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9.36 pm
The Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Alistair Darling): It comes as some surprise to us and, I suspect, to the whole country, that the Conservatives are now against means testing. I do not remember one occasion in the past 18 years when any of the then Ministers said from the Dispatch Box that they were going to end means testing. Means testing has always been part of the welfare state. It is not the only part, by any means, but it is one way of ensuring that help can be got to those who need it most.
I shall deal with welfare reform, the contributory principle and means testing shortly. However, like the hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith), I want to cover some of the other points made in this debate which covered health
and welfare, although I agree with the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) that the two are inextricably linked.
The right hon. Member for Maidstone--
Miss Widdecombe:
And The Weald.
Mr. Darling:
And The Weald as well.
Until now, I had been spared the sight of the righthon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) in full flow. I did not see the video of her at the Tory party conference, but I have had the opportunity this afternoon to see something of a rather tormented and demented miniature Hattie Jacques.
As I listened to the right hon. Lady talk about waiting lists and berate us on our record on the treatment of cancer and so on, I found it odd that she did not allude to the fact that she and her party oppose the £21 billion investment that we are putting into the national health service over the next three years. The shadow Chancellor, who, I assume, speaks for the whole of the Conservative party, has made it clear that all our public spending--our £40 billion on health and education--is a mistake. The criticism that the Tories make of us falls apart when one remembers that the Tories oppose every extra penny that we are investing in the health service.
Mr. Quentin Davies:
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Given that the Tories want to cut £21 billion of investment, it is not surprising that, to get around the gap that that leaves in the health service, they have to emphasise the importance that they attach to increasing private health provision. It is another example of how they are drifting further from the mainstream into the right wing of politics. I do not think that the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies), to whom I am about to give way, believes in that nonsense. He spent 18 years in the wilderness on the Tory Back Benches because he does not believe that. How on earth can he justify speaking for the Conservative party which is against the investment that most people want?
Mr. Davies:
The right hon. Gentleman affords me rather more seniority than I can claim. He either has not understood or pretends that he has not understood the force of criticism from the Conservative Benches. Of course we are not against spending money efficiently on health and education. The Labour party came to power promising to pay for that incremental expenditure through social security savings, but he and his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), have fundamentally failed to deliver them. Indeed, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) pointed out, he is allowing his budget to increase out of control. That is the criticism that we are making.
Mr. Darling:
The hon. Gentleman is most clearly wrong. He should listen to the shadow Chancellor, who has made it abundantly clear that the Tories oppose our additional investment. He says that such investment is
Miss Widdecombe:
Can the right hon. Gentleman name one occasion on which I have said that Labour should be spending more?
Mr. Darling:
The right hon. Lady has been shouting that she wants us to be spending more. When I looked into the Chamber during debates following the Budget last year, I heard her say on many occasions that we were not spending enough. She has been complaining about waiting lists and cancer treatment, yet she belongs to the same Front-Bench team as the Shadow Chancellor, who is against additional spending.
Mr. Duncan Smith:
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Darling:
I will later on--not just as the moment.
We are investing £40 billion more in health and education. The Bill that will shortly be before the House, which will abolish the internal market, ensure that the NHS is universally available and get rid of competition and the false market that the Tories tried to create in the health service, will be welcomed by most people.
We are able to make such investment and to restructure and reform the welfare state because we are doing so from a sound economic base. Over the past two years, we have taken steps to end boom and bust--the instability of the economy that we inherited--to ensure that we can plan ahead. We gave the Bank of England independence and, as a result, we have the lowest long-term interest rates for 35 years. The Conservative party is against not only our long-term investment, but one of the key planks of our strategy for economic stability.
Miss Widdecombe:
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Darling:
I would be delighted to give way shortly.
The hon. Members for Chingford and Woodford Green and for Grantham and Stamford criticised our approach to welfare reform. We said during the election campaign that we would cut the bills of economic failure, and we are doing so. Through the new deal, we are getting people, who were written off by the Conservative party, into work. We also said that we wanted to reform and restructure the welfare state so that it meets the needs not of post-war Britain, for which, fundamentally, it was designed, but of the next two to three decades and beyond.
The rate of increase of social security spending in this Parliament will be half that of the previous Parliament. That is because not only have we been cutting the bills of economic failure by getting people into work, but we have taken steps in the Department to ensure that we pay benefits to the people for whom they are intended. We are taking more care to ensure that we have evidence before we pay benefits in the first place.
The Conservatives must come to terms with the fact that, because we are in the business of fundamentally restructuring the emphasis of the welfare state, concentrating more on preventing failure in the first place rather than picking up the bill after it, we will be
successful in restructuring and reforming the welfare state, so that it delivers the support and active help that we require to get people into work.
Mr. Burns:
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Darling:
I will in one moment. The hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green wants to intervene, too. If the Tories believe that our increased spending on pensions, family support and disabled people is wrong, which area of spending would they cut?
Mr. Duncan Smith:
The right hon. Gentleman seems to be giving way to me. That is fine, but two or three of us had lined up to intervene. [Hon. Members: "He said, 'Chingford and Woodford Green'."] Yes, I was and still am the Member for that constituency.
The right hon. Gentleman said that spending over the lifetime of the current Parliament would be half the amount of our spending when we were in government. He is wrong. If he looks at the figures for the first year of the present Government--figures that, as he knows full well, were set by the last Government--he will see that they fell by 1 per cent. If he takes those figures out of the equation, which is quite right--every other commentator will do the same--he will see that the spending that he predicts, even in good times, will grow by nearly 3.5 per cent. in the current Parliament. That is not half what our spending was.
Mr. Darling:
Taking numbers from any selected year will produce a different answer. Moreover, the hon. Gentleman ignores the fact that social security spending was increasing by some 10 per cent. in the early 1990s. In any case, he did not answer the question. He says that we are spending too much on social security--on pensions, families and the disabled. He did not explain something else either. The Conservatives oppose the working families tax credit, which will help people on lower incomes and lower the barriers preventing people from getting into work; furthermore, they want to introduce a transferable tax allowance that will cost £4 billion a year. They must finance that before doing anything else--and, of course, such action would disproportionately benefit the better-off. We want to ensure that poorer people who have been trapped on benefit get into work: that is part of our fundamental reform of the welfare state.
Miss Widdecombe:
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Darling:
I will in a moment, but I want to make some progress. I want to deal with a point made on behalf of the Liberals. At least, I think that it was made on their behalf; I discerned two or three different lines of thought during the evening. I refer to what was said about the Government's overall approach to poverty.
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