Housing Benefit

Part of Opposition Day — [5th Allotted Day] – in the House of Commons at 4:22 pm on 9 November 2010.

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Photo of Iain Duncan Smith Iain Duncan Smith The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions 4:22, 9 November 2010

I am going to make progress. Labour Members continue to try to accelerate the figures to the worst level and then make ludicrous assumptions. That is what is going on. The fact is that we inherited 5 million people on out-of-work benefits from the Labour Government-the hon. Lady was in the Government-which they did nothing about at all. Two million people of working age are claiming incapacity benefit, of whom 900,000 have been claiming it for an entire decade.

The figures that lie behind this issue are astonishing. Today we spend £1 in £3 on British welfare, which that Government left us, yet youth unemployment is higher, inequality is greater and there are 800,000 more working-age adults in poverty than in 1998-99. That is the great record of the last Government.