No.

Why are the Government not doing more to help? Because the cost of economic failure is sending the benefits bill through the roof. Last week we learnt from the detail of the Budget book just how big that bill has now become.

This afternoon the Secretary of State liked to boast about his reforms of housing benefit, but forgot to tell the House that the housing benefit bill is projected to rise by more than £1 billion in the next few years. In the small print of the Budget we saw something more: his benefits bill over the next few years is now projected to increase by £12.5 billion. That is £500 for every household in the country.

Almost as shocking is what will happen to the unemployment bill as a result of the Secretary of State’s great endeavours to get so many extra people back to work. When the Chancellor came to the House last year, he somehow forgot to tell us that as a result of his Budget higher unemployment figures would increase the dole bill by £700 million. Now we learn that it is going to go up again, by another £1.9 billion. In other words, since the Government came to office they have put the unemployment bill up by £2.6 billion. That is an indictment of their record in getting people back to work. In fact, £2.6 billion is the same amount that the Government are cutting from tax credits for people with children. The right hon. Gentleman is cutting support for our children in order to pay the bills for his economic failure.

What does this mean for the average British family? A single earner family with a child and an income of £23,000 will lose £400 a year. The Secretary of State may not care about what is happening to ordinary families, but I assure him that plenty of people are interested in the bills for his economic failure. Households with child care costs will be hit even harder. A family with average child care costs will lose nearly £500 a year, and for some it will be even worse. A single earner on the minimum wage with two children will lose more than £2,000 a year—6.5% of his or her income. Even for low earners, any gains that they make as a result of changes in income tax and child tax credits will be wiped out by the VAT rise. The Secretary of State is squeezing Britain’s families harder than ever to pay for his failure to get the country back to work. Does that not sound all too familiar?