Labour to vote against Welfare Uprating Bill (and table amendment to introduce a compulsory jobs guarantee)

Labour will challenge the Government to back its plan for a compulsory jobs guarantee for the long term unemployed as new figures from the IFS show 7 million working people will be hit by the Government’s ‘strivers tax’. Labour will oppose the Welfare Uprating Bill and call for the Government to bring in a compulsory jobs guarantee. The amendment that Labour will be tabling in the Commons is as follows:

“That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill because it fails to address the reasons why the cost of benefits is exceeding the Government’s plans;

notes that the Resolution Foundation has calculated that 68 per cent of households affected by these measures are in work and that figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that all the measures announced in the Autumn Statement, including those in the Bill, will mean a one-earner family with children will on average be £534 worse off by 2015;

further notes that the Bill does not include anything to remedy the deficiencies in the Government’s work programme or the slipped timetable for universal credit;  

believes that a comprehensive plan to reduce the benefits bill must include measures to create economic growth and help the 129,400 adults over the age of 25 out of work for 24 months or more, but this Bill does not do so;

further believes that the Bill should introduce a compulsory jobs guarantee, which would give long-term unemployed adults a job they would have to take up or lose benefits, funded by limiting tax relief on pension contributions for people earning over £150,000 to 20 per cent;

and further believes that the proposals in the Bill are unfair when the additional rate of income tax is being reduced, which will result in those earning over a million pounds per year receiving an average tax cut of over £100,000 a year.”