As I write this, I am in Westminster waiting to vote on the Welfare Reform Bill, which is a piece of proposed legislation put forward by the Government to change provision on benefits.

How the country provides benefits for people considered to need help, the level of those benefits and for how long people can continue to claim those benefits naturally exercise a lot of people. I think I share the view of most people in the town: the welfare state is an important symbol of our country’s decency and concern for society as a whole, especially the vulnerable. If a person finds themselves out of work, or is sick or disabled, I think the state should play a part in assisting them in the costs of living. I wouldn’t want to go back to a situation, which we certainly had in the past, where people starved or were sent to the workhouse once they found themselves out of work or became old.

But, equally, I wouldn’t want to see people or families living on benefits for years at a time, or across the generations. There are a number of reasons for this: first, because people on benefits have a lower standard of living, and I believe everybody should have the opportunity to improve their quality of life. I also think, good old-fashioned puritan that I am, that hard work is good for the soul. I was brought up by my parents and grandparents to feel a sense of achievement from a job well done or to feel satisfied at the end of a hard day’s work. I’m not suggesting for one minute that my job is hard physical work like a manual worker or someone going down the pit, but I do feel better about myself when I have worked hard.

I also live in the real world, and I know full well that people often fell very aggrieved when they see people who flout the system. There are many hard working people in Hartlepool, who rise early in the morning, often have two or three jobs to make ends meet, go to bed late at night exhausted and don’t ask for any handouts. They often see people living in the same street who don’t work but seem to have a great standard of living. I think often benefit scroungers are portrayed in the media as being far more widespread than they actually are, but they do exist and the whole notion of the welfare state breaks down when hard working taxpayers feel that their taxes are misused.

This is the context in which the Government is bringing forward its Welfare Reform Bill. The House of Lords has inflicted a series of defeats on the legislation, and now that today it has passed back to the Commons I will be voting to agree with the Lords. This is because I don’t think the Bill tackles the problem properly. I believe unemployment is the biggest problem facing Hartlepool at the moment, and the Bill does not contain one single provision to help people into work. It seems ludicrous to me that the Government cuts demand, reduces expenditure and forces unemployment up to its highest level for 18 years, and then cuts the level of support available for people who have been made jobless. I want to see the Government concentrating on creating jobs. The Bill is also mean-spirited and vindictive towards people who are the most vulnerable in society and who are suffering from the most horrific illnesses. It cuts off Employment and Support Allowance after just 12 months for people recovering from cancer and mental health problems. It also cuts in half the support for disabled children. In a supposedly civilised society, that surely can’t be right.

I don’t oppose the need for welfare reform. But this is not the right type of legislation, and the Government’s priorities, in the week when it agreed to Stephen Hester’s bonus of £1 million at the same time as taking support from disabled children, seem simply wrong.

It is a sad fact of life that people’s health in Hartlepool is not as good as the rest of the country. We tend to suffer more from ill-health, obesity, alcohol related issues and smoking and, as a result, endure heart attacks, cancer and strokes.

Life expectancy in Hartlepool is lower than other parts of the country – a Hartlepool boy born today would be expected to live until he was 75.9 years’ old, some two years below the national average. A little girl from the town born today could expect to live until she was 81 years’ old which, although is better than a similar girl born in Middlesbrough, Gateshead, South Tyneside or Sunderland, would expect to live a full year shorter than the national average.

These figures have improved quite dramatically in the last fifteen years or so. This is because of significant increases in health funding, a greater emphasis on prevention, more investment focused on primary health care such as GPs and generally rising living standards as the economy grew.

However, the situation is actually much worse than those figures suggest. The information masks huge differences in life expectancy within the town. Someone living in Stranton, Dyke House or Owton Manor would expect to die up to 11 years earlier than somebody living close to Ward Jackson Park. That can’t be right in a civilised society that where you live or your postcode can determine how long you live.

This week, there was a Parliamentary debate in the House of Commons to discuss health inequalities in the North East and I attended to champion Hartlepool’s case. There are a number of reasons why we suffer in Hartlepool from ill health and poor life expectancy. One of the reasons is our historical legacy as a place of heavy manufacturing, which means that we have more of a problem than other parts of the country with industrial diseases and injuries. I particularly wanted to highlight to Parliament my concern over the delay in helping people suffering from asbestos-related diseases like mesothelioma.

However, the biggest factor in terms of health is the economy. Being unemployed is often the same as being unwell and there is a very clear link between deprivation, low levels of income and ill health. I fear – and this is something I emphasised in the Parliamentary debate – that a worsening economic situation will make health matters much worse and that those poor life expectancy figures will deteriorate over the next few years.

The Minister’s response in the debate was stunning in not answering any of the questions I asked, including on the future of Hartlepool Hospital. However, she and other Ministers cannot hide their heads in the sand. Economic problems will lead to further health problems, and people’s well being will suffer.

How will you spend your pay bonus this year?

Chances are, in fact, that you won’t have had a bonus, you probably haven’t had a pay increase and you are thinking about how to keep your job in the light of declining economic performance and rising unemployment.

This is in contrast to the pay experience of a band of people at the top of organisations which shape and define modern life. Take the new Chief Executive of Apple, Tim Cook, who took over from Steve Jobs just before the latter died last year. Mr Cook received a pay package in 2011 of $378 million, or some £244,000,000. As my nana used to say, I wish I was a penny behind him.

In many respects, the example of Apple, certainly under the leadership of Steve Jobs, the previous chief executive, is not the best one to use. Steve Jobs came back to Apple in the late 1990s and turned around a poorly performing company that was looking old-fashioned and obsolete, into an organisation offering innovative, even beautiful products like the iPod and the iPhone which people eagerly wanted. As a result, Apple’s profits increased massively, as did its share price. Apple was worth about $17 a share in 2000 – last time I looked, you could buy the same Apple share this week for over $425.

I don’t think anybody would mind success being rewarded appropriately. We all have an interest in companies doing well: they provide employment and offer goods and services which make our lives easier or better. Better company performance will result in higher dividends and share prices, and as many of our pensions will be invested in these companies, our retirement provision should improve if companies do well. If executives produce sustainable growth that benefit their shareholders and the communities in which they operate, there is a case that their pay should reflect that.

I think what angers most people, quite rightly, is when executives are paid an obscene amount of money but there is no increase in success. There is no link between paying a huge amount of money and a successful performance by the organisation. In many respects, executives are failing and are being rewarded handsomely for it. The situation with the banks is an obvious example, but it is not confined to the financial sector. Take Cable & Wireless, an important and historic British company that spans the world. It is important for the UK economy that this British company does well. The top two executives were paid £9 million and £10 million, but in that time the company stopped paying a dividend because it couldn’t generate enough cash, it imposed thousands of job losses, it took £650 million out of its accounts, and its share price fell from 90 pence two years ago to about 17 pence today. Last year, one of the executives quit and took about £650,000 in severance pay.

The other concern is the big difference between executive pay and the wages of ordinary workers. In 1980, the boss of Lloyds was paid £79,000, which was thirteen times higher than average pay. In 2010, his successor was paid £2 ½ million, which was 75 times the average pay packet. Such a growing gulf between the experiences of ordinary people, especially when they are experiencing cuts in standards of living, and the elite is simply unsustainable and morally questionable.

Greater curbs on executive pay, with more transparency, more effective reporting and greater representation of workers on committees that set these top levels of pay, are something which needs to be addressed quickly.