Deirdre Costigan

I agree with my hon. Friend, and we are making huge progress on reducing those waiting lists. We are also fixing the broken welfare system that the Conservatives left behind. We are increasing the basic rate of universal credit to help those families who rely on it, so that it starts to become enough to live on, and they do not have to use food banks. We have changed the rules, so that people are no longer better off on sickness benefit. That is how the Conservatives left the welfare system, but we are the Labour party, and we believe in good jobs as the best route out of poverty. We have put more than £1 billion into helping people find those good jobs. What do the Conservatives have to say for themselves? There is no apology to the almost 1 million children that they put into poverty and left reliant on food banks. There is no apology to the almost 3 million people on long-term sick left living on benefits when many of them wanted to work. There is no apology to the tens of thousands of families struggling to get by on bargain-basement jobs. They created the problem, and as their motion shows today, they have absolutely no plan to fix it. All they can do is blame the very families their policies have forced into poverty. It is clear that only this Labour Government are serious about getting Britain working, ensuring that those who cannot work have a decent living income, finally ending reliance on food banks, such as St Anselm’s in Southall, for good.