Health and Disability Reform

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his comments about Frank Field. Both I and my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), who is sitting alongside me on the Front Bench, thought the world of Frank. I thank the Secretary of State for his tribute to a person who was completely unique in every way.

With regards to advance sight of the Secretary of State’s statement, I say: apology accepted. Labour will carefully review the detail of the Green Paper, because the country that we want is one where disabled people have the same right to a good job and help to get it as anyone else. We will judge any measure that the Government bring forward on its merits and against that principle, because the costs of failure in this area are unsustainable. The autonomy and routine of work is good for us all, for our mental and physical health—and more than that, for women, work is freedom, too.

I have read the Secretary of State’s gibes about Labour. He says that he does not know what our position is on a set of reforms that he has not set out. The Prime Minister made a speech about this issue two weeks ago, but every single day since then the Government have failed to publish the Green Paper. The Secretary of State wants my views on his, until this moment, unpublished thoughts. What was the problem? Was the printer jammed? Rather, was it that the Prime Minister and Secretary of State realised that, as soon as they published the Green Paper, everyone would realise the truth about the Government: like the Prime Minister who leads them, they are long on questions and short when it comes to the answers?

The Green Paper is not a plan; it is an exam that the Secretary of State is hoping he will never have to sit. The reason he wants to know Labour’s plan is that he suspects he will be long gone before any of these proposals are a reality. Will the Secretary of State tell me where the Green Paper leaves the Government’s earlier half-baked plan to scrap the work capability assessment, given that the idea behind that was to use the PIP assessment? He said that some health conditions can be taken out of PIP assessments. Which conditions was he talking about?

PIP was the creation of a Conservative Government, so where is the analysis of what has gone wrong? PIP replaced DLA, and now we are hearing that PIP is the problem. How many more times will we go around this same roundabout? Do the Government’s plans involve treating people’s mental and physical health differently? Can he explain the legal basis for doing so? Importantly, on health itself, is this Green Paper not a huge admission of the Tory failure on the NHS, in that it takes as its starting point the fact that people today simply cannot get the treatment and care they need? What will the costs of any new system be, in particular those of any extra support of the kind he mentioned? Will we see a White Paper before a general election?

I am standing in today and for the next few weeks for my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), who believes that health and work are two sides of the same coin. That is the insight that the Government are missing today. I ask myself how we got here. The country today is sicker—that is the legacy of this Government. NHS waiting lists are longer than they have ever been—that is the legacy of the Secretary of State’s party. If he does not know how bad things are in mental healthcare, he needs only to ask my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter). There are 2.8 million people who are locked out of work due to long-term sickness. That is the Conservative legacy: like ice on our potholed roads, the Tories have widened the cracks in our economy and society, making them all much worse.

With respect to mental health, in recent weeks the Secretary of State has decided to speak out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, he says,

“I’m grateful for today’s much more open approach to mental health”,

but with the same breath he goes on to say,

“there is danger that this has gone too far.”

He wants it both ways. He thinks that openness about mental health is good, but then he says the very thing that brings back the stigma.

Every time the Secretary of State speaks, he makes it less likely that people will be open about their mental health. On behalf of all of us who have ever had a panic attack at work, or worse, can I say that that stigma stops people from getting treatment, it makes getting help harder, and it keeps people out of work, not in it? A Labour Government will take a totally different approach. We will not only ensure more appointments but have an extra 8,500 mental health staff. The last Labour Government delivered the highest patient satisfaction on record, and that is the record on which we will build.

The issue that we are discussing is bigger than just health; it is also about work. Because of our commitment to serve working people, we will make work better, too. We will have the new deal for working people, improving rights for the first time in a generation, and we will drive up employment in every region because we will devolve employment support and end the tick-box culture in jobcentres. We will tear down the barriers to work for disabled people and provide help for young people. That will get Britain working again.

Harold Wilson said that unemployment, above all else, made him political. Those of us who grew up seeing people thrown on the scrapheap in the ’80s and ’90s feel the same. Every young person out of work today will never forget whose hand was on the tiller when these Tories robbed them of hope. It is time for a change, and a general election.

[Mel Stride]

I thank the hon. Lady for her response and the gracious manner in which she accepted my apology, which is much appreciated.

The hon. Lady said that she cannot be expected to comment on the PIP proposals, but I remind her that the work capability assessment proposals went through a consultation, and we still do not know where the Labour party stands on those. We have spoken about fit note reforms, we are setting up WorkWell, and in the autumn we will trial some of those fit note possibilities. We do not know where the Labour party stands at all on those matters.

One would have thought that given the central role that PIP plays in the welfare system in our society and country, the Labour party would have some kind of view on that benefit. But we hear precisely nothing on that matter because the Labour party has no plan. The consequence of that will be that, as under previous Labour Governments, the welfare bill will continue to spiral out of control. That will fall to hard-working families up and down the country to pay, by way of higher taxation.

The hon. Lady asked about the abolition of the work capability assessment, which, as she said, is set out in the White Paper. Those measures will not be due to come into effect until 2026. We will take into account the conclusions that may be drawn as a result of this consultation when we consider that matter. She raised numerous other questions, many of which are included in the consultation. I am sure that she will actively take part in the consultation as we work towards the answers to those questions.

I was rather surprised that the hon. Lady raised the NHS. This party is spending more on the national health service than at any time in its history, with a 13% real-terms increase in spending over the last couple of years, 21,000 additional nurses and 7,000 more doctors in the last 12 months alone, and from next year £2.4 billion additional spend on mental health services, to which she referred. That is on top of the additional £4.7 billion that the Chancellor previously set aside for more mental health treatments and, at the last fiscal event, 400,000 additional talking therapies within the national health service.

The hon. Lady concluded by referring to Harold Wilson’s comments on unemployment. I simply refer her to the fact that under every single Labour Government in the history of this country, unemployment has been higher at the end of their term of office than at the beginning.