| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
9.13 pm
Mr. Stephen Hesford (Wirral, West): I should like to address one narrow aspect of the Bill: clause 23 and its potential effect on a large number of my constituents who are pensioners--a section of the community that has not yet been mentioned in the debate.
Before I discuss that, however, let me say that I will take no lessons from Conservative Members as to the ownership of the Bill, because my constituents well recognise that Conservative Members' cards were marked at the general election. They were rejected--as was their approach to the Bill--at the general election, and my constituents are very pleased that these measures--[Interruption.] Conservative Members may laugh, but my constituents are very pleased indeed that these measures are now in the hands of a Labour Government.
Not for the first time in my short time in the House, the Liberal Democrats reveal schizophrenia in their approach. They welcome our welfare-to-work programme, and they have been repeatedly told tonight that the Bill is part of that programme. Do they accept the Bill, do they accept the welfare-to-work programme and do they accept that the Bill is a key part of that measure? I shall sit down if the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) wants to intervene.
Mr. Webb:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the invitation to intervene. If he heard my remarks earlier, quoting the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, the hon. Member for Newport, East (Mr. Howarth), who is in charge of part of the Government's welfare-to-work policy, he will recall that the hon. Gentleman described the abolition of one-parent benefit as irrational as part of a welfare-to-work strategy. Therefore, although, naturally, we want people to come off welfare and into work, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will not expect us to accept every element of the package, especially the parts that have been described by Labour Members as irrational and perverse.
Mr. Hesford:
I return to my original point. In this country there are more than 10 million pensioners, more than half of whom are on state benefit--the ordinary state pension. Many of those pensioners rely on income support. The Bill will be key for them. There are 10,000 pensioners in that position in my constituency; only two constituencies have an electorate with a larger proportion of pensioners. Those pensioners would not thank me if I did not ask Ministers to consider clause 23 and to give an assurance about it.
I broadly support the Bill; I want to ask only one question. Subsection (1) reads:
I know from my mailbag and surgery that the most vulnerable claimants of that type of benefit are pensioners, and it would be a worry to pensioners in my constituency if they believed that they might fall foul of that part of the Bill, through no fault of their own. Many of them attend offices with friends because they cannot cope with the system.
Mr. Simon Burns (West Chelmsford):
I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Elmet (Mr. Burgon) on his maiden speech. Every hon. Member has to go through the torturous, nerve-racking experience of making a maiden speech, and the hon. Gentleman's speech was impressive for its fluency, wit and confidence. I am sure that the House looks forward to further contributions by the hon. Gentleman in debates not only on social security but on issues throughout the political spectrum.
This has been a fascinating debate to which to listen, for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the most ironic of those reasons, as my hon. Friends the Members for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) and for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant) so ably said, is that, although the Bill has been presented by the Secretary of State, supported by all her senior Cabinet colleagues, it is mainly the Bill of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley). Plagiarism is the highest form of flattery, and the right hon. Lady has certainly paid my right hon. Friend the greatest of compliments by lifting his Bill, almost lock, stock and barrel, and introducing it to the House.
I want to be conciliatory. I am not sure whether to congratulate the Secretary of State on her nerve, gall and barefaced cheek, given that, in opposition, she was on record as being totally opposed to most of the contents of the Bill. On the other hand, perhaps I should offer her my condolences: she has lost her battle for her beliefs in the past; now she has lost control of the policy-making decisions in her remit in government, and has had the views of others foisted on her.
The introduction of the Bill prompts the question: who is really in charge of social security policy? It appears that the country has a Secretary of State who is in office but not in charge. That must be a difficult--even humiliating--position for the right hon. Lady, but she is of course used to being the human shield for others. Who persuaded or coerced her to accept this Bill? In the past, she has publicly declared much of it to be anathema to her beliefs.
The answer lies partly in what has been done to the Department. The Labour party proudly told us that it was going to think the unthinkable on welfare and end welfare as we know it. It was going to design and deliver a system that would ensure a hand-up, not a hand-out. Well, the right hon. Lady has certainly had a hand-up to the Cabinet table, but she has not received any hand-outs in terms of responsibilities or decision making.
Between them, as the Bill shows, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have ensured that the right hon. Lady is in charge of nothing. Welfare reform is split between two junior Ministers. Overshadowing her, like Banquo's ghost at the banquet, is the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who is responsible for the reform of the welfare state. He has been strangely silent, kept under wraps. On the instructions of the Minister without Portfolio, I understand, he is not allowed to lunch with journalists or speak with them in case he lets any cats out of the bag. Interestingly, after a brief interlude spent listening to the Secretary of
State's speech, the right hon. Gentleman scuttled out of the Chamber, never to be seen again--indeed, he is still not here. As was said of a former Conservative Prime Minister just before the war, the right hon. Gentleman is an air-raid shelter for the Government's policies.
Meanwhile, reform of the pension system resides with the junior Under-Secretary. Perhaps most galling of all to the right hon. Lady, reform of the tax and benefit systems has been awarded not to a Minister but to a friend of the Chancellor, the business man, Martin Taylor. On welfare to work, the Chancellor has also stepped in and appointed another crony of his, Sir Peter Davis, to head the new task force--including the scheme for lone mothers so eagerly talked about by the right hon. Lady at the time of the Budget.
Sadly for the Secretary of State, the truth is that she can talk about these policies and initiatives as much as she likes, but she cannot take charge of them--
Ms Harman:
The hon. Gentleman says that because I am a woman.
Mr. Burns:
I assure the right hon. Lady that it is not because she is a woman: it is because of her brain power. Isolated and humiliated, she swallows her pride while the policy-formulating and decision-making processes are taken out of her hands and Bills such as this one are foisted on her--despite a litany of quotations in which she expressed her opposition to many of the proposals in it.
Despite the Secretary of State's previous misgivings, the Bill follows a new, well-established pattern from new Labour: say one thing, do another. It is becoming a well-established, cynical performance. We have seen it over pensions, we have seen it over taxes, with 17 tax rises in the Budget earlier in this month, and we have seen it over asylum seekers. Now, we are seeing it over the Social Security Bill.
"The powers conferred by this section are exercisable in relation to persons who fail to comply with information requirements."
Subsection (2) reads:
"Regulations may provide for--
and indeed stopped.
(a) suspending payments of a relevant benefit, in whole or in part;
(b) the subsequent making in prescribed circumstances of any or all of the payments so suspended"--
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |