Welfare Reform

Debate between Jen Craft and Liz Kendall

Tuesday 18th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Liz Kendall]

As always, my hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. We want to free up our work coaches’ time from tick-box benefit administration so that they can spend more time with sick and disabled people who need support, and can refer them to, for instance, mental health or debt advice services. When we do that, more people get into work, and both their finances and their mental health improve. We have already announced that we will free up 1,000 work coaches’ time to help more than 60,000 sick and disabled people, and that is just the start: we want it to be rolled out throughout the land.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

I am one of the 6% to 8% of people living with a serious mental illness in employment, despite 80% of us wanting to work. I am here despite a mental health system that I have always found unsupportive, and because I went out of my way to forge my own pathway of support and care. Although I welcome the Secretary of State’s offer of a package of support, my plea to her is that she work with her colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care to make sure that those of us who suffer with a severe mental illness have the true support that we need to access employment.

[Liz Kendall]

My hon. Friend is right. One of the things we learned during the pandemic is that a healthy nation and a healthy economy are two sides of the same coin. I believe we need to do much, much more to join up what the DWP does with what the NHS and, crucially, local skills and voluntary organisations do. That is not the way we have worked in the past, but that is what we want to change.

“Get Britain Working” White Paper

Debate between Jen Craft and Liz Kendall

Tuesday 26th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Liz Kendall]

The hon. Lady raises a massively important point, and I am really sorry to hear about what her constituents are experiencing. We have to get people back to health and back to work. It is no wonder that so many people are out of work due to long-term sickness, given that waiting lists are at near-record levels. That is why my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary is sending in extra help, including doctors, to drive down waiting lists in the areas that need help the most. It is a no-brainer that we have to get people off waiting lists to get them back to work. That is what I mean when I say that a healthy nation and a healthy workforce are two sides of the same coin.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

Thurrock Lifestyle Solutions in my constituency is an excellent example of good practice in helping disabled people enter and stay in the workplace. It is particularly successful because it embodies the maxim, “Nothing about us without us”, as it is run by, led by and designed by disabled people themselves. Will the Secretary of State commit to taking such examples of best practice into consideration, and to ensuring that the voices of disabled people and those with long-term health conditions are put at the very heart of the strategy?

[Liz Kendall]

Yes. What my hon. Friend and many hon. Members have highlighted today are lots of individual examples of really good working, but we are not joining them up. They are not a central part of our employment system, but they absolutely should be. We know that we need extra investment, and the Chancellor has put £240 million into this endeavour, but we are not getting the most out of the money we are spending because it is not co-ordinated and joined up. That is what we mean by delivering investment and reform together. If it is locally led and involves people who are doing all this fantastic work, we can make a really big difference.