§ Queen's Recommendation having been signed—
10.15 pm§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Michael Portillo)I beg to move,
That, for the purpose of any Act resulting from the Social Security Bill it is expedient to authorise the following—The money resolution is in a form that will be familiar to the House for a social security Bill. It covers only payments from the Consolidated Fund and not from the national insurance fund or the social fund. The resolution is set out as follows: paragraph (1) (a) refers to clause 12(1) and clause 12(2), which relates to expenses incurred in travelling to hospital for treatment. Clause 12(1) covers England and Wales and clause 12(2) covers Scotland. Paragraph (1)(b) gives a general power to incur administrative expenses resulting from any clauses of the Bill. In particular, clause 7 may involve administrative expenses where local authorities and other bodies are authorised to make emergency payments on behalf of the Secretary of State.
- (1) The payment out of money provided by Parliament of—
- (a) any sums falling to be paid by the Secretary of State by virtue of the Act by way of travelling expenses;
- (b) any other expenses of a Minister of the Crown attributable to the Act;
- (c) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of money provided by Parliament under any other Act.
- (2) The making of payments into the Consolidated Fund.
Paragraph (1)(c) refers to any increases in payments made from the Consolidated Fund due to the Bill and relates to clause 4 which provides for child benefit to be extended to the families of 16 and 17-year-olds as part of the two-year youth training scheme. Paragraph (2) relates to payments into the Consolidated Fund as a result of recoveries from any overpayments to suppliers of welfare foods under clause 11.
§ Mr. Dave Nellist (Coventry, South-East)We are now debating the power that the Government seek to take in order to provide the expenditure necessary for them to carry out the provisions in the Bill, Second Reading of which the House has just approved. As the House is aware, the money resolution specifically requests authorisation of the Secretary of State to pay, by virtue of the Act, travelling expenses and expenses for a Minister of the Crown. That constricts, to a certain extent, the remarks that can be made by an hon. Member who is attempting to speak in the debate. I hope that I can remain sufficiently within order.
Seven months ago the Chancellor of the Exchequer appeared in the Chamber when he introduced the Budget and proudly boasted that we were in the seventh successive year of successful economic growth. No doubt tomorrow we will hear similar claims. Some of us have challenged those remarks, not least in speeches during that month and in June during the debate on the Queen's Speech. We pointed to the over-stretching of the economic elastic, particularly in the case of the American budget and trade deficits. We also pointed to the recession, which is clearly now on its way.
The Bill, which Parliament has just authorised, gives the lie to the promise by the Chancellor that the economy 749 is in line with his assessment. What is the definition of a successful economy if it introduces a Bill that specifically introduces new cuts for those least able to afford them? What is the definition of a healthy economy if it needs to abolish 55p a week of industrial death benefit to widows and to axe the widowers' pensions? The reality is that the Bill, together with tomorrow's so-called Employment Bill, is in preparation for the increasing economic storms of the months and years ahead. It attempts to make the working class of this country, especially the poorest sections of the working class, pay for the crisis in the capitalist economy which is not of their making. Simultaneously, it attempts to constrict the ability of their trade union organisations to resist those attacks.
There are a number of odious clauses in the Bill, but the constrictions of the money resolution debate will not allow me to deal with them in the depth that they deserve.
We heard earlier about the decreased numbers of people who will be able to claim unemployment benefit because of the clause that extends contribution conditions from one year to two years. It has been estimated that 350,000 people will lose their right to claim benefit because of that change, although Ministers were at pains to point out that 300,000 of those claimants will be able to fall back on means-tested benefits. However, at least 50,000 will lose benefit altogether, mainly women—particularly married women who are ineligible for those means-tested benefits—and young people.
The change will affect the jobless count, as only benefit claimants are counted in the total. Therefore, 50,000 will disappear from the official dole figures. Yet again, the Government are interested not in creating genuine work for the millions of unemployed people, but in gerrymandering the procedures for claiming benefit so as to reduce not unemployment but the statistics.
You will be aware, Mr. Deputy Speaker, even if Tory Members do not appear to be interested in this fact—[Interruption.] What my hon. Friends may lack in quantity they make up for in quality. At least they are paying attention to what I am saying, unlike Tory Members who are attempting to drown my remarks.
You will be aware, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that at an official count there were 22,000 unemployed people in Coventry and 481 registered vacancies at the jobcentre. That figure of 22,000 is at least 8,000 less than the true number of unemployed people. However, that gives us an unemployed-vacancy ration of 46:1. Even if all the unemployed were to follow the advice of the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold)—who tonight accused the unemployed of being idle and not getting off their backsides—and succeed in getting one of the 481 vacancies, there would still be 45 unemployed people for every one who had succeeded in obtaining a job. What we needed from the Bill tonight, whether it be from the primary legislation or the money resolution, was not statistical sleight of hand, but new jobs for the genuine unemployed.
We have heard about the social fund, which will make the poor pay yet again. A clause in the Bill made it clear that the budget that will be allocated to local offices to administer the social fund will include the amount that claimants must pay back on the loans that they may be granted. Therefore, the social fund will become a local poor box for people on low incomes. Future unemployed people will have no right to extra help with major expenses such as children's clothing, cookers or repairs which are 750 not covered by their weekly benefit. The system of single payments will be replaced by a system of loans rationed through the fund. I strongly advise all those who might read the debate, or extracts of it, to seek assistance from their local law centre or citizens advice bureaux so that they can claim their rights before they disappear in April 1988.
We heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Livingston (Mr. Cook) and for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) that the Government's own Social Security Advisory Committee recommended that £350 million should he made available for the social fund, yet it is to receive only £200 million. The Tories have set weekly benefit rates at a miserly level. Inevitably, the social fund will be overrun by people who cannot make ends meet.
The Bill and the money resolution give the administrators greater discretion to decide who deserves, or does not deserve, help. We are told that two social funds will operate at local offices—one for loans and one for grants. Local offices will be expected to keep within their budgets and not to operate waiting lists or review those cases turned down, because of the lack of money, for a minimum period of six months. The draft manual, extracts of which some of us have had a chance to see, states:
Single applicants or a couple without children would generally have lower priority".The manual states:Loans should not be made to those unable to pay.Once again, the poorest group of those on benefits will face the severest cuts.We have heard that unemployment benefit will be cut for those between 55 and 60 if they already receive an occupational pension of £35 a week or more. I do not know how many Conservative Members understand working class people who make payments into occupational pension schemes. Those benefits are deferred wages, paid for while one is in work to enhance the miserable pensions that the Government give those who rely on state pension benefits. Those workers make national insurance contributions to cushion them when they are out of work through enforced redundancy or, as is likely today in former manufacturing areas such as Coventry, enforced early retirement and to gain them 12-months' unemployment benefit. Hundreds of thousands of men over 60 have already lost up to £700 in the first 12 month period. As the former Minister for Social Security and the Disabled—the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major)—admitted to me in a question in February this year. over a six-year period the Government have refused to index-link the abatement level introduced in 1981 and increase it from £35 to £48.40 per week, the level it should be. The legislation reduces from 60 to 55 the age at which workers become trapped by the limit. We have heard that a further 27,000 workers who have already paid their national insurance contributions and paid into their occupational pension schemes will lose up to £700 in a 12-month period. The irony, which seems lost on most Tory Members, is that if those workers succeeded in getting a job again after enforced redundancy or early retirement, they would again have to pay into the national insurance fund, which would not give them unemployment benefit if they again became unemployed.
Earlier this year, we saw some of the Right-wing think tanks, which now seem to be represented by such hon. Members as the new hon. Member for Gravesham. Incidentally, for the benefit of those who did not hear this 751 earlier, the hon. Gentleman tried his luck some four years ago in Coventry, South-East and got a right sending-off from working people there. The head of one think tank—Sir John Hoskyns—is now the director-general of the Institute of Directors. The people involved in those think tanks said that employment should be counted only from age 25 to age 55.
§ Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham)Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
§ Mr. NellistI shall give way in a second. If we pass the full legislation, we shall make that prediction reality.
§ Mr. ArnoldWill the hon. Gentleman give way?
§ Mr. NellistIn a minute—[HON. MEMBERS: "Give way."]—when I finish my point. If we pass the full legislation, the combination of YTS and JTS for those up to 25 and the abatement on occupational pensions, which reduces the level of unemployment benefit pound per pound for those aged 55 or more, will bring to fruition the promise from outside the Tory party that the only workers who count as really employed or unemployed will be between 25 and 55. Those under the age of 25 are fodder for schemes, while those over the age of 55——
§ Mr. ArnoldWill the hon. Gentleman give way?
§ Mr. NellistIn a minute. Those aged 55 or over are to be put on a permanent scrap heap with the rest of a generation that the Government say is too old to work.
§ Mr. ArnoldThe hon. Gentleman referred to a right setting-down at the Coventry, South-East general election contest in 1983. If a right setting-down means reducing the Labour majority by two-thirds I hope that there will be many more.
§ Mr. NellistAs that has nothing to do with the money resolution, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you would no doubt rule me out of order if I replied—other than to say that I got here in 1983 and the international banker across the way did not.
The House is being asked to authorise the Secretary of State to spend money on travel and other administrative expenses necessary for the implementation of the Bill. The core of the Bill consists of the total removal from all 16 and 17-year-olds of the right to any form of supplementary benefit. I regard that as equivalent to the introduction into this country of the work fare schemes now in operation in some states of America. Why do we need economic conscription to force young people on to a scheme which, if one is to believe the summer's £2 million television advertising campaign, is so attractive that every youngster of 16 or 17 should be jumping at the chance to get a place on it?
If that were really so, the Government would not be having to introduce measures to try to force school leavers on to the scheme. The Government already have the power to reduce by 40 per cent. for 13 weeks the benefit of those who refuse to join a scheme or who leave it early. One figure suggests that some 2,500 youngsters have refused to take a place while about 23,000 have left early. The present Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, when he was Secretary of State for Employment, suggested that youngsters left the scheme or refused to join them because 752 they preferred to go to discos. Lord UB40—Lord Young—who replaced him said that the youngsters preferred to stay in bed.
I have discovered from most of the youths to whom I have spoken—as the civil servants in the Box will no doubt confirm, this is backed up by surveys conducted by the Department of Employment and the Manpower Services Commission—that the three objections of those who leave the schemes or refuse to join boil down to the low allowance, exploitation by employers and no guarantee of a job at the end.
YTS was never a bridge from school to work. Sir John Hoskyns, who was the head of the Prime Minister's think tank in 1981, drafted the original paper which led the Government from their 1979 position of cutting £29 million off the training budget to their decision in 1983 to spend £1,000 million on YTS—the intervening events included, of course, the riots in the inner-city areas of Toxteth, Moss Side, Brixton and St. Pauls.
Sir John Hoskyns said that the main need for a scheme was to increase the differential between adult rates and youth rates, although it had the useful additional effect of reducing the official dole figures.
As I have already explained, the problem in Coventry is not that there is a lack of willing hands but that there is a lack of jobs. We have 6,800 unemployed 16 to 18-yearolds in Coventry. A third of them—2,700—are on YTS schemes but 4,000 of them are unemployed. What we need in Coventry is not for those 4,000 youngsters to be coerced by having their benefits removed but for at least 4,000 jobs to be made available so that the youngsters can put their hands to them.
If the Tories had taken the Labour Government's YOP scheme and uprated the allowance from £19.50p to the £49 it should be today, there might be fewer grumbles from young people about the allowance. Youngsters have been robbed of £20 a week. They know that it is part of a package involving the abolition of the wages councils for under 21-year-olds which was designed to reduce the level of youth wages.
Some schemes are run by redundant shop stewards from manufacturing industry. They attempt to provide real training. Unfortunately, the majority, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Hull, West (Mr. Prescott) has said, are "nowt more than skivvy" schemes and a substitute for older workers.
The Department of Employment says that 32 per cent. of large firms and 62 per cent. of small firms have used YTS in the last year or two to substitute young workers on YTS for older workers. There is no guarantee of a job later. What can be worse than leading youngsters up the garden path with advertisements featuring Spikey Dodds playing for England because he went on a YTS course or someone else getting a job in manufacturing or packing when the reality is that half the youngsters go back to unemployment or on to another JTS scheme or to a job club?
There are genuine and well-founded fears amongst tens of thousands of young school leavers about YTS courses. Opposition to YTS will become a major issue in the weeks and months ahead among students, parents, teachers and trade unionists.
Two-year YTS is different from YOP and the old YTS courses. Youths on the two-year scheme are beginning to think, not so much like trainees but like young workers. They go into work at the same time as older workers, they 753 take their breaks at the same time and often do the same job. The difference is that at the end of the week they are paid a fraction of what the older workers are paid. That fuels resentment against YTS.
The Youth Trade Union Rights Campaign, of which I am the honorary president, will lobby the House of Commons on 19 November to protest at the measures outlined in the Bill. With the unions, particularly the Transport and General Workers Union, we shall try to unionise the youngsters on the schemes. We shall try to improve their allowance and to end the disgrace which has involved 40 youngsters being killed in the last eight years. We shall concentrate on improving the training content of the schemes and try to ensure that every scheme is vetted by the health and safety inspectorate or by shop stewards responsible for safety.
I believe that the action by the 250,000 young students two and a half years ago against the then Secretary of State for Employment who tried to bring conscription into the YTS, will he exceeded in the months ahead and that the young will take action against the YTS provision in the Bill.
Tonight we discussed the case of Vicky and Alex Storer, 18-month-old twins who are so physically and mentally handicapped that in their short lives they have already had heart surgery, suffered brain drainage and resucitation—[Interruption.] Brain drainage might seem funny to Conservative Members, but those twins did suffer brain drainage and their mother had to carry an oxygen cylinder every single day of their short lives. I challenge them to go to Coventry to meet the grandparents, or to Bedworth to meet the parents and the kids, and then to say to me and the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Stevens) that it is right to have the present restriction on attendance allowance that denies the under-twos the chance of their parents having an orange badge for disabled transport and the financial assistance that they can get in March next year when they reach their second birthdays. Let hon. Members laugh when they see those kids and meet their parents. I can promise that those smiles on Tory Members' faces—which have dropped somewhat now—will not be there the next time that the hon. Member for Nuneaton and I raise this issue.
§ Mr. Geoffrey Dickens (Littleborough and Saddleworth)The hon. Gentleman has set rather a dilemma for the House, especially his party. He may not remember, because he is a better shouter than he is a listener, that over the years the Opposition have consistently criticised the lack of take-up of schemes and benefits. The main thrust of the hon. Gentleman's speech on the money resolution has criticised the Government for their splendid advertising of the various schemes open to youngsters. The next time the Labour party criticises the Government for low take-up of benefits and schemes, I ask him to reflect on the speech that he has made with such force tonight. It flies in the face of what we have had to suffer from the Opposition for many years. We are trying to tell people what is available. We are trying to help with "Action for Jobs". We are trying to do what the Opposition failed to do for many, many years.
§ Mr. NellistIf the £42.5 million that was spent on television advertising for the privatisation of British Gas had been spent on advertising to raise the take-up of attendance allowance—notwithstanding ministerial 754 promises of amendments to a Bill that is itself an amendment to the Social Security Act 1986—and other benefits of real use to families, I might have more sympathy for the hon. Gentleman's point.
My opposition is fundamental to the Bill itself and to the granting of authorisation to the Secretary of State to expend money either on travel allowances or unnecessary administration to bring in the several clauses that the right hon. Gentleman outlined in his moving speech. If we had: been talking about extending the attendance allowance to the Mrs. Morans or the Vicki and Alex Storers of this world, there would have been unanimity on the need for advertising. If we had been talking about giving to the 500,000 youngsters on YTS something that the Government will be unable to grant—especially as we move towards recession—the right that post-war generations have always expected, namely, that following 11 years of compulsory state education the opportunity to use that qualification to get a job and contribute to society, there would have been unanimity. If, instead of banding the employed between the ages of 25 and 55, and saying that those under 25 are scheme fodder and those over 55 are past it—which clauses in the Bill clearly suggest—we had spoken of full employment, there would have been unanimity. The truth, as ever with Tory legislation, is the opposite. We have spoken tonight, in a country that is supposed to be in its seventh successive year of successful economic growth, of making the poorer sections of society pay for the top 5 per cent. to enjoy that growth.
The Labour opposition, both inside and outside Parliament, is about challenging the right of a Government who, in their manifesto, said that they intended to ensure that child benefit was to be paid as now, but who, within days of the new Session beginning, froze child benefit. Tonight we are expected to believe that there really is a promise of a training place and a job—a chance to use their skills—for every unemployed youngster aged 16 and 17. Frankly, I do not believe the Secretary of State or the Minister when they make such assertions. The Labour Opposition do not believe those assertions and, when the people of the country read this debate, they will not believe the Government either.
§ Sir Brandon Rhys Williams (Kensington)I should like to ask my hon. Friend whether, under the terms of the money resolution, it would be in order for Back-Bench Members to propose an amendment to the Bill at later stages that would have the effect of providing that, in future years, child benefit would be uprated automatically in accordance with the Lawson-Rooker-Wise formula.
§ Mr. PortilloWith the leave of the House, I will not detain hon. Members long as I sense that the House wishes to come to a decision on this matter.
I am not an expert on the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams). I believe that my hon. Friend will have to take up that matter with the Chairman of the Committee or, if we were on Report, with the occupant of your Chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker. For what it is worth, my reading of the Bill is that an amendment on child benefit probably would fall within the terms of the Bill, but I am not the expert on that.
The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist), who probably prepared his speech for the main 755 debate, was disappointed that he had been unable to participate in it and did not want to waste a good speech or even the speech that he had. We shall certainly return in Committee to the many points that he made and we look forward to him being a member of the Committee.
As far as I could detect, the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East raised no questions for me on the money resolution as such. However, I would like to make it clear to him that, if it were not for the economic success of the Government, we would not be talking about £46,000 million worth of public spending for social security. That has been made possible by the Government's economic policies.
756 Because I was unable to detect any specific questions on the money resolution, I feel that there is nothing standing in the way of my commending the resolution to the House.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§
Resolved,
That, for the purpose of any Act resulting from the Social Security Bill, it is expedient to authorise the following—