argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I rise for a second time to speak to new clause 1 in my name and those of my hon. Friends the shadow Chancellor, the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury and my shadow Work and Pensions team. The new clause is very straightforward. It would repeal the Tax Credits (Income Thresholds and Determination of Rates) (Amendment) Regulations 2015 It is a shame that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is not in the Chamber to debate this important measure. I do not know what else he is doing, but he has been noticeable by his absence from the debate on tax credits in recent days. I have been to 25 studios and other arenas to debate the issue. I have looked high and low for any Minister of any stripe with whom to discuss it, and they have been noticeable by their absence. I am therefore delighted that there are three Ministers of the Crown on the Front Bench to contest the issue. That is a first in recent weeks, and I am very pleased to have this opportunity It is a shame that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is not in the Chamber. If he was here, I would have started by reminding him of something he has said in the House—indeed, he has said it on several occasions over the years—which is that he is a great believer in second chances. He has said that he believes that Britain should be "a nation of the second chance" Opposition Members entirely agree with the Secretary of State. Indeed, that is one of the very few things on which I do agree with him. We should believe in second chances. I therefore say to Ministers and to the House that we have a second chance today. We have a second chance following yesterday’s vote in the House of Lords, which has called on this House to think again. In doing so, I think that the other place spoke not just for itself but for the entire country. It has asked us to think again and to give a second chance to repeal tax credits regulations that will hit so many people across this country In touring the studios in recent days, I have quite often heard the suggestion that the vote in the other place yesterday presaged a constitutional crisis in this country. In truth, what it did was to stop a financial crisis for the 3 million families who will be hit by the tax credits regulations when the changes are implemented next year. The message to us from the other place is quite simply to pause: for Ministers to pause before they lick the envelopes of the 3 million letters that they intend to post out at Christmas to tell such families across the country to anticipate a 10% reduction in their incomes, which is an average reduction of £1,300 for each of those 3 million working families. If the Government proposed to cut the salaries of Members of the House by 10%, there would be uproar on the Government Benches—indeed, on all Benches. Working families in this country, and people who are doing difficult low and middle-income jobs—there are 3 million of them, or more—are being told that next year they will face a 10% cut to their incomes at a stroke of a pen. It is not adequate.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I will start with a different figure, because 5,000 of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents who will be hit by this change should ask him what he thinks is fair or just about asking them—hard-working families in his patch—to take a 10% cut to their income. That to me is the substantive issue, and the smoke and mirrors produced by the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members about the constitutional crisis or the offsetting mitigating prospects for other changes elsewhere in the Government’s finances do not answer the central question: is it right or fair to ask hard-working families to take such a cut to their incomes Tax credits have changed enormously. It is untrue to say that they were simply the creation of the previous Labour Government because successive Governments have helped family or income support to evolve over many years—arguably, such measures were first introduced in this country in the 1920s and they have gone through different iterations. Different Governments have used different ways to try to do what we all believe in, which is to make work pay and keep people in work. Thresholds are flexed and levels have changed, and the amount of money we spend on tax credits has changed over time. However, it is a net positive for us as a society and for our economy to keep people in work, and this cut will diminish work incentives for the people that the hon. Gentleman and I hope to support.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Labor
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I have heard that argument a lot recently, and there is no evidence to support such a contention. It is nice to believe that were we to reduce the amount of money people have—withdraw the subsidy, as the hon. Gentleman would say—some employers would increase their payments to people and wages would go up, but I do not suggest that that is true or that any evidence supports it. Tax credits have been a necessary subsidy for low wages, and I welcome and applaud the decision by the Government to increase the national minimum wage. That is the right thing to do, which is why Labour called for it before the election—the Government could get on with it a little faster and stop spinning it as a national living wage when we know it is not, but it is a welcome step. There is no evidence to suggest that if we withdraw the subsidy at a stroke, employers will think, "I’d better put up wages for my workforce because they will struggle to survive on what they earn."
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Labor
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I will in a moment In 1997 about 43% of single parents were in work in this country, and today it is 65%. The reason for that is tax credits. Tax credits have made it possible for thousands of constituents in my patch—and in the constituencies of all Members—to stay in work despite the decline in wages.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Barbara Mary Keeley (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is rightly making a good speech about working families, but Ministers have made little mention of the impact that cuts to tax credits will have on working family carers. A carer in receipt of carers allowance who works 16 hours a week on the minimum wage and claims working tax credits will be badly hit by these cuts. Conservative Members talk about people working more hours, but those carers are already working for a minimum of 51 hours a week and they cannot work more. Does my hon. Friend believe that working carers must be protected from Government cuts, because Ministers do not even seem to recognise that issue?
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): Yes, and if the Government are to provide us with any sort of detailed, worthwhile impact assessment, they should undertake precisely that sort of calculation. They should look at what net benefit to our economy and society is made by working mothers, carers, and those whose efforts are not being calibrated by the Government, because those people will lose out as a result of the changes to tax credits.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Labor
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): Well that may or may not be true, but it is a very large proportion. Without doubt there has been a welcome increase in employment and self-employment, but my point is that 60% of self-employed sole traders are currently eligible for tax credits.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I will in a moment. That is why the Bow Group, the Adam Smith Institute, Lord Lawson and many other respected Conservative economists think that this change is a false economy. Not only will it damage the incomes of working people; it will damage our economy. The Bow Group—which you will remember well, Mr Speaker—said that these cuts will be "devastating" for our economy.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I fear that may be correct, and Government’s lack of forethought, analysis and scrutiny on these measures, and the way they have tried to bowl them through both Houses in double quick time, is a measure of their fear that such analysis will reveal the fundamentally misconceived economics behind these cuts, which are unfortunately designed to make an ideological political point.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman should start by explaining to the 3,700 constituents in his constituency who will lose out as a result of the measures for which he will no doubt vote and speak today—[Interruption.] I will answer the specific question he asks. The truth is that under the previous Labour Government, when this iteration of tax credits was introduced, the steady state amount of money we spent on tax credits was £23 billion per annum. In 2009-10, after the crisis, that went up to £30 billion. The bankers’ recession saw a spike in the necessary spending on tax credits, and it has stayed at £30 billion under his Government—another measure of this Government’s rotten economic record.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I would first of all say to the 3,000-odd people in the hon. Lady’s constituency of Lewes who are going to be hit by the changes that they should be ringing her up and asking her why on earth she is voting for a 10% reduction in their income. I think they would be interested to hear her justification.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Labor
Steve Rotheram (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree that the changes are obviously a problem for some Government Members, and that they are in absolute denial about them? Does he agree that the Government’s inertia over intervention to save steel jobs and last night’s defeat in the Lords firmly put to bed the falsehood that the Tories are the party of the workers?
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Conor Patrick McGinn (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree that there is an inherent contradiction in the Government’s policy? The parents of a young family who came to see me in my constituency last week told me that they work hard, pay their way and are trying to do the right thing to set an example for their children. Should the Government not be supporting them, rather than punishing them?
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): Indeed they should. I cannot understand how on earth even this Chancellor, who is pretty slipshod on occasion when it comes to analysing the impact of his measures, can have allowed this one to slip through the net. A pasty tax and a caravan tax maybe, but a £4.4 billion hit on the very workers he purports to support is truly extraordinary Let us look beyond the statistics for a moment. On Friday, I was out in my constituency in the village of Beddau, a former pit village at the heart of Pontypridd. Entirely by chance, I met a young woman called Kirsten who was bringing her daughter Maisie home from school. Kirsten is a nursery manager in a small private-run nursery just outside the village. She works 21 hours a week. They are all the hours available, as the nursery is open only in the morning and she works all five mornings. She then brings her daughter home from school and looks after her. She earns £611 a month. That is what she earns from her 21 hours of work at £8 an hour. That is well above the minimum wage and well above the new minimum wage we will see next year. She is set to lose £1,300 of her £7,000 earnings as a result of the cuts. That is an enormous drop for her to contemplate. She said to me that she simply did not know how she would manage. She did not understand how, without the £128 she receives in tax credits each month, she will be able to make ends meet I sat down with Kirsten and talked through what she needs to pay out for each month: the housing association three-bedroom house she lives in, council tax, insurance, and running her car to get back and forth to the nursery and to pick up her child. There is nothing left over. The £128 she spends from the tax credits she rightly receives pays for food, new clothes and her child’s books for school. It is just beyond the ken of ordinary people that the Government could be asking them to pay the price for the bankers’ recession, which has led to the crisis in our economy and a Tory Government cutting the incomes of working people.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Ian Lavery (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree, when the issue of family tax credits is all boiled down and the arguments have been fine-tuned, that this is simply an ideological attack by the Government on the lowest paid in our communities? Does he agree with the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which says that low-paid people are being specifically targeted?
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
David Anderson (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) mentioned the word "bribe". Is not the real bribe in the Bill the bribe that will be given to the children of dead millionaires through the changes to inheritance tax, to the detriment of the people who will be hit by tax credit cuts?
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Steve Rotheram (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree that the 6,700 families that will lose out from the tax credit cuts to their incomes will not be compensated, and that it is arithmetically impossible that the Government’s proposed changes would do that?
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): There is no need to take just my word for that; it is precisely what Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies said—that it is arithmetically impossible for the Government’s offsets, which I have just listed, to compensate for the losses that these hard-working families in all our constituencies are going to face. The Government know that that is true, which is why they have been so absent from the television studios in recent days. They do not need to hear the truth from me: they know it.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I have considered the impacts. I think that reducing aggregate demand by taking money out of the pockets of working families—the people with the highest propensity to spend money locally in the economy—is a foolish thing to do. It is a false economy. We know that to be true economically, so why on earth would the Government want to do it?
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Barbara Mary Keeley (Labour, Centre-left): I want to add a little detail. Conservative Members seem to be raising the cases of people who do not benefit from working tax credit and are questioning it on that basis. Perhaps the example I quoted earlier will help. The carer on carer’s allowance will get £62 and is able to earn a maximum of £110, which is a disregard. That is what carers are on, and they will be hit very hard by the loss of working tax credit. These people are earning a maximum of only £172. The important point is that there are 689,000 such people—those wonderful carers committed to looking after family members. Only one Conservative Member seems to have recognised that issue, which is a massive one. It is not quite as massive as the 3 million families affected, but it is still important. Ministers need to reflect on and explain why they are doing this to 689,000 carers up and down the country.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I will not—I have already given way a lot—but I will quote to Conservative Members some of their own people, who have recognised how mistaken this policy is. Let us take Lord Lawson, for example—hardly a bleeding-heart liberal, and someone I remember standing next to Mrs Thatcher during those dog days for my part of the world when the pits closed in south Wales. Lord Lawson referred in the other place yesterday to "the great harm, or a great deal of the harm", being done "at the lowest end". He continued: "That is what needs to be looked at again; that is what concerns me." He said that the Chancellor would, of course, "listen to this debate, but it is not just listening that is required. Change is required."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 26 October 2015; Vol. 765, c. 1005.] Let me also cite the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen), who I thought spoke brilliantly, eloquently and forcefully last week. I shall quote just one part of her speech. She said: "To pull ourselves out of debt, we should not be forcing those working families into it."—[Official Report, 20 October 2015; Vol. 600, c. 876.] We should not be forcing working families into debt to deal with the debt that the country has been left by the bankers’ recession and the failure of the Tory Government to fix it.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Neil Coyle (Labour, Centre-left): The National Audit Office has suggested that as a result of the incompetence of the coalition Government and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, £140 million was wasted on the early stages of universal credit. Is my hon. Friend aware that that could have helped 108,000 people who are now being punished for that failure and face the withdrawal of tax credits, or 21,500 people over the course of the current Parliament? Should the money not have been better spent?
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Labor
Karen Patricia Buck (Labour, Centre-left): Does the Conservative party not fail to understand what tax credits are all about? The tax credit policy was successful in that it moved people into work, and, in particular, underpinned the major progress that was made when single parents were allowed to move into work. When we talk about saving money, should we not see that in the context of the tax credit policy’s success in moving people from worklessness into sustainable employment?
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I will give way in a moment to the hon. Gentleman, who represents a great city—a working-class city—but before I do so, I ask him to reflect on the views of one of his colleagues, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), who said last week that "it would be remiss of me not to recount the extraordinary levels of feeling in Plymouth last weekend. This bright, vibrant, exciting and…blue collar city, where in the last general election we saw lots of new and first-time Conservative voters, has serious objections to the tax credit reforms." —[Official Report, 20 October 2015; Vol. 600, c.882.] The hon. Gentleman knows, and I know, that that stands for his constituency in Cardiff too, and I hope he will reflect on it when he addresses the House.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Labor
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I know that the hon. Gentleman is relatively new to the House, but he really ought to be present for the beginning of debates. I said at the start of my speech, and indeed on two other occasions, that I welcomed the Government’s moves. I applaud them for what they are doing in increasing the national minimum wage, although I repeat that it is utterly bogus to describe it as a national living wage. It is not a national living wage, which is why the Living Wage Foundation will not describe it as such. I wish that the Government would give us a true national living wage, in London and elsewhere The hon. Gentleman has, in his wealthy, leafy part of Cardiff, more than 3,000 constituents who benefit from tax credits. I ask him to look into his heart and reflect on whether it is right, for whatever purpose—ideological or economic—to ask those hard-working families to pay this bill. It is not fair, it is not just, and I do not think that it should go ahead.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman could, of course, start by deciding not to do what the Government did this week when they offered an inheritance tax cut for properties worth more than £1 million. That would provide about £1 billion. He could decide to reverse the 50p tax rate cut for millionaires; that would provide another £3 billion. He could choose to do what the Chancellor has already chosen to do in the past, and delay the point at which the Government get the budget into surplus. He has moved the goalposts once; why does he not do it again? He is very good at it. He has practised. He has already had one crack at it.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Ian Lavery (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend has been asked numerous times what the Labour party would do about the £4.2 billion. Will he now explain, categorically and in the simplest terms, that we would not do what the Government are doing, which is taking £4.2 billion from the lowest paid in society? People are losing £1,300 a year, and 200,000 kids are being pushed into poverty. That is not what we are going to do.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I am delighted to say that I agree 100% with my hon. Friend. Let me be really clear: our view today is that the Government should repeal these measures. Our view is that it is wrong to seek to balance the books, in this or any country, on the back of the working poor—those with low and middle incomes who are doing the right thing. This is the wrong thing to do, and we will not do it Let me end by reflecting a little on what this whole unedifying spectacle means for the public, and to the public. I think we can agree that politics has been held in pretty low esteem in this country in recent years. People feel that we, as a political class, are not straight with them. They feel that we do not keep our word, or say what we mean.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I will not give way again The problem with this change is that it will simply compound that fundamental mistrust. Before the last election, the Prime Minister said, on live national television, that he was not going to cut child tax credits, but he is going to do so. That was a fundamental misleading of the British public. Other Ministers also made categorical statements. When asked whether the Conservative party would cut tax credits, one of them said: ""No; we are going to freeze them for two years; we are not going to cut them." That was a fundamental untruth, and the country knows it Unfortunately, when that is added to the Government’s smoke and mirrors and what they say about how they intend to offset the impact of these cuts, it is clear that we as a group—and the Conservatives as a political party—are deepening what is already a profound mistrust in our politics. For the Conservatives to describe themselves as the workers’ party is laughable. Theirs is the party that is cutting the incomes of the workers of Britain, and they should be ashamed of that. They should stand up today and vote with us for new clause 1, and repeal the tax credit cuts.