argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Social Welfare
James Spencer Cleverly (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman has said several times that he is willing to support sensible measures to reduce the welfare bill. Can he assure the House that that comment will survive the imminent leadership elections in his party? [Interruption.]
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
Rishi Sunak (Conservative, Centre-right): The shadow Chancellor mentioned the election campaign. In that campaign, the Opposition suggested that they would raise the rate of corporation tax—a move that would damage jobs and growth. Will he confirm that that is still Labour’s policy, or will he start backing British businesses?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): May I just take the hon. Gentleman up on the case that he set out? I want to get the figures right. A lone parent with two children who works 16 hours on the minimum wage will, when we add in everything including childcare, actually be better off on the net figures after the Budget.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
Alan Mak (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Will he confirm that if a Labour Government were ever to return to power, they would increase tax credits, and if so, which taxes on working people would they raise to pay for that increase?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Social Welfare
Kevin Paul Hollinrake (Conservative, Centre-right): Does the Secretary of State agree that there are two sides to the welfare coin—the people who receive the benefit and the people who pay for the benefit? The burden of £30 billion a year in tax credits was too big a burden to carry.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): Indeed. I shall shortly come to how these imbalances created disparities for people in work and trapped on low income We are sticking to two of our most important manifesto promises on personal tax. We are starting the journey to raise the tax-free personal allowance to £12,500 from next year. Once £12,500 is reached, as my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said, we will legislate so that the personal allowance always rises in line with the minimum wage—a great move to protect working people. We are keeping our commitment to raise the threshold at which people pay the higher 40p rate of tax to £50,000, starting with an increase to £43,000 from next year I consider one measure from yesterday’s Budget to be more significant than all the others—indeed, it is perhaps the most significant measure in all the Budgets that I have listened to during my many years in this House. The Government believe that if people work hard, they should be rewarded. In our growing economy, people should be able to expect a decent wage if they move into work and increase their hours. That is why, starting from April 2016, the Government have announced that we will move to a national living wage—set initially at £7.20, but rising to £9 by 2020. We will ask the Low Pay Commission to recommend future increases to the national living wage that achieve the Government’s objective of reaching 60% of median earnings by 2020. I believe that that is groundbreaking, and I hope that all Members of the House, instead of cavilling about it, will come to support it.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): We have the spending review to address such issues. In my Department here in London I took on contractors about paying the London living wage, and I faced exactly the same debates and arguments about how it was not feasible and how they would face high costs. I insisted that they went away and looked at their productivity. My Department in London instituted the London living wage. Not one job was lost and productivity has improved. I would consider the matter carefully before we take those official statements as the reality.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Labor
James Spencer Cleverly (Conservative, Centre-right): Is there an economic imperative and also—perhaps more importantly—a moral imperative that, in the relationship between employer and employee, the employer ensures that the employee receives a salary on which they can live? It is not right that the Government make up the shortfall between employer and employee.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Labor
Chris White (Conservative, Centre-right): As someone who has long campaigned for an increased uptake of the living wage—not least by leading a debate on that in the House last November—I congratulate the Secretary of State on creating the national living wage. Will he tell me how many people’s incomes will increase as a result of that policy?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): The answer is that the incomes of 2.5 million people will increase, but it is not me who introduced that policy—I give all the credit to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. Let me also say to the right hon. Member for Nottingham East—
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Labor
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): I apologise. That is a matter for his leader but—what can I say? Labour has no leader at the moment. The hon. Member for Nottingham East was talking about the minimum wage and the living wage, and I want to pick up on something he said a fortnight ago: "Do not the Government need a serious strategy to address low pay and boost productivity? They should be providing incentives for a living wage and new opportunities for high-quality skills, as a more positive route out of poverty." Absolutely. He went on to speak about the Chancellor’s Budget before it had been delivered and said: "Unless he is planning a rise of 25% in the minimum wage, that will not happen."—[Official Report, 25 June 2015; Vol. 597, c. 1038.] Well, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor listened to that and initiated a rise of 38% to the minimum wage. The hon. Gentleman must be overjoyed, and will want to tell the House what a great man the Chancellor is and what a great Government we are.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): No, there is a clear question that needs to be answered. The hon. Gentleman has been asked it but he has not answered, and it would be helpful for us if he would: will he vote against the changes, and do the Opposition plan to reverse the changes on tax credits?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Social Welfare
Alan Mak (Conservative, Centre-right): This Budget creates clear dividing lines between this Government who help people into work, and the Labour party that created a high welfare dependency culture. Will my right hon. Friend remind the House of how many people under the previous Government were paying income tax to the state and receiving welfare credits from it? How many people are no longer in that situation?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): The answer to my hon. Friend’s question, which I wanted to come to, is that that is the perverse nature of tax credits. About 40% of those on tax credits had tax taken off them, which was recycled through the system with some of it being given back to them. That seems to be a rather bizarre and absurd system The tax credit system was the brainchild of the previous Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. The original tax credit system, introduced by the Labour Government, cost £1.1 billion in its first year; the tax credit system now costs some £30 billion a year, most of which is spent on child tax credits. This money was pumped into the system in a clear attempt to chase what was then a moving poverty line. In fact, under the previous Government, £258 billion of hard-earned taxpayers’ money was recycled to be spent cumulatively on tax credits—a huge sum We saw massive spikes in tax credit spending in the run-up to election years. In the two years before the 2005 election, spending increased by £10 billion—a 70% increase. In the two years before the 2010 election, it increased by some £6 billion, or 25%. It is worth looking again at the in-between years, when it suddenly flattened but rose before an election. There were disproportionate increases in the child element, in an attempt to keep up with that moving median line. The child element was increased by more than earnings in 2004-05 and from 2008-09 to 2010-11, so that by 2010-11 the child element had increased by 25% more than if it had been uprated in line with average earnings since 2003-04. One of the worst aspects of the system was the way people had to predict their income for a year. If their actual earnings turned out to be different, they were left with large overpayments or underpayments. This caused misery for families and left a gaping hole in the public finances. Although Labour Members have never owned up to it, we lost billions through that process. To try to deal with the situation, a large disregard was introduced. People then did not have to tell the Government if their income changed by up to £25,000 in the course of a year. To have the disregard at that level was completely irresponsible. It was an attempt to use taxpayers’ money to plug holes in a failing system.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Social Welfare
Peter William Bone (Conservative, Centre-right): Was that not one of the cruellest aspects of Gordon Brown’s system? In my constituency surgery, I saw desperately poor people who were being asked to repay money they could not afford. It was extraordinarily cruel.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Labor
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): There are impact assessments in the Red Book. There will be relevant impact assessments before Second Reading, as there always are The key point on tax credits is what they got for all of that: unsustainable spending that went up jerkily, but by huge amounts; and a subsidy for employers, which enabled the payment of lower wages and completely distorted systems, and presented a bizarre set of incentives for moving in and out of work. It is now well documented that for many people it made sense to work only 16 hours —no more, no less—and we saw spikes in the employment data at 16 hours. There were huge spikes of people clustered around 16 hours, because it did not pay to work anything else.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Social Welfare
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): I do. As my hon. Friend makes clear, if people can afford to work only 16 hours, businesses will not invest in them and their training because it will not be worth their while. That means their chances of progressing are nil. Many rotated and crashed out of work directly, because they had no sense that they could go on any further. She is absolutely right We believe that two-fifths of those who received tax credits ended up paying for the tax credits they received. It was a bizarre system This Government are different. We are building on the firm foundations of a welfare system by balancing the books and fixing the economy, while continuing to provide a strong safety net to support the most vulnerable. Our record in the previous Parliament spoke for itself, so I am going to say it again. Despite all the doomsday predictions from the Opposition—
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): No, no. Honestly, I am not that kind Despite the doomsday predictions that the hon. Lady and many of her colleagues made, this is the actual result: 2 million more people in work; 2 million more apprentices; the proportion of workless households at an all-time low; and, perhaps most importantly, the proportion of workless households in the social rented sector at a record all-time low. That is a real record of success on which we will build. That is what we are going to do with the Budget.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Social Welfare
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): I must say that that would have to be pretty quick work. If they have done that much work in a matter of hours, I want to employ them in my Department. No, I do not agree with that, and here is why. I fully support food banks. What people do to help with food banks is a very good idea. However, the figures on usage put out by food banks have all been proven to be incorrect. In Germany, 1.5 million people a week use food banks and its benefit system is meant to be more generous than ours. In Canada, more than 800,000 a month use food banks. This country has a very low number compared with other countries. Those figures speak for themselves As we build on this, we must meet our commitments to protect the elderly and the most vulnerable, protecting those benefits that provide for additional costs arising from disability or caring, and protecting pensioner benefits. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor and I make no apology for that, with good reason. When we took office, pensioners were some of the most vulnerable people suffering from a very, very low income. We have begun to put that right, and we intend to be proud of it It is right that we provide extra support for those who face the biggest challenges in changing their income levels. Spending on the main disability benefits—disability living allowance, personal independence payment and attendance allowance—will be higher in every single year to 2020 compared with 2010. Our commitment to protecting the most vulnerable is why we have protections in place on policies such as the benefit cap, so that people are exempt if someone in a household is claiming DLA, PIP or working tax credits. Wherever possible, we are introducing measures on a flow basis to give people the time and knowledge to prepare for the changes We are also ensuring that people on benefits face the same choices as those in work and not on benefits. Our measures will mean people making decisions and choices about their lives, which is why we are introducing the two-children element on a flow basis, and why we are lowering the benefits cap to £23,000 in London and £20,000 elsewhere, emphasising that it is not fair for someone on benefits to receive more than many people in work. I think that that principle is well accepted and popular around the country. In London, about four in 10 households earn less than £23,000, and outside London the same proportion earn less than £20,000.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Social Welfare
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): I just do not agree with that, I am afraid. We have set out to protect disability living allowance and PIPs so that those in the greatest need are protected and their benefits continue to rise. As I said, we will help those in work and capable of work through the living wage and childcare support. We will get people back to work and doing more hours. I do not agree, therefore, with what the hon. Lady says; we have gone out of our way to protect those in the greatest need.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Social Welfare
Thomas Christopher John Pursglove (Conservative, Centre-right): In my constituency, people would say that the £20,000 benefits cap is not only morally right but much more in line with circumstances in our area. I tried to intervene on the shadow Chancellor to find out if he agreed with that. Has the Secretary of State had any such indication?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Labor
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): We have presented today a package for working people that will incentivise those who can work to go back to work and work the hours they need to improve themselves and their families. My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. This is exactly the drive the Government are making.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Social Welfare
Rishi Sunak (Conservative, Centre-right): Will the Secretary of State confirm that when he first entered office, we were spending more on working-age welfare than on education? If so, is that not evidence that our welfare system is unsustainable and needs sensible and fair reform?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The other point that has not come up but which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has made clear is that the amount of money we pay to people outside Britain to pay off our debts is money that we cannot spend on education and health. Getting the deficit down and paying off our debts has to be the best thing we can do for people on low incomes, who need those services.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Labor
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): No, I have given way twice to the hon. Lady; I am going to make some progress We remain relentlessly focused on supporting people to move into work. Universal credit is now rolled out to half of all jobcentres in Britain, and by the new year will be rolled out to all of them and will then be expanding. It will provide people in work with even better help and support, meaning that those on low pay will do better as a result of universal credit, which was a big reform that was opposed by the other side but which we will deliver and make work.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Labor
Amanda Anne Milling (Conservative, Centre-right): Unemployment in Cannock Chase fell dramatically in the last Parliament. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the measures in yesterday’s Budget will see unemployment in Cannock Chase, Staffordshire and the west midlands fall even more dramatically?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): As I said earlier, and as my hon. Friend says, in all these areas, we inherited a country riven by deep unemployment, debt and a massive deficit and unable to pay its way. In many senses, it was in a worse state than Greece. Look at the difference five years later. I believe that the next five years will see a renaissance in Britain, as we become an economic powerhouse, both in the north and the south, and more people get back to work earning a decent wage—in fact, a living wage In conclusion—
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): The Opposition do not like being reminded of the fact that the last Labour Government left the economy in a terrible mess, and it is this Chancellor who, over the last five years, has set out to put it right, and we are proud of that.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
Graham Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): Opposition Members never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity to apologise for wrecking the country’s economy. The shadow Chancellor criticised my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and said there was no mention of science and technology. My right hon. Friend has a very proud record of investment in the north of England, as part of the northern powerhouse—
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Social Welfare
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): I have to say to my hon. Friends that I really have to make some progress, because lots of Members want to speak. They will have a chance to speak later With universal credit, people will get up to 85% of their childcare costs paid, which is up from 70% under the previous system. In addition, there will be 15 hours of free childcare if someone has a two-year-old, or a three or four-year-old, and if they are working, while the 30 hours of free childcare a week will be worth £5,000 a year. By the way, the 30 hours of free childcare will start exactly when I said it would—it will be cutting in in the 2016-17 period.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Social Welfare
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): In that case, to clarify, the 30 hours of free childcare for working parents with three and four-year-olds has not been delayed; it will start to be introduced in September 2016. Thank you very much; now let’s move on If someone needs support to improve their skills or talk to their employer about increasing their hours, universal credit comes in again. For the first time, it will stick with them and help them to increase their hours, which is why it will complete the process of supporting people back into work. Even with the changes we are making, the welfare system will remain generous.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Social Welfare
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): No, no; the hon. Gentleman had his chance About five in 10 families with children will still be eligible for tax credits as a result of these reforms. These figures show that we are taking a balanced approach to welfare—an approach that expects people to stand on their own two feet whenever possible but which provides them with the support to do that, by reducing their taxes, providing childcare, skills and back-to-work support, introducing universal credit to make work pay and asking employers to play their part by increasing wages at a time when our economy is growing In conclusion, ours is an approach that continues to provide a generous safety net and support for those who need it and expects people to face the same choices as those in work and not on benefits. At its heart, it is about moving from a low-wage, high-tax, high-welfare country, to a high-wage, lower-tax, lower-welfare country. It is a positive vision for Britain under a one nation Conservative Government delivered by a great Chancellor and a great Prime Minister.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Social Welfare
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): I will make sure that the hon. Lady’s questions are answered in the winding-up speeches, but there are all sorts of provisos involved. If two families are joined, the original child element is kept. Following up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), the six deciles in the middle can end up paying for others to have more children than they can afford themselves. This is a point about fairness: they are the ones paying, but they do not feel that they can afford to have more children themselves.