Torsten Bell

I am afraid that I do not have time to give way. The last Government cancelled face-to-face assessments for health benefits; this Government are bringing them back. The last Government also oversaw a scandal that has received far too little attention. They allowed people who came to Britain for just a few years—people who left, and never had any intention of returning—not only to buy a state pension, but to buy it on the cheap. The Conservative Government did not just waste money here at home; they wasted it across Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and we are bringing this overseas pension scandal to a close. What this Government will never do is pretend that the Tory policy of making children poor does anything other than cost us all in the long run. Child poverty costs this country £40 billion a year. A child growing up in poverty is less likely to be in work as an adult, and they earn 25% less at age 30. We tackle child poverty not only because it is a moral imperative, as was laid out by my hon. Friends the Members for Rochdale (Paul Waugh) and for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon), but because it is an economic one. This Government will scrap the two-child limit, we will lift over half a million children out of poverty and we will deliver the biggest fall in child poverty of any Parliament on record. Everyone can see what the Conservatives are trying to do. They cannot defend their record, and we all know why. They have nothing to say about Britain’s future, as the Leader of the Opposition made patently clear yesterday, and now they are salivating at the prospect of trying to hide their total lack of policy behind the cheap, divisive, lazy politics of talking about “Benefits Street”. Well, bring it on, because this Budget is for every street, with potholes being filled, neighbourhood police back on the streets and an NHS that is actually there when we need it. It is a Budget for every street in cutting borrowing because that helps not just mortgage payers, but employers; it is a Budget for every street in cutting energy bills because the cost of living crisis has seeped into everyone’s homes—rich and poor, north and south; and it is a Budget for every street because child poverty exists in every part of Britain, limiting life chances, wasting talents and undermining not just some childhoods, but all of them. With borrowing down, energy bills cut and public services rebuilt, this is a Budget for every street in Britain. Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Gregor Poynton.) Debate to be resumed on Monday 1 December.