| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston): As one of those new Members that you are so terribly concerned about, may I assure you that there is a difference between saving money for the sake of it and saving money in a system that is inherently inefficient? You left us with an inefficient system that needs modernising. You were simply cutting--
Ms Stuart: I am sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The right hon. and hon. Members who are now, rightly, on the Opposition Benches, were cutting without looking at what was happening to the whole system. I suggest that there is a difference between what the previous Government proposed and what we propose today.
Mr. Duncan Smith: My hon. Friend may have a point. I must tell the hon. Lady that the only real difference is the fact that Labour Members are now on the Government Benches and we are on the Opposition Benches. If the Bill had been constructed and written by the present Government since they came to power, if they had thought of it and initiated it--even if that had been done by the Minister for Welfare Reform--she might have a point. She does not, because we proposed the same measures before our departure. I simply tell her that, even if she was so opposed to those measures before, she has quickly learnt how to swallow her words.
Clause 70 is especially important because it was not part of our proposals. I am interested in it, and we shall tease out in Committee more detail about how it will work. Some concerns have been raised about it. As we know, the clause introduces a new time restriction on backdating social security benefit claims. The limit will be reduced from three months to one month. Clearly, that is a cost-cutting measure; the clause is designed to save money. The explanatory and financial memorandum estimates that it will save about £57 million annually, so there is no questioning it. The Government are not trying to hide the saving, because that, essentially, is what the clause is for.
The question is why the clause was added to the Bill, although it was not originally suggested. We initiated the idea of levelling the time at three months, so the new
arrangement goes deeper than we planned. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) should examine that difference carefully.
The measure was added because, as the Secretary of State admitted, the Labour Government do not intend to implement some of our proposed changes to housing benefit. The measure is designed in part to fund that reversal. It will affect the people whom hon. Members have said that it will, because of the decision not to change the housing benefit regulations. [Interruption.] We shall see who will be on the streets and who will not be able to afford to make a claim as a result.
One of the concerns raised was about the problems for widows who are confused about exactly when and where claims were made. Their claims will be levelled back to one month, like everyone else's. I hope that the Government will reconsider that, because it is a hard part of the clause, which we shall examine in Committee.
Members of the Government, when in opposition, made strong statements on the subject. On 16 July 1993, as is recorded at column 1260 of Hansard, the Minister who is to sum up said that a high take-up was essential to ensure that the poorest in our society received the meagre income to which they were entitled through the benefits system. How does he square that with the present change? I shall be interested to hear his answer when he sums up.
The Secretary of State probably breathed a sigh of relief when I went straight to clause 70, because I had not dealt with clause 68. However, we shall come back to clause 68 now. I left it until last because it represents the biggest single change and the biggest single money-saving measure in the Bill.
The change is not purely administrative; it is a serious change to the way in which child benefit is paid to single parents, as compared with those who are not single parents. We definitely advanced the idea, and I have often asked the Secretary of State whether she would implement it.
The right hon. Lady knows that, in the past, she consistently opposed that idea. Many, probably most, of her right hon. and hon. Friends probably opposed it too. As I said a couple of weeks ago during the Budget debate, the right hon. Lady can be extensively quoted on the subject, especially in an interview with Polly Toynbee in The Independent, in which she said that she would not implement the measure. The Prime Minister, when he was Leader of the Opposition, backed the right hon. Lady up by saying that Labour certainly would not implement it.
In view of those assurances, given before the Labour party entered government, I want to know why Labour Members publicly told all the people whom they assumed would vote for them, that Labour would not take that action--indeed, that there was no chance of that happening--when, after two and a half months in government, they have implemented the scheme that we proposed. That is the very scheme that the present Secretary of State attacked, both at the time of the Budget in which we proposed it, and subsequently.
What changed the right hon. Lady's view? It appears to me that the saving of money was probably the greatest driving force. We shall want to find out more about why she, supported by the Prime Minister, turned round and changed her mind in government.
I am intrigued, because the right hon. Lady has such a long track record on the subject. In 1990 she wrote a pamphlet called "The Family Way", which made it clear that she would never countenance such a thing were she in government. She wrote:
The Chancellor has broken his bond of trust in the Budget, and now more bonds of trust are being thrown away on the route to implementation of the Bill. As I have said, the Bill contains many things that we suggested. We still want to hear answers from the Secretary of State about the change programme, and we still need to know--the House needs to know--exactly why the Government have decided to implement our proposals. I welcome the fact that that is what they intend to do, but they must give their reasons.
The right hon. Lady talked about having secured £200 million from the Treasury through the windfall tax. It is important to note that, in clause 68 alone, the saving will dwarf what she gets from the Treasury. The sum will not be £240 million alone; she knows that new entrants are affected, so there will be a build-up to a cumulative total.
The estimates are that, in the lifetime of this Parliament, in the four years that the arrangement is likely to run while the Labour party is in power, the saving is likely to be from £300 million to £500 million. The right hon. Lady is offering up a much bigger saving than she is getting back for the welfare-to-work proposal. She should get her civil servants to inform her about that.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden, the right hon. Lady's predecessor as Secretary of State, was told that, at its peak, the measure would deliver £1.5 billion in savings back to the Treasury from the Department. It is worth examining that figure, because it represents serious savings. It alone dwarfs everything else. I welcome the major cost saving implied by the volte-face but I wonder how many Labour Back Benchers would do so.
We intend to reserve our position in Committee, on Report and on Third Reading, until we get answers about some of the changes. I am especially concerned about clause 70, because that seems to have come out of the blue to get the Government off the hook about not implementing the housing benefit changes. I want to hear in detail in Committee the Government's estimate of who will be most affected. How do the Government intend to alleviate the hardship that will fall where they had perhaps not thought that it would?
Our position generally is logical, because it is clear that the Bill derives from the Green Paper and from other proposals by my right hon. Friend the previous Secretary of State. We would have implemented many of the proposals in the Bill had we been in government, and we have not changed our position publicly or privately.
I also see the logic of the Liberal Democrats tabling a reasoned amendment, because they made it clear on several occasions that they were opposed to some of the changes, but I suspect that they may need to watch out a bit more, because the great coalitions that are being built may be thrown into jeopardy as a result of their strange opposition, which has emerged at the 11th hour, and the Chancellor and the Prime Minister may reconsider their great scheme of including the Liberal Democrats.
The most illogical position is the Government's. Having vehemently opposed and attacked every single measure in the Bill, and especially those in clause 68, they are now implementing them all. They have an awful lot of explaining to do. The very people who so publicly opposed those programmes are lined up on the Treasury Bench proposing them. I accept that there may be one or more exceptions, but the majority of the Ministers concerned were absolutely opposed to the measures.
To change one's opinion because of the power of the argument is one thing, but to do a policy U-turn and not offer a single explanation in one's opening speech is another; it is extremely strange, and appears to be more about misleading than about accountability. Surely we are in the realms of hypocrisy. This is the politics of convenience, because the Labour party in government is clawing around for money savings and going for the very proposals that we made and it attacked.
"a more efficient means for raising the living standard of parents and children on welfare is a substantial increase in the lone parents' premium to child benefit and/or child benefit itself".
I hate to drag things up from the past, because they do not always fit easily with the way people are at the moment. I simply say that such matters are important. The country and the House have a right to know what happened on the road to Damascus to persuade the right hon. Lady that what she had said should all be swept aside, and she should implement the change. It is fair enough that she should implement that change, which was our proposal, but my question is important. The one group that she has endlessly championed will, rightly, want to know the answer. Let us hear it, perhaps when the Under-Secretary of State sums up--or if the Secretary of State wants to tell us now, I shall give way to her. She does not. Okay, fair enough.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |