Welfare

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb]

I am, of course, very familiar with the excellent work that my right hon. Friend, and other Members on both sides of the House, have done with the all-party parliamentary group, and we certainly want to involve and include the group in the discussions that we are having. I should also put on record my appreciation of the fantastic work that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People has already been doing with disability groups and charities.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

I welcome the new Secretary of State to his role and thank him for advance sight of his statement. I think he knows that he is inheriting one almighty mess. As the debacle has unfolded, there have been untold adverse consequences not just for those who depend on personal independence payments, but many others, such as those who are set to lose £30 a week in ESA, the thousands of low-income families affected by cuts in work allowances under universal credit, the thousands of mostly disabled people already affected by the bedroom tax, and the women born in the 1950s for whom the goalposts have been shifted relentlessly on their state pension age.

Last week, the Government proposed taking a further £4.3 billion out of the pockets of disabled people to fund tax cuts for the wealthiest. Even by their standards, that was a new low. I am glad that they have been forced to backtrack on the latest round of PIP cuts, but the policy’s problems are more fundamental. The PIP roll-out has consistently failed to meet the Government’s own implementation targets and has been dogged by inordinate delays. Meanwhile, the Government have missed every single opportunity to sort out the fiasco of the implementation of universal credit. Indeed, their cuts have butchered the aspects of universal credit that might have created work incentives. Instead they have hammered low-paid workers, in particular those with children.

I said last week that the Government have remained wedded to austerity as a political choice, even when that has meant a heartless and callous disregard for the wellbeing of disabled people. Now those same people have become pawns in an increasingly bitter Tory civil war. Parts of the social security system, including PIP, are set to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament, yet there has been wholly inadequate consultation and engagement with Scottish Ministers ahead of the changes coming into effect. I urge the Secretary of State to take the opportunity to go back to the drawing board not only on PIP, but on the wider social security reform agenda, including the cuts to ESA and work allowances. Will he meet disabled people and work with them? Will he meet me and my colleagues to identify a more constructive way forward?

[Stephen Crabb]

I thank the hon. Lady for her series of questions. She listed several specific issues, all of which are high up in the in-tray that I have inherited at the Department, but I do not recognise her description of my inheritance. When I arrived at Caxton House yesterday and again today, I found that I had inherited an amazingly committed, passionate, capable group of civil servants and an amazing team of Ministers, who share a real determination to work together in unison to carry on reforming welfare.

On Scotland specifically, I have already checked the matter out and the working relationships in the Department, at both ministerial and official levels, with the Scottish Government are positive and constructive. I want to look at that and will be making an early visit up to Scotland. Perhaps we can carry on the discussion about the new devolved powers that Scotland will be getting.