Welfare Reform (Sick and Disabled People)

Guto Bebb Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) for securing this debate via the Backbench Business Committee and for bringing to our attention the fact that the WOW campaign has gathered 104,000 signatures on its petition on the Directgov website.

The fact that this motion has to be considered by Parliament is an indictment of our political system. It is an issue and a cause that I brought to the House’s attention via a debate in Westminster Hall a little over a year ago. I am pleased to say that it continues to receive the deserved consideration of this House as a wrong that needs to be righted. The truth is that we do not need an independent cumulative impact assessment to tell us what is going on. Every week, Members in this House have to deal with the devastating damage caused by the so-called welfare reforms.

In my own constituency of Gateshead, the reforms are having a profound impact on people’s lives, disproportionately affecting disabled people, their carers and their families. The policies and their implementation are causing immeasurable anxiety and tangible human suffering. We all know what the effects of them are. We support this motion as a means of exposing the truth, which is that the Government are driven by one consistent ideological principle—a determination to protect the privileged by demonising and attacking the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.

[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

rose—

[Ian Mearns]

I will not give way for the moment.

How else can we explain the fact that of the £63.4 billion of public expenditure cuts forecast by 2015, 29% of them fall on disabled people who make up only 8% of the population? Even worse, how else can we explain the fact that those with the most severe disabilities, who make up only 2% of the population, have to endure 15% of the cuts? In the face of that, can we continue to regard ourselves as a civilised society? What kind of civilised society seeks to finance its deficit recovery programme out of the suffering of the poorest and most vulnerable while managing to target tax cuts to the most privileged?

Thirty-one people died in the three years to October 2011 waiting for their appeals against the assessments which said that they were able to work. The BBC’s “Panorama” programme reported in July 2012 that, on average, 32 people died every week whom the Government had declared could be helped into work in the medium term.

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[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire). I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on securing this debate and representing the 104,000 petitioners. The National Audit Office report published this morning on the implementation of PIP is a disappointment, but it is important to point out, at the outset, that the report talks about the implementation, rather than the policy aims. That is important. The report is not a criticism of the policy aims. It makes it very clear that it is far too early to give any view of the implications of the policy change that is being implemented through PIP.

This issue and this debate are framed in the context of the idea that changes to the welfare state are being undertaken in response to the need for austerity. I would argue that the issue is far more important than that; it is very important that it is dealt with, not because of austerity but despite it, because we have a failing welfare system. Anybody in this Chamber who argued that, prior to 2010, we had a system that we could be proud of would be very brave indeed. It is to the credit of the Government that the welfare reform agenda is being implemented not primarily to save money, but to ensure that the system does not trap people in a way that is unproductive and unfair.

Today’s debate highlights the significant problem that the Opposition have in relation to welfare reform. When I spoke to Welsh Labour Members last night, I was surprised to hear that they were on a one-line Whip for this debate. I am staggered by that, and I am pleased to see the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) here. Given that the Welsh Labour Government have produced significant documents—they are not particularly impressive, when one reads the detail—complaining about the impact of welfare reform in Wales, I would have expected Labour Members from Wales to highlight their concerns in a debate as important as this one. Surprisingly, they are not here. Perhaps that is because they know full well that the Labour party is committed to a zero-growth spending review. We have heard Members express a lot of passionately held points of view today; it is important to point out that in a zero-growth spending review, it is very difficult to envisage any increase in the welfare budget. That is a point that any honest Member should be happy to make from the Opposition Benches.

My hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery) highlighted the fact that work capability assessments, the abolition of which the motion calls for, have been changed and reformed throughout the Government’s period in office. Most of the recommendations of Professor Harrington’s reviews have been accepted, and the number of complaints coming through my constituency office has reduced. The implication of Labour Members’ speeches is that there should be no work capability assessments whatsoever, although I do not think that that is Labour’s policy. Are they saying that there should or should not be some sort of work capability assessment? If we have work capability assessments, as I believe that we should, any responsible Government should obtain medical advice from experts and implement their recommendations, which is exactly what the Government are doing.

Is the system perfect? Clearly not yet. Is it a problem that 40% of cases are won on appeal? I take it as a badge of pride when I win an appeal, but of course the figure of 40% is too high. However, we are implementing the changes that have been recommended, and it is irresponsible to call for the abolition of any work capability test because that is not in keeping with the whole purpose of welfare reform—to target support at the poorest in society.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington talked about the impact of removing the spare room subsidy—the so-called bedroom tax—on people with disabilities, and Labour Members told us that the policy has had a tremendous effect in many local authorities throughout England. I take a keen interest in the issue and regularly speak at length with my local authority in north Wales. Figures for Conwy county borough council and Denbighshire county council, which are both close to my constituency, show that the discretionary housing funding will probably not be spent in full and that rent arrears in north Wales housing associations are falling in two out of three cases. The statistics shows that more than two thirds of discretionary housing awards have been made because of a need arising owing to factors outside welfare reform. From listening to Opposition Members, one would think that every single change is having a huge impact, yet figures from a Labour-controlled local authority clearly show that that is not the case.

The Work programme is a success. It attempts to treat people as individuals and is getting people back to work. However, on getting people back to work, I want to highlight a disgraceful fact. Wales has European-funded projects that give people training and skills, and ensure that they get closer to the workplace, yet the Welsh Labour Government have denied any Work programme client access to those training programmes. If Labour were genuine about helping people back into work, they would allow disabled people in Wales who need training and support to access those programmes.

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[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

This important debate is very welcome, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and the Backbench Business Committee for arranging it. Like others, however, I pay particular tribute to the 104,000 people who signed the War on Welfare petition that forms the basis of the motion, and who were the driving force behind today’s debate. The volume of signatures is testimony to the strength of public feeling about these matters. I have had the opportunity to meet War on Welfare campaigners in my constituency and here at Westminster, and I can testify to the anger and fear that many feel about the impact of the Government’s policies on disabled people. It concerns non-disabled people as much as disabled people, which is not surprising in view of the fact that—as my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) so powerfully reminded us—only one in five disabled people is born with a disability.

It is to our shame that, in all walks of life, disabled people face injustice and unfairness. They are twice as likely to be treated unfairly at work as non-disabled people; they are more likely to be victims of crime; they face additional living costs associated with their disabilities; they are twice as likely to live in poverty; and they are less likely to be in work. Today the employment rate among disabled people is 45%, while the rate among the working-age population as a whole is 71%. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) rightly identified some of the labour market barriers that disabled people face. Moreover, shamefully, they are on the receiving end of a virtually non-stop flow of hostile and abusive rhetoric.

One would expect that, faced with that grim picture, the Government would focus their efforts on tackling the injustice and discrimination that confront disabled people, but the policies of the current Government so often make matters worse. That is why Labour wholeheartedly supports the call for a cumulative impact assessment of the effect of those policies on disabled people, and why we called for such an assessment last year.

The Government have argued that Labour never carried out such an assessment, but Labour never unleashed such a deluge of negative policies on disabled people. Let me say to the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) in particular that our record speaks for itself. [Interruption.] He should listen to this. Poverty among disabled people, which stood at 40% when Labour came to office, subsequently fell to about one in four, and the employment rate among disabled people rose by 9 percentage points. We introduced a host of measures to strengthen the rights of disabled people. We passed the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 and introduced the Equality Act 2010, we formed the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and, in 2009, we signed the United Nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities.

Let us contrast that with the damaging policies of the current Government, which have been highlighted today. Cuts in local authority budgets have meant swingeing cuts in social care. The independent living fund has been closed to new applicants, and its future remains unclear. The Work programme is failing disabled people badly—only 5% of disabled participants have found work—and the Work and Pensions Committee has established that there is just one specialist disability employment adviser for every 600 people in the work-related activity group.

[Guto Bebb]

If the hon. Lady is so proud of the record of Labour, can she explain why training and skills programmes financed by the European social fund in Wales are not being made available to Work programme planners because of a decision by the Welsh Labour Government?

[Kate Green]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that exactly the same is happening in my constituency. I am glad that he mentioned training and skills, because this Government are placing the future of residential training colleges in jeopardy. They closed 33 Remploy factories last year, and 12 months later two thirds of former Remploy employees were still out of work. Funds from the closures were promised to help those former workers into jobs, but they seem to have disappeared.