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Mr. Burt: The hon. Lady mentioned lone parents, nine out of 10 of whom are lone mothers. I am anxious to put on record what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security said at our party conference in 1993. He mentioned areas of rising spending and said:
- "The third main area of rising spending is on lone parents. But I am less concerned about the cost than the breakdown of families. There are now 1.3 million lone parents. Many find themselves lone parents against their will. Widows, divorced and separated people struggle alone, but often successfully, to bring their children up well. They deserve not blame but support."
Our work on lone parents is not a new area for us. I was interested in the comments made by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell) about her local scheme, and I would be grateful if she would keep us informed. We have worked on the problem of lone parents for some time, and we appreciate the differences with other countries which have more lone parents in work. Lone parents in other countries do not have the option of not needing to find work until their children are 16--they have to find work much earlier.
We have tried a number of schemes to put lone parents back to work, and the most successful is the family credit scheme. The hon. Member for Peckham did not mention that. She said that lone parents were left on benefit with no assistance to get back to work, but the family credit scheme has been outstandingly successful in getting lone parents back to work. It is one of the main reasons why some 300,000 lone parents now claim family credit at a cost of £1 billion. Since 1992, some 200,000 lone parents have left income support for family credit, and more will do so in the future.
We have worked on schemes with the National Council for One Parent Families for the past three years--the contract has been renewed--to research the work and training that will be most suitable for women who want to get back to work. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has studied that area and, together with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, has introduced Parent Plus, which will provide structured assistance in jobseeking and training for lone parents by way of a three-year pilot project.
Mr. Andrew Mitchell:
The best scheme in the world.
Mr. Burt:
As my hon. Friend says, it will be the best scheme in the world, because it is distilled from ideas from elsewhere and ideas that we have worked on for a long time.
Not only do we share a common desire to get lone parents back into work but, as has so often been the case in social security, it is we who have had the ideas, we who are putting them into practice and we who can create budgets that can deliver, unlike the Labour party, which simply makes pious promises.
The hon. Member for Islington, North made, as always, a significant speech. If the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) is one of the ghosts
at this feast because of his contribution to social security, the hon. Member for Islington, North, along with the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen), are also the ghosts, because they have spoken in the past of their belief in socialism; I have no doubt that their connection with the Opposition Front Bench is tenuous, to say the least.
The hon. Member for Islington, North went through the entire range of his concerns about poverty and other such matters but his sole solution was to tax the rich. As the hon. Gentleman knows, because I have debated with him for many years, there is not much between us in our determination to deal with matters such as poverty caused through lack of employment. As sponsor Minister for Manchester and Salford with responsibility for the city challenge projects in the north of England, I have seen the Government invest serious sums of money in a variety of areas where work has been hard to come by, in order to stimulate employment and improve social conditions in hard-hit communities.
That regeneration work has been among the most successful that the Government have accomplished, and the Prime Minister and others deserve great credit for putting money into those schemes and doing the job properly. However, having recognised that money alone is not enough, they have looked for good schemes and ways to help reduce the incidence of poverty.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Southport clearly said, the hon. Member for Islington, North and, to some extent, Opposition Front-Bench Members, have failed to see that poverty in the UK is not static. There is a great deal of mobility because people get jobs, have chances to improve their position and move up the income bracket with assistance and, above all, with the availability of jobs. Again, we return to the crucial contradiction in Labour policy. I do not understand how a group of people who have shared virtually every principle that they ever stood for but who cling desperately to at least one--the determination to get people into work--can have a minimum wage policy that is so contrary to that objective.
The Conservative party's determination to get people back into work is evidenced not just by the figures that show the reality of falling unemployment and rising employment but in our determination to resist the very policies that sound marvellous on the doorstep but would do such damage to working people. We are right to resist them vigorously.
My hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mr. Booth) had the right approach when he talked about people's attitude to employment and opportunities. He quoted the phrase that we need a hand-up society rather than a handout society. That is nothing new. He need not defer to the Labour party in terms of that phrase; we have all had it in mind as part of our policy for a long time. The only difference between us and the Labour party is that we achieve it. Our welfare-to-work, family credit and work incentive policies have done the job.
The hon. Member for Rochdale, surrounded by so many of her colleagues during the debate--[Hon. Members: "Where were they?"]--put up a lone but brave battle on a number of different issues. I must correct her analysis on war pensions. The responses from those we have consulted on the proposal to simplify war pensions have been broadly welcoming.
The measures were greeted by the Royal British Legion with the words:
Mr. Burt:
May I finish the point?
We accept that the evidence on which our new advice is based has been available to the experts for some time. That means that the current advice should have been applied earlier. However, we shall honour existing awards, despite their lack of foundation, and no existing war pensioner will lose money as a result of the change of approach.
Mr. Burt:
I shall give way to the hon. Lady first, as I mentioned her first.
Ms Lynne:
How come that Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, in the other place, seemed to back-track on the idea of new medical evidence? He seemed to admit that no new medical evidence had been brought forward, yet people who had experienced hearing loss--not to the extent of an 80-year-old at present, but hearing loss that could deteriorate over the years--would not get their war pensions. Why did Lord Mackay say that?
Mr. Burt:
The clarification offered by my right hon. and noble Friend in another place related to the medical evidence. We had originally been under the impression that the medical evidence that we were receiving was new. In fact, it had been available for some time, and we might have acted upon it sooner. My right hon. and noble Friend was clarifying the fact that we did not intend to go back on awards already made, and confirming the fact that the advice on which we are now working had been available for some time.
Mr. Denham:
Will the Minister confirm that, according to the experts, there has been no change in the medical evidence not only for "some time", but for 30 years? Is not the truth that it was a convenient discovery of an alleged change that led to the change in policy designed to hit future war pension claims?
Mr. Burt:
I think that the number of years is immaterial. The point is that the policy that we are following now is correct, and based on medical evidence. We have clarified the small detail that had been left open through recent arguments.
My hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts), in a good contribution, described in some detail the importance of work incentives. Again, we could supplement his comments in so many ways by examining our work incentive strategy since 1988. We have introduced a series of measures to ensure that people move from welfare into work--from the introduction of family credit to housing benefit earnings disregards, from national insurance contribution bonuses and contribution holidays for employers, to housing benefit run-ons. Those measures have been responsible for ensuring that people have moved from welfare into work. In the face of such evidence, it is extraordinary that Opposition Members seem so determined to go back on policies that have proved so successful.
My hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls) made several points. In particular, we share with him a concern that those who claim benefits should be available for work. I assure him that the benefit claims of people who take part in protests are processed, in the same way as everyone else's, to ensure that they are indeed available for work.
I am grateful for the assistance of my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith) in passing on further information about a loophole. We do much to ensure that loopholes are closed, but we are always grateful for new information about them.
My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, North (Mr. Jenkin), in what was almost the final contribution of the debate, hit the nail on the head when he described the difference between the Government and the Opposition in terms of the two tunes that Labour like to sing. There is one tune down here, which is spread round by the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East, and it is about Labour sticking to our spending and tax policies. There is a different tune for the poor and disadvantaged, which says that in some way the Labour party still represents some hope for them.
The truth is that the hope for those who want to see an improvement in people's conditions in this country no longer resides with the Labour party; the hope for people to improve their circumstances lies with those who are getting people back to work: the Conservative party and the Secretary of State with his policies on social security.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield said earlier that we had won the arguments both on pensions and on social security. He was so right. This is
no longer a debate. We go through as an icebreaker, and Para Handy follows behind like a little tugboat trying to make something of it.
We can answer the challenges. Some years ago, the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) was sent away to think the unthinkable on social security. The truth is that, as on so many other matters, the Tories have got it right.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
"the decision on the changes has been most welcome and reassuring".
The British Limbless Ex-Service Men's Association said:
"we are extremely happy with the decisions reached by the Government".
The approach that we are now taking to war pensions in connection with noise-induced sensorineural hearing loss is sound. All those who have commented agree that the medical advice that we are now following is right. The Royal British Legion's medical advisers confirmed in their open letter that
"noise induced hearing loss and loss due to ageing are broadly additive".
We accept--
That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 1997, which was laid before this House on 31st January, be approved.
Mr. Deputy Speaker then put the remaining Questions required to be put at that hour.
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