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Mr. Pickles: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. She is making an interesting speech and my remarks are not meant to trip her up. She has been forthright about what would constitute a success. The figure of 40,000 clearly would not be--that is regarded as a conservative estimate. In a year or two, when the measure has had an opportunity to bed in, how many people would have to be brought back into the labour market in order for it to be regarded as a success?
Yvette Cooper: I do not think that we can specify a figure. The working families tax credit will be a success if it simply manages to get an extra £17 a week, on average, into the pockets of low-income families. I would regard that as a success, because it is so important to help the children living in poverty and the families who are struggling to support them.
Miss Kirkbride: Family credit does that.
Yvette Cooper: It is interesting that Conservative Members are calling from a sedentary position for those families to be given family credit. Will any of those hon. Members stand up and say that they want an extra £1.5 billion to be spent on that? There are two key elements to the measure. One is the extra money--the extra generosity--to help low-income families. The other is the change in the structure of the tax and benefit system to encourage people into work. Conservative Members clearly do not support that. None of them has stood up.
There is a further important element, if the proposal is to work, which has been touched on by other hon. Members. There is a fear that money will be given away and swallowed up by employers, because they will cut wages. Working families tax credit would not work without a minimum wage. I do not believe that family credit could ever be substantially extended or expanded without a minimum wage. How could people be convinced that taxpayers' money would be spent efficiently, unless there were a floor on wages and on what employers could do in response to in-work benefits? Without a minimum wage, there would be no bottom line.
Opposition Members should be honest about their own arguments and their apparent concerns. They should recognise the strength of the case for introducing a minimum wage. That would allow in-work support, in the form of the working families tax credit, to act as a work incentive, to encourage more people into work and to get more money into the pockets of low-income families.
The Conservatives are trapped in a ludicrous ideological corner on the issue. Do they want the extra
£1.5 billion to be spent on working families? Their motion states that they will oppose the Bill
The hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) has said previously that the Conservatives would cut the working families tax credit. I did not understand the comments of the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar at the Dispatch Box. He seemed to be all over the place. Would he cut the £1.5 billion extra spending on the working families tax credit or not? A simple answer, yes or no, would help to clarify the position for the House and for my constituents, who want to know whether they will have to pay an extra £35 a week at the next election.
Those are important questions, but the Conservatives are prevaricating. They are not sure what they want to do about the £1.5 billion. The last we heard--
Mr. Pickles:
The hon. Lady was no doubt present for the Prime Minister's speech to the parliamentary Labour party at Church house on 7 May 1997. When he said that he would reduce social security bills, did she heckle him?
Yvette Cooper:
The aim of effective welfare reform is to cut the spending on the bills of failure, for which the Government that the hon. Gentleman supported were responsible for so long. It is tragic that they spent money keeping people trapped on benefit, rather than providing proper incentives to get those people into work.
The Conservatives do not know what they want to do about the £1.5 billion or the working families tax credit. Their leader said relatively recently that he wants to spend £5 billion on a transferable married couples tax allowance. Perhaps that proposal has now been quietly dropped and the £5 billion has disappeared, unexplained, along with the £1.5 billion.
Yvette Cooper:
Alternatively, perhaps there has been another U-turn on the £5 billion transferable married couples tax allowance.
Mr. Bercow:
I am sorry to trouble the hon. Lady. The speech made by her right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 7 May 1997 was explicit. He said that there should be
Yvette Cooper:
The hon. Gentleman is desperate to think of something to say, because his party has no answer to the question of what it would do about the Bill, and
Do Conservative Members think that the £5 billion transferable married couples tax allowance proposed by the Leader of the Opposition is a worthwhile use of money, when it would presumably put extra cash into the hands of Greg and Carla, the couple of strangers who married yesterday, having only just met? The people who would lose from the Opposition proposals are families who do not have enough income to keep going and to keep their children out of poverty.
Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury):
The answer to the hon. Lady's original question is yes. I, like most Conservative Members, strongly support our leader's commitment to that policy. However, the hon. Lady is wrong about two of the details that she has given. The cost would not be as much as £5 billion, and she knows perfectly well that the couple to whom she referred would not be eligible for the allowance, as they are not supporting children or disabled relatives.
Yvette Cooper:
In that case, what does the hon. Gentleman believe that the benefit would cost? Where would his party get the money, given that it already thinks that the Government's spending plans are "reckless", according to the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude), the Opposition Treasury spokesman?
The Conservative Opposition do not have a position on the working families tax credit, nor do they know what to do to tackle poverty or help families on low incomes. It is sad that they cannot come up with more intelligent alternatives.
However, the Liberal Democrats have come up with sensible points that are worth discussing in detail. Their main point is that they consider the measure to be inefficient. I disagree. The focus on efficiency stems from a view that the system must be pure and simple, and target one problem purely and efficiently. That is an academic economist's approach. In fact, the Bill has two separate aims, and it is not possible to achieve both with complete efficiency. It is not possible to produce a perfectly efficient system helping to tackle child poverty, which also provides work incentives. The Bill will do both those things.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Lorna Fitzsimons) advanced a credible argument about the benefits for women. We are not talking just about the huge benefits for women who are lone parents or main breadwinners; they will clearly benefit.
Mr. David Ruffley (Bury St. Edmunds):
The hon. Lady, whose remarks have been entertaining us, will know that the system that we are discussing will not allow a woman in a two-parent single-earner family to claim the child care allowance. A similar system in the United States led to family breakdowns and the non-declaration of "couple relationships". What evidence has the hon. Lady to demonstrate that the American experience will not be duplicated here?
Yvette Cooper:
The American and Canadian systems have been raised repeatedly throughout the debate, but I
"because it will increase the costs of social security . . . and . . . increase benefit dependency".
Cost seems to be a factor for them. They seem reluctant to spend the extra £1.5 billion--presumably, they want to cut it.
"far-reaching reforms that will tackle insecurity and poverty, as well as reducing social security bills".
Does the hon. Lady understand? There was no reference to the bills of economic and social failure. The Prime Minister called specifically for a reduction in social security bills. The Government's measure will increase those bills. Why did she not condemn and heckle him at the time, as she should have done?
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