Sir Stephen Timms

I want to make some further headway. In her speech, my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) drew attention to the fact that she and I had known each other for a long time, and that is correct. She urged us to listen to the voices of our constituents. In February, someone I had not met before came to my constituency surgery. He explained to me that he lost his arm aged six in a road accident. As a result, on leaving school at 16 he could not find a job. He tried really hard, but he could not find an employer that would take him, until in the year 2000 somebody told him about the new deal for disabled people, which found him a job. He then worked for 23 years without a break in a whole series of different jobs. He brought up his children and he paid his taxes, until in October 2023 he was in an unsatisfactory zero-hours job and he left it. To his dismay, he has not been able to find a job since. He came to me as his local MP to ask where to get help again, like he had from the new deal, but unfortunately that was all scrapped by the Tories and the Lib Dems after 2010. We are determined now to provide proper support again, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State yesterday announced further early funding for that support.