Contribution
I listened to the Minister’s remarks with great care. Many of the things that he says, he says with great sincerity, but some of the things he says, I do not believe that he quite so fervently believes. I ask him, being the hon. and gallant Gentleman that he is, to consider whether criticising those who criticise Government policy on the basis of the question “How dare you criticise the Government at such a serious time?” reflects the same kind of attack made by supporters of Neville Chamberlain against Winston Churchill and his supporters even as late as 1940. As they went through the Division Lobbies in May that year, they taunted those coming through voting against the Adjournment of the House: “Quislings”, they said.
To implicitly brand my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition as some kind of warmonger who is out of control—that is what the Government are basically saying—reflects exactly the gibe thrown at Winston Churchill: that he loved war so much, he was not objective. Yet he was the one who appreciated the dire emergency of the situation being faced, even as the British Expeditionary Force was losing in France and the Norway campaign was proving such a disaster.
I appreciate that it is perhaps obligatory for the Minister to say these things about the two-child benefit cap for the satisfaction of many of his Back Benchers, but we are now spending so much on welfare and so little on defence. Maybe the two problems have something to do with each other. If we could just spend the same on in-work or out-of-work benefits for people of working age as we were spending before covid, we could save £50 billion a year, but that does not seem to matter to the Government at all.
The Minister talked, I am sure with great sincerity, about how important it is to have a system that works “for them”—I think I am quoting his very words; he said that we need a social system in this country that works for the poorest people in our society. Well, the system over which the Government are presiding is failing. We now have a rising and terrifying number of young people who are not in education, employment, or training—the so-called NEETs. Even those operating on the frontline of food banks—I visited a food bank recently—understand that if we keep indexing benefits with inflation, but do not index tax allowances, that means that people pay more tax at lower rates of pay, and if we increase benefits, such as by removing the two-child benefit cap, and do not uprate the tapers to protect the better-off who are receiving universal credit, we create a disincentive to work.
When I first visited food banks, which I think was under Tony Blair’s Government—they were not originated under the Conservatives—there used to be a tiny number of people who were permanent beneficiaries of food banks; the vast majority were in a state of transition, and that persisted until quite recently. At the food bank I visited at the weekend, 80% of beneficiaries are now permanent clients, because they say there is no point in them trying to take work, as it does not pay. The system is not working for them, because we are spending too much on welfare and we have not cut taxes enough.
The next question is: are we at peace or at war? Much of the discussion in the Liaison Committee was about that. I cannot find a Minister who denies that we are at war, and I am afraid that makes the question of whether we choose to get involved rather redundant. We are involved, and we cannot help being involved. Our sovereign territory is involved, because it is being attacked. Indeed, we have been involved in a war in defence of the west, NATO and Ukraine probably since as far back as the original invasion of Georgia and Abkhazia, because the nature of Putin’s regime had become apparent by then. They are quite explicit: Lavrov has said that Russia is at war with NATO, so that war is already here.
What kind of war is it? Well, it reflects all kinds of conflicts, including hybrid conflict, which has often been discussed and is of such a varied nature, and what one might call cognitive conflict, which is the capacity and determination of Russia and China, and probably Iran, not just to interfere in our democratic processes, but to corrupt the truth. This is aimed at reshaping the societal, economic and informational environment, at undermining people’s faith in democracy and democratic values, and at destroying the faith of our voters in our democratic system.
The question now is: what are we doing to fight back? Well, what are we doing? I know that in bits of Government, many small parts of the Government are at war. There are some wonderful people in the Ministry of Defence who are sweating the night hours to do things that are of crucial importance.