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Mr. Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South): My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will remember the briefing notes that he sent out about how the new proposals would work. In them, he cited several examples of the way in which welfare reforms would affect different people. One of the examples in the original briefing referred to Dave, an unemployed binman who had been made redundant six years earlier and then suffered a stroke. However, Dave disappeared from the corrected version that was published later. Will the circumstances of someone with an intermittent employment record be covered by the proposed framework that my right hon. Friend now intends to put in place?
Mr. Darling: I shall set about a search for Dave as soon as I sit down, but I do not think that he has disappeared. I shall try to answer my hon. Friend's point--if not for Dave, then for Dave's mates or his replacement.
As I said to the House a few moments ago, the contribution conditions can be satisfied by someone on average earnings having completed four weeks' work in the preceding three years. The period is 12 weeks for someone on the minimum wage. I have also said that, when someone is trying out work after perhaps having been on benefit, he will be able to be credited back into the system through the credits that we are offering. In addition, people with degenerative conditions will also be helped because of the changes that we are making through the disabled persons tax credit.
Our objective is to ensure that, as far as possible, people who can work are helped to do so through a variety of means. We also want to ensure that when a person is working intermittently, the contribution conditions are such that if, eventually, they cannot continue to work, they are not stopped from receiving incapacity benefit.
The reforms are part of a wider package of support for disabled people. The disability income guarantee, the disabled person's tax credit and the Disability Rights Commission are all welcomed by most people--although they are all, of course, opposed by the Tory party. The reforms are also part of a wider welfare reform Bill before the House. We are introducing new measures to help people to get back to work because we are not prepared to put up with people being left with absolutely no help, through no fault of their own, because they have lost their job.
The Bill also introduces stakeholder pensions, which will help people with an intermittent work record. It delivers pension rights on divorce. It delivers new help for bereaved families with young children. It is worth noting that about 175,000 people disabled from birth or a young age will gain, and that nearly 175,000 other people will gain from the disability income guarantee. About 40,000 women will gain from the proposed bereavement changes. About 25,000 women will benefit from the extension of statutory maternity pay to low-paid women, and 960,000 people--nearly 1 million--on low pay will benefit from the changes that we are making in national insurance contributions. Some millions will benefit from the stakeholder changes.
The Bill delivers real help for disabled children, and others who have never had help. It is part of a package that delivers real reform, real help, all of it delivered for the first time ever by this Labour Government, all of it opposed by the Tories. Their opposition tonight is based, not on principle, but on naked opportunism of a sort that we have not seen for many years.
I believe that the Government should be supported. We have a record to be proud of. The Bill should be supported, and the amendments that I put before the House should be supported. I commend them to the House.
Mr. Willetts:
The Secretary of State has spoken as though he is bravely reforming an Attlee welfare state that has not been touched or reviewed or reformed for 50 years. That may be why he is so dismissive of the rebels on his own side and of the position that we, in the Conservative party, have adopted. He was pretty rude about his own rebels. He was quoted in The Guardian as saying:
Mr. Willetts:
If the right hon. Gentleman is denying the quote that appeared in The Guardian, I am happy to accept that correction.
The rebels can speak for themselves. I shall keep my remarks short so that as many as possible of them have an opportunity to speak. I want to tackle head on what the Secretary of State said at the end of his speech about what he described as the "naked opportunism" of our approach. I remind the Secretary of State that we constructed incapacity benefit. The benefit that he is messing around with tonight was introduced in 1995. That benefit was introduced while my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) was Secretary of State for Social Security. Conservative Members are perfectly entitled to defend a benefit that we constructed.
The Secretary of State is not suddenly examining disability benefits that have not been touched for 50 years: he is undermining a benefit that was introduced in the House and implemented only a few years ago.
Mr. Terry Rooney (Bradford, North):
Will thehon. Gentleman confirm that, in fact, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 enacted a change of name and up to a 50 per cent. reduction in benefit? He did not construct a benefit; he destructed a benefit system.
Mr. Willetts:
Over time, reductions in entitlement to benefit were introduced and, certainly, one of our biggest single changes was to remove the earnings-related supplement to the previous invalidity benefit. The reason why we did that--it was explicitly set out at the time--was that there was an increasing shift towards pension provision among people who left work early as a result of their growing disability. My predecessors--Secretaries of State in the previous Conservative Government--explicitly put that argument before the House. The justification for the measure was precisely that it would be part of a mixed economy in which there would be increasing access to pension savings. We oppose what the Secretary of State is doing because he is attacking part of our vision of the development of the social security system. We are defending exactly the argument that we used when we introduced the benefit only a few years ago.
Mr. Tom Levitt (High Peak):
The hon. Gentleman is defending a system that left some disabled people too poor to qualify for incapacity benefit.
Mr. Willetts:
I will not say that the system in 1997 was ideal. I am explaining that there was a logic to my right hon. and hon. Friends' construction of the benefit--consciously aiming at a mixture of occupational and personal pension provision and benefit. I thought that the vision of people increasingly having access to savings from pensions alongside benefit was one of the Government's principles too.
I have a copy of the Government's so-called "key messages on welfare reform". What does it say on the very front page? One of the bullet points refers to
Mr. Willetts:
If the right hon. Gentleman wants to intervene to explain how penalising people for having an occupational pension is compatible with encouraging savings, I shall be very interested to hear him.
Mr. Darling:
Of course it is the Government's objective to encourage saving for pensions and other eventualities in later life. However, it has always been a principle of the social security system that there comes a point at which we take into account people's means. It is a bit rich for a member of a party that vastly extended the way in which the Government take into account people's savings to criticise such an eminently sensible proposal. When people draw down good early-retirement pensions, we should take some of them--over a threshold--into account.
Mr. Willetts:
I remind the Secretary of State of what he said in "A New Contract for Welfare". I know that the document causes him considerable embarrassment, as his actions are increasingly departing from the principles that he set out in it, but principle 2 is as follows:
"There are some in the Labour party who would vote against four sheets of blank paper."
Mr. Darling:
I am used to good old-fashioned political knockabout, but what the hon. Gentleman just said is not true.
"Providing for the future with new stakeholder pensions and encouragement for those who can save to do so."
I should like to hear the Secretary of State explain how the measures before the House are consistent with that statement from him of the Government's commitment to encouraging savings. It is simply inconsistent.
"The public and private sector should work in partnership to ensure that, wherever possible, people are insured against foreseeable risks and make provision for their retirement."
That is the argument for people who are on incapacity benefit not being penalised for their entitlement to a retirement pension.
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