Sir Stephen Timms

Sir Stephen Timms

Labour — East Ham

Speaking in the House of Commons on 11 November 2026

Debate

Welfare

Contribution

Let me tell the right hon. Lady about one of the welfare reform measures in that period. As she will well remember, disability living allowance was replaced by the personal independence payment in 2013. We were told by the Conservatives that that would save £2 billion a year. That saving never, ever materialised: it was never delivered. In 2017, they said they would save hundreds of millions a year by scrapping the higher benefit, on top of the universal credit standard allowance, payable to people in the intermediate category with limited capability to work. What happened was that large numbers moved instead on to the highest rate—up to the limited capability for work-related activity category. In that case, it was not simply that the saving did not materialise, which it certainly did not, but that they ended up spending a lot more. Even worse, once people had LCWRA status, the system no longer offered them help to find work. Those people were completely abandoned, which was a big part of the reason why this Government inherited 2.8 million people who were economically inactive on health grounds.

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