Welfare Reform Bill

I am tempted to use the first part of my speech to defend accountants, as they got a raw deal earlier. However, I suppose that there are good accountants and bad accountants. There are parts of the Bill that we are happy to welcome. For example, the power to pay pension credit automatically is positive, because we know that between a quarter and a third of pensioners do not claim their entitlements, and that that has been the case for a number of years. We also agree in principle that we want to encourage people to work. Not only does that increase their income and the wealth of the whole economy; it improves folks' health and well-being, as they feel that they are really contributing to society. We want children to grow up in households where the parents are working. We want to break the cycle in which members of the new generation have never seen their parents work. I believe that the majority of claimants want to get to work. During the recess, I spent a morning in a Jobcentre Plus in my constituency. I sat in on a couple of interviews, and I saw folk who were really desperate to get back to work. The question that has just been asked, however, is: are the jobs actually out there? This seems a strange time to introduce this legislation. It might have worked two years ago, but this is surely the wrong time for it. Surely the Government have some responsibility to provide jobs. Can the Secretary of State assure us that jobs will be available when these people want them? Perhaps it would have been better for the £12 billion that was spent on the VAT cut to go into construction and into creating new jobs. There is a fear that the Bill will remove the welfare safety net. Conditionality is an interesting word. It sounds okay on the surface, but what does it actually mean underneath? Does it mean that people will have to fulfil certain conditions in order to have the right to eat and to live? If people are on an income that is above the minimum, we could make that extra bit conditional. Surely, however, in a civilised society, we cannot make the minimum conditional. My particular concern is for children and older people in the system. I have already asked Ministers whether they agree with Barnardo's hope that dependent children will be taken into account before sanctions are enforced. Figures from the United States suggest that, when sanctions have been imposed, 60 per cent. of the children involved are at a higher risk of being underweight. And what about those at the other end of the age range? Unemployment among the over-50s is rising twice as fast as in other age groups, and unemployed men over 50 have only a one in five chance of being in a job in two years' time. Is it right to put pressure on that group as well? How about having a few more conditional carrots, instead of just conditional sticks? For example, is the minimum wage high enough? Surely the real incentive to get people back into work is the knowledge that they will earn a living wage when they get there. I really must question how we can consider welfare reform without looking at the minimum wage at the same time.