| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Webb: In the hon. Gentleman's long and distinguished time at the Low Pay Unit, did he ever advocate and support the principle of universal benefits such as child benefit and lone-parent benefit, and indeed advocate that they be increased?
Mr. Pond: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, especially as it is not a difficult one to get around.
Mr. Flight: Answer the question.
Mr. Pond: I shall do. I have long advocated and will advocate again this evening the principle of universal
benefits. One of the difficulties that we face in the social security system, and one of the reasons why our system does not deliver to the people most in need and stigmatises those who have to turn to it, is that it now so heavily depends on means-tested benefits. That not only creates dependency among people claiming those benefits, but traps us as a society in a situation where the expenditure escalates--the cost of economic failure. As the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) well knows, I have also advocated an improvement in the level of benefits.
In recent years, there has been an attempt to widen those divisions between the poorest, whom we are discussing tonight, and the rest of society. That was justified, apparently, on the ground that it would generate prosperity, but Britain has slipped down the prosperity league. Only Greece, Portugal and Spain have a lower national income per head than Britain. That is because inequality is not only socially divisive and politically dangerous, but economically wasteful.
I do not think that any hon. Member believes that the Bill of itself is going to eradicate that poverty or that inequality, but we owe it to people who depend on social security benefits to ensure that the system delivers in the most effective and efficient way possible. That is one of the Bill's objectives and it is an important one. We need to ensure that the system uses the most modern technology available to deliver to claimants. We owe it to those on social security to ensure that they are treated with dignity and respect, and to the poorest families to ensure that, wherever possible, they are given every opportunity to lift themselves off social security and into work which provides them with a decent standard of living.
As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has explained, the Bill does not stand alone. It is part of a wider strategy of welfare to work. She referred to the fact that one in five non-pensioner households have no one in employment. That is almost the highest proportion in the EU. The creation of jobs and quality training places through the new deal will do far more to alleviate poverty than anything we might do in terms of social security benefit, so I argue that people who depend on social security should be treated with dignity and should be provided with a level of income that allows them to meet the needs of themselves and their families with self-respect. I also believe that it is important that, wherever possible, we allow people an escape route from dependency on benefits.
As we know, many families are consigned to poverty because the parents have no opportunity to work. That is why the measures that were described earlier--the new deal for lone parents and the extra £200 million--are so important in providing real choices. As we know, most of those single parents, if they had the choice, would prefer to work. Perhaps most important, we must remember that the single largest group in poverty--the working poor--is little touched by the Bill.
I have mentioned that I used to work for the Low Pay Unit. Its case load illustrates that, in current circumstances, for many people, paid employment is no escape from poverty. One young woman is employed as a typesetter and works 47.5 hours a week, just below the working-time directive limit, for a wage of £57.69 a week. If my sums are right, that is equivalent to £1.21 an hour.
Another is employed as an administrative supervisor in London for a wage of £1.55 an hour. Such pitiful rates of pay allow those people no escape from dependency on social security, however harsh that system is, and mean that they are consigned to relying on benefits.
Those people are among the poorest, but they are not necessarily on social security. That is why it is so important that the national minimum wage is part of this package of measures--to provide people with earnings so that they can provide themselves with a living that is worthy of human dignity. The position of that group will also be greatly enhanced by the Bill's measures on national insurance contributions. Too often, people, especially those in low-paid and insecure jobs, are the victims of cowboy employers who swindle not only the national insurance fund out of revenue, but their employees out of entitlement to benefit. They not only consign those individuals to poverty while in work but help to ensure that, when they are not in work, they will not have sufficient entitlement to benefits to lift themselves out of poverty at those stages of the life cycle. The growth of means testing has meant that millions are entangled in what used to be described as a safety net but which is that no longer. We should make sure that, when people turn to the social security system for support, they can do so with dignity and can expect fairness. We should also make sure that as few people as possible have to turn to the system for help.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston):
I am grateful for the opportunity to follow my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond) as I should like to take up some of his points. Before doing so, I will deal with the issue of computer evidence, which seemed to exercise the minds of some hon. Members.
In a previous incarnation I taught criminal and civil evidence to students. I remind Conservative Members of the poll tax. The issue arose of whether computer printout was admissible as court evidence. The Bill's provisions simply allow computer appeal decisions to be admissible as evidence in subsequent proceedings. That is not so much an innovation in English law as pre-empting a loophole in terms of whether computer printouts are admissible in courts and tribunals.
I am not afraid to acknowledge the Bill's antecedents as being part of the Department of Social Security programme for change. Its aim was to cut costs by 25 per cent. I have no problem about such objectives because we support efficiency and effectiveness. However, I have a severe problem over the absence of joined-up thinking among Conservative Members. The Conservative Government looked only for savings in the system but did not look at the effects on claimants. Did they deliver a fair, modern and efficient social security system? They did not.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham made it clear that we have taken parts of the Conservative Government's initiatives as a starting point. However, the
philosophy of our approach to social security is very different. We want to take as many people as possible out of the system and put them back into work rather than consign large sections of the population to a claimant culture and think that we can ignore them, which is what the Conservatives did. [Interruption.] Hon. Members are at liberty to disagree.
The Bill is simply the first step on the way to introducing a modern, efficient and fair system. Perhaps I may add an extra dimension to the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham. We tend to forget the scope of the social security system. We have been reminded that a third of Government spending is on social security. The number of claimants is horrendous. There are more than 1 million claimants for attendance allowance; 7 million for child benefit; more than 5 million for council tax benefit; and 1.7 million for incapacity benefit.
The social security system employs just under 100,000 people, but somehow we have achieved a system that is universally hated. Those who use it dislike it intensely and those who pay into it feel that it is not achieving anything. It is a classic worst-compromise scenario. No one is happy with it, and Conservative Members have never addressed that. Apart from the amount that we spend on claimants, I remind the House that 42 per cent. of beneficiaries are elderly and 24 per cent. of them are sick or disabled. They are the people least able to speak up for themselves. We have ended up with a system that is too complicated. It was designed to exclude people and to make it difficult for people to work out their entitlements rather than to be genuinely supportive.
The northern edge of my constituency has a little area called Fiveways which houses many civil servants, some of whom run a brilliant helpline. People could ring an 0800 number and receive universal advice on benefits. I should have thought that it was in the interests of any responsible Administration to ensure that those who need to claim can do so effectively and fairly. However, the Conservative Administration saw fit to do away with that helpline. At the same time, the social security offices in Birmingham went ex-directory, making it doubly difficult to get in touch with anyone.
The Law Society was one of the bodies that made submissions on the Bill, and I should like to refer to its submissions even if it did get some of them wrong. It gave the initiative an overall welcome because it thought that it would increase accuracy, speed and general effectiveness of first-tier decision making for social security benefits. We approve of that, but for Conservatives to conclude that we have swallowed their approach to social security hook, line and sinker means that they think that Labour Back Benchers do not have two brain cells to rub together and cannot think for themselves. That is wrong.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |