Steve Darling

I associate myself with the speech just made by the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell). The Liberal Democrats will be supporting the reasoned amendment that we are now debating. Over the past few weeks that the Green Paper has been under debate, some of the comments from Labour high command, such as describing Labour Back Benchers as “noises off”, have been disturbing in the extreme. People who should know better within the leadership of the Labour party described PIP as “pocket money”, which is utterly shameful. The way the Bill is being dashed through is equally shameful, and it decreases the credibility of Ministers. If the Bill is fine, it should have appropriate levels of scrutiny. We all know that rushed Bills are poor Bills, and the law of unintended consequences will come to haunt the Government if this Bill goes through. As has been alluded to, this two-tier approach to the system is wrong. I and the Liberal Democrats have grave concerns that it is un-British, unjust and not the way of our world. We have heard the Minister saying that it has been done before, but that does not make it right. It is almost Orwellian that we will have a system where in our law we say that all disabled people are equal, but some are more equal than others.