The hon. Member for Leominister (Mr. Temple-Morris) can hardly have expected the debate to be of such great quality when he initiated it, or that two maiden speeches would be delivered within it. They were maiden speakers of extremely high quality. I compliment the hon. Members for Stockport (Mr. Favell) and for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) on their fluency, commitment and obvious knowledge and experience in these areas. We look forward to their contributions in the near future.

The hon. Member for Leominster said that he was an amateur in these matters. If that is true, thank God for the amateurs. He brought a tone of common sense to the debate, but that is not to pour scorn upon the professionals. We have had what has already been described as a profound and wise speech from the hon. Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams). That can be expected from the hon. Gentleman's great knowledge and experience and his reflective and thoughtful contributions, for which we thank him.

It is right that we should have a debate on this subject now, even if it is early it the morning. No greater issue faces society and the Government. It faces all Governments and it is the acid test of the quality of our civilisation and the extent of our caring—a word that several hon. Members have used. It is important to examine what Governments do as well as to scrutinise their intentions.

The financing of the social services is a problem for all Governments as there are constraints on the Government's income. They are constrained by the extent to which people are prepared to pay taxes and rates, by the extent to which they achieve economic growth — successive Governments have not distinguished themselves in that respect recently—the extent to which they can borrow to fund the national debt and the extent to which they are prepared to levy charges for the services that are provided.

I should like to refer to the third special report of the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee entitled, "The Structure of Personal Income Taxation and Income Support". It is an important document which covered some of the points that the hon. Member for Kensington covered. It says that, 35 years after its introduction, the national insurance system still does not prevent widespread dependence on means-tested benefits. For many of them, the rate of take-up is well below 100 per cent. Moreover, child benefit has not prevented the persistence of poverty among families and, in 1979, more than 6 million people were at or below supplementary benefit level. The report states more generally that there is widely held anxiety about the level of taxation on the average wage earner and the way in which it has risen under successive Governments. It is not merely that the tax burden has risen overall; there has been a redistribution of that burden. Taxes have increased relatively more in the middle than at the top.

There is also a problem because of growth in demand. The demand for benefits and services has become almost insatiable. During 1971–81, the number of people of pensionable age increased by 10 per cent. whereas the general population increased by only 0.6 per cent. and pensioner households increased by 18 per cent. whereas others increased by only 10 per cent. In the same period, one-parent families increased by 71 per cent. That is the equivalent of 6 per cent. per annum. That is an enormous escalation in the demand for benefits and services. No doubt the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I understand that the National Health Service needs about a 1 per cent. per annum increase in expenditure to contain demographic growth. That would not provide for an improvement in the service.

It has recently been stated that the personal social services need something like a 2·5 per cent. growth per annum to achieve the same sort of objective.

In society at large we have been more efficient in recent years at identifying need. Perhaps I could put in a word for those much maligned people—community and social workers, and social scientists. It always seemed entirely laudable to me that people should be anxious to discover need, and should commit themselves to both finding and to meeting it. The meeting of social needs is every bit as laudable as meeting the needs of the market. Of course, it is more expensive and must be met from the public sector, but it is a laudable objective. I notice that the hon. Member for Suffolk, South (Mr. Yeo) has devoted much of his professional life to that.

The problem may exist for all Governments, but it is especially hard for this Conservative Government, because of their sado monetarism, to repeat the description used by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey). Indeed, I hope that I am permitted that expression at so early an hour of the morning. The Government came to power in 1979 determined to squeeze inflation out of the system. That involved, as we have been told ad nauseam, controlling the money supply, which in turn involved cutting Government borrowing. That meant, and will continue to mean as long as the Government are in power, reducing public expenditure. To begin with, we were told that that could all be done by eliminating waste. Do we remember those heady days of the 1979 election, when public expenditure could be cut quite painlessly, and when there was no need to cut services? It could all apparently be done by the elimination of waste in the public sector. Those of us who had worked in the public sector knew that even though there may be waste to eliminate, it was very ambitious to think that it could be eliminated that quickly and easily. We were proved right.

In controlling the money supply, cutting borrowing and reducing public expenditure with the objective of tax and rate reductions, the Government — both in 1979 and 1983—are severely constraining their ability to fund the social services just when demand is increasing rapidly for the reasons that I have given. In addition, there has been a rapid increase in demand because of the growth in unemployment, which some of us believe is not unconnected with the economic and financial strategy that the Government have pursued since 1979. There has been a growth in unemployment from 1·3 million in 1979 to more than 3 million in 1983. That represents a tremendous waste of human potential—a matter of regret to all hon. Members—and a very expensive waste at that.

During the recent election the Prime Minister pretended that the cost of unemployment was merely £5·5 billion. I say "merely", but that is high enough. However, that is just the cost of social security benefits to the unemployed. A Treasury report in February 1981 estimated that the cost of unemployment per person was £3,400. The report on unemployment from the House of Lords Select Committee calculated that for 1982–83 the cost was between £4,500 and £5,000 per year, which would have meant at that time, £13 billion. More recent estimates have suggested that it costs between £19 billion and £21 billion. Those estimates do not include the multiplier effect of having so many unemployed. It seems to many Labour Members that the Government have got themselves into a vicious circle of constrained finances and escalating demand.

I have tried to outline the Government's objectives, but from their record one sees that they have increased the tax burden from 44 per cent. to 48 per cent. of income for the average earner. They have increased the percentage of public expenditure in the GDP. They have increased, we read in The Observer this week, the volume of public expenditure by about 6·5 per cent. from 1978–79 to 1983–84. They have increased substantially public expenditure in some sectors. Expenditure on law and order during that period increased by 30 per cent. Expenditure on agriculture—I cannot imagine that it was intended—increased by 24·75 per cent., and expenditure on defence increased by 23·5 per cent. At the same time as increasing those aspects of public expenditure, the House knows that there have been reductions in benefits. I shall not detain the House now by listing those reductions. An hon. Member referred to the painful experience of the 5 per cent. abatement of earnings-related supplement.

So we come to the present Cabinet battle. We have already been treated by the new Chancellor to £500 million of cuts, which has been agreed. We are told that there is a great battle for a further £5 billion worth of expenditure cuts, which will be meted out to the British public during the next financial year. The Chancellor, in a written answer, claimed that 57 per cent. of the social security programme is covered by the Government's pledges to compensate for price increases. That is an important pledge, but it means that 43 per cent. of the social security programme is not covered by those pledges, including the long-term rate of supplementary allowance and child benefit.

I can only concur with the comment of my right hon. Friend the Member for Stepney and Poplar (Mr. Shore), who said: It is clear that child benefit, long-term supplementary allowance (including long-term sick and disabled and one-parent families) as well as maternity allowance, housing benefit and unemployment pay are excluded from any guarantee of protection against inflation. He went on to say: It would be entirely typical of this Government to cut the living standards of many of the most needy and defenceless people while handing out hundreds of millions of pounds to the most wealthy and the higher paid. What a pity the Prime Minister did not tell us about that during the election campaign. What a pity she did not come clean with the British people and tell us that she would cut public expenditure in that way. We remember all too vividly that she said, "The Health Service is safe with me". No doubt the Minister will explain to us how that can be in the face of such projected public expenditure cuts. The Prime Minister poured scorn upon Labour's charges of attacks on the welfare state and upon benefits.

There is no need to speak about the hidden manifesto this evening. We have no need to depend upon leaked documents. We even have no need to refer to the infamous Think Tank report. The expected attacks on the weakest and poorest are the inevitable consequences of the medium-term financial strategy and the values that underpin it.

The former Secretary of State for Transport has warned that current levels of public expenditure imply higher taxation. Government right hon. and hon. Members clearly want to cut taxation. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say Some much worshipped and deeply sacred cows will have to be candidates for the slaughterhouse". Why did the Government not tell us this at the election? I warn the Government and the Minister of State that they have no mandate, as hon. Gentlemen have said this evening, for cuts in the National Health Service, attacks on social services or cuts in benefits.

After listening to the many laudable sentiments of Conservative Members this evening, we expect some, if not all, to appear with us in the Lobbies at the appropriate time when we are trying to defend benefits, especially unemployment benefit, against what the Chancellor has in store for us.