Mike Penning interview: work and welfare
Outgoing NIO Minister of State Mike Penning is a vocal promoter of welfare reform but not a typical Tory. He discusses his working class roots and views on social mobility with Peter Cheney.
At a time when the miners and Neil Kinnock’s Labour leadership were battling Mrs Thatcher, one working class voter was crediting her for his new house. It led into a political career which now involves overseeing employment and welfare policy for disabled people.
agendaNi interviewed Penning just before he moved to the Department for Work and Pensions.
“I’m a working class Thatcherite Tory,” he said. “The reason I was able to buy my council flat when I was a fireman in Essex was because of Maggie.” That was one job in a varied career. It followed on from serving as a Grenadier Guardsman (partly in Northern Ireland) and he later turned his hand to business and political journalism.
As NIO Minister of State, his role covered counter-terrorism but he also used the post to promote cross-community youth work, particularly through sport. He’s a keen supporter of ‘Game of Three Halves’ – a Peace Players scheme which coaches Gaelic football, rugby and soccer.
“I think everyone would love to have a situation where you didn’t need to have a specific ‘national security’ Minister in Northern Ireland,” Penning remarked. “But sadly we do and the dissident republican side of terrorism out there is a real worry.”
Momentum
He found the killing of prison officer David Black “callous and cowardly” even by the standards of the Troubles.
The big picture, though, is positive.
“The peace process and the movement of normalisation in Northern Ireland isn’t a process that can stop,” he stated. “There has to be a momentum on it.” Job creation and welfare reform are two key indicators of progress for Penning – slow progress clearly frustrates him.
He had recently met a firm with a large order to build Stobart trailers which has to bring in welders from Poland. “One of the greatest shipyards in the world is still there,” he quipped. “Not as big as it was but welding [and] riveting was a part of a whole industry out there. There must be welders available. We’ve got to make sure that jobs go – as best as possible – to the people in the local communities.”
Penning drew on his working class roots to back welfare reform: “If you go to work, you should be better off than someone who isn’t – and that’s a simple fact in a society.”
His message to the Executive has been sharp and public: “You either do the welfare reforms or you get your block grant deducted by the equivalent amount. You’re devolved. You decide how you spend your money but you can’t expect UK taxpayers to subsidise ‘no welfare reforms in Northern Ireland.’”
The province’s recovery, though, is lagging Great Britain and with less job creation, there’s a widespread view that welfare reform punishes the poor.
“All we’re saying with the welfare reform is, like you and I, it is better to go to work,” Penning contended. “If you’re not in work, we need to help you to get to work but it cannot be a way of life.” Under Labour, 1.4 million people were on the dole for more than nine years: “That’s no life for anybody.”
Direction
He’s not losing sleep over his rivals to the right. “If you vote UKIP, you will get Miliband,” he stated. “Simple message and it’s a fact.” He sees UKIP as a catch-all movement for disillusioned voters from mainstream – and extreme parties – which only does well in the “strange anomaly” of European Parliament elections.
Fairness is the key word that stands out for Penning from the conference. “All I wanted to do was bring a wage home and I’ve been lucky and been able to progress,” he reflected. “I wasn’t good at school. I left school at 16 and I’ve worked my way through it.”
To take another side of social mobility, he wants the market to give people more confidence in buying a house. Telling builders to build houses doesn’t work on its own and he’s pleased to see the Treasury’s Help to Buy scheme being extended.
“On the away day the other day,” Penning recalled, “I very openly said it to the Chancellor: ‘Get on and do this. People want to be able to buy their own property.’”
Ed Miliband also talks up Labour’s fairness credentials but Penning, naturally, is dismissive: “Here is a guy who was a Minister and a Secretary of State in the administration that got us into this mess, and he wants to deny and rewrite history.”
Pressed on the global nature of the economic crisis, he replies that Labour “made a decision just to borrow, borrow, borrow and not really help people in a way to get them off welfare.” Austerity is clearly not the only option for deficit reduction. The USA cut its post-war stimulus through rapid economic growth, helped by government stimulus.
“America has a very, very different set of economics,” he contends, pointing to its size which creates a large single market with the same language and currency. The countries [in the current crisis] that have massively suffered are the countries that have excessively borrowed.”
Fiscally, his aims for the UK are to maintain the NHS and a safety net of benefits, and leave a better future for the next generation. Penning’s grounded approach is clearly influenced by his constituents who aren’t motivated by left-wing or right-wing politics. Instead, he finds: “They talk about things that keep them awake at night.”
Profile: Mike Penning MP
Mike has been MP for Hemel Hempstead since 2005 and was a shadow Health Minister before the general election. He worked with Theresa Villiers, as a junior Minister in the Department for Transport, before they were both moved to Northern Ireland in September 2012. Married to Angela with two daughters, Adele and Abby. His sporting interests are rugby and football.
