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9.4 pm
Mr. Robert G. Hughes (Harrow, West): I apologise for not having been present for the entire debate. I had to speak to a lobby in the Grand Committee Room, but I was here at the beginning and I heard the speech made by the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman), which was curious to say the least. She fell into a particular trap.
As usual, wise things have been said by the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who is the Chairman of the Select Committee on Social Security. He said that anyone who says that Labour's welfare objectives can be achieved without spending more either has something wrong with them or should not be trusted. I am not sure which of those is true of the hon. Member for Peckham, but plainly one of them must be, because she seemed to think that Labour could achieve its social objectives without increasing expenditure.
At least the hon. Lady hesitated before saying that, whereas her predecessor, the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), had no compunction. When asked whether Labour could achieve its plans without spending more money by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in last year's debate, he responded:
We get bits and pieces, but no properly costed programme to carry out the objectives that Labour Members like to tell us about, not only in the Chamber but outside. They make promises and talk about how wonderful the one-off payments used to be, which leads people to believe that we will go back to one-off payments if there is a Labour Government. None of the plans is costed, nothing is clearly stated--they say one thing to one group and something else to another.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was characteristically too generous to the Labour party when he spoke about its spending plans. He said that it would seek to contain expenditure across the whole range of Government spending within the current spending plans. However, over the period of the public expenditure survey round, those spending plans are predicated on about £9 billion of privatisation proceeds. The big question is, therefore, if a Labour Government are going to have to raise that money, what will they privatise?
We know--at least we think we know--that it will not be the Tote. Until the Labour party--which has opposed every single privatisation and every single agency being put out to the private sector--is able to come up with a list of things that a Labour Government would privatise, its spending plans have a huge hole in them, even at the current spending targets. Until Labour Members come clean on that, we will not know what they are talking about.
The theme of Labour Members' speeches that I have heard tonight is that the gap between rich and poor has increased more in Britain than in any other major
developed country, which is a quote from the previous Labour spokesman on social security, the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury. However, the facts simply do not bear out that assertion. We should look at what is really happening in Britain. That is not to say that there are no problems or that there are no people who are poor or who find life difficult, but there can be no doubt that the Conservative Government's actions have helped many poorer people to become richer.
The Government have a programme of major reforms and of targeting expenditure where it is needed, of helping those most in need--for instance, spending on vulnerable groups has increased by £1.5 billion a year since 1988--of improving the system of child benefit, of cracking down on fraud and of helping people into jobs. As my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, North (Mr. Jenkin) has said, Labour Members have said not a word about the success of family credit. They did not mention the fact that we introduced it, and improved it in 1992, 1994 and 1995. That benefit has boosted the incomes of families with children, who are in work but who have low incomes. Almost 700,000 families now receive family credit, which is worth an average of £55 per week.
A moment ago, I asked what is really happening in Britain. I wonder whether Opposition Members would recognise the Britain that is described in the following terms. The average incomes of the poorest tenth of the population in 1991 had risen by nearly 50 per cent. in real terms by 1994. Do Opposition Members recognise that description of Britain under a Conservative Government? Do they recognise the fact that the poorest 10 per cent. of the population by income spend 14 per cent. more now than they did in 1979? Do Opposition Members deny that that is the situation in Britain today? Do they deny that less well-off people now have a higher standard of living than when Labour was in power? [Interruption.] I shall give way to the hon. Member for Tyne Bridge (Mr. Clelland) if he thinks that he knows his facts.
Of the 20 per cent. of the population with the lowest incomes, 85 per cent. now have a fridge-freezer compared with only 32 per cent. in 1979. Opposition Members may think that that is irrelevant, but it shows what changes have occurred. Some 75 per cent. of that group have central heating, compared with 40 per cent. in 1979. If the hon. Member for Tyne Bridge thinks that I am making up those figures, he should intervene and say so. They are the facts: this is what is happening in Britain today under a Conservative Government.
Most people are on low incomes for only a short period because our society is highly mobile. Opposition Members shake their heads, but they will not get to their feet and deny that that is happening in Britain today.
Mr. David Clelland (Tyne Bridge):
Tell the people outside; they do not believe it.
Mr. Hughes:
That comment is characteristic of the hon. Gentleman. These are the facts. If he is confident that I am wrong, I challenge him to dispute my facts. We have a highly mobile society, which is also a meritocracy.
Mr. Hughes:
The Institute for Fiscal Studies believes that it is true.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes):
Order. I do not think that the debate should proceed via answers to questions from sedentary positions.
Mr. Hughes:
Although they will not come to the Dispatch Box and say so, Opposition Members deny that what I say is true. I have just quoted from the Institute for Fiscal Studies report of 1995, entitled "Poverty Dynamics in Great Britain". I think that people in this country would rather trust the IFS than Labour Front Benchers.
Less than 1 per cent. of men aged between 25 and 44 in 1978 stayed on unemployment, sickness or incapacity benefits between 1979 and 1993. About three quarters of men who leave their jobs find another job within a year. Listening to Labour Members, one would think, first, that long-term unemployment is a new phenomenon; and, secondly, that the same group of people remain unemployed year after year.
Finally, according to the 1996 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development study, "Employment Outlook", Britain enjoys more upward mobility among young workers than any from a sample of major western economies. Between 1986 and 1991, 62 per cent. of British under-25s moved up at least one band, as opposed to only 39 per cent. of young Swedes, whose social system new Labour would have us emulate.
Mr. Henry McLeish (Fife, Central):
I am not sure that the debate reached the dizzy heights of being interesting, but it has been an important debate nevertheless. The highlight came when the hon. Member for Colchester, North (Mr. Jenkin) got rather excited and suggested that the jackdaw was an animal, but at that point there were pigs flying round the Chamber as well, so what is new in the Government's approach?
Never have I seen Conservative Members so concerned to speak about the Opposition's policies. The proximity of a general election that Labour will win may loom large in their plans. I hope so. They spent a great deal of time attacking us this evening, but they refused to defend their appalling record on social security, especially in recent years under the guardianship of the right hon. Member for St. Albans (Mr. Lilley).
It is important to consider the charges that we preferred against the Government. Social security is a cradle-to-grave issue that affects virtually every individual in the nation at some point in his or her life.
It is useful to reflect on some of the comments made during the debate. I have never before heard my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) referred to as a toff. It is a pity that he was not present to hear that criticism.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) made an interesting point about the quality of service in the Department. I take the opportunity to praise one of the offices in my constituency. The lady--I am sure that I cannot use her name--has moved from being in charge of the benefits office in Kirkcaldy. She has been superb--courteous and effective, and the office that she managed provided efficient service. If every Department of State and every local government department were as effective as her office, less criticism would be levelled at public services throughout the nation.
I want to spend some time considering the issue that the Government do not want to talk about--poverty in modern Britain. The hon. Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls) suggested that the statistics on poverty were nonsense. I intervened at that point to suggest that one would describe the Government's statistics not as nonsense but as a worrying and sinister aspect of Britain as we approach the new millennium.
The Government put up no defence this evening. Over the past four years, an extra £15 billion has been spent on social security. The Government spend, spend, spend, but we have more poverty, more waste and more people living on the margins of society. The Government wax eloquent about the burdens facing the taxpayer, who pays more as a contribution to the social security budget.
We should put what the Government have been doing in context, and in doing so we should look at the past four years in particular. If the money involved had been not expenditure but investment, in a product that then materialised, we might have been debating that tonight; but, in a sense, all we have seen is a black hole. We can argue about the proportion of the budget that has been devoted to so-called family benefit, as against "failure benefit", "poverty benefit" or benefit for older people. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says, from a sedentary position, "The facts are there; we are telling the truth." We can dispute the facts, but I think that it is important to look at the issue of poverty.
It was the Prime Minister who said, in an article in The Herald published on 4 March 1992,
I think it important to identify two simple aspects of poverty. First, poverty is not just about money; in Britain, it means families and individuals experiencing social
exclusion, welfare dependency, economic and long-term insecurity, community dislocation, detachment from the labour market and, critically--I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House agree about this--the undermining of the self-worth of the individual. The catalyst in the creation of a productive and civilising society is the self-worth of every one of the 56 million people who live in the United Kingdom.
I said that poverty was not just about money; it is also not just about the poor. We are all involved. The recipients, or claimants, of benefit are obviously involved, but the taxpayer is playing an enormous role. One pound in three of public expenditure are now devoted to social security, and we have seen a remorseless increase over the past three or four years.
I have tried to underline the general importance of the issue, but I specifically want to confront the Government with the central charge that they are unaware, or else unwilling or unable to face up to their own statistics, which are contained in the quarterly reports on income support. We do not want to complicate life by talking about 50 per cent. of average household income or low pay at this stage.
Excluding those important considerations, let us dwell on income support. In February 1996, 5.8 million people were claiming income support. Let us recall what the Prime Minister said about the level of income support being something that could be used as a benchmark. That means that a population larger than that of Scotland is now claiming income support--and when we take into account dependants such as children and partners, the figure increases to nearly 10 million. Again, the Government, not I, worked out the ratio.
What does it mean in modern Britain for 10 million people--I exclude other definitions of poverty and low pay--to be on the breadline? What does that mean in a modern, civilised, prosperous society? It means all the things that I mentioned earlier, but it also confronts Governments, and it certainly confronts the Opposition. If we are to have a cohesive society in which fractures are healed, surely to goodness we must take account of nearly one in five of the population. Nearly 3 million children are being brought up in families whose income is, in fact, income support.
The central thrust of our charge this evening is that, in the past four years, there has been a spectacular explosion in costs and in the number of people claiming income support. Indeed, the Government's quarterly income support figures show that, between February 1992 and February 1996, a further 865 people claimed income support or entered poverty every working day. How can that be justified? I will give Ministers an opportunity to tell me, first, whether that figure is right--it is, and they know it--and, secondly, how they can justify the extraordinary explosion in the number of people marching to benefit offices day in and day out to receive girocheques.
"Yes, and if the Secretary of State will contain himself for a few weeks, he will learn how we intend to go about it."--[Official Report, 20 February 1996; Vol. 272, c. 211.]
That was a year ago, yet we are still waiting.
"Some people are still not very well off, but poverty is measured by the Income Support level. This is the only way people measure poverty, the number of people above and below the Income Support level."
That was the start of the Prime Minister's embarkation on the idea of the classless society. Moreover, it was at about that time that the current Secretary of State took over at the Department of Social Security. At the Conservative party conference, on Wednesday 9 October 1996, he said:
"But for us dependency isn't just a waste of money: it's a waste of lives. It not only drains the public purse, it saps the human spirit. That is why we are determined to continue our welfare revolution--developing a new approach to get people back to work--taking tough choices to curb welfare's relentless growth."
The Secretary of State did not go on to explain why the social security budget was at an historically high level, and still growing, when he took over.
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