Contribution
As the hon. Gentleman is aware, we have been clear that we will set out our proposals for welfare reform next year. They will be scored by the OBR in the usual way.
Turning back to the Conservatives’ proposed changes to local housing allowance, I have already quoted the Chartered Institute of Housing. I rather prefer the slightly snappier comments of the chief executive of Shelter, who said:
“Making more families homeless does not save the government money.”
It is not rocket science, but it needs explaining to some Members of this House.
The Conservatives have not said what would happen to British people, including children in households that contain foreign nationals. They have not set out how a household with a foreign national and a British citizen partner would be treated. Universal credit is, of course, a household benefit. Would that household be treated as a single person claim, instead of a couple claim? Would the household lose all eligibility? What about households containing foreign national adults living with British citizen children? Would the Tories’ policy on foreign nationals hit the income and living standards of British people? From the information available to us at present, it certainly seems that that would be the case.
Let us turn to the laughably ambitious £13.7 billion that the Conservatives claim they can save by reforming disability and sickness benefit. They say that this would be achieved by introducing more detailed and holistic assessments with tighter eligibility criteria, but the current contracts, which they signed us up to, run until 2029. They say that they can deliver all this by 2030, yet those contracts include a target for face-to-face assessments of just 20%. It is undeliverable.
Of course, that is before one considers that the Conservatives’ costings are predicated on claimants’ primary condition only. The shadow Secretary of State quoted the IFS, which has been very clear that most people in the cohorts that the Conservative party hopes to take benefits away from actually have multiple conditions, and often three or four. The Tories have no idea what those people’s conditions are, so the numbers are just total fantasy. Overall, they refuse to say how many households or individuals would lose out.
The hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) said that the Conservatives were protecting pensioners. That is not the case, because the transition from PIP to attendance allowance that they will force on people reaching pension age could cost somebody up to £4,160 a year. That would be someone on the higher rate of PIP for both daily living and mobility moving on to the higher rate of attendance allowance, so it could in some cases be more. I suspect that the Conservatives do not know how many people would be affected, I suspect they do not have a precise figure for how much it will save, and I fully expect—now I have pointed out that they are not, in fact, protecting pensioners—that that proposal will disappear, because many of these things do not stand up to scrutiny.
The challenge with the proposals the Conservatives have put forward is that they are not worth the paper they are written on. A serious Opposition would have done their homework properly, but what do we have instead? They claim to have a plan for welfare that works, but who exactly does it work for? Not for the children plunged into poverty, not for the taxpayers who have to foot the cost, not for the pensioners who face a £4,000 cliff edge and not for the households facing homelessness. We know how punitive policies turn out: more hardship, less opportunity and more pressure on the welfare state. This Government will not repeat the Conservatives’ mistakes. We are fixing the broken welfare system they left in their wake, and ensuring that everyone gets the support they need so that they can fulfil their potential and truly have a better future.
Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.