Sir Stephen Timms

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add: “notes that the previous Government left over one million young people not in education, employment or training, while overseeing a £33 billion rise in the welfare bill in its final year alone; recognises that since the General Election one million more people are in work and 397,000 more people are economically active; welcomes the imminent publication of the Milburn and Timms reviews; and supports the Government’s commitment to deliver welfare reforms that break down barriers to employment, support more people into good, secure work and bring down the benefits bill.” The welfare system that the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) has just been criticising is the one that her party designed and built, and then failed to reform when the Conservatives were in office. They failed abjectly on its financial cost and on its human cost. Over 14 years, they utterly failed to reform the system. She said at one stage that they had cut the welfare bill. I asked her in how many of those 14 years the bill fell, and she did not answer the question—not surprisingly—because the answer is none: it never fell in that 14-year period. On the Conservatives’ watch, 2.8 million people were out of work due to long-term sickness. Progress on the disability employment gap stalled. It fell steadily under the last Labour Government, but it barely shifted during their 14 years in office. The number of young people not in education, employment or training went up by a quarter of a million just in their last few years in power. The number of children in poverty went up by hundreds of thousands, setting back their life chances and making them much more likely to be not in education, employment or training as young adults. Welfare spending rose by £33 billion in their final year in government alone.