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Economic Affairs and Work and Pensions

I am not misrepresenting it in any way. Labour Members were prepared to have a system in which 80 or 90% of income was withdrawn from people who went into work, through the withdrawal of council tax and housing benefit, and not very much has been done about that. I recognise that some Labour Members were aware of the problem, including the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and some who have now left the House such as James Purnell and John Hutton. They were aware of the problem, but I suspect that they were blocked when they wanted to do something about it. The result is that 2 million people now say that they want to work but are on out-of-work benefits and are not included in the formal unemployment statistics, which amount to 2.5 million. Labour Members have presided over a welfare system that is incredibly effective at trapping people on benefits once they get on to them, and it is a challenge for my hon. and right hon. Friends to devise a better system that will get people off welfare and into work. They are having to undertake radical action on this front at a very unpropitious time, when we are facing, as we all know, the appalling deficit that has been inherited. I urge them to turn their hands to this task, because it is too important to fail or to put in the drawer marked "too difficult to undertake". It has to be undertaken, particularly for the sake of the younger people who are languishing on out-of-work benefits and are formally recorded as unemployed. This is a challenge for the future for my right hon. and hon. Friends; it is a challenge that has been neglected by the Labour party and so left for us to take up. It will contribute to solving the problem of the deficit, but we have to take the bold action that has not been taken for far too long—for 13 years of wasted opportunities, which have led to wasted lives and people who have been left, after a Labour Government, languishing on unemployment and out-of-work benefits.