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Mr. Corbyn: I have no idea, any more than any other Opposition Member, what the books will look like when we have won the general election on 1 May. But rest assured that I shall be here, campaigning for better housing for the poor in this country. Whether the Minister will be here as well is for the voters of Gedling to decide.
I shall now move on to the issue of health, and the link between poor health and poverty. The Department of Health now acknowledges that life expectancy for the poorest in our society has worsened. For some very poor people, it is almost as bad as it was in the 1940s.
There have been some interesting articles on the subject in the British Medical Journal. Infant mortality statistics show that death rates for first babies born into the poorest social class, class V, are 70 per cent. higher than in social class I, and that babies born to unemployed parents are almost twice as likely to die as those born to the wealthiest class.
The public health officer's report for Camden and Islington makes chilling reading. Infant mortality, life expectancy and the incidence of notifiable diseases are much worse than the national average. What is worse, the suicide rate for men has risen dramatically with the rise in unemployment and poverty in our society. There is a downside to the idea that all one needs to do is to give more money to the rich and let it trickle down to the poor. There is an increase in absolute poverty and deprivation.
The meanness of the Secretary of State's policy is apparent in many areas, one of which is the treatment of asylum seekers. An extremely small amount, compared with the Department's total budget, used to be spent on supporting people who were quite properly conducting an
appeal against the refusal of benefits because they were asylum seekers. They lost those benefits and are living in desperate poverty.
The National Assistance Act 1948 ruling by the court means that local authorities have to support people who face destitution. I welcome that ruling, because it is one way of getting some food into the mouths of desperately hungry people who are fleeing from fear and oppression in another society, but by rights the Department of Social Security, not local authorities, should bear the cost.
Benefit rights for asylum seekers should be fully restored, so that the spirit of the 1948 legislation, to remove the fear of starvation, poverty and homelessness from everyone in our society, can be seen to be a reality. I hope that the Secretary of State will tell us that he is prepared to restore those rights.
Mr. Stephen:
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that a genuine asylum seeker who claims asylum when he arrives does indeed receive benefits in the time that elapses before his case is decided, but that people who prove to an immigration officer that they are coming here as tourists or students, or on business, that they have tickets to get home at the end of their stay, and that they have the means to support themselves while here, do not get benefits, and nor should they?
Mr. Corbyn:
The hon. Gentleman has slightly misunderstood the rules. If people arrive here and claim asylum, not at the port of entry but subsequently, they have difficulty in getting benefits. If they have applied for asylum and it has been denied, and they are quite properly pursuing an appeal, which is their right, they have no access to benefits while the appeal is being pursued, which can last for up to three years.
We have a large number of absolutely destitute people in our society because the Government are playing the racist card against people who are victims of terrible situations in other societies. Last week, some asylum seekers from the middle east described to me the torture, pain, horror and terror that they had experienced at the hands of the regime from which they had fled. Their asylum applications had been turned down, they had no benefits, and they were living on gifts from people in local churches or--
Mr. David Shaw:
Not genuine asylum seekers.
Mr. Corbyn:
The hon. Gentleman says from a sedentary position that they were not genuine asylum seekers, but how on earth can he say that? He did not interview them, and he does not know them.
Mr. Nicholls:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
The account of the torture of those people and their families deserves at least to be listened to and given serious consideration. They have quite properly exercised their right to appeal against the decision, but the problem is that they get no benefits while the appeal is being processed, which may take a very long time. It is
disgraceful. It is equally disgraceful that people are on hunger strike in British prisons, yet the Home Office apparently could not give a sod.
Mr. Stephen:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Corbyn:
No, I am not going to give way any more. I shall move on, because I know that other hon. Members want to speak in this debate, which is not only about asylum seekers.
The hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) and the Secretary of State spoke about pensions and the so-called pension reform that is being paraded around by the Government and any number of right-wing think tanks as a great success. The problem is that in 1980 the Government broke the link of the annual uprating of pensions with earnings, and switched it to prices.
In the late 1970s, pensions had been increasing as a proportion of average earnings and had reached about 24 per cent. by 1980; today, the figure is down to 13 per cent. and falling. Indeed, one of the Secretary of State's predecessors said that at this rate it would eventually become nugatory.
Many in the Conservative party think that it is right to cut the value of the state earnings-related pension scheme, to create an enormous market for private pensions, and to ignore the consequences, which are that many elderly people are living in desperate poverty with no access to anything other than the state pension and state benefits, many of which they do not claim for various reasons, and that people in middle age who are in work--especially if they change jobs frequently or have occasional periods of unemployment--cannot buy into any kind of occupational scheme. They could possibly buy into a private scheme, but the cost would be phenomenal.
Many people heading for retirement age have no security whatever, other than the state pension and the state benefits system. We are facing an increase in poverty among the elderly in 10 to 15 years' time, rather than the majority being better off, as the Government like to suggest.
I believe passionately in a universal welfare state, and I believe that state pensions should be linked to average earnings and should be sufficient to live on, as they are in most European countries. The notion that the social security system should provide both a safety net and a marketplace for the private pensions industry seems entirely wrong to me.
I support the principle of universal benefits, for several reasons. They are effective, as child benefit has demonstrated, and they are cheap to administer. For example, in 1994-95 administration expenditure on the means-tested targeted directive for the social fund--if ever there was a Tory measure, that was it--was £209 million, out of a total budget of £451 million. How on earth can spending 40 per cent. of the value of the entire benefit merely on making sure that people do not get it be justified?
That is the reality: we are spending huge amounts on making sure that people do not get their benefits. We must get away from the mentality of spending millions of pounds on administration to stop people getting benefits, when we see poverty and misery increasing all around us.
The welfare state is crucial and will dominate political debate in the coming years both here and throughout Europe. I am entirely familiar with the argument being
made around Europe: we must cut corporate taxation, so benefits have to be cut to allow corporations to compete with the low-wage economies of the far east. That is the road to ruin and disaster. We should argue the case instead for a high level of provision under a universal benefit system.
It has been clearly demonstrated that if we continue on the present road we will increase the divisions in our society and increase poverty, and it will do nobody any good at all. To see what happens in societies that do not have welfare state provisions such as those that this country was once proud of, one need only look at the way in which the poor are treated in the worst states in the United States and in emergent industrial economies with a limited, if not almost non-existent, welfare state. The social division, misery and unemployment are apparent. It is time for us to change course and to consider protecting and, indeed, extending the welfare state.
Much has been made of employment. The best way of dealing with employment problems and to recognise the insecurity faced by people in work is to introduce a national minimum wage at a decent level. It is wrong that many people are forced by the jobseeker's allowance to take jobs at £1.50 or £2 an hour. If they refuse to do so, they may lose all benefits.
For example, a family on housing benefit and income support living in a private rented flat in London could pay as much as £100 to £150 a week for their flat, and their income support could be £60 or £70 a week depending on their circumstances. If a member of the family refuses a job--however low the wages--he loses housing benefit and other benefits. If he takes the job, the family will lose housing benefit just the same, and many people will be worse off in disgraceful low-paid jobs than they would be on benefit. The use of family credit as a prop to low wages and poor-quality employers is not the right way forward. It is time to change course and to get rid of the jobseeker's allowance. Instead, we must look to people's needs and the elimination of poverty within our society.
I recognise that time is moving on, and my final point deals with the way in which young people are treated in our society. Successive Secretaries of State for Social Security have been almost obsessed with cutting or restricting benefits for young people under 25. The most important change to the benefit system was the Social Security Act 1986, which came into effect in 1988 and was introduced by the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) with the support of the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), who is now the Prime Minister.
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