Welfare

Debate between Josh Fenton-Glynn and Priti Patel

Wednesday 11th November 2026 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to the debate and to have heard speeches from both Front Benches. It is also good to be debating again with the Minister for Social Security and Disability, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), with whom I have had similar debates on welfare reform, from the opposite side of the House, a few times in the past.

I am intrigued by what I have heard so far, although Back-Bench contributions have been limited. I think everyone in the House will agree that we have a moral duty and responsibility to ensure the welfare system in this country is functional and does what it says on the tin. It should be a safety net for those who are in need of support, and we should all work together to find ways to get more people back into work. There is no dispute on that whatever.

The hon. Member for Gedling (Michael Payne) just quoted my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) when he was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. I was his Minister of State, and at that time we were undertaking regression analysis to ensure there were the right taper levels so that work paid and there were the right incentives for people on universal credit. There is a lot of technicality behind this, and with regard to those circumstances, I am afraid that the hon. Member’s quotation of my right hon. Friend was not totally accurate. I was proud to serve with my right hon. Friend in that Government and of the work we undertook.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn]

The right hon. Lady talks about incentivising people to get back into work. In the £36 billion of savings, can she point to where the investment in getting people back into work is?

[Priti Patel]

There is plenty of investment, starting with the work that needs to take place at the Treasury to stop putting burdens on businesses. We can have the same conversation in the other debate later this afternoon.

Back in 2010, we inherited a fiscal position in which £1 in every £4 spent was borrowed. When up against a weak fiscal position, the Government of the day have a duty to ensure they incentivise work, get more people off welfare and back into work—particularly at a time when unemployment had been rising. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member listens and goes back and looks at how the last Conservative Government did, he will know that is the case.

We saw around 1 million young people who were not in education, employment or training. Within five years, as I said in my intervention on the Minister, the number of workless households had fallen by 600,000. Over 370,000 fewer children were growing up in households where no one had a job. That is really important, because employment levels for single parents and those with disabilities and barriers to employment had also increased. Of course, it was the combination of the Work programme—all colleagues in the House should give some time to look at this—universal credit and welfare reforms that encouraged more people into work and gave them something we should all care about: the security and dignity that comes with having a job.

None of this is easy. This afternoon, we will hear lots of point scoring, but I stood at the Government Dispatch Box along with my hon. Friends to do the heavy lifting on welfare reform. In fact, it was prior to 2010, during the Government in which the Minister served—I think he was in the Treasury; he may correct me if I am wrong—that the Work programme first came into the public domain. We all heard about how the Work programme was all about working with employers and giving them incentives to do much more to get people into work. That also led to young people getting into work and more apprenticeships.

Apprenticeship starts are not straightforward; we have to incentivise them. People with disabilities had been written off—that was why we had Disability Confident, and I am pleased to hear that more work is being done to look at that scheme to get more people into work. All those people had been written off under previous Governments.

In the past, it was easier to sign people off than to create pathways to meaningful employment. We all have a duty to work with businesses in our constituencies to help people get into work. Madam Deputy Speaker, I am sure you saw in your constituency that employment rates increased for those signed off and on benefits. We also saw a halving of youth unemployment. Those are the things that had been achieved under previous Governments. Then, of course, we had the pandemic—we have heard about that—which absolutely changed the situation.

Under previous Conservative Governments, in every debate, every question time and every Budget—this is why I made the point I did to the Minister—our welfare reforms were not supported universally in the House, including by Labour Members. As the Minister does now, I fielded endless questions, urgent questions and Westminster Hall debates from Labour Members who simply could not accept that supporting people into employment and reducing welfare dependency was the right thing to do for those who had become trapped on welfare.

Nothing is worse than seeing families trapped on welfare, with the intergenerational welfare dependency that creates. All credit to colleagues, including former Secretaries of State, who worked hard to tackle that. We have a duty to find ways to reduce the costs for taxpayers and to do more to create pathways to work.

Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

Debate between Josh Fenton-Glynn and Priti Patel

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I begin my remarks by paying tribute to the many speakers in the debate, and in particular the Chair of the International Development Committee, the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), who has been a long-standing advocate for development aid. I have had the great privilege of working with her, and I thoroughly understand her commitment.

I will pay tribute to a few other colleagues. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) has been a long-standing, dedicated and passionate advocate not just for 0.7%, but for the effective use of that funding, and for working with the private sector, which he and I have both had the enormous privilege of doing. I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) for her commitment. I have had the privilege of working with her as well, and during her time in government she was professional and committed to her brief. Of course, last week the Government sent her here to defend Labour’s indefensible Chagos surrender deal, which uses money transferred from the aid budget to defence to pay for the lease of a site that we have sovereignty over.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)]

rose—

[Priti Patel]

I will not give way because I do not have time.

To spare the blushes of the Minister, I will not relitigate the debate. I am glad that he is in his place because there is a lot to cover. He will speak passionately about development aid and assistance because of his background and experience. I would like to ask him a question about the British Indian Ocean Territory and which budgets the lease costs will come from. Will it be from the FCO, defence or ODA budgets? We still need an explanation of that. I thank the Minister, because before the debate started I received a flurry of answers to some of the questions I have been posing on this issue. However, just for the record, I still do not have clarification, so there will be more.

I want to speak about defence spending and ODA. The Government were right to follow our calls to redirect some ODA funds to support the defence budget at this critical time.