The real figures that should be driving the welfare debate

Simon Kirby, one of Brighton & Hove’s two Conservative MPs claims that 60% of his constituents support the Bedroom Tax, where hundreds of tenants are seeing their housing support cut by a quarter, many of them in my ward of East Brighton which Mr Kirby represents in Parliament.

His claims are based on a survey which is at best selective, and at worst meaningless. It is odd that an MP who has made great efforts so far to distance himself from every unpopular Conservative government policy he has voted for in the House of Commons should now seek to justify one of the most loathed and unfair. It is a policy which targets the disabled and the sick, and forces people out of their homes towards “more suitable” accommodation which does not exist. What is not surprising is that a Conservative is using dodgy statistics to back up a flawed policy. Let’s look at some real figures behind the debate on welfare and living standards in this country.

The Conservatives under David Cameron have encouraged the beliefs that this country is in debt due to large numbers of benefit claimants, branded “scroungers” and “shirkers”, and that cutting social security benefits is the way to reduce our national debt. The Bedroom Tax, however, makes no such savings, with additional burdens on the welfare bill expected to outweigh any savings from housing benefit cuts. Even according to their own figures, the fact is that this Tory-led government is now set to borrow more in five years than the last Labour government did in thirteen.

Whilst this Government borrows more, so do the rest of us. With social security slashed, the value of wages going down and the cost of food up 18% in three years, a million more people a month are now using high-interest payday lenders to make ends meet, and half a million now rely on food banks to feed their families. Meanwhile employers are getting around minimum wage legislation by employing over 200,000 staff on “zero-hour” casual employment contracts, paying them only for hours worked with no sickness, maternity or holiday pay.

It is no surprise that the reality of social security is now that six out of ten people on benefits are in work. Only one in eight people receiving housing benefit are unemployed. Unemployed people account for just 3% of the welfare budget, and benefit fraud accounts for just 0.7%. The vast majority of welfare spending goes on pensions, which account for around £70 billion of government spending a year; ironically around the same amount lost to illegal tax evasion. It is estimated another £100 billion is lost through legal tax avoidance by wealthy individuals, and much more through tax avoidance by large companies like Google, Starbucks and Amazon.

Our welfare state was established in the wake of World War Two, when there was a genuine and widely shared belief, proved through our collective national wartime effort, that we really were “all in it together” and that we had a duty to ensure a well-educated, well-housed and healthy society where all were cared for. Even Margaret Thatcher, who declared there was “no such thing as society” did not dare to systematically dismantle, run down and sell off the NHS, schools, local government and social security as the current Conservative-led government are doing.

The reality is that the Conservatives are creating an environment based on flawed statistics and mistaken beliefs that enable big business to pay less tax, pay lower wages and make more profit, whilst millions of working families are increasingly worse off. It is not fair on them, it is not healthy for the economy and it is not right for the country.

Warren Morgan is Leader of the Labour & Co-operative Group on Brighton Council