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5.27 pm
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North): I suppose that this debate is an annual discussion of the issues surrounding the welfare state and its funding. The Secretary of State seems to take great pride in announcing inflation-level increases in benefits and assuming that everything is all right. Clearly, when he is driven here in his chauffeur-driven car, he does not see people begging around tube stations in London. Nor does he see people waking up under soggy blankets alongside the Thames, or broken-down people desperate to find enough money from somebody to buy themselves a cup of tea during the day.
Since 1979, the Government have presided over an enormous shift of wealth from the poor to the rich, and over the degradation of many people in our society. Poverty blights the lives of about a quarter of this country's population. The latest figures show that between 13 million and 14 million people in Britain live in poverty. That is a sixth of Europe's poor--24 per cent. of the population. Worse still, 4.3 million children are living in poverty--and they call this a Government of success. In 1979, 1.4 million children were living in poverty. That figure was not good, but it is less than one third of the present level.
The wealth of the poorest tenth of the population has been reduced by about 18 per cent., whereas the richest tenth are roughly two thirds better off than when the Tory Government were elected. We are now presiding over a massive shift of wealth from the very poor to the very rich. People in the middle have not felt more insecure or unhappy since before the second world war, because they see the destruction of services all around them. Taxes have regularly been reduced to make the rich better off, so services for the rest of the population have had to be severely cut.
If the 1978-79 income tax regime were in place today, a further £31.4 billion would be available. The top 10 per cent. of taxpayers have enjoyed a reduction in their
income tax; indeed, they have received 48 per cent. of total tax cuts. We must seriously examine the issue of distribution between rich and poor within our society.
Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge):
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for having the courage to bring socialism into the Chamber, when it has become so profoundly unpopular. How does he explain the fact that, despite his belief that there would be much more money available if the rich were taxed more--based, presumably, on the assumption that they would simply stay around to be taxed more--Treasury figures, which were first asked for by the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), show conclusively that, when we decrease tax rates on the rich, the rich as a whole end up paying more to the total tax take, therefore making a bigger contribution to helping the people whom the hon. Gentleman wants to help? Is not his problem the fact that he wants to hurt the rich more than he wants to help the poor?
Mr. Corbyn:
I am not sure from which university one graduates with a degree in gobbledegook economics; perhaps the hon. Gentleman will tell us later. The simple fact is that his party, his Government and his philosophy aim to increase the power of the rich by reducing their tax burden. The knock-on effect is to cut public expenditure for the rest of society. That is why no houses are being built, hospitals are being closed, class sizes have increased and people are begging on the streets.
Visitors to this country who have not been here for 10 or 15 years find the situation shocking. They ask me, "Whatever has happened in London? Why are all these people homeless? Where have all these beggars come from?"
Mr. David Shaw:
From Paris, via Eurotunnel.
Mr. Corbyn:
Witty remarks by people such as the hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Shaw), who could not give a fig for the poor anyway, merely discredit him and his party even more, and show them up as what people know them to be and what they have always been--the party of division between rich and poor.
Mr. Nicholls:
Now what is the answer?
Mr. Corbyn:
The answer is a society seriously interested in caring for all its population, not just for those who can make a lot of money out of exploiting other people.
Mr. Nicholls:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Corbyn:
No, not a second time, because I want to make a little progress.
Poverty affects every aspect of people's lives. In my constituency, registered unemployment is about 22 per cent. On some estates it is probably 50 per cent., and for young black people it is much higher. When we talk about life to people on income support who are trying to bring up children, we start to see an awful lot of other things.
Constant unemployment means low income for the household, no extras for the kids, poor-quality furniture, lack of entertainment and a pretty miserable existence. It means poor-quality food, undernourished children, short
life expectancies and a constant burden on the health service, because, for reasons that we understand, poor people tend to be ill more often than rich people.
Mr. Shaw:
I hope that the hon. Gentleman understands that there are Conservative Members, including me, who genuinely want to try to create more jobs in the economy. But surely he must realise that in his constituency there is no incentive for businesses and employers to move in. All over London, Labour boroughs have discouraged employers and moved them out, replacing them with high-rise blocks of flats into which they put benefit claimant after benefit claimant, because they want the Labour votes. Labour boroughs have gerrymandered instead of creating jobs and attracting employment into their areas.
Mr. Corbyn:
My borough has a serious housing problem, which will be solved only by a programme of building and buying homes with affordable rents. The way in which the housing benefit system has been manipulated by the Tory Government over the past 15 years to subsidise extortionate rents charged by private landlords is outrageous.
I can give an example. Of two identical houses side by side, one is rented from the council at a weekly rent of about £55, which is paid by housing benefit because the family are unemployed. The family next door, who are also unemployed, rent privately what used to be a council home for £180 per week. That, too, is paid by housing benefit. Where is the sense in spending that public money on housing benefit, just to please a private landlord?
The council wants to solve the housing problem in the borough. I want to solve it, too. That can be done partly by better management of the property that we have, but, crucially, it can be done by the construction of new homes with affordable rents.
The housing benefit bill in this country is enormous. It does not help the individuals who receive it, because it was designed to help landlords who have benefited from deregulation.
Mr. Robert G. Hughes:
The hon. Gentleman is making an important point. Of course I acknowledge that there are problems with housing benefit, but when he cited his example he made no allowance for debt charges on the house that is still in council ownership. Surely if one does that, not necessarily for that particular house but overall, it changes the figures substantially. The debt on a house that has been sold will have been paid off, because that is how the regulations work.
Mr. Corbyn:
I realise that it is some time since the hon. Gentleman was a local councillor, and he may not have heard that the Department of the Environment has ring-fenced housing revenue accounts. The argument that council tenants are subsidised by the rest of the population is simply untrue. The issue is that a great deal of money is being made by private landlords for doing precisely nothing--and they are being subsidised by the state to do nothing. That is an abuse of public expenditure.
Mr. Hughes:
We have had the joke, but what about the serious answer? Of course I know that housing revenue
Mr. Corbyn:
The contrast is exactly what I said it was; I gave the figures. The ring fencing of the housing revenue account means that it has to bear the cost of debt charges on money borrowed over 60 years, as most local authority loans are, whereas a mortgage is usually taken out over 20, 25 or 30 years. That is the difference.
Public investment in good-quality housing is good for the people who live in it, and good for public expenditure as a whole. Spending money on housing benefit to prop up private landlords is not good. It is a crass waste of money, as the Government are at last beginning to recognise.
Mr. Andrew Mitchell:
I always enjoy the hon. Gentleman's speeches, and I have great respect for the integrity that he brings to his side of the debate, especially as it makes his hon. Friends on the Front Bench squirm. Will he make something clear to the House? He has said that extra public expenditure is needed. Will he confirm that he is entirely happy with the Labour party's policy of living within the Government's overall spending totals, in the unlikely event of Labour ever being elected?
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