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Mr. Spring: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is absolutely correct: there is no absolute evidence to prove that, as a result of the right hon. Lady's manoeuvrings in this direction, one extra job has been created.
That leads me on to a matter on which the right hon. Lady touched when she was summing up. At the end of the day, a growing economy is absolutely crucial as it provides jobs, and the last thing it needs is an artificial barrier to job creation. The reason that there has been such a dramatic fall in this country, most notably this year in full-time unemployment, is that, in contrast with what happens elsewhere in Europe, we do not have policies like the minimum wage and elements of the social chapter.
No matter how the welfare-to-work programme proceeds, we need a growing economy and job creation opportunities, but the reverse will occur if we introduce artificial creations such as the minimum wage and if other regulations come in via the back door of the social chapter. They will cause precisely the horrific mass unemployment that exists in continental Europe.
Dr. Phyllis Starkey (Milton Keynes, South-West):
Will the hon. Gentleman admit that many of our European partners have had what we have not had until now, namely a comprehensive child care strategy? Most women on the continent take for granted standards of child care provision that women in this country have long awaited and which we are now looking to a Labour Government to deliver.
Mr. Spring:
I remind the hon. Lady that unemployment in countries such as France and Germany is 12 or 13 per cent. What hope is there for young people entering the labour force when one quarter of people aged under 25 in France, one third of young people in Italy and about 40 per cent. of young people in Spain are unemployed? Such figures result directly from the imposition of artificial barriers to job creation, with which the Government intend to destroy employment.
I turn to the other regrettable element of spinning. We had an exciting announcement of £300 million-plus for after-school clubs and child care clubs for lone parents. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] I am glad that Labour Members and the Minister for Welfare Reform have something to cheer about. It must be very difficult for the right hon. Gentleman to sit next to the Secretary of State and look cheerful.
Of the £300 million, £220 million was taken out of lottery funds. The whole point behind the founding of the lottery was to help art, heritage and sports. Now, the principle of additionality has been flouted. I forecast that this is the thin end of the wedge. Every time the Government want to put money into some scheme, they will find some way of raiding the lottery, to the disadvantage of all its beneficiaries, flouting the very principle on which the lottery was set up.
I will quote from the Labour party manifesto, which as an historical document will increasingly be regarded as very different from what I suspect the Secretary of State imagines. I hope that she will listen very carefully. It says:
Mr. Michael Wills (North Swindon):
The debate is of great interest to my constituency, especially to the 6,000 lone parents and 22,000 pensioners in Swindon, who overwhelmingly voted Labour on 1 May because they knew that a Labour Government would provide them with the opportunities denied to them by the previous Government.
I do not know why the Conservatives tabled the motion. It seems to have no point whatever--apart from allowing a little gratuitous abuse and somehow suggesting that they are anxious about the plight of lone parents, that they support people with disabilities and are the protectors of pensioners. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that they did nothing to help any of those people during their 18 years in government.
If we want to know what the Conservatives really think about the issues for which they have suddenly discovered concern, we should look not at the motion but at what the shadow Cabinet have written and said before today.I also have some quotations, which, with the House's indulgence, I shall read.
This is the shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry expressing his understanding of the situation of lone parents:
This is the shadow Secretary of State for Social Security, who is no longer present, expressing in October his respect for all the hard work and love that most lone parents put into their families:
This is the shadow Foreign Secretary's considered judgment on lone parents: single mothers often prove to be inadequate parents because
The Conservative party made some of the neediest and most vulnerable members of our society the target of cheap political jibes, appealing to the most graceless and mean-spirited instincts of a mean-spirited and graceless Government. In 18 years, the Conservatives did nothing to help lone parents, nothing to help those with disabilities and nothing to help pensioners. On the contrary, it was central to their political philosophy to exclude such people. The difference between the Conservatives and Labour is that this Government will provide new opportunities to those who need them most, and not take them away as the Conservatives did.
Mr. Rendel:
I can understand how providing people with the opportunity to work may raise their status, but will the hon. Gentleman explain how benefit cuts can do so?
Mr. Wills:
If the hon. Gentleman will be patient a little longer, I will come precisely to the state of the budget.
This Government will help people and give them new hope and new opportunities not by short-term patch- and-mend measures but by a transformation of the welfare state to ensure that it is relevant to the needs of people today.
The welfare state that we inherited was created in the first half of the century for the circumstances of the first half of the century. As the House knows, it was built to help people through particular crises in their lives; recognising that they needed help when they were not able to work to provide for themselves; supplying free health care so that medical treatment could be received without plunging families into poverty from which they could not recover; providing benefit to tide families through periods when the breadwinner or breadwinners were out of work, without plunging them into debt from which they could not recover.
Vital as those measures were--everyone in the Labour party remains proud of the part that our party played in putting those measures into practice--people did not and could not envisage the problems that this country faces today. Large numbers of our citizens are excluded from the rewards of mainstream society because they lack work and are given no hope of working. Nearly one household in five with someone of working age has no one in work. That is a damning indictment of 18 years of Conservative government. For many, unemployment is not a cyclical phenomenon which they suffer along with their neighbours in the hope and expectation that sooner or later they will work again: it is an inescapable blight which sets them apart from their neighbours and offers them no hope of a better future.
Surely it is time for the welfare state to play its part in tackling those problems. The country should not take the short-term view that, somehow, we can just muddle through again. This Government will rebuild the welfare state around work, giving everyone the choice and opportunity of work. This Government will make the welfare state the opportunity state, giving everyone the opportunity to make real choices about their lives.
Choice and opportunity are principles of which the Conservative party is supposed to be in favour. The difference between the Conservatives and us is that this Government believe in choice and opportunity for everyone and in making those choices and opportunities real--real for the lone parents who the Government will help find work, which will make them on average £50 a week better off than if they had remained on income support. That is no deceit, as has been suggested. That is a fact.
Mr. Letwin:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Wills:
If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I will not give way. I have had 18 years to listen to him; he should give me 10 minutes.
We are going to make choice and opportunity real for lone parents who want to find work--part time or full time--and who want not just the extra income, which is important and precious to those living on the margins of society, but the sense of being reconnected to the world outside the home. They have been prevented from finding such reconnection by the lack of affordable child care. This Government are committed to providing affordable and accessible child care for everyone.
"People are cynical about politics and distrustful of political promises. That is hardly surprising."
After the Secretary of State's performance, the way in which the Government have conducted themselves, all the nods and winks and all the promises to the most vulnerable people in our society, I hope that she will take their concerns on board. Certainly, her Back Benchers are doing so.
5.11 pm
"The natural state should be the two-adult family."
What, in his considered view, does that make lone parents?
"Single parent families are more likely to be caught up in crime."
Really?
"since the state is educating, housing and feeding their children, the nature of parental responsibility may seem less immediate."
Earlier in the same speech, the right hon. and learned Gentleman said that the Government
"must examine all our policies to ensure that we are reinforcing rather than weakening a sense of responsibility",
so I assume that he is moving towards suggesting that the state should no longer educate, house and feed the children of single mothers.
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