 per cent. of GDP, and it is 3.5 per cent.; next year's was meant to be 2 per cent., and it is 2.5 per cent. We do not achieve balance until 2001.

Against that background, my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer had a most difficult Budget judgment to deliver, and I congratulate him on what he has achieved. The higher borrowing is due to sluggish tax rates. Therefore, I utterly applaud his initiatives to do his best to collect taxes that people are due to pay. The spend-and-save initiative aims to improve the Government's efficiency, not only in reducing social security fraud--which is possibly the main thrust of this debate--but in improving the efficiency of Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue, to ensure that businesses and individuals pay the taxes that they are due to pay.

The Budget was also delivered against the background of an extremely successful economy. We have only to look at the key outputs. We are in our fifth successive year of growth. The graphs show that industrial investment is rising above its trend levels. There is also good news about jobs. It is ridiculous for the Opposition to pretend

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that the economy is somehow on its uppers and that 17 years of Conservative Government have been wasted when unemployment in the United Kingdom has fallen by more than 1 million in the past few years, while our European competitors who have not dealt with their structural and other difficulties are still experiencing sharp rises in unemployment. The fact is that unemployment in the United Kingdom is 7.5 per cent. when it is more than 11 per cent. in France and more than 25 per cent. in Spain.

If the Government deliver one pledge to the electorate it is that people should have the best possible opportunity to get a job. When I intervened in the speech of the hon. Member for Peckham and asked her to produce evidence that a minimum wage would not destroy jobs, she was completely unable to do so. The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) has also admitted that the introduction of a national minimum wage would destroy jobs. How would that help the most vulnerable people in society? How can people make the transition from welfare dependency into work if we create an even higher barrier for them to surmount?

Mr. Alan Howarth: If the hon. Gentleman is interested in studying the academic evidence that demonstrates that a minimum wage, sensibly conceived, not only would not destroy jobs, but would enhance job creation, may I refer him to the work of Professor Card of Princeton university.

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