Oral Answers to Questions

Deirdre Costigan Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Stephen Timms]

The hon. Member will be relieved to know that spending on working-age adults’ and children’s welfare is forecast to be 4.9% of GDP at the end of the current Parliament, as it is now. Overall welfare spending is forecast to rise by less than half as much in this Parliament as in the last, by just over 0.3 percentage points by 2030-31 compared with 0.7 percentage points in the last Parliament. This Government are putting right the problems that they inherited.

[Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)]

According to a recent report from the Good Growth Foundation, 50% of disability claimants would swap up to £1,000 of benefits for help such as employment support, therapy and physical aids. Does the Minister agree that giving disabled people tailored support could both reduce the welfare bill and stop those who want to work being written off by the system?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I do agree with my hon. Friend, and, as she has said, we inherited a system that wrote people off. We are pleased with the early results emerging from our Connect to Work programme, which is providing exactly that kind of tailored support for disabled people and others faced with complex barriers to work. We recently published the second set of quarterly outcome statistics, and the news is very encouraging.