Disability Living Allowance: Qualifying Period for Children

Alex Easton Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Michelle Welsh]

I absolutely agree. Cancer is actually one of the clearest diagnoses that someone can get from day one.

Cancer does not wait, yet families have to. The three-month qualifying period does not reflect the realities that families face. In Mabel’s case, the family were informed that they would not qualify for any support, as Mabel’s condition had not lasted for more than six months. In other words, she had not had cancer for long enough. That is despite her having undergone multiple operations and chemotherapy; to this day, she must still attend regular hospital appointments. It is my understanding that the qualifying period is meant to establish that a health condition is long-standing in nature, but with a diagnosis of cancer surely support should be given from the outset.

[Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this debate. Does she agree that there is a strong case for greater flexibility in rapidly diagnosed cases where a clinician has already identified a severe, serious and long-lasting condition, and that in such cases a qualifying period can be unnecessary, bureaucratic and indeed insensitive?

[Michelle Welsh]

Absolutely. The bureaucratic system is failing families, but these issues could easily be resolved if medical evidence could be used instead of the qualifying period. I urge the Minister to look at ways in which medical evidence and research can be used in DLA to make the system better for those who rely on it. There are already provisions that allow the use of medical evidence to bypass the qualifying period, such as the special rules cases where someone is approaching the end of life. The qualifying period is outdated and does not reflect the complexities of lifelong conditions. I am aware that the Government do not know the cost of removing the qualifying period, but I do not think that any cost is worth more than parents’ ability to be there for their child when they have cancer.

As it stands, we cannot cure childhood cancer. We cannot spare families the fear, the sleepless nights or the heartbreak of watching a child undergo surgery and chemotherapy. But we can ensure that when the worst happens, the Government stand beside them rather than placing further barriers in their way. Families should not have to prove their desperation for three months before receiving support. They should not have to navigate mountains of paperwork while sitting beside a hospital bed. They should never be forced to choose between earning a wage and being there for their child.

Mabel’s story is one of hope. Today, she is back at school, enjoying the childhood that every parent wishes for their son or daughter. But her family’s experience has exposed a system that is failing too many in this country. The question before us is a simple one: when a child is diagnosed with cancer or another serious condition, do we respond with bureaucracy or with compassion? I believe we should choose compassion. I therefore urge the Minister to work with families, clinicians and charities to remove the three-month qualifying period and replace it with a system that recognises medical evidence at the outset. Let us ensure that no parent is forced to leave a child alone on a hospital ward because they cannot afford to be there. Let us build a system worthy of the families who rely on it—and let us act now, because cancer does not wait.

Place-based Employment Support Programmes

Alex Easton Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Hurley (Southport) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered place-based employment support programmes.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I am very pleased to have secured this debate. Discussions of employment policy can sometimes feel very abstract in this place; we talk about things like rates, targets and programmes, but for the people we represent, employment can be intensely personal. It is about confidence, dignity, routine and feeling that they have something to contribute.

I know all that from personal experience. The depression that I fell into in the mid-’90s, at the end of the Tories’ previous disastrous spell in government when I could not get a job, had a long-lasting effect on my life. Growing up in what was then and by many measures still is one of the poorest boroughs in the country, the pressure to find a job—any job, to be honest—was immense, but the availability of jobs did not match that pressure. The local factory had closed down in 1991. My home town had barely any industry left to speak of, and most of the low-paid, temporary jobs I could find were in the next town along. It was almost a two-hour walk away for a lad who wanted to work but could not afford the bus fare to get to the factory. That is why I want to make the case today for place-based employment support—support that is rooted in communities, shaped by local need and delivered by people who understand the realities of the lives that they are working with.

In my Southport constituency, I see it time and again: the people furthest from the labour market are not those who do not want to work, but people with caring responsibilities, health issues or gaps in their work history, or people who, for whatever reason, just cannot get a break. In my local authority area alone, that equates to over 26,000 people. What they need is not another box-ticking exercise, but someone who knows their area and knows what the local jobs are, and has the time to treat them as a person.

I want to put on the record my thanks for the work of several place-based employment support programmes across the north of England. The Big Onion in Southport does things differently, and that is precisely why it is effective. Its work is rooted in trust. It helps people to rebuild confidence, develop skills and, in many cases, explore things such as self-employment or community enterprise as a route back into work. It does not rush people. Its approach recognises that, for many people, the first step towards employment is simply believing that they have something to offer. That kind of progress does not always show up immediately in headline figures, but it is essential if we want to make sustainable outcomes for the long term.

Zink is a charity based in Buxton that started out as a food bank but, once it investigated the drivers of local food bank demand, soon branched out into offering employment support and debt advice. Its most innovative programme, microjobs, offers small, paid roles tailored to people who are far from the jobs market—often people who have been affected by homelessness or past substance abuse. Three quarters of those with a microjob subsequently move into part-time or full-time work within six months.

[Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that place-based employment schemes are a vital way of converting local strengths into local jobs, and that sector-specific initiatives can and should be tailored to the circumstances of individual constituencies? In North Down, there is particular potential in tourism, hospitality and the wider marine and coastal economy.

[Patrick Hurley]

That is one in a long line of things that place-based employment initiatives can do well, so I thank the hon. Member for his intervention.

The Recruitment Junction, which works up in the north-east, mainly in Newcastle, places people with criminal convictions into paid work. It works with local employers to identify skills shortages and then identifies suitable candidates, meets them and helps them to renew their qualifications, write their CVs and prepare for interviews. So far, it has placed almost 900 people with criminal convictions into paid work, with a 66% retention rate. Fewer than 5% of those that it places reoffend, compared with around 24% nationally.

I also want to commend the work of Transform Lives Company. Its model deliberately breaks away from what many people expect employment support to look like. It is welcoming, informal and feels safe, and for many participants in its schemes, that alone is transformative. People who go to Transform Lives Company are supported not just with job search, but with things like confidence, wellbeing and life skills. They are listened to, rather than lectured at. As a result, people who would never normally engage with employment services do so willingly. I think that should make us stop and think about how our national system is experienced on the ground.

Budget 2025: Impact on Graduates

Alex Easton Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jack Rankin]

I intend to get to the implications of plan 2 loans—both the freeze in the threshold for repayment and the freezing of the interest rates in a falling-interest-rates environment. I think the hon. Gentleman will find in the Budget papers that that raises about as much money as the mansion tax does, for example. I think that is deeply unfair.

More broadly, what is the incentive structure here? Are we not punishing some of our most productive people? Of course many people across the country have it worse, but the point is that Nick, Henry or Henrietta should not have to apologise for striving and being ambitious. After all, it is their tax money that is used to prop up the welfare state, whether that involves benefits, pensions or housing illegal migrants. But they are the lucky ones; we now have about 1 million young people not in work, education or training. Worse still, we have 400,000 graduates claiming out-of-work benefits.

I hear from graduates in my constituency who have applied for hundreds of jobs but get rejected or hear nothing at all. At the end of 2024, the Institute of Student Employers found that, on average, organisations were receiving 140 applications per job.

[Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)]

With research indicating that up to three quarters of higher education providers could be in deficit by 2025-26, and with plans being drawn up for course closures and staff cuts, does the hon. Member agree that there is an onus on the Government to act so that we secure a richly educated generation of UK graduates, and not simply the educated rich?

[Jack Rankin]

I am not sure that I agree 100% with the hon. Member. I suspect that, in this country, we are sending too many people to university, and we should have a higher focus on higher quality courses and courses that add economic value, while investing some of the money saved in apprenticeships. But I take the hon. Member’s point, which he makes well.

There are hundreds of people, like Nick, who have done everything the right way—just as the system told them to—but who are not seeing the results in their lives. We have a huge disenfranchised cohort of young people, ranging from Gen Zers who have just graduated to millennial young professionals who are trying to get on and start a family.

I am afraid that many are now voting with their feet. In the last year to March, 176,000 people aged 16 to 34 left Britain. Net migration may be down, but that is only because young Brits are fleeing the country under this Government. This is a national crisis, and it is really a question about the future of our country. If young people do not think they can thrive, they will not put down roots and have families, and there will be no next generation to fund the pensions and public services of the future that we will all rely on.

That feeling of disillusionment has not come around by accident. I would not pretend to the Minister, who gives as good as he gets, that my party delivered in some of these areas, particularly in house building and the intergenerational compact, but the past two Budgets have made things demonstrably worse.

The increase to employer’s national insurance in the first Budget created a freeze on hiring, and saw vacancies down and unemployment up. The Office for Budget Responsibility has shown that this could cost almost 50,000 jobs, and stats out today show that unemployment has risen to 5.1%. Increasing the national minimum wage has an impact on hiring and it further squeezes those on middle incomes. It could mean that baristas and shop assistants are dragged into paying back their student loans despite seeing no benefit from the so-called graduate premium.

At this year’s Budget, the Government raised £26 billion on the backs of working people. If the Minister will not take it from me, maybe he will take it from the Resolution Foundation, which found that a worker on £35,000 a year will be £1,400 poorer because of the freeze. It also raised concerns about the negative impact of increasing the minimum wage on levels of employment.

The most directly damaging policy is the latest changes to student loans, which have largely gone under the radar. Freezing the threshold for repayment will mean that as graduates’ starting salaries increase with inflation, they will end up paying more and earlier. There are also the perverse disincentives whereby those on plan 2 loans who earn more than £50,270 per year will pay a higher interest rate of 6% RPI—retail prices index—plus 3%. This means that they will have to earn up to £65,000 before they start paying off the actual loan, rather than simply the interest accumulating on it. They are being punished for success. That interest rate freeze, in an environment where rates are falling, is unjustifiable. Even the New Statesman has been critical of the grad tax, making the point that it will raise roughly the same amount as the mansion tax. Do the Government really see graduate workers as rich or as having the broadest shoulders? They are not being asked to chip in; they are being bled out. Moreover, the Minister and I may have different political perspectives, but an idiot he is not. He knows that national insurance for landlords will be passed straight on to rents, walloping exactly the same people.

All those choices will affect recent graduates: the Intergenerational Foundation estimate that they will pay an extra £24,500 on average as a result of this year’s Budget. But young people everywhere still want what young people everywhere have always wanted—the chance to own a home, start a family, be productive and get on in life.

I want to articulate a centre-right approach where we reform welfare, saving £23 billion, and cut anti-growth taxes such as stamp duty to galvanise the housing market. I have also been pushing for the liberalisation of planning reform and a bonfire of regulation to give young people a future to believe in.

In the light of that, I have several questions to put to the Minister on behalf of all the Nicks, Henrys and Henriettas out there. What message does it send to graduates when their taxes and student loan repayments increase while those on benefits get more? How can the Government explain record low house building in London while some on benefits live in council properties in London worth more than £2 million? What would he say to the young people who are considering leaving these shores because they do not feel that they can get on in life, buy a home and start a family here in Britain? And what risks does he perceive in the impact of the anti-graduate approach on future productivity, and really, the future financial stability of this country?

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Easton Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

I do not.

[Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)]

Will the Minister join me in commending the dedication and hard work of our work coaches, who assist with job applications and interview preparations?

[Alison McGovern]

On that one, I certainly will agree. Our work coaches are absolutely brilliant, and they are leading the way in changing jobcentres.