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Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington): I shall speak briefly on the regrettable Government proposal that is before the House. It will not do for Ministers to wrap it up in spurious feminism, claiming that the world has changed, women have moved on, women all work and they do not need the present provision. The world has not changed that much and the majority of women, particularly working-class women, still earn less than the majority of men. It is unrealistic of Ministers to imagine that women in their 50s, who perhaps have never worked or have worked only part time, can re-enter the labour market at a time of bereavement and hope to earn the sort of income that widows benefit would have provided.
I remember when my mother died. It took me much longer than six months to recover from that. It must be much worse if a partner in life, with whom one has lived for 20, 30 or 40 years, has died. Six months after that, Ministers are expecting unskilled and semi-skilled women to go back into the labour market. The spurious feminism that I have heard about in the past will not do.
Secondly, there is the idea of alternative provision. It has been said already that to make such provision, people would have required notice of the Government's proposal. Moreover, it would require sums well out of reach of most of my constituents. Why should people put their money into private sector provision, with the huge rake-offs in commissions and up-front fees, when they thought that they had a contributory system available to them, to which they had contributed throughout their working lives in good faith?
We have seen much briefing in the press during the days running up to the debate about how Ministers will be tough on these issues and face people down. We have been told that Ministers will show that they have backbones of steel. I say gently that it is not necessarily the most desirable thing to be tough on widows and the disabled.
Last week, we had a set of election results in Scotland and Wales which were variable in their quality. We were told by Millbank--I always believe what Millbank tells me--that we had such a low turnout in parts of Wales because people were so happy and pleased with new Labour. That was why they did not bother to come out to vote. However, I shall put forward an alternative theory, accepting that the results in Scotland and Wales were complex and there were different phenomena in different parts of the country.
For our core electorate--the people who stuck with us throughout the 1980s when many of those surrounding new Labour or in positions of high office in new Labour were nowhere to be seen--it is matters such as those before us which make them wonder, "Is this really our party after all?" Even if we are not able to reverse the Government's proposal, I believe that at another time and in another place, the Government's unfitting and rather mean proposal will be taken out of the Bill.
Mr. Hayes:
I have listened with great interest to the contributions of Labour Members, perhaps with even more concentration than I listened to the contributions of my colleagues. We have heard most interesting criticisms of the Government's position from Labour Members, and not always from the most expected quarters. I was particularly interested in the speech of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who talked with unnecessary generosity about the Prime Minister's facile remark about the something-for-nothing society. I accept that it was just a facile remark in what was an otherwise banal speech. The right hon. Gentleman may have been excessively generous for that reason.
However, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead will understand, because of his distinguished record in these affairs, that many right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House found the Prime Minister's remark a flagrant attack on some of the most disadvantaged, desperate, needy and defenceless people in our society. There are those of us on both sides of the House who believe that there are some people who deserve something for nothing. They deserve compassion, care and even our indulgence. They have very little to give in return. Those who are most disadvantaged in our society do not believe that they should give something in return for that care, compassion and charity.
The idea of compassion for the needy being part of a trade-off is unacceptable to many of us, but it does not surprise me that the idea has currency with the Prime Minister. If we are sinners, we are venal sinners. He is a mortal sinner, and an unrepentant mortal sinner. I shall not take the right hon. Gentleman too far down an Anglo-Catholic road, but it is important to recognise that Labour does not have a monopoly on care and compassion, or on regard and concern for disadvantaged and needy people.
Labour never has had such a monopoly, throughout the history of this place and of British politics. The Conservative party has a proud history. I shall not go
into it--[Hon. Members: "Go on."] You would not let me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but you and other hon. Members are fully aware of that proud history.
The right hon. Member for Birkenhead also spoke of his admiration for working class culture. There is nothing incompatible between that admiration, which I share--a belief in preparing for the future, in putting by fortough times, and in making provision and taking responsibility--and my earlier remarks. Working-class culture is also compassionate, caring and concerned for those who cannot put by for the future. That acceptance has always been a central part of our welfare state.
The contributory principle is valuable and important, but it does not mean that everyone should be obliged to contribute. Those who cannot contribute and those who are most desperate deserve support. The least fortunate deserve support from the most fortunate. That must be said time and again, particularly when we are governed by such a Prime Minister and Government.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) set the tone when he dragged out his great-grandfather--not literally, I hasten to add. Perhaps that was fortunate, because we all have a great- grandfather in the cupboard whom we can drag out to prove our credentials. While the grandparents of some liberal bourgeois Labour Members were no doubt founding the Woodcraft Folk, or writing pamphlets about the Spanish civil war, my grandfather was on the dole, a chairman of his local branch of a trade union and campaigning for the rights of other working class people to improve their lot. We do not need any lectures from the other side of the Chamber about working class culture or the need to support working class communities.
The right hon. Member for Birkenhead spoke with proper admiration for that culture, but I believe that he was referring to a deeper strain--the idea that we should look to the future, and that man is not here by accident, but is a product of his past and has a role in looking to his future. Man is linked to both past and future; preparedness and responsibility for the future are thus a fundamental instinct in humankind. It is the antithesis of the hedonistic live-for-today attitude that characterises the worst extremes of pop culture.
The right hon. Gentleman is right to draw our attention to that. The attack on the contributory principle implicit in the measure is an erosion of values which are bigger than working class culture. It is a deeper instinct still. That attack is also an attack on the trust of the people--[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Halton(Mr. Twigg) wants to say something about his working class roots, I am happy to give way. I am not sure whether he has any, so perhaps he does not want to intervene after all.
The attack on the contributory principle is a breach of people's trust in government. The contribution that people make is based on a proper expectation of what they were told they would receive at the end of the contributory period. The undermining of trust implicit in the measure not only damages the working class culture to which the right hon. Gentleman drew our attention, but undermines people's faith in good government. It also undermines people's trust in the promises that they were given--year by year, by successive Governments--about what they would receive when they fell on difficult times.
No time is more difficult than when one loses a loved one. I do not want to dwell on that, because it has been spoken about already, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar said, most of us have been through some form of bereavement and understand some of the tensions that it creates. His honest remarks contrast starkly with the assurances given in the Budget speech by the Chancellor, who said that
That calumny was reiterated in the Inland Revenue press release on the Budget, which said:
It has already been said that the change will harm the interests particularly of widows aged between 60 and 65 who will no longer be entitled to the benefit. It has also been said, but needs amplifying, that the six-month rule is at best--and I am being extremely generous--very harsh, given what we all know about bereavement and the status of people in the job market at that stage of life, towhich the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) referred. Her point concerned that generation of women who find themselves in the job market, and peculiarly and particularly disadvantaged because of their historical situation.
Administration of the new allowance will now be carried out by the Department of Social Security and the benefit will be available only to widows and widowers under retirement age. The change is not aimed at improving the lot of widows and widowers; it is about saving money. It would be better if the Government came clean and did not hide behind the pretence that, somehow, people will be better off. We all know that they will be significantly worse off. The change is about saving money and filling the coffers of the Exchequer in a fairly grubby way. If that money were reallocated to another good cause or to similar groups, one might be able to justify the reform, but there is little evidence of that. The net cost to widows of £600 million is highly unacceptable to Members across the Chamber.
The change also needs to be seen in the context of the other pressures that fall on elderly people and on these widows. We should not ignore the fact that the abolition of mortgage interest relief at source affects older people as well as younger ones; and, I suggest, disproportionately affects people who bought their own council house in their 50s. Following the Thatcher legislation in 1980, a lot of working class couples in their 50s decided to buy a house for the first time. Almost 20 years down the line, some of them find themselves still with a mortgage. I can say that with some authority, because my parents were in that category.
"the Budget will increase the income of all pensioners."--[Official Report, 9 March 1999; Vol. 327, c. 174.]
Does not that look pretty strange in the light of the measure that is before us tonight?
"Widows will be more than compensated by the loss of this allowance by the proposed Bereavement Payment in the Welfare Reform and Pensions Bill."
The end of widows bereavement allowance, which would be worth up to £197 in the new tax year and £285 this year, will certainly not leave widows better off and will not increase the income of all pensioners. Widows will not receive any degree of equivalence.
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