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.”
The complete record
Every one of 4,453 lines we hold for Sir Iain Duncan Smith, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 80 of 90.
“I am dying to do that. We want to know who has actually been claiming benefits, but we really do not know that from the figures. The last Government did not want to know. It was almost a deliberate policy not to have the figures available so that people would not know how many were coming in and claiming benefits. That will change. We are an open Government and we will publish the figures. We will be very clear and we will see the size of the problem that we have to resolve.”
“As I recall, the last Government put together a set of figures on Polish migration that were fundamentally wrong. The best way to deal with this is to make the systems much tighter and much better focused, so that we can deal with whatever numbers want to come here and ensure that they do not come here to claim benefits. I have said before and I say again that the last Government did not want to know how many of those people were claiming benefits. That is now changing.”
“We need to reach an agreement within that time scale, so I really am going to push the accelerator pedal down. I have already called for an urgent meeting with those other countries that have agreed to meet us to discuss the issue. We also need to talk to the Commission. The Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), is hugely responsible for this area, and I will do whatever I can in an arbitrary manner to make sure that nothing else takes place.”
“The whole point is that there is a contract between those who pay their taxes and those who need to receive benefits. That is implicit in everything we do in regard to welfare payments in the UK, and it should be implicit in the way the European Commission looks at individual nation states and understands their relationships with their own citizens. That is the issue that I want to take forward. The Commission needs to think carefully about driving hard just on free movement, without recognising that individual countries have very different systems. We need the leeway to implement those systems as necessary while still observing free movement for those who want to become employed.”
“I know the right hon. Gentleman would never want to unwittingly mislead the House. He has said that if someone is convicted, they will be exempt. They are not exempt. Only those on remand will be exempt. Would the right hon. Gentleman like to correct the record?”
“I just want to establish one thing: the right hon. Gentleman is now changing his party’s legal policy. It has been a very good principle in this country down through the ages that people are innocent until proven guilty, not guilty before they are proven innocent. The reality is that we stick within the existing strictures. The right hon. Gentleman has every right to oppose this measure, but he is now saying that as soon as someone is accused of a crime, they should immediately be treated as if they are guilty.”
“Will the right hon. Gentleman explain the following two important points? Under the Labour Government’s local housing allowance changes, the situation for children of the same sex in respect of the size criteria was exactly the same as we are now introducing in the social sector. Why is it good for one but not for the other? Secondly, he is crowing about the number of social houses in existence, but why did the last Labour Government leave the building programme at the lowest level since the 1920s?”
“I stand by our assessments. Will the right hon. Gentleman apologise for what was done in Labour’s 13 years? The current Government have increased the level of social house building by 18% on what we inherited; it had collapsed under Labour. Will he apologise and explain to the nationalists that one reason why we are in this predicament is that house building collapsed under his Government?”
“My hon. Friend is right to raise the important matter of communications, as was my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh). We have been talking to councils for quite some time and we are urging them to talk to their social housing residents. They are doing that, but they are not helped when others go out and say things about the provisions that are completely untrue. There have been many scare stories about pensioners and we made it clear from the word go that pensioners were not involved, but some of the Opposition parties spent their time saying that pensioners would be affected. There is a barrier, but we are doing our level best to get the information across.”
“The benefit cap will be implemented from 15 April 2013 in Bromley, Croydon, Enfield and Haringey local authority areas. This will be a phased roll-out, with the remaining local authorities implementing the cap by the summer. This is in keeping with the way that the culture has changed in DWP. All the programmes that we are implementing are being rolled out on a staged basis. That includes changes to the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, universal credit, personal independence payment and universal job match.”
“Clearly, the cap and the principles behind the cap are supported by Government Members—that is, that people who are on benefits should not be earning more than those, for example, on average earnings. Those who are exempted are those who are entitled to working tax credit—because this is about getting people back to work, not stopping them doing that—war widows, widowers, those in receipt of disability living allowance/personal independence payment, attendance allowance, industrial injuries benefits, those on war disablement pension and compensation scheme and the support component of employment support allowance. There is also a 39-week grace period for those who fall unemployed so that they can get back to work without having to change their arrangements.”
“First, I must say to the hon. Lady that she is talking complete nonsense. I would much rather implement a programme learning the lessons as we implement it, than follow the practice of the previous Government, who had a period of collapsing programmes because they rushed them. This is the right way to do it and it is a shift in culture. On the second part of her question, under the Government that she supported—and it is still the case today—when someone becomes an adult, they effectively form their own household. We have discussed and are discussing those matters continuously, but households are formed when someone becomes an adult, and the previous Government never saw any reason to change that in all the years that they were in power.”
“I say to my hon. Friend and to all hon. Members and hon. Friends whose areas are affected by the roll-out that we are in deep discussions with all those councils. Jobcentre Plus will be working hugely with each of them, advising, helping and supporting them—in many senses, giving them more support than is necessarily likely to be the case when the national roll-out follows the pilot programmes.”
“I am glad to see that the hon. Lady realises the point of this whole process—to learn the lessons and to understand how best to implement the pilot programmes properly. Of course we will be talking to all local authorities, particularly those that are directly affected, and all other local authorities will listen to what they say. Despite the massive protestations of collapse and doom and gloom that we heard when we announced these proposals—we should remember that all local authorities have known about them for over a year—we now see statistics showing that there has not been the mass migration that was predicted. As for access to housing, housing benefit caseloads in London have risen by 5%, not fallen.”
“Early roll-out of universal credit begins with a pathfinder in April 2013 in the Greater Manchester and Cheshire region, including the jobcentre in Ashton-under-Lyne. I am aware that a number of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents will be involved as a result, as will other Members’ constituents, and my Department will write to all of them to invite them to discuss the roll-out.”
“It will—I can give the hon. Gentleman that reassurance. We are discussing this at every level with the local authorities concerned. The process will start at a jobcentre in each of the areas I have mentioned on 29 April, and that will start bringing in childless couples to claim universal credit, rather than jobseeker’s allowance. Over that period, once people are captured into the universal credit system, they will not go back on to jobseeker’s allowance, so a lot of tax-credit people who fall unemployed will move on to universal credit. We are in deep discussions with the regions. [Official Report, 31 January 2013, Vol. 557, c. 6MC.]”
“All such programmes under Governments of any hue have always carried risk, because they are about change. The DWP benefits systems, including tax credits, are very complicated and often contradictory. Of course what we are doing involves risk, but we are trying to manage that risk. The best way to do so is to ensure that we introduce it stage by stage, so that we can recognise where we need to learn lessons, correct what is difficult or going wrong and ensure that we roll out the system properly.”
“I do not believe that there will be an impact. [ Interruption. ] The Opposition should look to their own record and the housing benefit mess that they left us. They left a rising bill that had doubled in nearly 10 years, so it would be better to have a little less from them. We are trying to ensure that those who are paying this money are not allowed to slip into debt for any great length of time. That matter is being discussed with housing associations and we are making good progress on it. I believe that this approach will help people who are trying to get back into work enormously, rather than their being treated as though they are children who have to have all their bills paid for them.”
“That is exactly the point. My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. The mess of all the chaotic benefits left by the last Government, many of which contradicted each other, meant that people were not incentivised to go to work for anything more than 16 hours in some cases. Many people who could have got themselves out of poverty by working did not do so because they were penalised by the system. That is the shame of what the last Government left behind.”
“The Department is looking closely at how we can assist people to take more work while on universal credit. We do not have the final results of that, but I am happy to sit down with the hon. Lady at any time and discuss her concerns. She is right about one thing: rather than parking people on a specific number of hours, universal credit will allow people to work more hours and get more money, rather than losing it, thereby getting themselves and their children, if they have any, out of poverty.”
“The Government have undertaken major reforms to limit Britain’s welfare spending, which over successive years ran out of control. Under the last Government, welfare bills had increased by 60% by 2010, costing every household in Britain an extra £3,000 a year. Last week, the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill was passed by this House. It will save £1.9 billion, restoring fairness for taxpayers in the process.”
“My hon. Friend is right about the situation that we were left. We are already bearing down on the problem. The figures show that we are making inroads into welfare fraud. Universal credit will have a much better record in this area, because we will be able to use real-time information to check up on who is in work and what they are earning on a monthly basis, rather than having to wait until the end of somebody’s time on tax credits at the end of a year and reconcile the figures over a long period. Under the current tax credits system, £5 billion has been written off as a result of fraud and error, and it looks like another £5 billion will also be written off. [Official Report, 1 February 2013, Vol. 557, c. 8MC.]”
“I agree with my hon. Friend: we should measure our welfare system by how soon it provides support to those who need it and how it supports those who can be moved into a more productive form of life. The previous system trapped people into dependency on welfare with rising bills and, ultimately, a very poor record on child poverty.”
“I understand fully what my hon. Friend is saying and, of course, the parent who is caring for a child in hospital has 84 days in which that child may be in hospital. I also recognise what he is saying about broken-up periods in hospital should someone have a condition that takes them back to hospital again. I would be happy to sit down with him, and anybody else, to look at the issue and discuss whether there are ways to rectify it.”
“First, as my hon. Friend knows, this is about the disability living allowance and the personal independence payment, and the reality is that DLA will not be included in the changes. More than that, it is important to note that through discussions over the introduction of PIP, a good and warm welcome has finally come from the Royal National Institute of Blind People. After recent discussions it said that the PIP criteria include a number of “significant improvements for blind and partially sighted people.” The changes we are making to PIP, after guidance from that organisation and others, will help people such as my hon. Friend’s constituent.”
“What the hon. Lady and her party presided over when they were in power was a complete mess in housing— [ Interruption. ] It is all very well for Opposition Members to shout like a bunch of discombobulated monkeys bouncing up and down on the Benches; the reality is that their housing benefit record left many thousands of families unable to find housing because they were in a queue, while others occupied housing that had far too many rooms. We have to put that right, and that is what we are doing. The Labour party never did that when it was in government.”
“I have known the hon. Gentleman for a long time, and the reality is that none of these decisions is taken lightly by this Government—indeed, any Government. I remind him, however, about all those people who, because of the mess in which the previous Government left the finances, have found themselves out of work or with incomes falling. When he talks about vulnerable people, it is this Government who have increased the pension and made it better for some of the most vulnerable people in society.”
“It is our intention to try to ensure that under universal credit the loose access to benefits that has been enjoyed by far too many people coming into this country who have no right to them will actually be limited. I will be able to brief the House much better on that as and when we complete the rules on it.”
“I have lots of discussions with the Chancellor on a regular basis, all very amicable. Of course we have to discuss this in a wider context, but the hon. Gentleman and his party look at this in a very narrow context. They say, “Well, you withdraw this money from people on benefits and that immediately has an effect on the high street.” If that were all that we were doing, I would agree with him, but it is not. There is a major programme for investment in industry and a huge capital spending programme, not least as will be announced in a statement later today. These will have an even bigger effect, in a positive way, on spending in the high street.”
“Today, I welcome the millionth jobseeker signed up to the universal jobmatch service, launched before Christmas, which is revolutionising how claimants look for work—with online job searching and matching through DWP on a scale never seen before. The system works 24/7 to find jobs that fit with people’s skills, location and working patterns, which means that their CV works for them even while they sleep. The service harnesses new technology to improve their prospects, and was launched on time and on budget.”
“This is a matter that we are looking into. As my hon. Friend knows very well, it is caught under European law; however, the recent judgment that came out said that we had to make these payments. There might be other ways we may be able to limit that exposure, and I will be able to let my hon. Friend know later in the day.”
“We are of course working closely with the Minister responsible at the Department for Education—the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson)—whose record on this is unimpeachable, as my right hon. Friend knows. He also should recognise that we have laid aside £5 million specifically to help with foster carers in the situation he described. However, we are in discussions with local authorities, county councils and the Department for Education about how best the money can be used to ensure that it specifically helps foster carers in this area, so that they suffer no hardship whatever, but can continue, and we can encourage more people to become foster carers.”
“The hon. Lady is confusing two answers. The answer that she received from the Treasury—from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs—was to do with checking against the references of the accredited companies. That was a process that was looking for 80%, and it was achieving just over 75%. What my hon. Friend the Minister was saying was that the number of companies being brought on to the pilot was exactly in line with the number that is there. I can promise the hon. Lady that, if she really wants me to, I will give her a written answer to that question as well.”
“The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban) and others are engaged on this matter with our European partners. We do not think it right that somebody who has made no contribution to this country should be able to walk in here on day one and take benefits, as is being proposed. I promise my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) that I will not allow that to happen.”
“We do not expect anybody to lose their homes as a result, but I must tell the hon. Gentleman that his Government sat for a large number of years without building any houses, watching housing benefit rise and people sitting on waiting lists to get houses, so crocodile tears from them now they are in opposition are a waste of time. We will sort the problem out, and I hope they will not be in government for a long time to come.”
“We inherited a situation in which there were rules guarding against that happening to those who come in. To put the record straight, habitual residence tests and other rules require that those who come into this country are involved in some form of work. My hon. Friend also knows that European legislation is before us at the moment that tries to allow those coming in to claim benefits on day one. We are utterly opposed to that: we are fighting it, and it is not my intention to see it happen in any way.”
“I am pleased to note that my hon. Friend ascribes efficiency and a real plan to the Labour Government, but that great plan of theirs to create a socialist state ended in the payment of tax credits to people earning more than £70,000 a year. Who were they helping in that regard?”
“For all the talk about this being absolutely about people in work, 70% of that money went on child tax credits, chasing a target that Labour never hit, and that was payable regardless of whether parents were in work or not.”
“We were left a legacy of disaster and spending that was out of control, and our priority must be to get that back under control. If we do not do that, the poorest in society will fare the worst—that is the main point to make. Let me give an illustration of the point I was making. Under the previous Government public spending ran to excess, while the cost of working age welfare increased by some 60% in real terms, as has been said on a number of occasions. Money was poured into what became an over-inflated system; as my hon. Friend the Minister of State, has said, for every £3 taken in tax £4 was actually borrowed, with the result that we had a growing deficit. It was one of the worst deficits in Europe, if not the worst in the western world. We spent £170 billion on tax credits alone between 2003 and 2010.”
“I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. The Bill moves into its Third Reading with—I believe—its fundamental principles intact. I thought that my hon. Friend the Minister of State’s closing speech before the votes answered, in detail, many of the questions that remained after the debate on the amendments, but now, on Third Reading, I think it important to make further progress. The arguments that we advanced when we presented the Bill were first and foremost about affordability. Our main argument concerned the need to reduce the historic deficit left by Labour. As I have said to my colleagues throughout the coalition, at no stage have we made our decisions lightly. This is not something that, at the start, we would have wanted to do, and I want to come back to that point in a moment.”
“No, I am going to make a little progress now, although I will give way later. I recognise that some who did not get a chance to speak earlier may wish to say a few words, and I want to give them a little time to do so. The previous Government appeared to have no care or concern for the fact that more than £10 billion was wasted and lost eventually through fraud, error and overpayments, nor that the rest of the money altogether failed to meet its aim. There was already a problem with fraud and error on tax credits, but, worse still, the previous Government did not even record overpayments, so we have no idea to what degree that system was damaged. However, we do know—”
“I said that I would make a little progress and then give way. I wish to make one point, which is that £4 billion has had to be written off as a direct result of this inability to get the money back, with a further £4 billion likely to be written off directly as a result of Labour’s massive failure to control that budget. The second part of our approach is important and it relates to the issue of fairness, which my hon. Friend the Minister of State addressed. We do not do these things lightly, but we do want to make sure that those paying the tax bill for those receiving it in welfare recognise that their taxes are well spent; we want to ensure that those in work paying their taxes do not see the rises for those on welfare outstripping their own. We have already discussed the increases, so this is fundamentally an issue of fairness.”
“The reality was that the previous Government ended up, through tax credits and child tax credits, attempting to chase a target that, as the economy improved, ran away from them. This became spending for an arbitrary target, and the taxpayer was chasing a target that the previous Government never achieved.”
“I have said all along that I do not doubt that at the beginning the intention was to try to improve the lot of those working on low incomes; I have never attacked that as a principle. The point I am making tonight is that there seemed to be a loss of control. In 2005, the then Government stuck a 58% increase into tax credits just before an election—almost 70% of all the money in tax credits goes on child tax credits—and they were, in a way, bribing an electorate in the hope that these people would vote for them because they felt that there would be some reason why they would not get the money afterwards. I wish to make one important point to the right hon. Gentleman on tax credits, because he has asked me about them.”
“I will not give way. Progress on tackling child poverty stalled, and the previous Government missed their 2010 target by some 600,000 children.”
“No, I will not give way yet. From 2004 until the last election the previous Government spent £171 billion trying to hit their target, and that was where the problem came from. They wrecked what might have been a good process because they turned it into a target-chasing process, which never succeeded finally.”
“If she and her party were honest—when I made this point on Second Reading, I noticed one of her Front Benchers nodding his head—they would admit that when they worked out the arbitrary target in 1997-98, they thought that they would not be in power that long and that they could achieve the targets along the way. What they ended up in doing was create a nightmare for themselves. Some £170 billion were spent on tax credits but targets to halve child poverty by 2010 were missed by 600,000. Easier successes were found and then later the rate fell from 26% to 23%. It dropped further between 2002 and 2005 but that coincided with a 75% increase in spending on tax credits from £13.2 billion to £22.9 billion. Throughout that period, the amount of severe child poverty was absolutely static.”
“Let me put the figures in the round within the period of spending review. My hon. Friend the Minister of State made a very good point, with which I agree and which I have made in the past—we do not trumpet our progress because we think the process of setting a target around 60% of the median income line was a recipe for nightmare problems and excess spending. We do not claim that that is the right way to measure the problem. The hon. Lady will have noticed that in answer to a parliamentary question last week, we said that we will go into full public consultation about a better way to measure real child poverty that the coalition Government will set and measure ourselves against— [ Interruption. ] Income will be part of it, but not the dominant part that her Government made it.”
“That is my genuine intention. My right hon. Friend will know that his hon. Friend the Minister of State and I have worked to ensure that what we do to get the deficit down through universal credit and the other reforms—even those for pensions—will improve the lot of the poorest in society. If we take the figures on that relative income point across the period covered by the spending review, we can see that some 350,000 children net will be lifted out of poverty, even if we take into account the effect of this Bill. I can tell my right hon. Friend that that is absolutely our purpose and one that I believe we can stand by.”
“I want to make a little progress before I give way again. We need to remind ourselves that although the Opposition spent the debate in Committee going on and on at my hon. Friends about taxes on the wealthy coming down, we are raising more in tax from the wealthiest than they ever planned to throughout the whole of their spending programme. Hon. Members should remember that Labour was the party that said early on that it was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”. We will take no lessons from the party that did not raise the upper rate to 50% until the last month or two before it lost the election.”