Liam Byrne
MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North · Labour · United Kingdom
“The loss of 4,000 jobs at Jaguar Land Rover is a body blow for workers, families and communities across the west midlands, so I commend Richard Parker, the Mayor of the West Midlands, for moving quickly on Monday to put £500,000 on the table to help ensure that everybody gets back to work.”
“I wholeheartedly welcome this well-rounded statement from the Foreign Secretary, and put on record my thanks to the new Prime Minister for the hard yards that I know he has put in over recent days and weeks.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, and I offer my warmest congratulations to her on her appointment to the role; she will be a brilliant Minister.”
“Let me start with a word of thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), who is not in her place, who said quite rightly that an awful lot has changed since the Bill was first introduced to this House. Indeed, a lot has been revealed over the course of the summer.”
“The effect of new clause 34 would be to ban off-ramping, ban new forms of digital currency transactions and ban memecoins, which are exactly the kind of measures that Ministers now need to bring forward. If we want to take the crypto system out of political finance, this is what we need to do.”
“No doubt we will learn that Mr Cottrell was in fact on the electoral register when that money was passed. No doubt we will discover that his mother, Fiona Cottrell, declared and did not disguise the fact that the money had ultimately come from her son.”
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“Now, of course, we have the news that the benefit cap—which Lord Freud told the other place would absolutely, definitely, without question be introduced nationwide in April—will be introduced in just four London boroughs. This is a record of chaos, delay and impending disaster, and today the Government are inviting millions of working families in this country to pay to clean it up.”
“Then, of course, we have universal credit—a policy that is now proceeding so smoothly that, it is fair to say, it has earned widespread support and praise from right the way across Government. Members of the Cabinet—perhaps even those sharing a building with the Economic Secretary—are now so impressed that they are telling anyone who will listen at the Daily Mail and elsewhere that it is a “disaster waiting to happen” and that the IT is “nowhere near ready.” The Secretary of State has so much grip on this project that the Prime Minister himself invited him to pack his bags and clear on out of the Department—a vote of confidence that I know rang around Caxton house, because senior officials are now leaving the Department as fast as they can.”
“Every time he comes to the House, he comes with words of reassurance: everything on his watch is going according to plan. He blithely assures us that the Work programme is fine. We are told that universal credit is completely and utterly on track—not a hiccup to be heard—and that the benefit cap will definitely start in May. The only problem is that he is living in a fantasy land of his own, because everything is not okay, everything is not on time and everything is certainly not on budget. We were promised a Work programme bigger than any yet known to man. So big it could be seen from space. This is a programme that is so effective it is literally worse than doing nothing. It works so well that just three out of 100 people who passed through it passed into sustained jobs. It is a disaster.”
“It is turning into a hit and run on working families, and frankly we should not stand for it. The Chancellor should have shown up, because the Bill is about clearing up the consequences of his failure. His reputation as a maker of recessions is now pretty well established. Every time he has come to the House, he has been forced to downgrade growth yet again, and since he took office he has battered the life out of the recovery that Labour left him in 2010. He is the first Chancellor for 35 years to preside over a double-dip recession. History will not judge him well. But the Chancellor has a partner in crime: the Secretary of State, the man who has become the Comical Ali of the Government, the only man in the DWP who thinks that everything is fine and hunky-dory—a man who would put Dr Pangloss to shame.”
“I think it is surprising that the Chancellor is talking to people in Germany, rather than to MPs in the House about the disastrous consequences of his policies. We know that the Chancellor and the Secretary of State do not see eye to eye on much, but they are jointly and severally liable for the mess and the haemorrhaging of the welfare budget that the Bill seeks to staunch. The Chancellor’s disappearance is a hallmark of the contempt that has been shown for the House today. The impact assessment for the Bill was published at noon. It makes radically different assumptions from the policy costings set out by the Chancellor last year. And now the Government propose to ram the Bill through the House in just one day of debate. They are terrified of scrutiny and exposure.”
“I want incomes to rise faster than benefits. That is why I think it was wrong that the hon. Gentleman voted for a three-year freeze in tax credits, which has hit 7,700 of his constituents. He must answer to them after today’s debate. Why is he supporting a huge tax cut for millionaires when 7,500 people in his constituency are seeing a freeze on their tax credits and a squeeze on them in the years to come?”
“Once upon a time—back in 2004 and 2005—when the Secretary of State was making speeches about poverty, he said that the way to judge the Conservative party was on how its policies worked for the poorest communities in the country. What many people will be asking after today’s debate is: what happened to that man?”
“I spoke to the former right honourable Member for Redditch yesterday and I set out— [ Interruption. ] Absolutely. I set out the substance of today’s debate and said that we have a choice between the Tory way and the Labour way to bring down welfare spending. The Tory way is to hit working families; the Labour way is to help people work.”
“My hon. Friend is already speaking very eloquently in the House. Some 40,000 soldiers, 300,000 nurses and 150,000 primary and nursery school teachers will be hit by this Bill. I suggest to the House that they are making a much bigger contribution to the health and well-being of this country than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is accusing them of being the people whose blinds are closed in the morning.”
“My hon. Friend is exactly right. What her constituents need is a job, but what they are not getting from the failed Work programme is any prospect at all of work.”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He is also right that the Department’s incompetence in proceeding with some of these reforms means that many of the changes risk costing more than they save. That is why Ministers have been forced to delay implementation of the benefit cap, about which they made such a fuss last year. Now we see that it will be implemented in just four London boroughs, because the Government do not know how it will work in practice.”
“I repeat: there are 6,800 people in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency on tax credits—we have rehearsed these figures before, because he is an assiduous attender of social security debates. I want incomes to go up faster than benefits. That is why it is so important that tax credits are protected. He has to accept that he has voted for a freeze in tax credits for the 6,800 of his constituents who enjoy them. Today he is proposing to vote for a further squeeze, at a time when millionaires are being given a tax cut. I just do not understand how he will justify that to the good residents of Dover.”
“The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do—he is a numerate man and he understands the figures involved in this debate—that the personal allowance does not compensate for the whack that has been delivered to most working families in this country. The House of Commons Library says they will be £280 a year poorer by next year and the Institute for Fiscal Studies says they will be £534 poorer by 2015-16. He has to get real about the impact of his Government’s policies, because they are hurting 7,000 of his constituents.”
“That is complete nonsense. This Government are taking £14 billion out of tax credits and the Bill proposes to take another £4 billion. That will hurt 7,000 of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, at a time when millionaires are being given a tax cut. I simply do not understand how he can justify that, either in this House or on the streets of Enfield.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When the Chancellor came to the House back in December, he was forced to admit that somehow, for some reason, growth had eluded him once again—it had got away. He brought forward a package of measures that was so focused on generating jobs that the Office for Budget Responsibility looked at it and revised the claimant count for the forecast period, not down but up by 300,000. The OBR also spelled out how much this was going to cost us: it is an eye-watering figure. The heroic efforts of the Chancellor and the Secretary of State to get the claimant count down over the next few years is costing us £6 billion in higher welfare bills, and today’s Bill shows us exactly who is going to pick up the tab.”
“I shall give way to people who were here at the start of the debate, rather than to those who have wandered in late. This is an important debate. The point that I want to make, before I give way to the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), is that we are learning today who is being asked to pick up the bill for this catastrophic economic failure. It is not Britain’s richest citizens, who are now so hard pressed and under the cosh that they are being given a tax cut. From next year, millionaires will have £107,000 more to help them to heat their swimming pools. It is not Britain’s millionaires who are picking up the tab; it is Britain’s working families. The measures in the Bill are a strivers’ tax, pure and simple.”
“I look forward to coming to Stourbridge and helping to explain to the 6,500 people there who are on tax credits that their Member of Parliament thinks that the money they are getting is unsustainable. I happen to think that those 6,500 people, whom the hon. Lady has just dismissed, need every pound of the tax credits that Labour delivered when we were in office.”
“I would contrast that money with the £3 billion a year that the Chancellor is giving away to Britain’s richest citizens, in a tax cut that will kick in next year, at a time when the Government are cutting tax credits and when Britain’s working families are under pressure. How can the hon. Gentleman possibly justify that, either here or to his constituents?”
“Like me, the Secretary of State will no doubt have seen table 2.1 of the Budget, published in March 2012, which clearly shows that in 2014-15, the cost of the tax giveaway will be £3.4 billion. How can he possibly justify that at a time when he is hitting Britain’s working families? Will he justify it now?”
“We put the top rate of tax up. It is this Government who are cutting it, at a cost of £3.4 billion a year. How can the Secretary of State possibly justify the choices made by his right hon. Friend the Chancellor, a man who has supported him hilt and sword? How can the Secretary of State justify giving away £3.4 billion to Britain’s richest citizens in a tax giveaway when he is hurting Britain’s working families? Justify it now!”
“I am saying that we should be raising more from Britain’s richest citizens, not giving them a £3.4 billion tax cut to heat their swimming pools while Britain’s working families are being punished. Let us be clear about the effects of the Bill.”
“I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, even though he could not be bothered to get here for the beginning of the debate, but let me first ask him how he can justify giving away £3.4 billion to Britain’s richest citizens while taking money away from Britain’s working families. Justify that now!”
“I think that, at a time like this, those with the broadest shoulders should be carrying the biggest load. I also thought that, once upon a time, the Conservatives agreed with that principle. I seem to remember hearing that once in a debate.”
“I will give way to the hon. Lady, who I believe made an important intervention yesterday about the tone of this debate and about how we should not reduce it to a basic division between Britain’s shirkers and strivers. I hope that she will say more about that today.”
“That is why we put up the top rate of tax, and that is why we object to the Chancellor of the Exchequer cutting it and giving £3.4 billion to Britain’s richest citizens when he is taking money from Britain’s working families.”
“I know that the hon. Lady is new to the House— [ Interruption. ] I will seek to answer her question as soon as those on her own Front Bench calm down a little. I think that she would acknowledge that the economics and the politics of this Parliament are very different from those in the last three Parliaments. There was an important principle at the heart of the debate—namely, that those with the broadest shoulders should bear the biggest load. That is why, when Labour was in power, we put up the top rate of tax. We knew that, as part of the plan to bring the deficit down, those with the broadest shoulders should bear the biggest load.”
“I respect the passion with which the right hon. Gentleman made that intervention, but would he mind intervening once again and telling me whether he thinks a top-rate tax cut is the right priority for Britain’s hard-pressed working families?”
“At least the right hon. Gentleman is honest, unlike that lot on the Conservative Benches. We will leave it to the voters of Bermondsey to decide whether the package that he secured, which punishes so many hard-working families in his constituency, was or was not a good one.”
“Why should a second lieutenant, a nurse or a primary school teacher, or 6,000 residents of an average Tory constituency, be asked to pay for this Government’s failure to get people back to work? This is a strivers’ tax pure and simple: it does nothing to create new jobs or remedy the deficiencies of the Work programme; it does nothing to sort out the chaos in universal credit; it does nothing but punish working families that are now losing £9 billion of support under this Government.”
“A second lieutenant will lose £552 a year, and there are 40,000 soldiers in the same position; and a lone parent nurse will lose £424 a year, as will a primary school teacher. These are not people who have their blinds closed in the morning, yet these are the people who will be hurt by the Bill. I know the Chancellor thought he was being clever. I know that he was, as the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) said, playing the politics of the playground and looking for a dividing line. We are right to ask what that means for the average Conservative constituency. It means that an average of 6,000 families in Tory-held constituencies will be worse off—a number that I noticed was bigger than the Tory majority in 107 seats. I just mention that in passing.”
“I will give way later, but I want to move the debate on a little. It is time that we debated who is going to be hurt by the Bill. Yesterday, the Institute for Fiscal Studies did us a great favour in setting out for the first time that a total of 7 million working families will be hit by the Bill—half the working families in Britain. As we heard from the hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois), some on the Treasury Bench like to cry, “Don’t worry, don’t panic; working people are going to be compensated by the rises in the personal allowance.” That is simply not true. The IFS is very clear about that: the real income of a one-earner working family is going to be £534 a year less by 2015-16. The Children’s Society, as one of my hon. Friends mentioned earlier, has spelt out clearly what this means for many of Britain’s working families.”
“He knows that the Chancellor was in search of a dividing line on welfare and that he has obliged the Secretary of State to kiss goodbye to 10 years of campaigning to turn the Tory party into one that gave a monkey’s about poverty.”
“My hon. Friend speaks eloquently, and his remarks cut to the quick of the values now on show in this Government. Once upon a time—the Secretary of State will well remember this—he said: “Conservative policies have to work for Britain’s poorest communities and every policy must be measured by that standard.” That is what the right hon. Gentleman said on 28 June 2004, so let us weigh up the impact of this Bill on Britain’s communities. It will mean child benefit rising by 20p a week, maternity allowance by £1.37 and jobseeker’s allowance by 72p, while the income of a millionaire will go up as a result of the tax cut by £2,058 a week. How can he possibly justify that? He cannot.”
“Many unemployed people in my hon. Friend’s constituency are young people. These are the people who need a jobs guarantee backed by a tax on bankers’ bonuses.”
“I am grateful for the intervention because I think the hon. Gentleman, like us, is concerned that in our country today a food bank is opening every three days, and that 5 million people may resort to payday loans this year in order to balance the books for the end of the month. The Sun on Sunday this weekend, in an article carried next to the one by the Secretary of State, said that a quarter of mums are now turning off heating so that they have enough money to feed the kids. Is that the kind of country that we are becoming, because the Saint of Easterhouse has now become the punch bag of the Treasury? Once he talked about broken Britain; now he is presiding over breadline Britain because he keeps losing his battles with the Treasury.”
“I have been very clear about where I think the savings can be made. I just think it is wrong that we are giving £3 billion in a tax giveaway to Britain’s richest citizens.”
“Let me deal first with the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. I think it is wrong that millionaires will get an extra £2,058 a week next year, in 2013-14, when child benefit is going up by 20p a week. I simply cannot see how that can be justified and I do not think that tax cut should go through.”
“The Tory way, aided and abetted by the Liberal Democrats, is to attack tax credits. The Labour way is to bring down welfare spending by getting people into jobs—jobs in which they will pay tax rather than sitting on the dole taking benefits. That is why we tabled our amendment. We think that it is right to introduce a bank bonus tax to get 100,000 young people back to work, and to reform pension tax relief to create a two-year limit on jobseeker’s allowance. We think that it is right to send the clear signal that anyone who can work must not, and will not, be allowed to languish or to live a life on welfare. That is the kind of tough-minded but fair policy that we now need.”
“I suspect the hon. Gentleman feels that very keenly, as 7,500 people in his constituency are on tax credits. I think that the best way to bring the welfare bill down is by getting people into work. The tragedy with the Bill is that it fails the Ronseal test set out by the Prime Minister yesterday. It does not do what it says on the tin. We are told that this Bill is all about reducing welfare spending. Actually, if we put tax credits to one side, the welfare bill for the period covered by this Bill will not rise by 1%; it is going to go up by 4%. It will go up by £8 billion because the Secretary of State is doing so little to get people back to work. The reality of the debate is that there is a Labour way to bring down welfare spending and there is a Tory way.”
“I note that the impact assessment is based on assumptions very different from those that formed the basis of the Treasury costings in December last year. However, the Government cannot change the simple truth: this is a strivers’ tax pure and simple, and it will hit people on tax credits. We oppose this strivers’ tax. We believe that welfare to work will not work without jobs, and the Bill does not create a single job. It creates a heck of a mess, and asks Britain’s working families to clear it up. I urge the House to oppose the Bill’s Second Reading, to strike a blow for Britain’s strivers, to send the Government back to the drawing board, and to demand from them a proper plan to get our country back to work.”
“Will the Minister confirm to the House by how much extra borrowing has gone up over and above his initial forecast because of his failure to deliver growth and jobs in the economy?”
“The Secretary of State clearly does not know, so let me help him. The Office for Budget Responsibility says that the dole bill will rise by £6 billion as a result of his failure to get Britain back to work. To pay that price, he is proposing an uprating Bill which, I am afraid to say, sounds all wrong to me. It is wrong to take £4 billion from tax credits, it is wrong to take £300 million from maternity pay, and it is wrong that this strivers tax is going to hit 4,500 working families in his constituency. He should be fixing welfare reform, not flogging working families. Perhaps he would like to tell the House this afternoon just what share of the savings from this uprating Bill is going to come from working families.”
“Especially after the Secretary of State dismissed Remploy workers as doing nothing more than sitting around drinking coffee, I think that that would be an appropriate gesture. Will the Minister stop this closure programme until we have a report on the table from her Department about what has gone wrong in getting the workers sacked earlier this year back into jobs? Specifically in respect of Wales, will she take up the proposal of Leighton Andrews that two factories in Wales be transferred to the Welsh Government, because although she does not feel they have a future, the Government of Wales certainly do?”
“I am afraid that is in sharp contrast to what we heard from the Minister this afternoon. It is now apparent that this closure programme must stop until we are clear about what has gone wrong in getting sacked Remploy workers back into jobs. We need to learn far more from the example set by the Welsh Government, who have already provided 97 opportunities for 250 workers who have lost their jobs. The Minister will have heard, as I have, just how important this is, because she will know, as I do, that for Remploy workers their job is far more than simply an income; it is their connection to a social network and to a world outside. It is often everything to them. Let me ask the Minister this: will she apologise to the House for trying to sneak this announcement out through a written ministerial statement?”
“Remploy epitomises both those ideals, yet over the past year all we have heard from the Government is one plan after another to close Remploy down, without any regard for how its workers are connected to a future—to jobs and prosperity in the years to come. Months ago, a Minister from this Department promised the House that the Government would move hell and high water to ensure sacked Remploy workers got into jobs, yet today about 90% of those workers sacked this year are still out of work. That is not good enough. The Work programme is not delivering for disabled people. Fewer than 1% of people on employment and support allowance have been found sustained jobs. When we undertook the modernisation of Remploy, we set aside £500 million to help support the process.”
“May I start, Mr Speaker, by saying how grateful we are to you for allowing this urgent question this afternoon? I say to the Minister that, frankly, it is shameful that her Department tried to sneak out through a written ministerial statement last week news that it was shutting a further 10 Remploy factories and putting five more at risk. It was a mark of contempt for Remploy workers that the Minister sought to duck a debate in the House. This statement marks the destruction of a tradition that stretches back to the foundation of the welfare state. If there is an ideal that Labour Members cherish, it is that the welfare state should be strong on the ethic to work and strong on the ethic to care.”
“625.] Indeed, he attacked his hon. Friends for standing “idly by” and watching child poverty reach record levels. Before the autumn statement, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that 400,000 children will be plunged back into poverty by 2015 because of measures already taken. How many more children will fall into poverty as a result of this strivers’ tax? Will the Minister please justify to the House how the Chancellor can press ahead with a £3 billion tax cut for the better-off—a tax cut of £107,000 for the 8,000 people earning over £1 million—when 6,000 families in his own constituency will see their tax credits frozen or cut? This Budget has increased the claimant count, put up the cost of failure and now working people will pay the price.”
“Already, £14 billion has been taken out of tax credits, and yesterday’s Budget steals another £5 billion from tax credits by 2016-17. The universal credit we have heard so much about—if it ever happens—has been hacked into before it has even started. The price will be paid by 6,000 families in the Minister’s constituency—no doubt they are delighted with him. In the welfare uprating Bill, what is the value of the squeeze on working people’s maternity allowance, statutory sick pay, maternity pay, paternity pay, statutory adoption pay, working tax credit and child tax credit? During Second Reading of the Child Poverty Bill, the Minister said that he had given up being an even-handed academic, because he was “appalled at what was happening in our country to the most vulnerable people” —[ Official Report , 20 July 2009; Vol. 496, c.”
“The Resolution Foundation stated yesterday that 60% of the welfare uprating bill will be paid by working people. It is a strivers’ tax. Her Majesty’s Treasury policy costings state that the 1% squeeze will save £6.7 billion. Provisional analysis this morning by the Library shows that just 23% of that will come from JSA, ESA and income support. The rest of the balance will come from tax credits, maternity allowance, maternity pay, sick pay and housing benefits, which are all claimed by working people. The strivers and battlers whom the Prime Minister promised to defend at his party conference will pay the price for the Government’s failure. I hope we will not have any nonsense from the Minister about how all that will be offset by the rise in the personal allowance.”
“We already knew that the Chancellor had throttled the recovery, that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government had cut hardest those councils where jobs were fewest, and that the Work programme was worse than doing nothing, but yesterday we saw what that means for the nation’s finances. The Office for Budget Responsibility has revised up the claimant count by 340,000 by 2016. This Budget puts up unemployment, and the bill for that failure is enormous. The dole bill in 2015-16 will now be nearly £1 billion higher—£1.6 billion more over the next three years. The bill for failure is not going down but up, and yesterday we learned that working people will pay the price. This country already has more than 6 million working people in poverty.”