Welfare

David Simmonds Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2026 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Gedling (Michael Payne) made a passing reference to William Beveridge in his speech. He is not often mentioned in the Chamber these days, but it was Beveridge’s decision to nationalise and bring into the political domain what was already the most evolved and most comprehensive welfare system of any country in the world, inherited from the Conservative Government that came before, that arguably put our welfare state on to the path of unsustainability that we see today.

A statistic that should chill us all is that today, 46.7% of our people live in households that are net contributors to the United Kingdom, while 53.3%—more than half—of our population live in households that receive more from the state than they contribute. That is not just about welfare—it is also about education, healthcare and other things—but it shows is a trajectory by which a greater and greater share of national resources is consumed by things broadly badged as welfare. Those people who come here, work hard, start businesses and contribute, about whom many have spoken warmly, and those born in the United Kingdom and whose families have lived here for generations see that they are able to gain less and less through their own efforts, because more and more of the available resources are consumed by those who are not currently contributing.

[Chris Curtis (Milton Keynes North) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman makes the point that roughly half of the people in this country give more to the state and roughly half give less than they take. If, on average, a large majority of people are giving more to the state than they are taking out, where would that money be going?

[David Simmonds]

Clearly, the benefit for people of keeping more of the money that they make is that they spend that money on the quality of life of their families from the wealth that they have personally created by their own efforts. What we are seeing is that a greater and greater share of the wealth that they are creating and more and more of the money they are earning through their jobs, or of the profits being generated by the businesses they run, is going into a central pot for the benefit of other people and, in many cases, delivering less and less benefit to those other people.

In the recent Budget, the announcement of £100 to help with heating bills was more than offset by the cost impact of the Government’s policies on household energy bills. The Government say that housing is really important, despite the fact that their own policies in the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 have massively driven up the cost of renting a home. They have made it harder for landlords to place a home on the market, and made it harder for developers to build, resulting in accelerating insolvencies in a sector that is crucial to our national economy. In many areas, the cost of state interventions has become grossly disproportionate to the benefit that accrues to the individual, and we as a party need to accept that we have had some responsibility in some of those areas.

This is a debate about working-age welfare. We have always accepted that we protect pensioners, because once people have retired it becomes much more difficult for them to increase their income by finding another job, but we need to find a better way of ensuring that work pays and enterprise pays if we are to address the long-term conundrum of growth in this country. So many of concerns that we all share—rough sleeping is often cited by Labour Members—have surged since this Government took office. More and more people are living on the streets of this country every day because of this Government’s policies. It is welcome that they talk about introducing policies to address that, but they are trying to fix with a sticking plaster a wound that they have created by their own actions.

The same is true of housing policy. It is also true of VAT on school fees, which has left our state schools net worse off than they were before. It is particularly true of national insurance, which has driven up the cost of employing people in this country, and the so-called Employment Rights Act 2025, which has, as we have all heard, made businesses more and more wary of hiring people and giving them the opportunity to get on the ladder to a job and prosperity.

Let us not forget that this is not just about money. This is not an arid debate that is solely about balancing the books. Having a job is good for mental health, for physical health and for family wellbeing. It is the one solution that we know makes the biggest difference to people’s opportunities in life. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) described, one of the things that we should be proud to have done in office was to massively increase the share of working-age households earning their own living by their own efforts, rather than increasing the number who are dependent on welfare and benefits from the state.

This is a time of missed opportunity. The proposal that our Front Benchers have set out is about a subset of that issue. It is about how we deal with welfare, but it is also about how we get this country back on to a path where prosperity is something that all our people have a realistic prospect of enjoying. It is worth remembering that when the previous Chancellor set out this Government’s first Budget, it provided flat cash for every single Government Department except the NHS, and that was entirely dependent on welfare reform, which Labour Back Benchers immediately overturned. I say gently to Labour Members: please make sure that welfare reform is something you are willing to drive through, so that we can make the difference we need for this country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Curtis (Milton Keynes North) (Lab)]

Let me start on that last point. I am the proud son of a single mother, and I am probably standing here today only because of the support that she got from the last Labour Government.

There are three things that we as Members can agree on. First, the welfare bill is too high, and the trajectory is unsustainable. Spending on disability benefits alone has risen from £45 billion last year and is forecast to reach almost £70 billion by 2031-32. If we want to protect the welfare state, we must make it more sustainable. Secondly, we have a duty to protect those who cannot work and provide a safety net for those who work but have fallen on hard times. That is what the welfare state is for.

Thirdly, helping more people into work is good not only for the Treasury, but, as many people have said, for those individuals. Good work brings dignity, purpose, independence and often better health. That matters, because this debate is presented as a contrast between those who are willing to reform the welfare system and those who want the status quo, but I reject that. I believe in reforming the welfare state because I am a Labour politician, not despite it. The disagreement is on how we do that and the determination with which we push through changes.

We have seen that just announcing spending cuts does not achieve them. The Conservatives announced £11 billion of welfare cuts in 2010. In 2015, they promised another £12 billion. When they introduced PIP, they expected it to reduce spending by 20% compared with the system that it replaced; instead, the OBR said that it increased spending. Even before the pandemic, working-age disability benefits spending was rising by more than 5% a year in real terms. Announcing savings does not always lead to delivering them.

There are two reasons for that, both of which are relevant to the Opposition’s proposals. First, cutting one benefit can simply move the cost elsewhere. Take local housing allowance; the Opposition have announced that they are going to add extra limits to that, as well as reinstate the two-child benefit limit. Imagine a family with three young children who are already struggling to pay the rent. They could lose support for their third child while their housing allowance is pegged to a level that covers only the cheapest tenth of local properties. What happens is that they can now no longer afford their home. Quite rightly, I think there is consensus across the Chamber that we do not leave children sleeping on the pavement, and I do not believe the Opposition are arguing against that.

[David Simmonds]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about local housing allowance. The Prime Minister said that he felt a freeze in local housing allowance was simply a cost-shunt on to local authorities, but the Chancellor went ahead and did it anyway. Does the hon. Gentleman think the Chancellor was right, or was the Prime Minister right to criticise him?

[Chris Curtis]

I sit on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, and we have discussed raising LHA a lot. However, the Conservatives’ proposal goes even further, and would ultimately have a real effect on the temporary housing bill. Last year, councils in England spent £2.9 billion on temporary accommodation. In London, the number of homeless children in such accommodation is equivalent to at least one in every classroom—if you cut in one place, it whacks the cost up somewhere else. That is before we get on to the wider costs, including disrupting schooling, parents being forced out of work, and pressure on the NHS.

Most horrifically of all, in the six years since 2019, 104 children died with temporary accommodation recorded as contributing to their vulnerability, ill health or death. Seventy-six of those children were under the age of one. We all accept that policies involve trade-offs, but that is probably one that we should all find pretty difficult to stomach. For the Conservatives to put forward such a policy without even having modelled its impact on temporary accommodation and wider impact on the welfare bill, shows that those proposals have not been well thought through.

Yes, we need to come up with sustainable ways to address the welfare bill. We will see more from the reviews that are coming forward, and I will be proud to support them.