Sir Iain Duncan Smith
MP for Chingford and Woodford Green · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I raise the cases of Ryan Cornelius and Jimmy Lai—both United Kingdom citizens—to the attention of the Foreign Secretary, who I welcome to his position. Ryan Cornelius has been incarcerated for 19 years—trumped-up charges by a corrupt regime that is supporting a war in Sudan at the moment.”
“Has the Secretary of State been made aware of the case of Joshua Wong, a Hong Kong resident who is being prosecuted by the Administration in Hong Kong using the national security law?”
“A particular memory is that during the Maastricht debates, when, I have to confess, I and one or two others here were deeply rebellious, Ann lectured me from the Dispatch Box—she was in government—about how I should support the Maastricht treaty and the European Union, which rather worried me.”
“It was phenomenal, because she was so certain about the way that she was. Ann embodied something else: the passion that is necessary for us in this Chamber to make our arguments without the fear of any other person doing something to us.”
“We need to reiterate, and the Government and the Home Secretary need to specify, to all the social media companies that they must do something to close down the visceral, violent language that some people use in attacking others personally, as they did over Ann’s murder, which shocked me.”
“Friday was a funny day. I heard the news very early in the morning that Ann had died, and I was utterly surprised about that because she had seemed perfectly fit the last time I saw her, so I gave my condolences and spoke about it on the radio.”
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“Yes, the No. 1 reality is that companies that believe the economy is well run will invest in their workforce and give them a better salary. The problem was that the last Labour Government set up a system that encouraged companies to pay low wages and leave them static. The change now is this: universal credit is making them move on; higher salaries; a better wage packet. Many companies are already paying the higher level—they have come and said they will.”
“The ambition is to get as many claims online as we can, but there will be some people who cannot get online. Under universal credit, we are keen to ensure that people can, if necessary, continue to make paper submissions, and that they will be treated inside jobcentres, but we will get as many online as we can. We have been talking constantly to the providers about how best to do this, and also about matters of security.”
“Under this Government, unemployment has fallen by more than 650,000 and the unemployment rate has been cut from 8% to 5.6% of the labour force.”
“My hon. Friend is, of course, right. People should remember what we inherited, which was a collapsing economy and huge levels of unemployment. Under this Government, some 1,000 more people are in work each day and employment is up by more than 350,000 to more than 31 million. Really importantly, 14.5 million women are in work, which is a record high that the last Labour Government never, ever achieved.”
“My hon. Friend does a huge amount of work in her constituency to help people in those kinds of jobs and represents them very well here. Jobcentres in her area are tasked with and focused on helping people who do periodic work, which is the nature of a lot of the employment there, and they are trained to do that. As universal credit arrives next year, my hon. Friend will find that a huge number of her constituents will benefit, because instead of losing their way by having to come off jobseeker’s allowance and on to tax credits, they will stay on universal credit and with the jobcentre. That will help those who have work that is not always permanent.”
“My hon. Friend has been assiduous in his work with the jobcentre and those who have been unemployed. Across the country, long-term unemployment is down by more than a fifth, falling to about 165,000 over the past year, and the number of people unemployed for more than 24 months is falling. The latest figures are down by a fifth, which is a remarkable position, given what we took over from the last Government.”
“As the hon. Lady should know, we offer support and help to those who attend jobcentres. If they do not speak English correctly, we send them on and support them through language courses. That process helps them obtain jobs and improve their circumstances.”
“Obviously, this is a matter for my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, but what I will say is that we have been in constant discussions and negotiations with politicians in Northern Ireland about implementing welfare reform. Even though there was agreement, they have now decided not to agree. I simply say to all involved that they now need to start thinking about how they can address the issue; otherwise, they will not benefit the people they serve who will lose out because they will lose money.”
“We do conduct reviews and I would be very happy to review that particular case, if the hon. Lady wants to take it up with me. The Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), has already met Parkinson’s UK to discuss how we can improve and modify the system so that it helps people much better. We are always looking for ways to improve it, and I and my hon. Friend would be very happy to speak to the hon. Lady about this particular case.”
“Yes. That is one of the objectives of this Government. We have made huge strides in getting more people with disabilities back into work—I think the figure is now over 220,000, which I believe is the highest figure since records began, in proportionate terms—but the most important point is that we are looking to get that up to the level of normal, non-disabled people who are back in work. Those with disabilities have every right and every reason to expect exactly the same support into work that everybody else gets.”
“Of course we are focused on youth unemployment, but it has actually been falling from what we inherited. It has fallen by more than 200,000 since we took over, and the claimant count has fallen every month in the past three and a half years. The right hon. Gentleman talked about the figures going up, and in a sense I am not surprised, because they cover the period leading up to the last election. Given what the Opposition were saying, and looking at the polls that some businesses carried out, it is no surprise to me that they might have held back. If he looks at the vacancies, he will see that there are 735,000 vacancies in the jobcentres every week, which is more than he managed.”
“This Government are committed to working to eliminate child poverty and improve the life chances of children. Our approach is to focus on the root causes of poverty and not just on the symptoms, which will deliver the best improvement in children’s life chances. Our consultation on child poverty measurement in 2013 received more than 250 responses, capturing views across the spectrum from local authorities, charities, academics and members of the public.”
“I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman did not notice that at the time of the Budget my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced one of the biggest rises in the living wage. I make no apology for punching the air, because that was a huge announcement. This is the whole point: as we get people back to work, they should be earning more in work—rather than being paid for by taxpayers, they should be paid for by their businesses.”
“We are not scrapping all the child poverty targets; what we have said is that we are going to look at all the life chances measures. We want to know what they are doing and how well they are performing. Alongside that, we are still publishing income measures; HBAI statistics—households below average income—will still be published. The hon. Lady is therefore wrong in what she says. What we are doing is focusing on what we can actually do to help families get out of poverty, rather than rotating them around a 60% median income line, as the last Labour Government did. That did not make any sense and cost a huge amount of money.”
“Absolutely; that is exactly right. This is about the measures we take that keep people out of poverty in a sustained way. I have talked already about the rise in the national living wage, but we are also doubling free childcare to 30 hours a week; raising educational standards; and expanding successfully the troubled families programme to a further 400,000 families. In addition, the early years pupil premium is hugely important in helping the most troubled families.”
“We inherited a situation where nearly one in five households in Britain had nobody in work at all. It is far more likely for someone who is out of work to be in poverty and for their children to be in poverty. We have pretty nearly halved that level and have the lowest number of workless households since records began.”
“We are not; we are committed to eradicating child poverty and we will have to report every year on our achievement in line with the figures that I gave the right hon. Gentleman earlier. I simply say to him that his Government failed to meet their targets—they spent £75 billion on tax credits in their last six years and still failed—and it is under this Government, in the past five years, that child poverty has actually fallen by some 300,000, rather than under them.”
“I believe that our reports will cover a much wider range of issues that affect child poverty. I have always felt that issues to do with family stability, drug and alcohol addiction and education are critical to a child achieving a decent outcome. If the right hon. Gentleman has anything further to add, I am always willing to take his submissions, and the Select Committee has also said that it will do the same. My point is that an arbitrary target simply for an income line, which is what his Government did, leads to a huge distortion in the benefits system, and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) has said exactly the same.”
“Universal credit is now available in more than half of jobcentres across Great Britain and will be available in all jobcentres early next year. The national roll-out is on track and our “test and learn” approach is now working very well. Nearly 175,000 people have made a claim for universal credit so far. The number is growing exponentially as we roll out the scheme across the country. Our evidence shows that universal credit claimants find work quicker, stay in work longer and earn more than the jobseeker’s allowance claimants.”
“It would be helpful if the hon. Lady listened to the answer that she was given rather than go with a Labour Whip’s handout. The Front-Bench team obviously worked very hard to ensure that she got her question in. Universal credit is going to be a remarkable success; it is rolling out to more than half of jobcentres and people will benefit enormously.”
“I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. In all the areas in which we have rolled out universal credit—in more than half of jobcentres—it is dramatically improving people’s lives. Unlike when the previous Government rolled out tax credit and hundreds of thousands of people lost their money, this scheme is ensuring that people who deserve the money and are ready for it are paid it.”
“I am on the verge of giving up speaking to the right hon. Gentleman, because he misuses all the facts. As I have told him again and again and again, he is more than welcome to visit the sites where it has been rolled out. He has had an open invitation to come to see the digital site and I recommend that he does so. Universal credit is already working; no one has lost any money; it will be online; and it will go out fully and start next year. This is a successful programme and if the right hon. Gentleman wants to compare notes about tax credit roll-outs, I would be more than happy to do that.”
“As I have already said, universal credit is now available in more than half the jobcentres. The full development starts rolling out next year. People will benefit enormously not just from the technicalities but from the fact that an adviser will now stay with a claimant all the way through the claim. I know that my hon. Friend was not looking for a job, but perhaps the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) will need to be looking for one in a few years’ time.”
“Full-time employment has risen by more than 350,000 over the last year, accounting for 99% of the rise in total employment. The number of people in full-time work is at a record high, and is up over 1.5 million since 2010.”
“My hon. Friend is right: nearly 2 million more people take home a pay packet that is increasing, up 2.8% on the year, and for the last nine consecutive months, the increase in pay has outstripped inflation. Even better, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has announced a huge rise in take-home pay through the national living wage, and we should all welcome that.”
“This month, we are rolling out our Fit for Work programme to all employers across England and Wales, and to GPs. Employers will now be able to refer thousands of workers facing long-term sickness to specialist support, providing occupational health advice and helping them to avoid long absence. The Fit for Work service is the first line of defence when anyone falls sick, and alongside GPs it will help employers to avoid people falling on to sickness benefits and losing their link with the world of work.”
“Absolutely. I recognise the huge and vital contribution made by firms such as GO4 Enterprises, delivering huge change in Essex. My Department is instrumental in growing social investment via the £30 million innovation fund I set up, and we will continue to chase and improve those targets.”
“Actually, that has not happened. Taxpayers have not lost money. What we have done is to go on rolling out a system, and unlike what happened when tax credits were rolled out under the last Labour Government and hundreds of thousands of people lost money, nobody is losing money as universal credit rolls out.”
“We publish statistics the whole time on child poverty. We will also be publishing statistics on the effects of different aspects of what we do. There has never been across-the-board comprehensive publication of data by Government on all those things, but I am happy to engage with the hon. Lady if she wants to take the matter further.”
“We are focused constantly on trying to get incomes up, and we are looking to do that through the raising of the national living wage announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. For this Government, the No. 1 thing we need to do to make sure that people get out of poverty is to get them back to work. There are some of the best employment figures in Scotland thanks to this Government.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for that really helpful question. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has made it clear that in this particular circumstance, the needs of these particular migrants, in many cases in desperate trouble, will be met by the money in the aid budget. We have no plans to change that. My hon. Friend cannot tempt me to say more, but following is a statement in which he might like to catch the Speaker’s eye.”
“The hon. Gentleman raises a really important point, which is about getting ahead of the curve by making sure that people do not fall sick. I have announced today the Fit for Work programme, part of which is very much about trying to encourage employers to look at the health of their employees well ahead of that happening. If he wants to write to me about this, I will be very happy to discuss it with him, and we may be able to do more.”
“Nobody should be sanctioned because they cannot get online. If the hon. Lady has any examples of that, we would be very happy to take them up. There are online opportunities in libraries and jobcentres, and everything else. If she wants to write to us about it, I would be very happy to deal with it.”
“The hon. Gentleman is right that a huge amount of work is being done and there is still even more that can be done, but the No. 1 priority for Northern Ireland right now is for people to sit down, behave rationally and sort this out so that we can get the money to Northern Ireland and support the sort of people he talks about, rather than posturing and playing games.”
“The hon. Lady put out a series of blogs on the mortality stats last week that were fundamentally wrong. Her use of figures is therefore quite often incorrect. I simply say to her— [ Interruption. ] She has had an offer to meet the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), time and again, but she just wants to sit in the bitter corner screaming abuse.”
“There are rules, regulations and guidance on who should be sanctioned. The sanctions regime, which was in place under the Labour Government, is there to ensure that when taxpayers pay their money to support unemployed people, those people look for work, take that work and stay in work. I think that is only fair.”
“That historic reform will give more than 2.7 million people currently on the minimum wage a pay rise of more than £5,000 a year. With the increase in the personal allowance to £12,500 by the end of the Parliament, the national living wage will make work pay and improve people’s living standards. It will also help productivity. The Governor of the Bank of England confirmed last week that the living wage will help increase the productivity of workers and of the country—”
“Eliminating the deficit and paying off our debts is the moral and most effective things for a responsible Government to do for people on low incomes, who rely more than anybody on those services. It is worth pointing out that we also need to drive productivity improvements. The Budget contains some important measures to make that a reality, and our long-term productivity plan sets out how it will boost productivity over the next 10 years. As my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary made vividly clear in launching that plan, if we could, for example, match US levels of productivity, we would increase GDP by 31%—that is £23,000 a year for every household. A key driver to getting us there is the national living wage.”
“The recent Budget debate, in which we had a pretty full discussion of many of the characteristics of this Bill, made it clear that we want to go further, delivering 3 million more apprenticeships and moving towards full employment. These are measures that this Government will drive forward and that this Bill requires us to report on each year. We will also continue to bear down on the deficit and debt, achieving a surplus by the end of the Parliament. We are spending £3 billion on debt interest payments alone every month—the figure is £33 billion a year, which is £1,236 per household. Every pound we spend on paying off the debt is a pound we are paying to others such as overseas investment funds, rather than on the necessary public services such as schools and hospitals or on being able to reduce taxation further.”
“Let me remind the House quickly, before we get into the details, of what we inherited when we came into office in 2010: nearly one in five households had no one working—this is what Labour left us; the number of households where no one had ever worked had nearly doubled; 1.4 million people had been on benefits for most of the previous decade; and close to half of all households in the social rented sector had no one at all in work. Since then, even through the coalition, we have proceeded to get to 2 million more jobs being created; there are now 2 million more apprenticeships; the number of workless households has reached a record low—it is down more than 670,000 since 2010; and the workless household rate in the social rented sector is now the lowest on record.”
“I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. I am conscious of the fact that many Members wish to speak today and that we have compressed time as a result of the statements. I will take interventions, but I recognise that we need to make some progress so that everybody has a chance to speak. In moving the motion, I wish to make it very clear that Conservative Members are united in support of the Government’s aim to move from a high tax, high welfare and low wage society to a low tax, lower welfare and higher wage society. This Bill lays the ground for that commitment and helps us to continue the job of reversing the Labour’s Government’s failure that led us into the difficulties we inherited.”
“I want to quote what the Governor has said and then I will give way to the hon. Gentleman. The Governor said: “There should be some improvement in productivity as a consequence of adjustment in the national living wage”.”
“As for the third part of his question, it is also correct that this Bill, with all the other welfare reforms and the things that we are bringing in, will ultimately improve the life chances of people and the numbers in work. We know that the best way out of poverty is through full-time work.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I wish him well in his campaign. [Laughter.] I was being genuine and not politically expedient. I must say that being Leader of the Opposition is not all that it is cracked up to be. I have some personal experience of that. He should be careful what he wishes for. None of us wishes him ill. On the hon. Gentleman’s legitimate question, I say yes to the first part. The measures in the Bill relating to life chances will do more to help us target the kind of work that we should be doing to turn lives around in families and households to ensure that people are able to get into work and to sustain themselves in work.”
“I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), but then I will make some progress. I will give way again a bit later.”
“First, it extends the important principles of the benefit cap. The £26,000 cap we introduced in 2013 has been a huge success—”
“I do agree with my hon. Friend, which is why I want to get to the Bill. This backdrop of rising employment, falling deficit, increased productivity and higher wages brings me to the Bill before the House today. This is a Bill for working Britain, and it is underpinned by three key principles: first, work is the best route out of poverty, and being in work should always pay more than being on benefits; secondly, spending on welfare should be sustainable and fair to the taxpayer while protecting the most vulnerable; and, thirdly, people on benefit should face the same choices as those in work and those not on benefits. I wish to talk about each of those principles in turn. My focus in government—and the focus of the Government —has been to ensure that it pays more to work than to be on benefits. This Bill builds on that principle.”
“One moment, please. The cap has been a huge success in getting people back to work and reintroducing fairness to the welfare system. Capped households are more than 40% more likely to go into work after a year than similar uncapped households. It is right to keep the level of the cap under review to ensure that it continues to be fair and that it provides the right incentives for people to move into work.”
“No, I will give way to the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) in a second, but I wish to make a bit of progress. We know that around four in 10 households outside London earn less than £20,000, and the same proportion of households in London earn less than £23,000. To ensure that the cap better reflects the circumstances of hard-working families, the Bill lowers the current cap to £20,000 for households outside Greater London, and the Greater London cap will be set at £23,000. The exemptions will continue to apply to the most vulnerable, which includes people on disability living allowance and personal independence payment, those in an employment and support allowance support group and those moving into work who are entitled to working tax credits.”
“I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss that and to look at the issue he raises. I know that we have looked at it, but I am happy to look at it again with him.”