HC Deb 12 April 1988 vol 131 cc7-10
9. Mr. Simon Hughes

To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make a statement on the efforts made by his Department to publicise the changes in the social security system in April.

Mr. Moore

My Department has organised television and press advertising campaigns. Our leaflets have been redesigned and rewritten to make them more attractive and easier to understand. Our regional and local staff are taking the initiative on local publicity and information. Special fact sheets have been produced for organisations representing and advising claimants to help them understand and explain the reforms, and claimants themselves will receive information about the changes, with notifications about the new benefit.

Mr. Hughes

Does the Secretary of State accept that, in spite of all that publicity, he has not managed to persuade the majority of people that his changes are acceptable? Does he accept that a system which allows a mother aged under 18 with a child to receive £14 a week less than a mother aged over 18, which allows an old person with a disability to receive over £20 a week less, or which means that people who have been encouraged to save and have saved £6,000 cannot receive any benefit is not the kind of system that the Government can convince the country is worth continuing? When will the results of the publicity, which has not persuaded 62 per cent. of the Minister's Back Benchers that it is acceptable, prove that the system needs to be changed before substantial disadvantage is caused to millions of people in Britain?

Mr. Moore

The publicity was addressed to the claimants, and it will continue to be so, in an attempt to communicate and help them to ensure that they receive the benefits to which they are entitled. The purpose of the publicity is not to publicise the benefits of the nature of the structural reforms. The structural reforms will be welcomed and accepted by the vast majority of people.

Mr. Alexander

Is it not also important to counter the pernicious propaganda of some Opposition Members, particularly on school meals? Would one ever learn from their pronouncements that a different system operates and that significantly more pupils will benefit?

Mr. Moore

Absolutely. I remind the House that 800,000 children—[Interruption.] Facts are always much more difficult to accept, especially for some of those hon. Members who interrupt from a sedentary position. I repeat that 800,000 children will continue to receive school meals through local authorities and 100,000 more children will benefit from family credit than was the case under FIS and local authority discretionary schemes.

Mr. Dobson

Guesswork.

Mr. Moore

Not guesswork, Mr. Speaker. That is based on national data normally accepted by those who are serious about the matter as opposed to those, such as the shadow Leader of the House, who are concerned only with making sedentary interruptions.

Ms. Mowlam

If the Minister is interested in helping families by the introduction of family credit, as he tells us he is, why was child benefit frozen? What he is giving with one hand, he is taking away with the other.

Mr. Moore

As my right hon. and hon. Friends have explained at considerable length in a considerable number of debates, we have sought to give additional help to 3 million children, out of the 12 million children who are in receipt of child benefit, through an increase in income support and family credit which they would otherwise not receive. They will benefit particularly from the reforms.

Mr. Ralph Howell

As child benefit is more valuable to better-off parents than to others, why have we not made child benefit means-tested in order to save £3 billion?

Mr. Moore

With his extensive knowledge of this subject, my hon. Friend draws attention to the tax position of the more wealthy families in receipt of child benefit as opposed to those in receipt of income support and family credit.

Mrs. Margaret Ewing

In the light of what the Secretary of State has said about unpalatable facts, does he accept that many elderly and low-paid people are shocked at the reduction in their incomes as a result of the social security and housing benefit changes? Will he give a commitment that his Department will review the existing system when he has been inundated with facts from Back Benchers on the effect of the changes on their constituents?

Mr. Moore

I am conscious of the fact that 87 per cent. of pensioners benefit from or are no worse off as a result of the changes. I am also conscious of the Government's outstanding record in improving the lot of the pensioner, especially in destroying that which most threatens the pensioner—the appalling rates of inflation that the Government inherited from the previous Labour Government.

Mr. Marlow

Would it be helpful to the public during the debate to make plain the vast amount of resources involved—I think that the social security budget is about £800 for every man, woman and child in Britain, which is about £64 a week for every family of four—and that, however little or much anybody might be receiving through supplementary benefit, that money is coming from their neighbours?

Mr. Moore

My hon. Friend is right. An extraordinary feature of the debate is that it is hard for those outside to realise that during the past eight and a half years expenditure on social security has increased—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker

Order. It is unseemly to shout from a sedentary position.

Mr. Moore

—in real terms by 38 per cent. Most of that has little to do with the increased number of those unemployed and everything to do with the enormous increase in benefits for pensioners, the disabled and families with children.

Mr. Robin Cook

Can the Secretary of State name a single organisation representing claimants which has been convinced by the Government's claim that 87 per cent. will be no worse off as a result of the changes? Is he aware that not one of my colleagues who met desperate claimants at their surgeries at the weekend can accept his complacent figures, that his own Social Security Advisory Committee put the losers as a majority, and that even Conservative-controlled Wandsworth council estimates that there will be twice as many losers as gainers in its borough? Has he forgotten—we have not—that last month his Government found £2,000 million for the top taxpayers? With all that cash to spare, is it not abundantly clear that they had the money to prevent there being any losers among the poor?

Mr. Moore

The hon. Gentleman is aware—as is anyone who looks at the facts—of the invalidity of most of the data in studies such as that of Wandsworth, which assumed, for example, that all income supports claimants in this country were in receipt of single payments as of the middle of 1986. Two thirds of them were not. The hon. Gentleman also asks whether any group in the country actually supports the Government's proposals. The proposals were published and printed. They were passed by this House in 1986 and confirmed by the election in 1987.

Mr. Wells

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, unfortunately, his efforts in publishing these changes have not been drawn to the attention of the Bishop of Durham? Does he agree that it is indeed wicked for the Bishop of Durham to comment when he has not read and does not understand what the Government are doing to support the poorest people in this land?

Mr. Moore

I have the distinct feeling that you. Mr. Speaker, would not wish me to pursue that particular line of argument, other than to say that the reforms add to and do not diminish the overall expenditure by the taxpayer on social security help for the poorest people.