Liz Kendall

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. This Bill and our wider welfare reforms seek to fix the broken benefits system that we inherited from the Conservatives and deliver a better life for millions of people across our country. Our plans are rooted in principles and values that I know many in this House share: compassion for those who need our help most, a belief in equality and social justice, that everyone should have the chance to fulfil their potential no matter where they are born or what their parents did, and responsibility for our constituents and our country as a whole, so that we ensure the welfare state is sustainable and lasts for generations to come. But the system we inherited is failing on all those counts. Conservative Members left us with a system that incentivises people to define themselves as incapable of work just to be able to afford to live. They then wrote people off without any help or support, then blamed them to grab a cheap headline. The result is 2.8 million people out of work due to long-term sickness, and one in eight of all our young people not in education, employment or training, with all the terrible long-term consequences that brings for their future job prospects, earnings and health. The number of people on disability benefits is set to more than double this decade, with awards for personal independence payments increasing at twice the rate of increases in the prevalence of disabled people in our society, adding 1,000 new PIP awards a day—the equivalent of adding a city the size of Leicester every single year.