Jeremy Corbyn

This is a crucial moment for a lot of people in this country. This Bill did not come from the demands of the disabled community or from an understanding of the inequality and injustice in our society; the whole origin of this Bill was a demand to save £5 billion. That £5 billion was wanted by the Defence Secretary for more armaments—no doubt other Departments were making demands—so the whole thing has been driven from a bad source at the very beginning. It would be much more honest and much better if the Government simply withdrew the Bill altogether and allowed the review of the Minister for Social Security and Disability to take place and look at the issues of poverty facing people with disabilities and the huge levels of stress that many others face. That includes children with special needs that are not met in schools and children with autism or other special needs not being housed in decent-sized homes. There is a whole area of discrimination against people with all forms of disabilities that could and should be addressed. As the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Cat Smith) just pointed out, it was a previous Labour Government who introduced the disability discrimination legislation that made such an enormous difference. Going back further, it was the Labour MP Alf Morris who introduced the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, which made a phenomenal difference to a lot of people’s lives. What has happened is that that whole tradition seems to have been stood on its head. We are now presented with a piece of legislation that was going to take the personal independence payment away from a very large number of people, but instead, after the failed rebellion by some Labour MPs, it was changed to say that only future generations will be denied access to the payments they absolutely deserve. That means that in future, there are going to be very serious levels of poverty—much worse than there are now—among every family that includes someone with a level of disability.