Contribution
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to contribute briefly on this huge topic. While I am glad to discuss welfare reform, I am perplexed as to why the Conservatives would want to do so, given their completely disastrous record. In response to the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild), I wonder whether he has read the plans for their £23 billion-worth of welfare cuts, on the back of the fag packet on which it is displayed, because there are no details to speak of on things such as housing benefit, which was raised by the Minister beforehand.
I do not even think it is brass neck any more from the Conservatives; it is just desperate. Their hope is that we forget what they left us only last year, and forget what they were like in government: employment is lower than before the pandemic; 10 million households are now net recipients of Government support; 4.5 million children are growing up in poverty; 2.8 million people have been left languishing on waiting lists and out of work; and 1 million young people are out of work and have been left jobless in the first straits of their lives—all while we have record welfare spending, with billions of pounds spent every year on failure. Indeed, when the shadow Chancellor was at DWP—I made this point earlier—we saw the biggest rise in welfare spending since records began in 1996, including £33 billion in one year alone.
The Conservatives have zero credibility on this issue and a record of expensive failure. It is a disastrous legacy, which they ought to be utterly ashamed of. They left people in this country languishing on benefits and left out of work, and left us to pick up the bill for years to come. I have touched on their plan, so I will not say any more on that, but it feels a bit like standing next to an arsonist who is watching a house on fire and complaining, “Someone should really put that out,” having started the fire.
I am short of time, but I want to say something about reform—real reform, not the turquoise Tories of Reform UK, who I notice are not here for the debate and who I believe would destroy the welfare system as we understand it. We all know that welfare spending must come down, and we all want to get people into work—young people, disabled people and those who can, want and should work. The current system—the Conservatives’ system—does not enjoy public support system because of the Tories’ failure, and risks undermining the whole welfare state and social contract as we know it; hence our reforms earlier this year. If we believe in helping those who really need it—the disabled, the sick and those unable to work, whom the welfare state is designed for—we must make the tough choices that the Conservatives did not make over 14 years.
The current front door for the work capability assessment is not fit for purpose, and I am glad that we are doing away with it, but neither is the assessment for personal independence payments, as it is considered by many to be out of date and unfit for the modern wave of claimants living with mental health conditions and likewise. I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on whether more reform in this area would be welcome and will come.
The arguments made for reform, which were explored in the papers earlier this year, still stand. Too many people are rolling on to PIP, too many are failing and falling out of work ill, and too many, having done so, are not re-entering the jobs market. So I am glad that we are stimulating more people into work through measures such as our £1 billion Pathways to Work guarantee. Because of the sheer number of applicants and particularly of successful applicants since the pandemic, we have to consider the appropriateness of some of the thresholds for people currently applying for PIP to ensure that the support is still there for those who really need it.