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Ms Harman: That was the longest intervention on record. I am well aware of the Secretary of State's figures. He placed similar figures in the Library after Social Security questions.
The point at issue is clear. The Secretary of State tries to categorise, for example, the £10 billion of income support for lone mothers as a good thing because it is a family benefit. The Opposition say that £10 billion of income support for lone mothers, most of whom want to work, is not a sign of success, but of failure. It is why the social security budget has gone up. It has risen because of income support, housing benefit, council tax benefit and the economic inactivity of the one in five households of people of working age who are not in work. It is not acceptable for the Secretary of State to say that the increase in his budget is due to the growing number of elderly or the Government's generosity towards the elderly. That is an unrecognisable description.
Of the £14.8 billion by which the Secretary of State has increased the social security budget since 1992, only £1.6 billion of the extra is accounted for by pensions. It is not good enough for the Secretary of State to rely on patronising, sexist assertions that assume that women cannot understand figures. It is absolutely clear that there is an extra £8 billion in his budget as a direct result of the growth in poverty and unemployment.
It is not the elderly who are pushing up the social security budget, but poverty. It is not the disabled who are pushing up the social security budget, but unemployment--the one in five households of people of working age who are without work. They live on the breadline, and the taxpayer has to pick up the bill for those one in five households, which is why the taxpayer has seen his tax bill increase by the equivalent of 4p on the basic rate of income tax. It is to pay for poverty and unemployment which have increased since the right hon. Gentleman became Secretary of State.
The more the Secretary of State spends on benefits for people who should be working, the less the Government invest in the future and in education. His failure has caused the social security budget to increase and its spending to crowd out the sort of public investment that people want. The £8 billion extra that he is spending on poverty and unemployment could have paid for more nursery places, more after-school clubs, more teachers, more books and more computers.
Mr. Matthew Banks (Southport):
With no discourtesy to the hon. Lady, may I ask her about one point that she raised on the subject of war pensioners? Many of those who have war pensions, and who are young like me, get fed up with her crocodile tears. One reason the social security budget has blossomed is that the Government have encouraged so many people to apply for war pensions. If I had had £1 for every senior citizen in my constituency for whom I had got a war pension, I would be a wealthy young man.
Ms Harman:
The bill for social security in this country has not blossomed, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, owing to the Government's generosity to war pensioners. In fact, the Government, behind the backs of war pensioners, tried to cut their pension and deny it to them.
The social security budget has risen owing to the one in five households of people of working age who are not working--the tax bill of the other four families has therefore risen. There is an extra £15 billion on the social security budget this year compared to when the right hon. Gentleman took over as Secretary of State; only £1.6 billion of that increase is accounted for by pensioners. I hope that he will not claim that the extra numbers of pensioners taking up income support is a sign of success, not poverty.
I have looked through the figures that the Secretary of State put in the Library after I first raised the issue. The various allocations that he has made to try to smear over the issue conceals everything and confuses no one.
Mr. Lilley:
I am sure that the hon. Lady would not want to mislead the House. She has just said that only £1.6 billion of extra spending is on the elderly: in fact, £3.3 billion of the total £14.6 spending is on the elderly, and £7.5 billion is on the long-term sick and disabled. That gives a total of £10.8 billion, so three quarters of the total increase is spent on the elderly, the long-term sick and the disabled.
Ms Harman:
I shall simply state the figures as they are once more. There is a total of £15 billion extra every year in the right hon. Gentleman's blossoming budget, comprising £0.7 billion extra on child benefit; £1.6 billion extra on pensions; £4.3 billion extra on incapacity and disablement; and the remaining £8.2 billion going on income support, unemployment benefit and all those people of working age who are not in work.
To be without work--to be in one of the one in five households where no one is working--is not only to be without a decent standing of living, but to live on the margins of our society. That sows the seeds of disillusion and despair. To be unemployed when young is to feel that one has been thrown on the scrap heap before one has even begun. The Government have failed the young
unemployed: 500,000 people under 25 are unemployed, which is one in six of that age group. In some inner-city estates, half the people under 25 are out of work. In London, where my own constituency of Peckham is situated, 50 per cent. of young black men are officially registered as unemployed. That is why we say that there must be a windfall levy--a tax on the unfair and excess profits of the privatised utilities. We can use the money to break the vicious circle and get 250,000 young people who have been without work for six months off benefit and into proper work or training. When they reject that windfall levy, the Government reject all hope for the young unemployed.
We know that, the longer a person is out of work, the harder it is to get a job. The Government have failed the long-term unemployed--400,000 people have been jobless for more than two years and it costs the public purse £9,000 a year to keep someone trapped in unemployment. That is why we have argued for extra help for the long-term unemployed to get them into work--for a £75 a week national insurance holiday for employers who take on people who have been unemployed for more than two years; for a relaxation of the 16-hour rule to help the long-term unemployed to get the skills or educational qualifications they need to get the jobs that are available; and for a national minimum wage to help make work pay and enable people to move off benefit and into work.
Mr. David Shaw (Dover):
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Ms Harman:
I shall give way in a minute, but I must press on because the Secretary of State made a long intervention that was half as long again as his speech.
The real map of poverty and unemployment stretches far beyond the official unemployment statistics, which have been fiddled more than 30 times by the Government. Among the poorest families in Britain today are those who are hidden from view because they are not on the official unemployment statistics, especially lone mothers. There are 1 million lone mothers who are trapped on income support, living on around £100 a week. Two million children in families headed by lone mothers are being brought up on the breadline. They face life on benefit for years, and the taxpayer now faces a bill that has risen to £10 billion a year to support lone mothers and their children.
In the Secretary of State's accounts, that is a success--a blossoming of the social security budget--and he calls it family benefits. We call it those mothers who want to work being trapped on benefit at public expense--a sign of the Government's policy failure. In the uprating debate in February last year, the Secretary of State said that there were three steps he would take to halt the rising number of lone mothers on income support. He has failed on all three of those steps, and there are more lone mothers on income support, not fewer.
The Secretary of State has failed to get lone mothers off income support by making absent fathers pay. He has failed to help lone mothers into work. Although he has cut lone mothers' benefit, that has failed to reduce the divorce rate. The Secretary of State is absolutely right in his determination to make fathers pay for their children.
Every child has a right to receive the emotional and financial support of both parents, irrespective of where they live. However, the latest figures from the Child
Support Agency show that it has failed: in the past three months, only 15 per cent. of absent fathers paid the full amount awarded. The Child Support Agency has been so badly administered that it has caused real hardship to some, and to many more it has provided an excuse to abdicate responsibility for their children.
Experience from around the world shows that it is difficult to make absent fathers pay under any system. It is an uphill battle. It is not a task from which we should shrink--far from it--but we must be realistic: we cannot leave the children of lone mothers in poverty and allow the benefits bill to increase every year while we wait for absent fathers to wake up to their responsibilities. It is vital that lone mothers are able to work to support themselves and their children.
Here, too, the Government have failed. While more married women are going out to work, fewer lone mothers are in the work force--yet they are the ones who most want and need to work. Lone mothers in Britain are less likely to be in work and more likely to be dependent on benefit than lone mothers anywhere else in Europe. In France, 82 per cent. of lone mothers are in work compared with only 41 per cent.--half as many--in Britain.
The problem is not just financial, with children being brought up on the breadline and the taxpayer facing a growing benefits bill. There is the deeper problem of children being brought up without seeing the world of work, and growing up with the expectation that life is about receiving benefit rather than going out to work.
Lone mothers want to work--especially when their youngest child begins full-time schooling. That is the time when most married women start to look for work. For the past 17 years, this Government--and this Secretary of State for the past five years--have told lone mothers, "Here's your income support. I'll send it to you every week, and come back when your youngest child is 16." That has been the Government's policy for the past 17 years.
Lone mothers do not want to depend on benefit, and it should not have to be like that. I recently conducted a small survey of lone mothers in my constituency, which backed up the national findings. For example, Sheryl is 29. She has two children, aged eight and three, she lives on her own and the children's father pays nothing. Before she had her children, she worked as an administrative assistant. She has been bringing up her children on income support for the past three years. She wants to work, but she cannot because she is unable to match working hours with school hours. She said:
"My youngest child starts full-time school in January and, once she's settled, I would like to go back to work. But I can't because of all the problems of after-school care, school holidays and teacher training days."
The story is the same throughout the country: lone mothers want to work not in spite of the fact that they are mothers, but because they are mothers. Like all mothers, they are driven to give their children a better life.
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