Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

Carla Lockhart Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Steve Darling]

I thank the hon. Member for his contribution—his contributions are always good value.

What message does this Bill send to disabled children? We will be saying that those who have gone down the path of their disability degenerating to the extent that they can claim PIP will be over the line, but those youngsters who know they have a degenerative condition can look forward to no PIP under the Bill.

I reflect to the Chamber that PIP is often a passport to other levels of support, such as blue badges or rail cards, which give people the opportunity of getting out and living their best lives. Perhaps the most important passported benefit from PIP is carer’s allowance. We have grave concerns about this Bill’s impact on those families who will no longer benefit from carer’s allowance. They will be robbed of up to £12,000 a year.

Do not get me wrong; we as Liberal Democrats recognise that the benefits system is broken and needs resolving, but it needs, as we had in our manifesto, co-design with disabled groups and carers groups to make sure that we get it right for our people.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

The Secretary of State has claimed that she is listening. Does the hon. Member agree that she is certainly not listening to many of her Back Benchers, nor the 86 disability charities that have said this Bill will harm disabled people? We all know that reform is needed, but when we talk about reform, there is no mention of the fraud that goes on within the system that is costing our country billions. Surely we should start with that and not impact on and affect the most vulnerable in our society. We will be voting against this Bill today for that reason.

[Steve Darling]

I agree with the hon. Member.

Let me return to the reasons why people are not in work—the root causes, and some of the challenges. People have come to my constituency surgery and said, “I have a long-term illness, but I cannot be fixed by the NHS because it is broken.” Until we have sorted out the national health service and the social care system, people will be trapped in long-term ill health, and that needs to be resolved as a matter of urgency. I have already banged on about this, but while we acknowledge that PIP is not an out-of-work benefit but a benefit that helps people to lead lives that many of us would take for granted, the reality is that the Access to Work scheme is massively broken, and that too needs to be resolved. While there are warm words—

Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

Carla Lockhart Excerpts

Committee of the whole House & 3rd reading
Wednesday 9th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman will know that, as the benefit system grows, the likelihood is that fraud will grow within it. I applaud all efforts to crack down on fraud. I want to see greater efforts by those on the Front Bench to do that, but he knows that it is those sitting on the Back Benches who are now calling the shots.

Ultimately, all roads lead back to the Treasury. The truth is that the Bill is not the product of serious policymaking—neither in its inception nor its eventual outcome, gutted and filleted as it has been by a triumphant left in the Labour party. Instead, it is the product of panic—a rushed response to economic pressures caused by a feeble Chancellor who has brought the economy to a halt. It has been written not with reform in mind, but with rebellion in the rear-view mirror. The result is a muddled, mean-spirited piece of legislation that satisfies no one, least of all the vulnerable people who will suffer under it, or the British taxpayer who will pay for it.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

The right hon. Member is right to bring his speech back to the vulnerable people who will be impacted. He will know the devastating impact of cancer on many families. One in two face the reality of a cancer diagnosis. Young Lives vs Cancer has said that, on average, the disease costs £700 a month and £6,000 in annual income. Does he agree that the Bill, by ensuring that those people do not get the high rate universal credit health element, will be devastating for many cancer patients right across the country?

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to highlight the plight of cancer sufferers and the need to have a system that is more generous to those who genuinely need it, but is also tougher in ensuring that the funding goes to the places where it is most required. Under this Chancellor, as we know, Britain risks a return to the same old Labour habits: spend today, tax tomorrow and leave the mess for someone else to clear up. We saw that under Gordon Brown, and we are seeing it again today. The public deserve better than another Labour tax-and-spend spiral that leaves less money in their pockets and less resilience in our economy.

The Bill in its current form is a short-term fix with long term costs. It fails to tackle fraud, fails to address getting people back into work, despite all the protestations from Ministers that it had anything to do with that, fails to guarantee value for money and fails working families by paving the way for inevitable tax rises. If Labour wants to be taken seriously on economic credibility, it needs to start by showing some discipline on spending and not indulging in a spending spree that Britain simply cannot afford. The Prime Minister promised a serious Government—remember that?—a grown-up Government, yet here we are debating a confused, divisive Bill whose main achievement so far is to split the Prime Minister’s own Benches.