Winter Fuel Payment

Helen Whately Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House calls on the Government to publish data on the number of eligible pensioners it estimates did not receive the Winter Fuel Payment in 2024–25; further calls on the Government to publish data showing the impact of changes to the Winter Fuel Payment on levels of pensioner poverty and the number of hospital admissions; also calls on the Government to set out how it intends to ensure that those eligible for Pension Credit receive it before winter 2025-26; and calls on the Government to apologise for the misery caused to vulnerable pensioners in winter 2024–25.

Now that the sun has come out, I suspect that many of us will quickly forget the chill of the winter—the evenings when it was freezing outside and we reached for our jumpers, and perhaps the switch on our central heating too. However, for many pensioners turning up the heating was not an option, because one of the Chancellor’s first acts in her new job last year was to scrap the winter fuel payment for 10 million pensioners—something of which she gave no hint before the election, a time when voters rightly expect political parties to spell out their plans. As a result, millions of older people, many with fixed and far from substantial incomes and many living in draughty homes, missed out on £300 this winter. That money makes all the difference. In fact, for some it is literally a choice between heating and eating. At the same time, energy bills went up. Before the election, the Government did not say they would cut the winter fuel payment, but they did promise to bring our energy bills down—by £300, in fact. Instead, they are up by about £170. It was a promise so easily made and so carelessly broken.

Labour Members may not like hearing this, but let us pause for a minute to think about what this means in human terms. I remember well my grandmother in her 90s in layers of jumpers, shawls and blankets in winter, even when she had the heating on. In fact, I remember well giving her a woollen shawl as a Christmas present, because she was always cold. I would describe myself as someone who feels the cold, but I know that what I feel on a winter’s day is not a patch on how someone in their 80s or 90s feels, especially if they have health problems, and I know from my time as a Health Minister about the connection between being cold and ending up in hospital.

To help get the winter fuel payment cut past Labour Back Benchers, some of whom do have consciences, the Government claimed that they were going to protect the most vulnerable because those on pension credit would still get it, but let us look at what that really means in practice—at the facts. Pension credit tops up a pensioner’s weekly income to £218.15 if they are single or, if they have a partner, to £332.95 jointly. Someone with an annual income of £11,500 could be ineligible for pension credit. They may be just £1 or £2 over the threshold, but because of the cliff edge, they do not get pension credit and, as a result of the Government’s cut, they would not get the winter fuel payment either. So we are not talking about rich people.

[Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)]

I certainly remember, and I am sure others will, the Government saying that those with the broadest shoulders would take the strain. Does the shadow Secretary of State consider those on this level of income to have the broadest shoulders?

[Helen Whately]

My hon. Friend makes exactly the important point I am making, which is that if the Government thought what they were doing would affect just the very wealthiest in society, they were very wrong.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

Is it not very telling that, although when this policy was voted on in this House in September the Government had a majority of 120, there are very few Labour MPs on the Government Benches to defend their own policy in this debate?

[Helen Whately]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. As I said a moment ago, I do believe that some Labour Members have consciences, but I am not sure which ones. Are those with consciences the ones who are hiding away from the Chamber because they feel guilty and do not want to hear this debate, or the hon. Members here who are actually going to stand up in support of pensioners and join us in the Lobby later.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

I am looking forward to the opening speech of the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Swansea West (Torsten Bell), because if we see the same sympathy that he showed for people in his “Newsnight” interview last night, we should be in for a treat.

When the Government put forward their proposals, they claimed that they were going to save £1 billion. However, the amount of money they would be paying out with the increased uptake of pension credit was going to cost £3.5 billion at that time. Does the shadow Secretary of State have up-to-date figures on whether this policy will actually deliver a saving for the Government?

[Helen Whately]

One of the things we would very much like to see is a full set of figures from the Government, but my hon. Friend makes a very important point. The Government said they wanted everyone who was eligible to sign up for pension credit and therefore be able to access the winter fuel payment, but if everyone had actually signed up for pension credit, the Government would not have saved the money they set out that the policy would save.

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

The Department for Work and Pensions states that it works to a planned timescale of 50 working days for processing applications. However, on 9 December, in response to my written question, it turned out that, at its peak just before the coldest period, it was 87 working days. Even now, the answer is that it takes on average 56 working days to get pension credit sorted. That is a problem, because the Government directed people to pension credit who cannot then get access to it when they need it, at the coldest time of the year. Is that not a despicable decision?

[Helen Whately]

Yes. My hon. Friend makes a really important point. He has been every effective in his use of parliamentary questions to scrutinise the Government and get data from them—they do not like to give it willingly. He identifies the long delays for pension credit approvals and therefore access to winter fuel payment. Some will have applied before the deadline for pension credit and got the whole way through winter without getting money, or even knowing whether they were going to get any money. We know well from charities such as Age UK, which represents pensioners, that pensioners are very reluctant to get themselves into debt. If they did not know whether they were getting the payment, they would have been very reluctant to spend money in the hope that they might.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Helen Whately]

Let me make a little progress and then I will be delighted to take more interventions from colleagues.

The Chancellor has previously argued that winter fuel payments should be means-tested and cut for the richest pensioners, but who here thinks that someone on an income of £11,500 is rich? Age UK estimated that over 80% of pensioners living below or only just above the poverty line would lose their winter fuel payment.

The issue is not just that low-income vulnerable pensioners miss out on help with their heating because they are just above the pension credit threshold—the problem is worse than that. Last summer, the Government knew that over 800,000 people may be eligible for pension credit but did not claim it, meaning that they, too, would miss out on the winter fuel payment. The Pensions Minister at the time, the hon. Member for Wycombe (Emma Reynolds), assured us that the Government would get on top of that. In fact, she told us that her target was to have 100% of those eligible for pension credit claiming it. But here we are many months later, and still around three quarters of a million eligible pensioners are not on pension credit. That is another promise easily made but easily broken. There has been a woeful failure by the Government to close properly that gap, despite all the coverage the winter fuel payment received.

Of course, we knew that this would be hard. We, too, had pension credit uptake campaigns in Government. More people signed up, but still many did not. I expect the Government knew that they would fail, too. Their officials would have told them, but it was easier for them to assure the press, the charities and their Back Benchers, “Don’t worry,” just as we have heard their Ministers do about the welfare reforms in the last 24 hours. For them, it was easier to wait for the spring to come and hope that everyone would simply forget. Well I say to them, “We won’t let you forget.” Nor will millions of pensioners and their families: 10 million pensioners are missing out on help with their heating, among them around 1 million of the most vulnerable people in our country, quite literally left in the cold by this Labour Government. That will not be forgotten in a hurry.

[Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. It is absolutely right that we ask the questions we are asking today. The statistic that has shocked me most in this debate is that of the millions of pensioners who lost their winter fuel payment, 44,000 are estimated to have been terminally ill. Is she as shocked as I am by that statistic?

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Whately]

I was indeed extremely shocked by that statistic; that is one reason why we need to have this debate today and try to get some of the data out of the Government. They were at the time, and continue to be, incredibly reluctant to share whatever they know about the impact of this cut on people, including the terminally ill.

[Dr Luke Evans]

Going back to data, this policy does not just impact pensioners, because the Government seconded 500 extra staff to try to deal with pension credit. We know, from another written answer, that those staff came from the services handling child maintenance, counter fraud, compliance and debt, so there is going to be an ongoing impact. Do the Government not need to be transparent about the impact on the Departments that have had to move staff across to try to deal with their own policy?

[Helen Whately]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about transparency, and he recognises that this policy has had an impact not only on pensioners, but on other parts of Government, and therefore on other constituents. It is another thing that I hope the Government Back Benchers in the Chamber are taking note of, to pass on to their colleagues who, for some reason, have chosen not to be present to discuss this topic this afternoon.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is being exceptionally generous in giving way. Does she agree that the Government need to be completely transparent about the costs of this policy? It has been estimated that it will cost the NHS—already pressed—£169 million. We know from NHS England that 100,000 extra people aged 65 or over have been through A&E this relatively warm winter. Is this policy not a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul?

[Helen Whately]

My right hon. Friend, given his experience in this area, will know very well the connection between heating and health, particularly for older people. The Government must surely ensure that they understand the knock-on impact of the cut to the winter fuel payment on older people’s health, and therefore on admissions to hospital and on hospitals’ ability to cope. As we know, there are then the consequences for older people, who, when admitted to hospital, often end up having long hospital stays, with significant loss of independence and reduction in quality of life as a result.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Helen Whately]

I will continue, because I know that many Members wish to speak this afternoon—at least on the Opposition Benches.

From the moment the Government announced this policy, we were deeply concerned about the impact it would have, which is why we led the opposition to the cut, and why we forced a vote on it back in September. The vote was a chance for Labour MPs to make a stand. Instead, 348 Labour MPs chose to support the winter fuel payment cut. We then saw the Government trying to avoid telling people the impact the cut would actually have, so we are trying again today.

I put it to the Minister that now is his chance to be straight with people. What did the Government know when the cut was announced? Did they know how many pensioners would miss out? Did they know how many would end up in hospital? Their own report from 2017 found that cutting the winter fuel payment could cause nearly 4,000 pensioners to die. Did Ministers ask if that was likely to happen this winter? I would be happy to give way to him if he wanted to answer my questions right now, but, given they have not been answered for months, I fear he will not.

[Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Helen Whately]

I will in a moment—I was hoping the Minister might have answers, but he does not.

To this day, the Government have not published a full impact assessment setting out the truth about their policies. Is that because they do not know themselves, or because they do not want to admit the harm that they were willing to do?

Thanks to the effort of colleagues and the public, we have, however, been able to glean some information in the months since. The Secretary of State admitted to the Work and Pensions Committee that she had seen internal modelling showing that 100,000 pensioners would be pushed into poverty because of their political choices. Thanks to a freedom of information request, the Government were forced to publish their equality analysis, showing that 71% of people with a disability would lose their winter fuel payment, while official NHS data shows that the number of over-65s attending A&E this winter soared by nearly 100,000 compared with last year, despite this being a less cold year.

And now, as I have said, it feels as if spring is here. It is time for the Government to be honest with the public and tell us what this policy has done in practice. I hope they will not tell us that they did not monitor the results, because that surely is not credible. It is time to tell us how many eligible pensioners did not receive the winter fuel payment this year; time to tell us how the cuts have hit pensioner poverty; and time to tell us what those cuts did to hospital admissions. Ministers need to know this information so that they can prepare responsibly for next year. Back Benchers need to know this information so that they can represent their constituents effectively. And the public deserve to know the consequence of the actions of the Government they elected.

[Deirdre Costigan]

Will the shadow Minister be honest with the House, and honest with pensioners: how many would be affected, and by how much, by the means-testing of the state pension, to which the Leader of the Opposition is committed?

--- Later in debate ---

[Deirdre Costigan]

Will the shadow Minister tell the House how many pensioners would be impacted by the Leader of the Opposition’s plan to means-test the state pension, and by how much?

[Helen Whately]

I do not want to fall into the same trap as the hon. Lady did when she made those accusations. What she has just said does not describe the position of the Leader of the Opposition. I also remind her that today is an opportunity for the Government to answer questions, and that is what she should be looking to the Minister, rather than the shadow Minister, to do.

[Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)]

I have always said that it is absolute nonsense that somebody like me, who is still working, and my wife, who is still working, should receive the winter fuel allowance. We were going to address that, which was right—so we should have done. If that is what is called means-testing, then I am perfectly happy with that. But what we were not going to do was to take money from the pockets of the poorest pensioners in the country, and that is what this Government have done.

[Helen Whately]

I could not have made the point better than my right hon. Friend.

I have one final question before I conclude: what was all this for? We clearly know who lost out and who suffered as a result of the cut to the winter fuel payment, but who benefited? To govern is to choose. All those who got inflation-busting pay increases after Labour did its deals with its trade union friends were the ones to benefit. Billions for the unions, but nothing for the pensioners. This will be the legacy of yet another Labour Government. The last one increased the state pension by just 75p a week; this one have taken away the winter fuel payment.

By contrast, it was the Conservatives who introduced and protected the triple lock, which saw the state pension increase by £3,700 during our time in office; it was the Conservatives who reduced the number of pensioners living in absolute poverty by 200,000—Labour will undo that by a quarter in its first year—and it was the Conservatives who delivered nearly £12 million in winter fuel payments and cost of living payments for pensioners, because we understand the need to help the most vulnerable through the winter. It is astonishing how many people Labour has already let down in just eight months—pensioners, farmers, business owners, young people looking for jobs, and, yesterday, disabled people—in its rush to fix its financial mess.

Earlier we heard the Prime Minister say that if a party has a big majority, it does not need to consult, so the onus is on all of us here. Colleagues, and especially Labour Members, have an opportunity today to make the Government listen. It is a chance to stick to our principles, stick up for our constituents and vote to see the truth.

--- Later in debate ---

[Louise Jones (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

Before I begin, will the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), clarify her earlier comments? Does she not support pay rises for the armed forces? [Interruption.] She is more than welcome to clarify; I can see that she looks a bit confused.

[Helen Whately]

The hon. Lady asks about something that I have never said, so I was surprised to hear it.

[Louise Jones]

I very much thank the hon. Lady for those comments. I know she vociferously criticised pay rises for public sector workers in her speech, so I am glad to have clarified that.

The winter fuel payment was a policy that the Labour Government introduced in 1997, and it stands as one of the great achievements of that Labour Administration. When it was brought in, pensioner poverty was significantly higher than what we face today, and it made a real difference to many pensioners who were struggling with heating, eating, and many other living costs. Along with many things that that Government achieved, we had the shortest NHS waiting times in history, we brought crime down, and we created Sure Start, which made a difference to many young people’s lives. We had record results in schools, we introduced the Disability Discrimination Act 2005, and we brought in the first ever Climate Change Act in 2008. All those things made a huge difference to the lives of people in this country, in particular pensioners.

Welfare Reform

Helen Whately Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement. She and I agree on one thing: the welfare bill is too high. Left unchecked, it will rise to £100 billion by the end of the decade. Spending more on sickness benefits than we do on defence is not the sign of a strong country.

This is not just a question of money. We have 3 million people of working-age who are not in work due to ill health, not filling the roles businesses need, not contributing to our economy and not fulfilling their own potential. The best way to get the welfare bill down is to get people off benefits and into work. That is what we did year after year after taking office in 2010. Despite the once-in-a-century pandemic, 4 million more people were in employment when we left office than when we inherited Labour’s mess. Before the pandemic, economic inactivity was at an historic low, but it is true that we then started to see a new phenomenon: growing numbers of people, and—particularly worryingly—young people, claiming sickness benefits. A system set up with good intentions to protect the most vulnerable in society has over time morphed into something broader, driven in part by a well-intentioned but not always helpful medicalisation of life’s ups and downs.

In government, we identified the problem and worked up plans to tackle it, but at every point Labour Members opposed them. In fact, the now Chancellor said that not one single penny could be saved from benefits. When they came into office, not only did they cancel or delay pretty much everything we handed over, but they had no plans of their own. They walked into the Department with empty notebooks. All they had done in opposition was oppose, instead of the hard work of coming up with their own answers. That is why the country has had to wait another eight months for this announcement. In that time, taxpayers have shelled out £7 billion in extra sickness benefits, and nearly half a million people have been signed off sick. In fact, 60 people were signed on to sickness benefits while the Secretary of State was talking.

None the less, I have been looking forward to hearing what the right hon. Lady would announce today and which of the many things briefed to the media her spinning policy wheel would eventually land on. Governing is hard—we know that. In the last few weeks, the Government have made it look really hard, but that is nothing compared with how hard life can be for a severely disabled person, somebody for whom getting up, getting dressed and getting breakfast—things most of us found easy this morning—are hard if not impossible. For some people, the last few weeks have been deeply frightening. They will be glad of the uncertainty finally ending.

I genuinely want the right hon. Lady to succeed, and I welcome her commitment today to increasing the number of reassessments and to having more of them face to face and recorded. I welcome the investment in employment support for disabled people. I welcome, of course, her reannouncing a host of things that we were doing in government. Scrapping the work capability assessment and creating a single assessment is already Government policy that is due to come in in 2026-27. Her big idea seems to be to delay that until 2028. Merging new-style jobseeker’s allowance and employment and support allowance into a new time-limited higher rate is a proposal that we worked up in government. We launched a consultation on tightening up eligibility for PIP and, by the way, we would have gone much further with that. We consulted on ending reassessments for people whose health conditions will not improve, and the right to try guarantee sounds remarkably similar to our chance to work guarantee. Of course, on the Secretary of State’s continued support for WorkWell, I launched that programme with the now shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride). In fact, the only original idea I can see in the entire announcement is increasing the rate of unemployment benefits—a Labour policy if ever I have heard one.

This is a now-or-never chance to seize the moment—a now or never for millions of people who will otherwise be signed off for what could end up being a lifetime on benefits—but today’s announcement leaves me with more questions than answers. How many people will be helped back into work and by when? Surely we have not been waiting eight months for just another Green Paper. Where is the fit note reform crucial to stem the flow of people on to benefits? Where is the action on people being signed off sick for the everyday ups and downs of life? Why is the right hon. Lady planning to save only £5 billion when the bill is forecast to rise to over £100 billion? Do the savings she is announcing today include the £5 billion we had already agreed with the OBR for reforming the work capability assessment? If so, she has made virtually no savings of her own. What is the net saving given the additional expenditure planned?

Fundamentally, this is too little, too late. The fact is that £5 billion just does not cut it with a bill so big going up so fast. She needed to be tougher. She should be saying, “No more hard-working taxpayers funding the family next-door not to work, no free top-of-the-range cars for people who do not need them, no more sickfluencers helping people to claim money they do not need.”

Before the right hon. Lady puts on her angry voice and leans across the Dispatch Box to shout at me about “14 years”, I gently say to her that everybody in this Chamber and around the country knows that we lost and Labour won. Her job now is to govern and mine is to hold her to account. Our country needs everybody who can work to do so. That principle should be at the heart of our welfare system. It is good for the taxpayer, good for the economy and good for the individual and their family, who benefit from security, dignity and purpose that work brings, and it means that those who genuinely cannot work get the support that they deserve.

The fact is that fewer people work under Labour. That has happened every time Labour has been in office, and it is already happening now. The Government should have taken their time in opposition to come up with meaningful reforms, but they did not, and the country is already paying the price.

[Liz Kendall]

I personally like the hon. Lady a great deal, but her entire response seemed to be railing against her own party’s failings and lamenting action that her party failed to take. “Too little, too late,” will indeed be the epitaph of the Conservative party. One thing on which I agree with her that this is a now-or-never moment, and I am proud that this Government are taking it. We are taking decisive action, ducking the challenges that have been ignored for too long.

I am not interested in being tough. This is about real people with real lives, and we must be careful in how we talk about it. I am interested in taking the right steps to change the system in order to transform people’s lives and, crucially, ensure that we have a social security system that lasts. One in three of us will have a health condition in our lifetime, and one in four is disabled. Unless the country, the welfare state, the world of work and all our public services wake up to that fact, the welfare state that the Labour party created will not be there for future generations. That is what we are determined to secure. This is a substantial package of measures that will save around £5 billion by 2029-30. We will have to wait until the OBR comes up with its final costings on all this at the spring statement.

I leave hon. Members with this: a decade ago, former Chancellor George Osborne said:

“Governments…let…unemployed people get parked on disability benefits, and told they’d never work again. Why? Because people on disability benefits don’t get counted in unemployment figures that could embarrass politicians.”

The Labour party is not embarrassed about this situation; we are ashamed of the state the Tories left the country in. We will face up to our responsibilities; it is time that Conservative Members did the same.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Whately Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

Back in the autumn, the right hon. Lady said

“we will not allow young people not to be in education, employment or training.”

How is it possible then that since Labour has been in office there are 100,000 more young people in exactly that situation?

[Liz Kendall]

The hon. Lady had 14 years to solve the problem and the Conservatives’ record is clear: nearly 1 million young people not in education, employment or training, which is one in eight of all our young people; and the number of young people with mental health concerns who are out of work has now reached 270,000. That is the legacy of 14 years of Conservative government, and it is a legacy that this Government are determined to change.

[Helen Whately]

I asked about what has happened “since” the right hon. Lady’s party has been in government: it is her Chancellor’s tax on jobs and economic mismanagement that are costing young people opportunities. Instead of taxing jobs, Labour should have been ready with a plan for welfare reform at the time of the Budget. They have spent nine months trying to cobble one together and still we wait. Why did the right hon. Lady not make any plans in opposition, and does she regret that?

[Liz Kendall]

Conservative Members had no plan. Even their own former Chancellor admitted that the numbers were made up. The only thing they put forward were proposals on the work capability assessment, which have recently been ruled illegal by the courts. They had no plan, but they had a clear record: leaving people behind, writing them off and putting them on the scrapheap. This Labour Government will turn that around and get people, and our country, on the pathway to success.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

We heard yesterday that the Cabinet had not yet seen the welfare plan that the right hon. Lady is apparently due to announce tomorrow. Given all the media briefings, the apprehension of disabled people and the growing number of people not working, none of us would want to see that delayed. Can she assure us that she has got collective agreement so that she can announce her plan here in this Chamber tomorrow?

[Liz Kendall]

The hon. Lady will have to show a little patience. She talks about plans, but we have seen her and the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), making claims in various newspapers about their plan—but there never was a plan. The former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt), actually admitted that during the election when he said that the numbers had already been scored. The only thing that the previous Government ever put forward was ruled illegal by the courts. They had 14 years to put this right; this Government will act.

[Helen Whately]

I listened hard to the right hon. Lady’s answer but, given everything I heard, I still do not think she has the support of Cabinet colleagues, with less than 24 hours to go. It was a no.

There is never a good time for millions of people to be out of work, but as the world gets more dangerous we can afford neither the benefits bill nor the waste of human potential. Given the opposition of the right hon. Lady’s party to welfare reform, can she assure me that her planned reforms will grasp the nettle and bring the benefits bill down?

[Liz Kendall]

That from a member of a Government who left one in 10 working-age people on a sickness and disability benefit, one in eight young people not in education, employment or training, and 2.8 million people out of work due to long-term sickness. That was terrible for them—for their life chances, incomes and health—and terrible for taxpayers who are paying for an ever-spiralling bill for the cost of failure. Unlike the Conservative Government, who wrote people off and then blamed them to get a cheap headline, we will take decisive action, get people into work and get this country on a pathway to success.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Whately Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I welcome the Minister to his place. I have a simple question for him: how many people are still waiting for their winter fuel payment?

[Torsten Bell]

The largest campaign to drive up pension credit take-up is now under way, and it will continue in the years ahead. What we are seeing at present is that anyone who made their claim for pension credit before 21 December will receive their winter fuel payment when that claim is processed.

[Helen Whately]

So the answer is that the Minister does not know. He does not know how many people are waiting for their winter fuel payment. He does not know how many people are stuck in the pension credit backlog. He does not know when they will hear about their claims. He does not know who has had help from their local council. He does not know how many people who lost their winter fuel payment have ended up in hospital this winter. He and his Department have dodged or refused to answer every single one of those questions in recent weeks. Will he commit to a full review of the winter fuel payment cut so that we can get those answers?

[Torsten Bell]

I will commit to fighting every day to avoid a repeat of the exercise under the last Government whereby pensioner poverty rose by 300,000, having fallen by 1 million under the last Labour Government. We will make sure that we publish details of the take-up of pension credit by the end of February.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

Last week, the right hon. Lady described herself as the HR manager for the Government’s growth plan, so can Liz from HR tell me which of her colleagues should be fired for the addition of 47,000 people to the unemployment figures in December?

[Liz Kendall]

I am proud to say that I want to get Britain working again after we inherited a situation in which a record 2.8 million people were out of work due to health problems, because the Conservatives pushed the NHS to its knees and failed to have a proper plan to get people back into work. Our mission is to get Britain working and growing again, and that is what our plan will deliver.

[Helen Whately]

Wishful thinking is all very well, but let us talk about the facts. Those 47,000 people probably spent Christmas worrying about how they would pay the bills without a job, and they are now looking for work in an employment market decimated by Labour’s jobs tax. How high does the right hon. Lady forecast unemployment will get under her Government?

[Liz Kendall]

The hon. Lady wants to talk about the facts. The facts are that we inherited a situation in which we will be spending £20 billion more on working-age, incapacity and disability benefits because of the mess her Government made, and in which there has been a doubling of the number of young people out of work due to health conditions, so people are more likely to be out of work due to poor health in their 20s than in their 40s. Our radical reforms will give people the right to work and the support they need, and will get the benefits bill on a sustainable footing.

Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill

Helen Whately Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 3rd February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

A strongly held Conservative principle is that public money must not be wasted. We hold this view not because we are mean, but because the Government do not have money of their own. What they have, they raise through taxation from all of us. A tiny fraction of every penny that they spend is yours, mine and everyone else’s who pays in. Those who spend public money have a duty to spend it wisely, and ensure that it ends up only with those who should have it, for the purpose for which it was intended. In a big, complex system of government in a country of nearly 70 million people, from time to time that will not happen for a range of reasons—from a form that has been accidentally filled in with the wrong information, or a change of circumstance that someone forgot to notify the jobcentre about, to serious organised fraud—but however taxpayers have lost out, it is incumbent on the state to do all that it can to get their money back. That is what taxpayers rightly expect. It is part of the unwritten contract for collecting that money in the first place. Therefore, it will be no surprise to hear that, in principle, we support the Bill’s aim. In fact, much of the Bill continues work that we did in government, and legislation that was interrupted by the election.

It is important to put what we are discussing today in context. Before the pandemic, fraud and error across the DWP benefits and tax credit system was at a near record low, but then we had two national crises—first, the pandemic, then war in Ukraine—which piled huge cost of living pressures on families across the UK. During both, we acted rapidly. We set up never-seen-before systems of support in record time. We protected millions of people’s jobs. We paid half of everyone’s energy bills for a year. We got direct payments to the people who needed them the most. I am proud of what we did, and I think that history will look back kindly on how we supported people through those times, but the truth is that when we do something fast at a moment of crisis, that inevitably opens up new vulnerabilities in the system. Disappointingly, against a national spirit of getting through hard times together, some people saw it as a chance to make a quick buck, and we saw a material increase in the amount being lost to fraud within the system. Any and all of us could spell out better uses for that money. That is why, back in May 2022, we published our plan, “Fighting Fraud in the Welfare System”. We increased the number of frontline counter-fraud professionals in the DWP, created a new Public Sector Fraud Authority and started work on new legal powers to investigate and punish fraudsters. It was a good start. In 2022-23, fraud and error were cut by 10%. We saved £1 billion through the Department’s dedicated counter-fraud activities. The next year we upped that to £1.35 billion, exceeding the £1.3 billion target, yet we were still not satisfied.

In May last year, we published a second fraud plan to save £9 billion by 2027-28, which included hiring more staff to check claims for accuracy, modernising information-gathering powers, broadening the penalty system and investing £70 million in advanced data analytics. In April, we announced plans for a new fraud Bill to align DWP investigations with HMRC, treating benefit fraud like tax fraud and giving investigators new powers to make seizures and arrests. When the general election was called, the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill had already passed through the House of Commons. The Bill included the powers the Government are introducing today to require third parties, such as banks, to provide relevant information to the DWP. To the extent that this Bill continues that work, I do not envisage substantial disagreement—albeit we have questions on how the law will work in practice. I also have serious concerns about the powers that the Cabinet Office is giving itself.

Before I deal with those, let me say that I recognise the concerns that people have about the state getting too much information about their finances. Privacy should never be taken lightly. I do not want to live in a country where the Government can access our bank accounts and look at what we have been spending our money on, and I would not support a Bill that would allow the Government to do that, but I believe that it is right for the DWP to learn lessons from HMRC to recoup taxpayers’ money. The fact of the matter is that if someone receives money from the state, it is not unreasonable for the state to investigate if there are signs they are taking money that they should not be.

As I said, I have some questions about how the social security powers in the Bill will be put into practice, and I expect to probe those matters further as the Bill progresses. For instance, on the role of banks, how much testing has been done of the systems that they expect to use? The Horizon scandal is a recent reminder of how computer systems do not always get it right. What progress has been made on the code of conduct, and when will we see it? I also note that no impact assessment has been done on the cost to banks. Has the Minister met the sector and discussed what the changes mean for it? I know there are concerns within the sector about the lack of detail brought forward by the DWP. If the maximum level of scrutiny allowed under the Bill is demanded by the DWP, how would that work in practice for banks and what would it cost?

On the sanctions that can be meted out under the Bill, we support the Department for Work and Pensions being given further powers to pursue recovery outside of benefits and PAYE, but are the measures outlined in the Bill tough enough? Why is 40% the maximum amount of someone’s capital that can be reclaimed? Allowing for hardship, which the Bill does, why should someone potentially keep the majority of their ill-gotten gains?

It is not clear how the Bill intends to treat carer’s allowance overpayments, which I know from my time as Care Minister are complicated and often accidental, though unfortunately not always. None the less, they are a loss to the taxpayer that should be investigated. We would like to understand in more detail how the savings we are told to expect from the Bill will accrue. How many people does the Government think that will affect, and what proportion is it of the fraud currently being perpetrated? I was concerned the other day to see reports in the media of a number of artificial intelligence schemes being quietly shelved in the Department. It is noticeable that the plans rely heavily on human labour to root out fraud. While I know the Government have to create jobs somehow, I would be interested to hear what consideration has been given to automating some of the processes in future. That too will help ensure that taxpayers’ money does not go to waste.

I come to my main area of concern, which is the powers being given to Cabinet Office Ministers and the Public Sector Fraud Authority. I know what it is like to make legislation thinking that I, as a good person, would only use it wisely, but I also know what it is like to be wrongly investigated by a public authority on the grounds of a misleading newspaper article. Looking at the investigatory powers bestowed in chapter 2 of the Bill, how could one not be worried to see a Minister being given powers, with little oversight, to compel a person to release whatever information they wish, in any format demanded, within 10 days, along with the information of anyone connected to them, on any grounds that the Minister deems “reasonable”—and to disclose that information to whomever they think necessary, with the sole right of appeal being only to that Minister? It could be impossible for someone to comply within the timeframe given, yet the Bill includes fines set at £300 a day for missing the deadline.

Of course the Government should go after fraudsters, but I worry that some of that power could be abused and that, in its current form, it may breach laws on the state taking someone’s property without due process. I would be interested to hear if experts in the legal sector have been consulted on the legislation as drafted. Have Ministers engaged with the Law Society, the Bar Council or, for that matter, organisations like Liberty and Justice?

In the Department for Work and Pensions and the Cabinet Office, it is right to pursue fraudsters with the full might of the law, but the ends cannot justify all means and the process must always be fair, reasonable and proportionate. I look forward to further discussions on the detail of the Bill, and I am sure that colleagues in the other place will be preparing for that, too.

In the meantime, we must not let the Bill distract from the elephant in the room. For every penny the Bill will save—welcome though that is—it will do nothing about the billions of pounds that will be racked up in sickness benefits under this Labour Government. It is staggering that they did not come into office with a plan. They have done nothing to halt the tide in the seven months they have been in office, and I hear that they have shelved some of the work we handed over. We have heard not a murmur about what they will actually do, just briefing after briefing to the papers. Why not bring an actual plan to Parliament rather than talking to the papers? I suspect you, Madam Deputy Speaker, might agree with me on that point.

We had a plan—where is theirs? Every day the Government scramble about without a plan costs taxpayers millions. Fraud and error in the system is a problem, and I am pleased to pledge the Opposition’s support for tackling them, but let us not use this Bill as a distraction from the big issue. We all agree that the welfare system needs reform. Let us end the briefings and have some action.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Before I call the next speaker, I just want to make it clear that after the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), I will call the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling).

Welfare Cap

Helen Whately Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

The welfare cap we are debating today was introduced back in 2014 by the Conservative Chancellor at the time, George Osborne, to hold the Government to account on the cost of our welfare system. Through the 2010s, in government, we broadly kept to that cap; it was part of the discipline we applied to the welfare system to make it fair for the taxpayer and to put into practice the strongly held Conservative principle that if you can work, you should work. We introduced universal credit to ensure that work always pays and supported businesses to create millions of jobs, and we helped thousands of people into work and drove down economic inactivity—and were opposed at every step of the way by the Labour party.

But in the years during and since the pandemic—I will not shy away from telling the truth—things changed. While the number of jobs kept going up, the number of people economically inactive also started to go up, and with that, the welfare bill, and that is a big problem. It is a financial problem that means we are today debating a welfare cap which has been breached. It is an economic problem because our economy needs the talents and energies of everyone. And it is a social problem: of the 9 million people of working age defined as economically inactive, 2.8 million are not working because of ill health. That includes growing numbers of young people. Young people are starting out on a life on benefits instead of starting out on a career, missing out on the opportunities that work brings—the sense of purpose, the connections with other people, the chance to learn and develop skills—missing out on the experience of being paid for their efforts, and missing out on the chance to build financial independence and security. We as a country have a moral and financial imperative to turn this around and in government we were working flat out to tackle it.

[David Pinto-Duschinsky (Hendon) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady acknowledge that under the last Conservative Government inactivity rates among the young were the highest in the OECD, and that they were working on it, but it was not working?

[Helen Whately]

As I am sure the hon. Gentleman heard, I was just acknowledging the fact that the economic inactivity rate started going up in the run-up to and particularly following the pandemic. We have a particular concern, which I am sure the Government share, around growing inactivity among young people. It is a challenge that we are experiencing more than other countries, and there is a lot of work to do to get to the bottom of it. I was involved in that work in government as a Health Minister, and it is imperative that the new Government get a grip on that issue.

[Peter Swallow]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Helen Whately]

I will make some progress.

In government, we were working flat out to tackle that problem. We were changing how we assess people’s capability for work, recognising that the world of work has changed. We developed WorkWell to help people with health conditions or disabilities find and stay in work, and we were reforming the fit notes that GPs give people. Once again, we were opposed by Labour every step of the way.

We also had plans to go further. In our manifesto, we committed to £12 billion-worth of savings by reforming sickness benefits. Labour responded at the time by saying that the money is simply not there, and the present Chancellor said that not a single penny could be saved from welfare. It turns out that, on this one occasion, Labour has stuck to its word: it has no plans to control welfare spending. Today, the Government are setting a welfare cap that does not include a penny’s worth of savings at a staggering £195 billion by 2029-30—a 44% increase on this year’s cap. In cash terms, that is more than our entire defence budget. Not content with not saving a single penny, they have given themselves a £10 billion buffer on top of that. That lack of ambition is terrifying.

We believe that money can and should be saved from the welfare bill. The Chancellor finally seems to agree with us, because she has been busy briefing the papers in a panic about cutting spending. But where are those plans? Unfortunately, she has not got any because, as I said, until now she did not believe any savings could be made. Perhaps the Employment Minister can give us some clues. I believe she has canned my fit note reforms, so what will she do to get the welfare bill down and by when? How on earth does she expect to get people into work when 50,000 people were added to the unemployment figures in December alone?

[Alison McGovern]

I think I am being asked whether we stopped the extensive work that the previous Government were doing on rising inactivity. I have to say that when I got into the Department for Work and Pensions, there was not an extensive plan available. That is why we have had to embark on fundamental reform, which we set out in a White Paper in November, and that is why we will shortly be bringing forward a Green Paper on health and disability reform. The idea that somehow there was an instruction list left in the Department that we could just crack on with is a fantasy.

[Helen Whately]

The hon. Lady will know—at least I think she will know—that the vast majority of what she set out in the White Paper was the continuation of things we were doing in government. In fact, if she has read it she will see that it even says that the youth guarantee is essentially a new name for a repackaged set of measures that are already in place. That is literally in the White Paper. I am happy to follow up with her afterwards on the page that she will find that phrase on.

I have yet to see a single sign to suggest that this Government can tackle the welfare bill, and the cap they are setting today tells us that they agree. The Opposition will support efforts to bring down welfare costs sensibly. We need a compassionate safety net, but that net should never become a trap. If the Government do not get a grip of the problem, it will put our entire social contract at risk. Ministers have finally twigged that action is required—a Green Paper is, they say, on its way. I urge the hon. Lady to get on with it, because each month that passes see thousands more drift out of work and into a life of inactivity.

Women’s State Pension Age Communication: PHSO Report

Helen Whately Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions for advance sight of her statement, and I thank the ombudsman and his team for their work on this important matter.

In March this year, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman published its final report into the way that changes to the state pension age were communicated to women born in the 1950s. The report took over five years to produce and reflects the complexity of the issue. It spans a 30-year period across different Governments, dating back to Parliament’s decision in 1995 for the state pension age for men and women to be equalised, in a long-overdue move towards gender equality.

As the chief executive of the ombudsman set out, the Department for Work and Pensions fully co-operated with the ombudsman through its investigation and provided thousands of pages of detailed evidence to support it. It is because we took the work of the ombudsman so seriously that it was right for the Government to fully and properly consider the findings, and we were committed to working with Parliament to provide an appropriate and swift response. However, as the House will know, the general election was called less than two months later. Given that it has taken Labour five months since the general election to provide its findings, I am sure the Secretary of State would agree that there was insufficient time to take a considered and fair decision between the publication of the report and the election.

I am glad that the Secretary of State has picked this issue up since coming into office and has brought her statement to the House today. I will be considering it in more detail in the days and weeks to come, as well as the basis on which she has reached her conclusion. I am sure that the Government’s statement today will be a huge disappointment to WASPI women, and I recognise the strength of feeling about the issue.

As a constituency MP, I have met WASPI women who live in Faversham and Mid Kent and heard their personal stories. No doubt campaigners will note the Government’s apology for the decisions made between 2005 and 2007 that led to a 28-month delay in sending out letters, which the ombudsman identified as “maladministration”. But let us be clear: the decision to provide no compensation is the Government’s decision, and they need to own it. I am not going to let them get away with saying that there is no compensation because of a fictional black hole in the public finances. The country’s financial position now is a result of their political choices. They should not try to dodge responsibility by suggesting to WASPI women that, if times were different, they might have come to a different conclusion. Government compensation should always be based on what is fair and just.

That brings me to some questions. Given the announcement that they will not be providing financial compensation, will the Government put forward any other non-financial form of remedy for the women affected? Will the Secretary of State be involving the WASPI campaigners in the action plan she has referred to and what is the timeline for that?

The Secretary of State claimed that pensioners are better off under Labour, but let us not forget that it was the Conservatives who introduced and protected the triple lock, which has seen the state pension increase by £3,700 since 2010, and there are now 200,000 fewer pensioners living in absolute poverty. Does the right hon. Lady know how many women affected by her decision are on pension credit?

Labour’s own impact assessment shows that its decision to scrap the winter fuel payment will see 5.2 million women lose out. How many of those hit by those cuts to the winter fuel payment are also affected by today’s announcement?

Finally, given that the Government have dismissed the recommendations of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, will the Secretary of State set out what implications she sees for the future of the ombudsman?

[Liz Kendall]

I welcome the overall tone of the hon. Lady’s comments. I am glad that she is finally considering her party’s response to the ombudsman’s report, and I am sure that the whole House looks forward to its detailed response to the findings and recommendations, which were not provided when the Conservatives were in Government.

I am sorry that the hon. Lady still fails to take responsibility for the state of the public finances. We have taken full responsibility for that and have taken difficult decisions on the public finances. We have also taken this very difficult decision in response to the ombudsman’s report and have provided that to the House as quickly as we have been able, given the huge amount of information we have had to go through.

The hon. Lady asks about next steps. We have three clear things that we intend to do. We will produce a detailed action plan. We want to work with the ombudsman on that so that we can ensure that the delay, the maladministration and the 28-month delay in sending out notifications never happens again, and I am perfectly happy to consider working with the women to make sure we get that right. It is extremely important that, wherever possible, we provide personalised, tailored information. Pensions are a hugely complicated area, and we want people to be empowered with that information and knowledge. We have to do it in all sorts of different formats, because it is individual to the person, and we need to get that right in future.

The hon. Lady also mentioned pension credit and the winter fuel payment. I will say to her, as I did yesterday, that we have seen a 145% increase in the number of claims for pension credit since we launched our campaign. More than 42,000 more people are claiming pension credit now. We want to deal with yet another thing the Conservative Government left us with, which was 880,000 pensioners not getting the pension credit or the winter fuel payment they are entitled to.

These are difficult decisions. We are a responsible Government and we face up to our responsibilities. I look forward to Members on the Conservative Benches finally doing the same.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Whately Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

In the run-up to the election, Labour clearly committed to an employment rate target of 80%, but in the past few weeks I have noticed a shift in language from “target” to “ambition”. Will the Minister clear this up for us: are the Government still committed to the 80% employment target, or will that be another broken Labour promise?

[Alison McGovern]

I make no apologies for having ambition for people in our labour market. The figure was always an ambition, because Labour Members want our jobcentres to shift away from pointless admin towards real ambition for everybody who steps through the door.

[Helen Whately]

I think we all heard that loud and clear: Labour has ditched its employment target. That is already another broken Labour promise. However, I feel for the Minister. How can she be expected to boost employment when her Chancellor is busy taxing jobs and then shrinking the economy? The Government have destroyed business confidence, have put up taxes on jobs, and are piling red tape on employers. Which of those measures will help her to deliver that employment “ambition”?

[Alison McGovern]

I have brought forward proposals to get Britain working, together with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the Secretary of State for Education, and Secretaries of State right across Government. That is how we will plot a course towards our ambition of an 80% employment rate. I thank the shadow Secretary of State for being kind enough to refer to our “Get Britain Working” plans as

“rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic”.

It was very brave of her to acknowledge that the last Government’s legacy for us was a sinking ship.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

How many people who should get the winter fuel payment will get it this winter?

[Liz Kendall]

We intend to ensure that everybody who is entitled to pension credit, and therefore the winter fuel payment, claims it and gets it. We have seen a 145% increase in claims—far more than was ever achieved under the last Government. If the hon. Lady was so concerned about that, perhaps she should have taken action during her party’s 14 years in government.

[Helen Whately]

Unfortunately, the right hon. Lady simply will not give a straight answer. She will not tell the House what she knows; she knew that the Government’s choices would push 100,000 pensioners into poverty and she did not tell the House that, either. Let us try this question instead. The Government’s own figures show that pensioners applying now will have to wait until the spring to find out whether they will get winter fuel money. What is her advice to a pensioner sitting in the cold and wondering if they can afford to turn on their heating this Christmas?

[Liz Kendall]

If the hon. Lady cared so much about pensioners in the cold, why did her Government leave 880,000 not claiming pension credit? Why did they first promise to bring together housing benefit and pension credit in 2011 and never deliver it? This Government are taking action—42,500 more people are receiving pension credit now than when she left government. We are determined to act; perhaps she should apologise for her failure.

Disability History Month

Helen Whately Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I congratulate the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) on securing this debate during Disability History Month. As someone with a disability herself, she will likely know that everyday life can be so much harder for those with a disability than for those of us fortunate to be able to take our health more or less for granted.

Before I was elected to Parliament, I had an inspirational colleague who had suffered a spinal injury that left her unable to walk. Our jobs were demanding—a 70-hour week was not uncommon—and somehow my colleague managed to do the work, and do it brilliantly, despite all the extra challenges of life in a wheelchair, including the difficulty of getting to and from work and navigating inaccessible buildings, and all the extra effort it takes to do the everyday things that so many of us do without thinking, like getting dressed or taking a shower. Working alongside her made me realise the importance of the things that we have done to help disabled people over the years, like making buildings and transport more accessible.

I also saw the consequences of people failing to give any thought to those needs: for example, by using disabled toilets as storage cupboards, or leaving them locked so that people have to go on a mission to find the key—a mission that is doubly hard for someone in a wheelchair. My colleague’s disability was obvious, but we should be sure to remember people whose disabilities are hidden and not to underestimate the difficulty that such disabilities can add to life. For instance, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths) said with great insight that in this job it is the first time her hearing loss has felt like an advantage as she uses her platform as an MP to advocate for others. She argued powerfully for disabled people to be able to access not just a job but a career.

Alongside talking about the challenges, this Disability History Month is a chance to reflect on pivotal moments of progress for disabled people and to celebrate the individual heroes who picked up the cause and made the running—metaphorically and sometimes in practice. If we cast our minds back, for instance, to summer 2012, right here in London the international bar was raised and a new standard was set for what disabled people could imagine achieving.

More than 4,000 para-athletes from 164 countries competed with everything they had in front of a physical audience of 2.7 million people. It was watched on 3.8 billion television screens around the world, with record- breaking audiences, including a record number of young people growing up with a disability who were waking up each day and thinking, “If I put my mind to it, that could be me.” We in this country made a leap forward at that moment, and as we did so, we led the world. The message is repeated at every Paralympic games: never underestimate what someone with a disability can do.

That brings me to disability employment. The Government should recognise the challenges that disabled people face, but must not dissuade anyone of their ability to overcome them. On the contrary, the Government must lean into the barriers to employment and help to knock them aside. On that my party has a strong track record. As a new Back Bencher, I remember being encouraged by a passionate disabilities Minister at the time, Justin Tomlinson, to get involved in our Disability Confident programme to get employers across the country to think differently about disabilities.

In 2017 we set a target to get a million more disabled people into work by 2027, and we met that target five years early; there are now 5.5 million disabled people in work. We took practical steps to achieve that, including working with employers, as I mentioned; funding Access to Work, which helped more than 67,000 people in 2023-24; launching universal support to give personalised support to long-term sick and disabled people to find and stay in work; and providing supported internships for people with special educational needs. Those are just a few examples.

I am a firm believer that work is the best way to improve our standard of living, as well as giving us the satisfaction of a job well done—a view that I am sure is shared by many, if not all, hon. Members present, and also argued for compellingly by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) in his extremely well-informed speech. The question is not whether someone can work, but what work they can do and how. If a person with disabilities needs help to work, where does that help come from? Often it comes from family, community, charities—as hon. Members have referred to today, which often have deep expertise—volunteers who give their time and compassion, and, as I have set out, the Government.

The Government’s resources must be targeted. Since the pandemic, we all know that the number of people who are economically inactive due to ill health has surged, reaching 2.8 million people. Apart from the cost, that is a waste of talent and potential. That is why, when the Conservatives were in government, we embarked on reforms to help people to stay in work or get back to work—reforms to fit notes, the launch of WorkWell, the launch of universal support, and our work with employers. We reformed welfare to make sure that financial incentives did not get in the way of work.

I welcome the Government taking forward many of those reforms, but I believe they have made a grave error in kicking the can down the road on the accompanying benefit reforms. Every day that someone who could work is getting money from benefits instead is money that could help a disabled person to live their life to the full.

As I conclude I will return to history, given the topic of the debate. The Disabled Persons (Employment) Act 1944, which was introduced in response to the second world war, as the hon. Member for Thurrock said, laid the path for disability legislation and protections for the next 80 years. We live in a different era, but our welfare system is built on the vision of our predecessors who were determined to make sure that soldiers who were wounded defending our freedom would be supported on their return home. When the Conservatives were in government, we put our shoulder to the wheel to make our welfare system fit for the 21st century. We made progress, but there is much more to do. Every hon. Member who has spoken today has made important suggestions.

This Disability History Month is a chance to send an emphatic message of encouragement to people with disabilities across the whole United Kingdom. We know how hard every day can be, but let there be no limits to what they can achieve.

“Get Britain Working” White Paper

Helen Whately Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement. The Conservatives are the party of work and aspiration—[Interruption.] In the decade after we took over from Labour, we drove down unemployment—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order.

[Helen Whately]

In the decade after we took over from Labour, we drove down unemployment and economic inactivity year after year, including youth unemployment, which went down by 400,000 after the mess we inherited from the last Labour Government. During the pandemic, we took unprecedented action to protect jobs and livelihoods, but since the pandemic we have faced a new and difficult challenge in this country: rising economic inactivity, particularly among young people. In government, we were tackling that. I know that, because as a Health Minister I was working on it. I am delighted that the right hon. Lady and the Health Secretary visited one of our WorkWell pilots just the other day. I was working on our fit note reforms, our youth offer, which helped a million young people, and our universal support scheme, which I now hear the Secretary of State has quietly rebranded as her own Connect to Work scheme.

Far from being cross that the Government are pinching our ideas, I welcome the right hon. Lady taking our work forward. She is making the right noises about how important it is to fix this area. Economic inactivity is a big problem for our economy and for each and every individual who risks being written off to a life on benefits. Knowing that, I am disappointed by the substance of what she is announcing today, because far from matching her rhetoric, it appears to be little more than a pot of money for local councils, some disparaging language about the work of jobcentres and a consultation that will be launched in the spring. Given that the Government have had 14 years to prepare for this moment, is that it?

Where are the reforms to benefits that will make material savings to the taxpayer, such as the £12 billion we committed to save in our manifesto? Where are the reforms to fit notes, which we had handed over, ready to go? Where is the Secretary of State’s plan for reforming the work capability assessments? She has banked the £3 billion of savings from our plan, but has failed to set out her own. Her big announcement is making benefits for young people conditional. Did she forget that they already are?

The fact is that the Secretary of State has dodged the tough decisions. Every day that she kicks the can down the road costs the taxpayer millions of pounds. At this rate, spending on sickness benefits will rise to £100 billion by the end of this Parliament. They are taking that money from farmers, from pensioners and from businesses. To get people off benefits, we need jobs for them to go into. Those are the very jobs that businesses are saying, since the Budget, they will no longer be hiring for. While the right hon. Lady tries to get people into work, her Chancellor is busy destroying jobs—50,000 jobs lost from her first Budget alone.

If the Secretary of State wants to get more 18-year-olds into work, she should have a word with her Chancellor, who has made it so that from April it will cost £5,000 more for a business to employ them. She should have a word with her Business Secretary, whose Employment Rights Bill will, according to the Government’s own impact assessment, make it less likely for employers to take on young people. The Government cannot solve this problem on their own. Businesses are the engine of our economy that create jobs for people to do. It is telling that I cannot see a single business representative on the new Labour Market Advisory Board.

I did hear the right hon. Lady talk about some new partnerships, but this announcement is such a song and dance about so little that I feel sure she will qualify for one of her own Royal Shakespeare Company apprenticeships. She has kicked the can so far down the road that her new partner, the Premier League, is sure to be on the phone by the end of the day.

May I for a moment cut through the word soup of the announcement? It is time for the right hon. Lady to tell the House some facts. How many people will it help into work, and by when? What is the total she is saving the taxpayer? When will she reach her 80% employment target? What return on investment is she expecting from these plans? How will she measure her success or failure? This is so far from the bold grasping of the nettle that she is making it out to be and that this country needs for our economy, for taxpayers and for the millions of people missing out on the purpose and freedom that work brings. It is simply not good enough.

[Liz Kendall]

May I say gently to the hon. Lady, who I personally like and have a great deal of time for, that the only people who dodge difficult decisions on welfare are the Conservatives? The facts speak for themselves. By the end of this Parliament, the Office for Budget Responsibility says that 420,000 more people will be on health-related universal credit benefits, rising from a third now to a half at the end of the Parliament. That is her Government’s legacy. One in eight of all our young people are not in education, employment or training. We have seen a doubling in the number of young people out of work due to long-term sickness and a doubling of young people out of work because of mental health problems. After 14 years in government, who does she think is responsible for that? I am afraid that the truth is staring her in the face: the Conservatives are now the party of welfare, and Labour is the party of work.

The hon. Lady talks about British businesses. I know only too well the pressures that many businesses face. We have spoken to the CBI, the Federation of Small Businesses and the British Chambers of Commerce, and they are keen to work with us on our proposals. They know that their members have hundreds of thousands of vacancies that they need to fill, one in three of which is because of skills gaps. They know that 300,000 people every single year fall out of work due to a health condition. They need support to try to tackle that problem. I believe that the Department for Work and Pensions and jobcentres should serve businesses’ needs and aspirations, not be the place of last resort. That is precisely what our reforms will deliver.

Finally, the biggest challenge we face today is the growing number of people out of work or at risk of falling out of work due to health problems or a disability. Our entire employment and benefits system is simply not geared up to deal with that. We will take examples of good practice from wherever we find them, but we have got to go much further. We need big reforms, not easy slogans that say people just felt a bit too bluesy to work, which do nothing to help people get to grips with the real issues in their lives. We are facing up to our responsibilities and the difficult decisions necessary to get Britain working again. It is time the hon. Lady and her party did the same.