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Mr. Letwin: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is about to say that, according to the Government's own recent production, "The Modernisation of Britain's Tax and Benefit System", 26 per cent. of those interviewed mentioned the issue of jobs being temporary, and 23 per cent. mentioned worries about reclaiming benefit after a short period of work, as reasons for not taking work.

Mr. Rendel: I was not about to cite those statistics, but I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has.

It is clear from Government statistics, as was clearly explained in the Standing Committee on the Social Security Bill, that lone parents--not all, but the majority--are among the poorest members of our community; most of them are below the poverty line. Some may go back to work and thereby become better off, but many will not; even the Secretary of State has accepted that probably 50 per cent. will not. All those very poor people will be made even poorer by the Labour Government. Not all that many people who voted Labour in May thought that they were voting to make poor people even poorer.

In November 1996, the Secretary of State, then in opposition, said:

"Lone Parent Premium recognises that lone parents face additional costs in bringing up their children--they do not have a partner's time or income to help with children".

That is right. They are already extremely poor.

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It seems to me that the Labour Government are falling into the age-old Tory trap of thinking that the way to get poor people to work is to make them even poorer while the way to get rich people to work is to make them richer. I do not believe that both assertions can be true at the same time.

The right hon. Lady continued:

"The way to get lone mothers out of poverty and cut spending on benefits for them is not by cutting the amount on which they have to live year by year and plunging them into further poverty."

She then said that the proposals of the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) would make

"hundreds of thousands of the poorest children worse off."--[Official Report, 28 November 1996; Vol. 286, c. 500-1.]

Elsewhere, the right hon. Lady said:

"Since one parent benefit is not taxed, it helped to bridge the gap between welfare and work. Its abolition will make working lone mothers worse off and will discourage work amongst this group".

Again the Secretary of State's own words prove the fallacies in her current policies.

Mr. Webb: I reassure my hon. Friend that it is not just the Secretary of State who holds such views. Is he aware that the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, the hon. Member for Newport, East (Mr. Howarth), said before the election that the abolition of one-parent benefit would be directly contrary to a rational welfare-to-work strategy?

Mr. Rendel: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am sure that he agrees that, quite apart from the two people we have mentioned, many others on the Government Front Bench and Labour Back Benches have made similar statements in the past.

In their amendment, the Government congratulate themselves on their welfare reform. I should like to mention another aspect of their reforms--their refusal to allow the backdating of benefit claims for more than one month. The Conservative Government accepted that there should be no backdating beyond three months, but the Labour Government have gone further and done something that is even harsher than what the Conservatives introduced.

It is not a question of the Labour Government fulfilling promises to stick to Tory budgets or spending plans--they are going further and making life even harder for those who are least well off. Their policy will hit the worst-off members of our community. It seems that the Labour party--new Labour, the new Tory convert--is shouting, "Whatever you can do that's cruel, we can do something even crueller." I do not believe that that is what it was elected to do.

The Labour Government believe that there should be no backdating beyond one month and that there is no excuse for late claims, not even when a claimant has good cause--such as being widowed, by which they may be extremely traumatised. Such good causes will be swept away by new Labour in an apparent bid to outdo, not just maintain the same strategies as, its Tory teachers. It is a tragedy that in the playground game that is being fought out over who can be toughest, those in need are suffering every day the Government continue in office.

I urge Labour party members, not just those in the House but those outside it, to think about why they joined the Labour party. It was not, I suggest, to introduce

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Conservative spending plans and Conservative social policy. Of that I am sure. I ask those in the Government who still have the courage of their convictions and who share our disgust at the Government's handling of social security to vote with the Liberal Democrats against the Government's benefit cuts.

5.52 pm

Caroline Flint (Don Valley): I am very interested in what the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) said, but I do not need to take lessons from the Liberal party, which voted against the windfall levy and therefore would have put a stop to the new deal programme. It takes some brass neck for Conservative Opposition spokespersons to attack new Labour's strategies to tackle the reform of the welfare state after the disaster that they left after 18 years of Tory mismanagement and lack of imagination.

Before I outline why we need a new direction and vision for welfare reform, we should remind ourselves--it is important to continue to do so during the debate--what the Conservatives contributed to the welfare system when they were in government. While the Conservatives were in government, taxpayers picked up the bill for mass dependency on benefit, persistent unemployment, huge subsidies for low pay and widespread fraud. It was truly a nation on benefit.

Under the Conservatives, overall benefit expenditure rose by £40 billion in real terms. The proportion of the Department of Social Security budget spent on means-tested benefits more than doubled from 17 per cent. to 36 per cent. The number of people dependent on such benefits doubled from one in 12 of the population to one in six. The proportion of total public spending accounted for by the DSS went up from one fifth to one third.

What was there to show for all the increases in social security expenditure? Did more people move from welfare into work? No. One fifth of all households had no one earning a wage. Was there a reduction in benefit fraud? No. Up to £2 billion was being lost every year through housing benefit fraud alone, while expenditure on housing benefit doubled in five years. Were there any increases in the basic rate of pay among the low-paid? No. Under the Conservatives, low pay cost the taxpayer almost £4 billion annually in benefits to top up income--the equivalent of 2p on the basic rate of income tax.

Did Conservative policies lift more people out of poverty? No. The bottom 10th of the population were 13 per cent. worse off in absolute terms and the proportion of households living in poverty more than trebled from one in 14 to one in four. As the climate of insecurity and social failure moved on apace, so Britain's crime industry had its boom years under the Conservatives.

What was the great pensions achievement of the Conservative years? Pensions mis-selling soared to new heights, which damaged living standards--and it was left to the new Labour Government to rectify a problem that they should never have inherited. Let us be very clear: the Tories' record increase in social security spending was not an explosion of generosity: it was purely the cost of social failure.

Under the Conservatives, secure employment was undermined; traditional industries were savaged; the unemployed were blamed and lone parents were made the scapegoats; there was under-investment in young

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people; and people were removed from the unemployment register and put on disability benefits, thereby consigning them to a workless life. I remind the House that I have direct experience of the previous Government's policies and how they affected people working for Remploy, the Government's sheltered employment scheme for disabled people. I know only too well that compulsory competitive tendering had a huge effect on the employment of people with disabilities in that sector, so forgive me if I decline to take a tutorial in compassion from Conservative Members.

I shall now consider some principles on which we should all agree. First, parents are financially responsible for their children. That principle has been recognised whenever the House has discussed child support legislation. It would have even wider support if the operation of the Child Support Agency was seen to be fair and efficient. I am pleased that my hon. Friends have pledged to tackle that problem through a widespread review.

Secondly, the best form of welfare, and the one preferred by the great majority of people, is work. That principle has only been undermined by the inability of the Conservative party to reform the tax and benefits system to remove poverty traps and to ensure that work pays. Finally, the welfare system must help people through hard times and, where possible, help them support themselves independently once more. It should help people to contribute to and prosper in their retirement, so reaping the benefit of a lifetime in work. Let us not forget that our benefit system was created to help people through short-term hardship. It was only the Conservatives' lack of vision that consigned people to a lifetime of dependency.

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