Deirdre Costigan

Under the last Labour Government, work was the cornerstone of everything that we did, and we will continue with that under this Labour Government. As I said, the Opposition’s approach to welfare is a false economy, and we will end up spending the money again on public services. It would just move the cost from the welfare bill to the NHS and local authorities. Their plan to bring back the two-child limit would see 3,660 children in Ealing Southall fall into poverty. That is not just a statistic; it is 3,660 children in Ealing Southall going hungry and cold, and it is the taxpayer who would still end up picking up the tab. The Conservatives’ claim to be able to cut £13 billion from disabled people’s benefits seems like a random number they plucked from the sky with no real plan. The Leader of the Opposition says she can cut this £13 billion because “Double amputees run marathons… People with autism” have set up “tech companies”. She may be right about a very small number of people, but she should tell that to the parents in my constituency with non-verbal and developmentally disabled autistic children—parents who spend every single day of their lives fearing what will happen to their grown-up child when they die. I can only imagine how utterly crass and insensitive the Leader of the Opposition’s comments must sound to those parents. Instead of scaring those parents, Labour is taking a measured approach to changing the system. We have commissioned the Timms report to look at making PIP fit for the modern world, where we know so much more about the impact of mental health and fluctuating conditions than we did a decade ago, and we have commissioned the Milburn review, which will radically change how we support young people to get into work. Already Labour is spending £3.5 billion on employment support for sick and disabled people with personalised support through Connect to Work. We have invested in new apprenticeships and introduced a jobs guarantee, with paid work for six months, backed by mentoring and tailored support. Those reforms are part of our work to address the broken welfare system inherited from the previous Government and to ensure that the system supports those who can work while protecting those who cannot. The Conservatives’ approach to welfare spending is to let it run out of control when they are in government and then come up with crude and financially illiterate cuts when they are out of government and will not have to deliver them. Instead of making families and their children sick, homeless and dependent on food banks, Labour’s choice is to bring down welfare spending in a safe and sustainable way by doing one simple thing: making people better off in work. That is the Labour way and that is the way that we will deliver.