Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Gerald Jones and Stephen McPartland

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to be given the opportunity to speak in this debate. I consider myself to be a proud and loyal member of the Conservative party, and as such I believe it is my duty to hold the Government to account and to help them when they lose their way. I am very proud to have had a number of conversations with the Minister for Employment, who is very happy to listen and talk. She is very welcoming and tries to work with others to achieve change. I was very happy with some of the reassurances she gave me, but I am sure that Opposition Members will be delighted to know that I will join them in the Lobby when we vote on Lords amendments 8 and 9 in about half an hour, because I am not happy with all the assurances I was given by others in the Department.

I want to clarify a few things. On the ESA WRAG and ESA support group, we are talking about 500,000 people who have been defined as being too ill to work under the measures introduced by the coalition Government in 2010. They have already been assessed as needing more support to go into work.

The fact that one in 100 are leaving that group and going into work is our failure. Something has gone wrong with the back to work programme. I am not proud of that. I was very keen to support the back to work programme, and disabled constituents of mine were very happy when we introduced it, because they felt that, for the first time in their lives, they would be given the opportunity to get out there and get real, practical support to get back into work. They do not want training sessions or to be taught new skills that are of no use whatsoever to them by a company that gets paid to do so. They are interested in getting back to work, and that is what I and the Government are interested in, too, but the problem is that, although we all want the same thing, we differ on how to get there.

The ESA support group consists of people who are just too ill to work. We are effectively saying, “We’re not writing anybody off, but if you’re in the support group you don’t need to find work, we won’t really give any support and we’ll just leave you there.” I am concerned that, by abolishing the ESA WRAG for new claimants—the Minister has been clear that that does not apply to existing claimants—from April 2017, we will push more people into the support group. Someone with a progressive disease such as motor neurone disease, which is getting worse and worse, will end up being pushed into the support group as fast as possible. I have a problem with that.

The Disability Benefits Consortium has said that almost half of those in the ESA WRAG have mental and behavioural disorders, which include mental health issues, learning disabilities and autism. Before the debate, we had an urgent question about the Government providing an extra £1 billion for mental health. Almost half—248,000—of the 500,000 people in the ESA WRAG have mental health issues. With that £1 billion going to the NHS, we have to wonder what we can do to support back into work those who have learning difficulties, autism or a variety of other issues. Some employers simply do not want them. Some small businesses find it very difficult to employ them. How do we go out and find them that opportunity? How do we find them a real job, as opposed to a fake job?

Parkinson’s UK, Rethink and Mind jointly say:

“This policy is poorly conceived. It will ultimately cause unintended harm and push sick and disabled people further from employment.”

Scope has said that the changes will disincentivise disabled people from finding work and will create a greater incentive for people to want to be placed in the support group. Macmillan has said that the changes will have a significant, detrimental impact on people affected by cancer. The bottom line is that the charities with which the Government will work in the taskforce to help to deliver the changes that will be in the White Paper are very concerned about the changes and do not see how they will work.

I do not accept that £30 a week is an incentive for somebody not to go to work. Most Conservatives do not accept that. Most Conservatives consider it to be their proud duty to look after the disabled. Ideologically, we have no issue about providing a welfare system that is a safety net for those who need support when they fall on hard times, to help people back into work. My concern is that the way in which the Bill will be perceived, and its practical implications, will lead some people who have disabilities to feel as though they are being pushed into the support group or into work.

I have a technical question for the Minister, which I hope she will be able to answer later this evening or in the next few weeks. If some of the original 500,000 people in the ESA WRAG find work but cannot cope with it, will they be able after April 2017 to go into something like the ESA WRAG, which will no longer exist? Or will they just have to push themselves towards the support group? Will there be an incentive to do so?

There are lots of other points that I would like to make, but as we are running out of time I will make one quick point. We have heard that £100 million is being reinvested, but we are taking £640 million away, so £540 million is going. If we are that keen on it, why do we not reinvest the whole £640 million into helping people back into work?

[Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

I will be brief, because other Members have covered some of the points that I wanted to make. The Welfare Reform and Work Bill will create hardship across our country and push people further into poverty. Child poverty is rising, and independent projections from the IFS show that the fall in child poverty rates that we saw under Labour is at risk of being reversed. We hear from the Children’s Society that if the proposals in the Bill are enacted, we should expect child poverty to rise even more steeply.

Research by End Child Poverty identified that 4.1 million families and 7.7 million children have been affected by below-inflation rises in child benefit and child tax credit over the past three years. One in five families said that they had cut back on food and heating because benefits have been increased below inflation. The Government’s attempts to mask the impact of child poverty by removing income as a measure will fool nobody. Child poverty should be something that we all recognise and want to combat. Sadly, the Government seem to be trying to bury the effects of their social security policies on child poverty; it appears that the Government are far from taking the situation seriously.

The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission has indicated that 1.5 million children live in poverty because their working parents do not earn enough to secure a basic standard of living. As was mentioned earlier, the commission stated in its December 2015 report that

“it is not credible to try to improve the life chances of the poor without acknowledging the most obvious symptom of poverty, lack of money.”

I believe that the Government’s position is just not credible.

I turn to the Government’s proposals to cut ESA in the WRAG. If clauses 13 and 14 of the Bill are accepted, the financial support for claimants in that group will be cut by 25%, from £102 to £73. That will have a drastic impact on both disabled people who are in work and disabled people who are out of work. In view of the fact that the Government have committed to protecting support for disabled people, that is deeply worrying. This cut will not incentivise people, which is what the Government say they want to do. The cut has been opposed in the other place, and I hope that the Government will now listen and scrap clauses 13 and 14.