Dr Marie Tidball

I rise to speak to new clause 11 and Government amendment 4. This Bill has been transformed since Second Reading. I welcome the Government’s significant changes and hard work. I said that I could not support the measures that remained on the face of the Bill last week that would have pushed 150,000 people into poverty. Nor could I accept proposals for a points system which, under previously proposed descriptors, would exclude eligibility for those who cannot put on their underwear, prosthetic limbs or shoes without support. Towards the end of the Second Reading debate, the Government promised to remove clause 5 on personal independence payments, including the eligibility criteria. I wholeheartedly support Government amendment 4, which achieves that. I am pleased to hear that the new impact assessment by the Department for Work and Pensions has found that the Bill will now lift 50,000 people out of relative poverty by 2030. This matters, to fulfil the Government’s obligations under the Equality Act 2010 and to meet our commitments to the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. In 2016, under the Conservative Government, when the UN produced its inquiry report on the UK’s treatment of disabled people, it said that the Government at that time had to ensure that any measures of welfare reform should uphold the human rights model of disability and did not disproportionately or adversely affect the rights of disabled people to live independently or to access employment.