Contribution
I send my congratulations to those receiving that wonderful award in West Dunbartonshire. Well done to them.
We will always need some form of crisis support. My worry is not just the consequences of day-to-day crisis, but the chronic challenge. People need an income that they can live on, and that is why in last month’s Budget the Chancellor announced that we will introduce a fair repayment rate to help households on universal credit who are having deductions made from their benefit keep more of their money to help them budget for essentials. More than 1.2 million households on universal credit will benefit from that—a reduction in the deductions cap from 25% to 15%, which is worth about £420 a year on average. As my dad used to say, “Out of debt, out of danger.”
That will make a big difference for some of the poorest people in our country, but we understand that more change will still be needed. That is why we are committed, as Members have mentioned, to reviewing universal credit. I know, and Beveridge wrote in his report, that social security can only work well when we have policies for full and fulfilling employment. We have to make work pay. It is ridiculous to have a queue at the food bank door when our businesses are crying out for staff. We have millions of people locked out of work, not getting the support they need to build a better life.
Alongside the reforms I have set out, therefore, we have set an ambitious long-term goal of an 80% employment rate, towards full employment. To achieve it, we have kick-started the biggest reforms to employment support for a generation. We will build a new jobs and careers service to give people proper, tailored support to help them get on in work. Our White Paper will bring forward a youth guarantee for our young people, to ensure that they are not left on the scrapheap. We will empower our local areas, towns and cities so that they can be in the lead with their work, health and skills plan. We will set out all that detail in our “Get Britain Working” White Paper shortly. I cannot wait to talk to Members and colleagues about it.
I want to make one more point about making work pay. It is not enough to get people into any job; it must be a good job. In 2022, 2.3 million people lived in a household that had used a food bank in the past year, and 40% of them were living in families where at least one adult worked. That is not acceptable to me. Too many people in our country are being denied the dignity of decent and fair work. Too many are stuck in insecure jobs with unpredictable working patterns. That is why we introduced our Employment Rights Bill.
I do not agree that we have to make a choice between high unemployment and poor-quality work. We will have the biggest upgrade to rights at work for a generation, including an end to exploitative zero-hours contracts, which often see people not just low-paid, but unsure about what pay they will get next week. That stress and instability tip people into destitution. As I said, we are also putting up the living wage, which will benefit 3 million workers and be worth £1,400 next year for the average full-time worker.
In conclusion, as I have set out—and as Members know from their experiences talking to people in their constituencies—the inheritance of this Government could hardly be worse. It is not really the 3.1 million bags of shopping handed out to people in desperate need that is the problem, but the social and economic failure that that represents. We cannot accept it.
Tackling poverty and ending mass dependence on emergency food parcels is not just a manifesto commitment that we made to the British public; it is our priority every day. It is vital to all this Government’s missions to break down barriers to opportunity and to deliver economic growth, because you cannot grow a country on shaky foundations. The action we have already taken to support those most in need—to spread opportunity and make work pay—shows that we will take that challenge head-on. I look forward to working with all Members present to deliver that change.