Joe Robertson

No welfare system stands the test of time in perpetuity. Loopholes appear in all well-intentioned systems. People test the system, and the world does not stand still. That is why the last Conservative Government came into office with a plan to tackle the welfare bill that had ballooned under Labour, and they did tackle welfare. The right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) asked earlier in this debate, “In which years under the last Conservative Government did the welfare bill come down?” I am happy to be able to assist him. Under the last Conservative Government, the working welfare bill came down in 2012. It came down in 2013. It came down in 2014. It came down in 2015. It came down in 2016. It came down in 2017. It came down in 2018. It came down in 2019. Between 2010 and 2019, the working welfare bill came down by a fifth. That is the legacy of the last Conservative Government’s reforms. I live in the real world, and I accept that covid changed everything. It changed the relationship between the individual and the state. From that time, the welfare bill started to climb. Those were the conditions that Labour knew it would have to deal with as it came into government, and it failed to deliver. Labour did not even have a plan to tackle the welfare bill, which it knew had been climbing year on year since covid. At least the last Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, cobbled together some form of plan. It was a pretty rubbish plan, but a year and a half ago he tried to get some crude cuts through the House of only £5 billion-worth of savings. He failed, though, because the same MPs sitting opposite me now on the Government Benches stopped him. The current Prime Minister came into office a few months ago and flirted with the idea of bringing down the welfare bill, but he has given up entirely and he is proud of it. He is so proud that he will not bring the welfare bill down that he has ruled it out for the remainder of this Parliament. The right hon. Member for East Ham has been tasked with finding savings, and he is about to publish his review into PIP. We know what will be in that review when it comes to savings: absolutely nothing, because the Prime Minister has already ruled it out. The Labour party is the welfare party. Its Members are proud of welfare spending going up and up. Just a few hours ago, at the Dispatch Box, the Prime Minister criticised our party’s plan to save £36 billion because it will hit incomes during a cost of living crisis. The system of benefits and personal independence payments is not intended to be an income top-up. It is not even means-tested. It is there to help people with a genuine need to meet the daily cost of a disability. I am afraid that the Prime Minister’s mask has slipped if he thinks it is there to serve as an income top-up during a cost of living crisis of his own making. Let me now deal with some of the contributions from Labour Members. The hon. Member for Wirral West (Matthew Patrick) brought up the subject of child poverty. The best way to help hard-working families tackle child poverty is to make sure that they have well-paid jobs—to get off the backs of wealth creators, get off the backs of business and reverse the harmful job tax, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) has asked.