Social Security — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Heidi-Suzanne Allen (Independent, Unknown): Setting aside my concerns about the direction of the Conservative party, one of the motivations behind those of us determined to build a new centre ground party is the opportunity to develop policy based on evidence and to reflect on and amend our policy when that evidence changes. The motion in front of us today is one that this House debates annually. Its purpose is to increase welfare benefits in line with the economy—in other words, the consumer prices index. Those benefits include the state pension, disability living allowance, the personal independence payment, widows’ and bereavement benefits, the employment and support allowance support group premium, and the maternity allowance. However, as we have heard across the Chamber tonight, there is one glaring omission. The order excludes working-age benefits. Within this exclusion also sit standard allowances in ESA and income support, child tax credit and the child element of universal credit—in other words, benefits paid to those struggling to make ends meet but who are doing the right thing and working, as well as those too ill to work and those families with children who are also struggling to make ends meet. Our fair-minded constituents would be right to think that there must be some mistake here, but there is not. Individuals are being subjected to the final year of the four-year benefit freeze In the 2016 Budget, the Treasury announced the four-year year freeze with the aspiration of saving £3.5 billion by 2019-20. Everyone understood the need to reduce spending right across Government, but policy cannot be static and must be regularly reviewed, particularly when the policy so directly affects the most vulnerable people in society. Estimates recently published by the Resolution Foundation, which excels at statistical analysis in this space, indicate that the Government will have already exceeded their target by £900 million by the end of year three. Owing to inflation, the Resolution Foundation further estimates that while wages, the cost of living and pensioner incomes have risen over the period—everything has risen—these in-work benefits have seen a 6% real-terms decrease. The policy can no longer be right. The context within which the four-year benefit freeze policy was developed has changed. What kind of Government can think that it is morally acceptable to maintain this policy My recent visits with the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) to the parts of the UK struggling most with poverty have provided me with clear quantitative evidence, too. Society is responding with compassion and the strength of human kindness. Beneath the Government’s welfare safety net, society is providing three further layers: the established and now almost "normalised" food bank network; third sector charities and faith groups who open their doors when food banks are closed; and, most movingly, individual families helping those around them. The motion before us today therefore brings into sharp focus the damaging impact of the benefit freeze on the most vulnerable in society. With the recent news that tax income in January outstripped public spending by £14.9 billion—the biggest January surplus since records began in 1993—there is simply no reason to persist with the final year of the benefit freeze. We can afford it Working-age benefits must be uprated in line with all benefits from April 2019. As we have heard, ending the freeze would lift 200,000 people out of poverty. It is now almost universally understood that working-age benefits are insufficient for claimants to even maintain subsistence living. Claimants at the lowest point in their lives cannot afford to live on the current welfare safety net. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions herself has spoken out about the need for the freeze to end, and I can see the discomfort among those on the Front Bench, because I know that it is not within their gift to change things, but it is not too late for the Treasury to change course and end the four-year freeze. I have also been disappointed not to hear any suggestion from Ministers that the matter will be dealt with at the spring statement on 13 March. This Government must look again at the evidence: their benefit freeze is no longer morally nor economically viable and must end in April this year.