Sir Alec Shelbrooke

Well, the reality is that the motion is about welfare reform, which is about saving money. Members on the Opposition Front Bench have outlined the savings that we could make, and there has been much comment from the Government Benches, not least the accusation that people with mental health conditions are being stigmatised. There have also been accusations concerning people’s inability to work if they have an ADHD diagnosis. I would counter those accusations by arguing that when someone is told that, because they have a certain condition, they should not have to go into the workplace, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Many statistics have been thrown about in this debate on the increase in welfare from 2022, but in reality that period covers a time when a group of people left the school system and went straight on to welfare. It is all very well dismissing what happened during the pandemic, but it is crass, quite frankly, to say, “Well, it had no impact later on; that was all down to you.” The Leader of the Opposition has made it clear that, yes, welfare was not properly reformed, and the adjustments that needed to be made to universal credit did not happen during our time in power. That is a fact. It changed because people felt they needed more support and said, “Well, if you were going to give it on those grounds, you can give it to me on these grounds.” Of course, the other side of it is that an adjustment has not been made for the fact that there are now plenty of social media instructions on how to cheat the system. We have to address those issues, and we have to be able to understand what is being said. To the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), who said that welfare was running out of control, I say that it was his leader who said back in March 2022, at the start of the war in Ukraine, when people’s mortgage rates started to rise, that the Government should be paying for those increases. That is a ridiculous policy, and it speaks to this whole idea that the Government should step in for every aspect of life that people find a bit hard. Life is hard. When we talk about people having anxiety, it is called being an adult, in a lot of ways. We all have anxiety. Most people in this building could lose their job tomorrow and would find that hard. That is anxiety. [Interruption.] There is a bit of chuntering from Members on the Government Benches; I know they are probably all nervous because they do not know whether the Prime Minister is going to go to the country. There has been plenty of speculation about that—bring it on, I say. The reality of the situation is that if we carry on telling people that they do not have to go into the workplace because they have been diagnosed with something, and if we put more and more labels on them, it will become impossible to get them back into work, because they keep being told that they have a reason not to want to work, and to a certain extent they have been led down that path over quite a long period of time. Welfare reform is necessary, but the things being said in this debate are all about future ideas. Nothing solid is coming across. There is a lot of theory coming across, but without savings we will not be able to invest in the defence and security we need to ensure that people have a secure nation and welfare security.