Luke Akehurst

It is beyond belief that Conservative Members have chosen today to shine a spotlight on the subject of welfare, when their record on it is one of failure, chaos and incompetence. Under the previous Conservative Government, welfare spending ballooned out of control. The final Office for Budget Responsibility forecast on their watch projected that annual welfare spending would increase by close to £100 billion by 2028-29. That is enough to fund the entire NHS for a year, but instead, the money was spent patching up the consequences of Conservative failure. The Conservatives now want to run from their record. The Leader of the Opposition has even called for a “totally different approach” to welfare from the one that she supported when in government. So who did she appoint as her shadow Chancellor? The right hon. Member for Central Devon (Sir Mel Stride)—the very Member who, as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, oversaw the overspending. When the Conservatives say that they have changed, I say: look at their Front Bench—the architects of failure are still drawing up plans. And what a failure it was. On the shadow Chancellor’s watch, more than 800,000 people left the labour market. What does it say about a Government when hundreds of thousands of people give up on looking for work? Those people had lost hope. That is not just money lost in tax revenue—it is a parent who can no longer work because they are on an NHS waiting list; it is a young person with mental health challenges, left behind by cuts to mental health services.