Helen Whately
MP for Faversham and Mid Kent · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Every holiday period, Kent and my constituency of Faversham and Mid Kent is brought to a standstill, and that has become much worse with the introduction of the EU entry-exit system, despite the fact that our ports and Eurotunnel have invested in the technology.”
“The situation could be horrific this summer: imagine people, including children and elderly people, and potentially pets, waiting in their cars in this heat for around 12 hours. It is a disaster. I implore the Minister to involve the Prime Minister—and, most likely, the right hon.”
“I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. She is making an important point about the fact that we need not just the minimum but the maximum. We need really strong commitments. The Cleve Hill solar development in the village of Graveney in my constituency is huge. It has obliterated 900 acres of agricultural land and marshland.”
“On the point about considering the community benefit, what counts as a community is really important. In some circumstances—this has come up in my local area—a large geographical area is considered as a community, even though the number of households that are very substantially affected is very small.”
“I associate myself and those on the Opposition Benches with the Secretary of State’s comments about the outgoing permanent secretary of the Department for Work and Pensions. I am sorry that this may be my last exchange with the Secretary of State, as we await the coronation of the king in the north and the appointment of his new team.”
“I heard no commitment from the Secretary of State that the benefits bill was going to come down any time soon. Labour can change its leader, but it is still the same old welfare party. The right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) told us this morning that he is going to bring “Manchesterism” to the whole country.”
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“Today, there is just one issue left: mandation, or, as the Government prefer to call it, the reserve power—a power that sat in clause 40 until the noble Lords once again removed it from the Bill last Wednesday. The Government’s case for this power is straightforward: they want more pension investment in private markets and, by extension, more pension investment in the UK. That was the ambition behind the Mansion House accord, and it is an ambition that we share. We want to see the accord succeed, we want more productive investment, and we want pension capital to work harder for savers, but although the ambition is right, this policy is not. Mandation is the wrong lever to achieve those aims. As the House has heard from me and my hon.”
“First, may I thank the hon. Gentleman for opening this evening’s debate, and for setting out the latest Government amendments, in place of the Pensions Minister? These ping-pong sessions with the hon. Member for Swansea West (Torsten Bell) have become a regular in my diary, and I will miss him this evening. When this Bill was introduced last summer, we said that much of it was a sensible step forward that built on the work of the previous Conservative Government. We stand by that view, but supporting the broad direction of a Bill does not mean unqualified support for its every provision. Throughout its passage, we have challenged the Government on the local government pension scheme, on member communications and on the scale requirements in the Bill, but you will be pleased to know that those debates are behind us, Madam Deputy Speaker.”
“The hon. Gentleman is quoting selectively from a letter that I have written to the industry. We had this exact debate with the Pensions Minister last week. There is an acknowledged and debated collective action problem; on that, there is a level of consensus, but there is no consensus that mandation is the right answer. In fact, there is a consensus in the sector that mandation is the wrong answer. This Bill contains measures that will make a difference, and will go towards fixing this collective action problem, such as the value for money framework. The Mansion House accord was only signed last year, and the Government should give it time to work. We do not need mandation in this Bill.”
“Secondly, the Government have committed, in their amendment in lieu of Baroness Neville-Rolfe’s amendment 77, to examine the costs and sustainability of public sector pensions. That too is welcome. That review should consider questions of intergenerational fairness, long-term sustainability and how best to protect the benefits already promised to people, particularly at a time when demands on the state are rising and taxpayers are being asked to contribute more than ever.”
“Last week I thought that the Minister could and should do better, and I am glad that since then he has. His tone has shifted, and I am grateful for the discussions he has had with me and my team. His engagement has been constructive, and we have indeed made progress. Turning to the amendments tabled since our last debate, I first welcome the Government’s commitment on the local government pension scheme. A faster and wider review of the triennial valuation by the Government Actuary’s Department is sensible and significant. If the review is to be meaningful, it must focus on what actually drives employer contribution rates, and we welcome that the Government have now recognised that.”
“What a difference a week makes. When the hon. Gentleman rose to conclude our debate last Wednesday, he delivered from the Dispatch Box what I can only describe as a tirade. Serious and considered concerns—not just from me and my hon. Friends, but from noble Lords and many respected people across the industry—were met with accusations. We were told that those concerns were “nonsense on stilts”. He said that I had been “infected” by my party. If by that he meant that I have strong opinions—that I believe in a smaller state because Governments do not have all the answers and often need to get out of the way—then I must break the news to him that I have held those views for many years. I came to Parliament after a career in business. I knew my views then, and I still know them now.”
“As I think the right hon. Gentleman will have heard in my speech, there is widespread agreement that we want to see more investment by pension funds in the UK; the debate is about whether mandation is the way to achieve that. Actually the Minister’s main argument for the mandation powers is not about investment in the UK; it is about solving a collective action first-mover problem in trying to improve returns and the risk that that will put up costs to pension funds and for savers. That is what he’s really arguing, rather than the point made by the right hon. Gentleman about investment in the UK.”
“On the ABI report that he referred to—he has referred to it before—yes, the ABI has agreed with the diagnosis of the problem, as I set out, as a collective action problem. However, it does not agree with mandation as the remedy. The Minister needs to be clear about that.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The last Division we voted on was on a motion proposed by the Government that grouped a series of amendments with which we agreed, alongside amendments on mandation, with which we had strong disagreements. What steps can be taken to bring about a separate Division on the mandation clauses, with which we disagree?”
“He should have listened to their debate, as I did, but listening may not be something he likes to do. He even blocked one respected industry voice, Tom McPhail, on social media when Tom simply called out mandation for what it is: a dangerous power grab by the Government.”
“Labour snuck in the power that we talk about as mandation under the auspices of a backstop to the voluntary Mansion House agreement. Well, well, well. It really did not have to be this way. If only the Pensions Minister had been a little more receptive to suggestions from other parties or from the pension sector itself. It is hard to find anyone who supports his mandation policy. Pensions UK, the Pensions Management Institute, the Association of British Insurers, Aviva and BlackRock—I could go on—are all against mandation, as are any number of economists and respected voices, from Paul Johnson to Dominic Lawson, and even the Minister’s former colleague Ed Balls. In the other place, noble Lords in their droves have sought to expose this policy for what it is.”
“Who knew that the Pension Schemes Bill would become so controversial? It is a Bill on which there was so much consensus; a Bill begun by one party in government and now being continued by another; a Bill that could have sailed through Parliament. But no, that was not to be, because the Government had an idea—a bad idea. Labour saw £400 billion-worth of pension funds, the savings built up through years of successful auto-enrolment, and it was tempted. We can picture Labour Members looking at the pensions piggybank and saying to each other, “Just imagine what we could do with that money—we could perhaps put it towards some of the Energy Secretary’s net zero schemes.” They have taxed the country to the hilt, they cannot bring themselves to make savings on welfare, and they have run the Treasury dry, so now they are coming for pensions.”
“The Minister is back here with his tail between his legs, and he has changed his tune from, “It’s all fine, nothing to see here”; he reluctantly tabled three amendments last week. I recognise the direction that the Government are trying to move in. They are reining in the power that they are taking, and trying to make it look more aligned with the voluntary Mansion House accord. The fundamental problem remains unresolved, however, because at its core, the Bill still gives the Government the power to direct the investment of people’s pension savings, and that, as a matter of principle, is wrong.”
“On the contrary, I want to see more investment in the UK and higher returns for savers in default pension schemes, and there is widespread support for those objectives, but even the Minister should have realised that he could not get away with saying that the provision is just a backstop to the Mansion House agreement when the mandation power in his Bill was so glaringly different. Back in December last year, I warned him that mandation would not wash, but he did not listen. That is why I have fought mandation every step of the way, along with the pension sector, my colleagues on the Front Bench and the noble Lords in the other place, who resoundingly rejected it.”
“We have shared ambitions for our pension system, such as boosting pension pots through increased pension scheme scale and a greater focus on returns, rather than minimising costs. We want greater transparency and consumer engagement in the size and performance of pension pots and a system that works better for people with terminal illness. Despite all the consensus, the Minister’s Bill is still far from the finish line. Returning to Lords amendment 1, which the Government are seeking to eject from this Bill, relates to the mandation powers. I have no disagreement with the objectives of the voluntary Mansion House agreement.”
“My hon. Friend is exactly right. Sometimes the Pensions Minister talks about this all as being technicalities, but the fact is that the Government are coming after people’s hard-earned savings, and the public can see it. The Government think it is a pension pot they can mess with. We know that it is people’s own savings. The Government do not know best. [ Interruption. ] The Minister should not just listen to us; he should listen to the noble Lords in the other place. The Minister has returned to this House after suffering 12 defeats in the other place. That is what happens when a Government put their fingers in their ears. This situation is entirely of the Pensions Minister’s own making, because there is a great deal of common ground here. Across this House, we want pensions policy to move forward.”
“I commend my right hon. Friend on securing this debate and on the speech he is making about the challenge of supplying water to Tonbridge and Malling, now and in the future with such a huge number of developments planned. Given the difficulty of supplying water to his constituency, where there are 19,000 more homes planned, how on earth can there be enough water for the 20,000 homes in the pipeline for my constituency? We are already suffering with water outages and having to rely on water being tankered, so there is very poor resilience. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government should think again about the scale of the housing plan for rural constituencies like mine and his, particularly given the lack of adequate infrastructure?”
“The Minister mentioned that the water taskforce will be meeting with David Hinton, the chief executive of South East Water, to hold him to account for its abysmal performance in the recent outages. If that taskforce finds that South East Water’s response has been inadequate, as I believe it was, what action will the taskforce be able to take? I believe that David Hinton should no longer be the chief executive because of those failures.”
“I thank the Minister very much for taking a second intervention from me. I do not disagree that the country needs more homes; that is an accepted fact. However, what we have seen under her Government is housing targets being shifted out of London, so that London’s numbers have fallen and the numbers in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat) and in my constituency of Faversham and Mid Kent have gone up. Against that backdrop, I have not seen London homes having large outages where they have not had enough water for days on end, whereas in Kent we have had them on multiple occasions. Yet still her Government persist in reducing the housing ambitions for London and putting more housing in rural areas, such as our constituencies, where we simply do not have the infrastructure that is needed.”
“I am grateful to the NHS and the UKHSA for the action that they have already been taking locally, but many parents feel that they are not receiving enough information, and schools have also found themselves struggling to obtain guidance. May I ask the Secretary of State why there was no contact with schools until Monday, whether all school pupils who went to Club Chemistry have been identified and invited for treatment, and whether he will roll out the vaccination programme to local schools, including residential schools in the area?”
“I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, and for his communications with me. Juliette was a schoolgirl in year 13 at Queen Elizabeth grammar school in my constituency. She died of meningitis this weekend. Her headteacher said of her: “She was incredibly kind, thoughtful and intelligent”, and that she had been “treasured”. I too am a parent of a year 13 student and my heart goes out to Juliette’s family, and also to the family of the university student who has died. Sixth-formers and university students mix in the same crowded venues in Canterbury, so the Government must fully consider the risk to schoolkids as well as the students in the universities.”
“Does he accept that taxing jobs on the one hand and subsidising them on the other is not an economic strategy, but the economics of the madhouse? Finally, can the Secretary of State at least agree that the benefits bill needs to come down? Perhaps he could take this chance to use the word “savings”. Does he see the irony? Does he understand my feeling of déjà vu? This is another plan from his party for welfare reform that spends more money, rather than saving it. When will he bring forward a plan to actually bring down the benefits bill? He talks about welfare reform; is this it?”
“There are nearly 150,000 more people claiming benefits for mental ill health and neurodiversity. I have been clear: this cannot go on. Benefits are not the right answer. Work is better for us. People who can work should work. The Secretary of State needs to answer some questions. Where exactly has the extra £1 billion that he has just announced for state-funded jobs come from? Will this latest plan actually bring down youth unemployment? Will it even touch the sides? How will he stop fraudulent claims for the cash? How will he make sure that no one loses their job because of his cash handouts? How will he make sure that all this spending makes a difference, and that he is not subsidising employment that would have happened anyway?”
“Why not adopt the policy we have announced of cutting back on low-value degrees, and using the saving to increase apprenticeships? This Government’s answer is to just go back, cap in hand, to the taxpayer. At the end of his statement, the Secretary of State talked about welfare reform, but why do we never hear the important word “savings”? I think we know why. The Government tried and failed to make welfare savings last summer. What has changed since then? The Prime Minister is only weaker and more indecisive, though the problem becomes ever more urgent. Today’s personal independence payment figures show that claims are up again. There are over 300,000 more people on PIP since Labour took over—a rise of 9%—and the number of young people claiming PIP has risen by 14%.”
“It is not a jobs plan or a serious new deal for young people; it is a sticking-plaster, and an expensive one costing over £1 billion. These are state-subsidised jobs to replace the real ones that Labour has killed. The Secretary of State has laid into our record on apprenticeships, but he knows perfectly well that the drop he refers to happened because we raised the standard of apprenticeships to make them a qualification that would actually count, and to make them a meaningful alternative to university, not just a way for businesses to get cheaper workers. I warn him not to just chase higher numbers in his reforms; quality matters. And why are the Government doing nothing about dead-end degrees and mounting student debt?”
“That is one in six young people out of work, wanting employment but denied the chance—and a university degree will not save them, either. Some 700,000 graduates are out of work, and nearly 1 million young people are not in education, employment or training. So many young people have done everything asked of them. They have studied hard, done their exams and got their grades, but now they are getting rejection after rejection to their job applications. The Government are letting down a whole generation, and the Secretary of State knows it. He said so himself this week on the radio. He talked about the “scarring effects” of youth unemployment: worse mental health, worse outcomes and even lower life expectancy. He is right, so why are his Government making things so much worse? Let us be clear about what this new policy is.”
“The Government have lost control of welfare. The benefits bill is ballooning. Sickness benefits alone will cost us £109 billion by the end of the decade. Working-age benefits are costing £161 billion right now and rising. But instead of bringing forward welfare savings, Labour MPs have chosen to spend ever more on benefits. Just the other day, they backed an extra £3 billion spending on scrapping the two-child benefit cap. It is all paid for in the same way—by taxpayers, by hard-working people, and by the businesses that employ them. First the Government tax jobs, and then they wonder why there are fewer of them. Let me tell them: if you tax it, you get less of it. Under Labour, unemployment has gone up month after month. Our youth unemployment now rivals that of Greece, at over 16%.”
“The working-age benefits bill is set to reach £171 billion by the end of this Parliament, yet the Government are doing nothing to get it under control. In fact, by scrapping the two-child cap, they have added another £3 billion. It is time to stop spending and get saving. The Conservatives would stop benefits for foreign nationals and save £7 billion a year. Britain cannot be a cash machine for the world. With war in Ukraine and now in the middle east, we must boost our national security, so why are the Government continuing to bankroll benefits for migrants rather than investing in defence?”
“Madam Deputy Speaker, you are no doubt familiar with the dramatic principle of Chekhov’s gun: if there is a gun on the wall in the first act, it will be fired by the final scene. Ministers say that the mandation power in the Pension Schemes Bill is merely a backstop that they do not intend to use, but once they have a power in law like a gun on the wall, how long will that intention last? Will the Secretary of State make a commitment to the House that the mandation gun will never be fired at the expense of UK pension savers?”
“The Government should not be giving themselves control over how people’s retirement savings are invested, but that is what mandation does. I am against it, the pensions sector is against it, and savers are against it. Will he listen and change tack?”
“Given that the savings of millions of people are at stake, I am disappointed that the Secretary of State did not rise to answer this important question. The Pensions Minister needs to stop conflating the voluntary Mansion House agreement with changing the law to give Government the power to direct pension fund investments. The two are not the same. Both the Association of British Insurers and Pensions UK are urging the Government to drop the mandation power from the Bill. The Pensions Minister has a tendency to think he always knows best, but he is not always right; apparently, the Ed stone was his idea. Let us not have people’s retirements savings suffer the same fate as the quest of the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Ed Miliband) to become Prime Minister.”
“Only Conservatives are prepared to make the argument for welfare savings and stand up for principles like fairness, personal responsibility and living within your means. Other parties compete to be more generous with other people’s money; we do not. Conservatives believe in a country where work pays, responsibility is valued, and welfare is a safety net, not a lifestyle choice. That is the difference not just over the two-child cap, but over the direction of Britain itself.”
“I know that every other party represented here wants to expand the state—not just Labour, but the Lib Dems, the Greens, the SNP, Plaid, and who knows how Reform will vote tonight? I can see one Reform MP is here; maybe somebody will help his colleagues to find their way to the right Lobby tonight. I think Reform now says that it would keep the cap, but it still does not back it in principle; it is just a question of timing. Well, well. The Prime Minister has decided that the time is now because he needed to save his skin. He is not a Prime Minister who will take the tough decisions to control the welfare bill and make work pay, because that would require a backbone and the support of his Back Benchers.”
“Labour’s answer to every challenge is the same: spend more money. Labour Members see people as victims of circumstance, and their instinct is always to compensate rather than change the circumstance. We see it differently. We know that children are better off if the country is better off; if there are more jobs, higher wages, lower inflation and stronger growth. Look at the moments in our history when living standards rose for everyone. It was when people were motivated to strive, ideas were turned into businesses and hard work reaped rewards. That is how countries get ahead and their children thrive. [ Interruption. ] I do not expect the argument that I am making to be popular in this Chamber, although— [ Interruption. ] I am not expecting Labour Members to like what I am saying, but it is popular out there in the real world.”
“They ignore that relative poverty tends to look better when the country gets poorer, which is exactly what their policies are doing to this country. They have done it before and they are doing it again—taxing more to spend more, killing growth and killing jobs. What really makes a difference to children’s lives is having their parents in work, but what are the Government doing about that? They are making it less likely. Under this Government, we have seen— [ Interruption. ] I know that Labour Members do not want to hear it, but we have seen the fastest increase on record of children growing up without a parent in work. Unemployment has gone up every month; now it is at its highest for five years. This debate is about more than just one policy; it is about two different visions for our country.”
“Anyone serious about fiscal responsibility would not vote for a Bill that adds £3 billion a year to the ballooning welfare budget and costs £14 billion over the next five years. That money is not just sitting there jingling in the Treasury bank account waiting to be spent on this; it will have to be taken from a small business desperately trying not to let staff go, from a family already struggling with food and energy costs, or from the next generation through higher borrowing. However Ministers dress it up, someone else will pay. Labour Members have said that this Bill cuts child poverty. What they generally mean is that it reduces relative poverty, a statistic that tells us nothing about whether children’s lives are actually looking up.”
“People do not get a pay rise from their employer when they have another child; they make their money stretch further. However, for people on universal credit, this Bill means their benefits will rise by thousands of pounds for each extra child they have. Some families are about to get tens of thousands of pounds extra. A single parent with five children will be able to get £10,000 more, and an annual income just from benefits of over £45,000 untaxed. To get the same through work, someone would need to earn £60,000. I heard that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who is standing behind the Chair, was due to talk about welfare reform this evening. I say to him and all Labour Members that anyone serious about welfare reform or about ending the welfare trap would vote against a Bill that makes benefits pay this much more than work.”
“We have all seen the strength of feeling among MPs who support this Bill, but passion does not make a policy right. Children are a blessing, but they are also a responsibility. Parents up and down the country work long hours and make sacrifices to bring up their children. Many couples question whether they can afford one child, let alone three, four or five. They make tough but responsible choices, yet this Bill means they will be taxed to fund other people who make choices they know they cannot afford, and that is fundamentally unfair. It is unfair to people who make responsible decisions, unfair to people who decide to live within their means and unfair to the people who cannot get a job, let alone afford to start a family, because this Government are wrecking the economy with ever higher spending and higher taxes.”
“I thank my hon. Friends for their contributions during the passage of this Bill. In particular, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith), who has argued with true passion against the Bill, drawing on her own experience as well as her sound principles. I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst) and for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), my right hon. Friends the Members for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat) and for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox), who spoke on Second Reading, and my hon. Friend the Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam), who spoke in Committee this evening, and pointed out with customary clarity the flaws in the reasoning of Labour Members.”
“Let us be clear about what the two-child cap is and what it is not. The two-child cap restricts the additional universal credit a household can get to the amount for two children, with carefully considered exceptions, such as twins or non-consensual conception. It does not apply to child benefit. It says that there is a limit, and a point at which it is simply not fair to make taxpayers fund choices that they themselves cannot afford to make.”
“Every week, millions of people up and down the country sit at their kitchen table and do the sums to work out what is coming in, what is going out, and what simply is not affordable. Sometimes the conversation may take a more serious turn to one of life’s biggest decisions: “Shall we start a family?” or “Can we afford another child?” Though romantics might love that to be a decision about whether people want the joy of bringing new life into this world, the reality is that many ask themselves, “Can we afford it?” They are not looking to someone else to help them make ends meet or pick up the bill; they are just doing the maths. That is a difficult conversation, but Members have to ask themselves a simple question before we vote: why should people on benefits get to avoid the hard choices faced by everyone else?”
“Benefits for individual households will rise by thousands. Nearly half a million households will receive around £5,000 more on average. A single parent on universal credit with five children could get an extra £10,000 without doing any work, taking their household income to more than £45,000, untaxed—people have to earn about £60,000 to get that income from work! Around 75,000 households will get between £10,000 and £21,000 extra as a result of this Bill. For some households, the extra money will be more than a full-time income, after tax, for someone on the minimum wage.”
“I am sure that all of us in this House care about poverty and children’s prospects, but the answer is not to spend more, to hand out more money and to trap people in worklessness; the answer is to support people to work, and that is exactly the opposite of what the hon. Lady’s Government are doing. We all know that bringing up children is expensive and important, but when working couples are having to make tough decisions about whether they can afford to start a family at all, they should not be asked to pay higher taxes to fund someone else to have a third, fourth or fifth child. Someone who is in work does not get a pay rise because they have another child. If we are serious about avoiding a benefits trap, whereby it pays more to be on welfare than in work, we should be honest about what happens if we lift the two-child cap.”
“It is exactly as my hon. Friend says. The extra money that some families will be receiving—without even working—would require such a high income to achieve through work. This simply exacerbates the poverty trap.”
“We know that a declining birth rate is a cause for concern, but falling birth rates are driven by many factors, including changes in people’s aspirations, the poor jobs market, the cost of housing and childcare, the penalties that motherhood imposes on careers and the changing nature of 21st-century relationships. Children are important and we need to have more, but the answer to that complex problem is not, “Here’s some cash for having a kid.””
“I will give way to Members on the Government Benches in a moment. I just ask them to think about the implications of the extra money that people will be receiving. Some people will—frankly and factually—calculate that they can boost their income far more by having children than by working. The best way out of poverty will not be work— [ Interruption. ] Government Members do not like to hear this, but I am afraid it is just rational. The best way out of poverty will not be work; it will be having babies. I want to address the argument that lifting the cap is necessary because women are not having enough babies.”
“The fact is that people do the sums. That is the reality of the world we live in. The hon. Gentleman indicated that he is a member of the Treasury Committee, so he must be interested—even though he is looking at his phone—in these unavoidable questions. Where will the £3 billion to fund this Bill come from? Where will the £14 billion over a five-year period come from? We all know where it will come from: taxpayers—either today’s or tomorrow’s—and the men and women who get up every morning, go to work, pay their bills and do the right thing. In the last Budget, as she knows, the Chancellor made a deliberate political choice: to raise taxes on people who work and save, so that millions who do not work will receive more in benefits. Working families already make hard choices. Many already strive and struggle to live within their means.”
“Unfortunately, the hon. Lady does not seem to understand that hypothecated taxes are not a thing. What she has said simply does not make sense. The fact is that this Bill will cost the Government money, so it will cost taxpayers money, either now or in the future. That is simply the way it works.”
“Contrast that with our record, Madam Deputy Speaker. From 2014 onwards, the number of children in workless households fell year on year. We lifted a million people out of absolute poverty, including 100,000 children, and we drove unemployment down to historic lows. Under this Labour Government, unemployment is rising month after month, so, sadly, the number of children in workless households will continue to increase. Inflation is up as well, to almost double the level that the Government inherited. Higher inflation means that the money in your pocket is worth less: in other words, you are poorer. Fewer jobs, more unemployment, a higher cost of living—that is what the Government are doing to people. I say this to them: you do not lift children out of poverty by making the whole country poorer.”
“Throwing money at one flawed metric is not a strategy. In fact, it risks doing the opposite of what Ministers claim to want, trapping families in long-term dependency rather than lifting them out of it. There is a proven way in which to improve children’s life chances, and that is work. Work allows parents to provide for their families, to pay the rent or mortgage, to put food on the table and clothes on their children’s backs, to set an example to their children, and to create structure and routine in their households. The Centre for Social Justice has found that children in workless households are four times more likely to be materially deprived, but under this Government the number of children growing up in workless households has risen at the fastest rate on record, and has now reached 1.5 million.”