Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform (Disabled People)

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

That this House notes the comments of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform, Lord Freud, on 30 September 2014 that the work of disabled people is not worth the minimum wage; believes that these comments have further undermined trust among disabled people in this Government’s policies, a trust which had already been damaged by delays in assessments for a personal independence payment, problems with work capability assessments, and the poor performance of policies aimed at helping disabled people into work; further notes that the conduct of Lord Freud had already damaged that trust through his oversight of the housing benefit social sector size criteria which has had a particularly severe impact on disabled people, many of whom have nowhere else to move to and need extra room for medical equipment or carers; and therefore concludes that this House has no confidence in the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform; and calls on the Prime Minister to dismiss him.

I offer the apologies of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) who is unable to be in the Chamber today.

This afternoon, the eyes of millions of disabled people, their families, friends and carers are on this House. They include people such as Ciara, who has a learning disability. I had the pleasure of meeting her in Parliament a few weeks ago. She works full time for Mencap. When she heard of the noble Lord Freud’s remarks about disabled people, she said:

“People with a disability are often made to feel like second class citizens and face many barriers when trying to receive the same rights as everyone else, especially in employment. Having a politician place further barriers to us being included is incredibly upsetting and frankly quite frightening.”

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kate Green]

Not yet. No, I will not.

Ciara continued:

“I hope politicians realise that people with a disability should be encouraged to become active citizens, and not to be discriminated against for their disability, and I want to call for a full explanation of how these comments are deemed acceptable in this day and age.”

I hope that this debate will give Ciara some answers.

[Mr Stuart]

There are 116,000 more disabled people in work now than there were a year ago. Is it not time that the Labour party stopped using the disabled to smear its opponents, and supported this Government’s and Lord Freud’s efforts to get people mainstream jobs, rather than leave them stuck in joblessness or Potemkin factories?

[Kate Green]

I am astounded by that intervention immediately after I had quoted the concerns of a disabled woman.

For many months under this Government, disabled people have endured hardship, hostility and fear. They have lived with the consequences of Ministers’ decisions, which are causing them and their families real pain. As things have got worse, they have lost all faith that Ministers understand their lives. They do not believe that the Government are on their side. They have become anxious and despairing, desperate and insecure.

The remarks of the noble Lord Freud last month that disabled people were not worth the minimum wage sparked an outpouring of anger and outrage. That has prompted this debate today, for those remarks go to the heart of the collapse in trust in this Government among disabled people, not just because they might be thought a plausible statement of Government policy or of what the Government really think deep down—that is what a Freudian slip is, after all—but because disabled people already know from the effect that the Government’s policies are having on their lives that they are not valued by this Government.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will my hon. Friend use this debate to try to flush out details not just about Freud, but about other aspects of disability, such as the disabled students allowance? Can we find out whether the Government have taken away that allowance or partially put it back? They should have been proud of the fact that every disabled student in this country had the ability to go into higher education, but that has been wiped away.

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. This afternoon, we in this House have a chance to send exactly such messages on behalf of disabled people, as well as to send messages to them. I hope that the whole House will embrace this opportunity to state that we value them as equal citizens, believe we should treat them with respect, recognise the worth and potential of every person, and will not tolerate an attack on their dignity or their rights.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady accept that overall spending on disability benefits will be higher in the period to 2018 than it was under her Government?

[Kate Green]

Of course it is right that the benefits bill for disabled people has risen under this Government, but it remains Ministers’ ambition to cut that spend. The former Minister with responsibility for disabled people, the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), told me in a written answer on 14 July that the Government were on track to achieve billions of pounds of savings in cuts to the personal independence payment by 2017-18. Ministers need to be clear about whether they are spending more on disabled people or are in practice aiming to cut their benefits.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that what is so shocking about Lord Freud’s comments is the simple lack of common humanity and decency in them, which reflects the Government’s attitude to disabled people as a whole? When I have asked questions about work capability assessments or Atos cancelling appointments, the Government simply do not know: they do not choose to find out such information because they do not actually care about it.

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[Kate Green]

That is absolutely right. As I will show later, on several occasions when I have asked Ministers for information about what is happening, the answer has either been that they do not know or that they do not record the information at all.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

I have known the hon. Lady for a long time, and I am concerned by a charge she is making. Will she explain to the House why, if this matter of the clumsy and offensive words for which Lord Freud has apologised were of concern to the Labour party to the extent it says, Labour waited weeks after it had the recording to bring it forward at Prime Minister’s questions? Surely if Labour Members were so concerned about this—instead of the faux concern they are now showing—they would have raised it immediately and demanded an apology and an explanation. Why did they not do so immediately rather than wait for weeks?

[Kate Green]

We were so taken aback and stunned by these remarks, and we considered them so offensive and serious, that we considered it right to bring them before the Prime Minister in the highest forum in this land, this Chamber, in the very first Prime Minister’s Question Time that we had the opportunity to do so.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

I want to go back to the question about increased spending. It is unacceptable to boast of increased spending when that is due to inefficiency and the failure to deliver. In 2010, the Office for Budget Responsibility expected spending on incapacity benefit to fall. That projection has now been changed to an increase of £3 billion, which, put against the sort of savings being made on disabled people through the bedroom tax, is absolutely outrageous. Surely nobody can boast about spending more if it is down to their own inefficiency.

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is right.

As we start the debate this afternoon, let me say that we can send a message of dignity and respect to disabled people in two ways. We can do so by voting for the motion to make it clear that anyone who makes comments that suggest discriminating against disabled people or that demean them should not be in government, least of all in a role in which they make decisions day in, day out that affect disabled people’s lives. We can also show our feelings by the way in which we conduct this debate. The real reason this debate matters so much is that it is an opportunity for us to show disabled people that we understand why Lord Freud’s remarks caused such anger and pain and that we understand what is happening in their lives. Lord Freud’s comments have touched a chord because disabled people are already suffering so much from the policies for which he and his ministerial colleagues are responsible.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

I think that the hon. Lady is struggling to make her case. Will she explain why, in 2003, the Labour party had a policy to get rid of the minimum wage for people who had mental health problems?

[Kate Green]

That was never our policy. Of course programmes exist to support disabled people who are on benefits to get into therapeutic work, but that is not what the noble Lord Freud was speaking about.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to condemn unreservedly the reprehensible comments that were made by Lord Freud at the Conservative party conference, but should we not also condemn his actions? It must never be forgotten that Lord Freud is the chief champion of the bedroom tax, which has condemned two thirds of disabled people to live in poverty.

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that this debate is about the Minister’s bedroom tax, which disproportionately affects disabled people and their families, with two thirds of those who are hit being disabled people, their families and their carers. It is about the chaos of the personal independence payment, which is leaving thousands of people without essential support. It is about Ministers’ handling of the work capability assessment and the abject failure of their policies to support many disabled people into work, and it is about the collapse in social care and the services that support people to live the lives that they want. My hon. Friend is right that what this afternoon’s debate is truly about is putting the policies that Lord Freud and his colleagues have been pursuing under the microscope, and understanding what has gone wrong.

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

In this place I have campaigned on mental health with people from all parts of the Chamber, including some fabulous people from the Opposition. The one thing that I have learned is that people make mistakes. Sometimes people get it wrong, like Lord Freud did, but they apologise and are allowed to move on. Please will the hon. Lady find some compassion for people who make mistakes and apologise? He is not a bad man.

[Kate Green]

I have known Lord Freud for a number of years and I agree that, personally, he is courteous and caring. However, his remark touched a deep nerve for disabled people and we have to understand why. It is because it came in the context of the Government’s policies and the effects that disabled people are experiencing.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

Lord Freud is an intelligent and articulate individual. He knew what he was saying and he meant what he was saying. Does my hon. Friend agree that Ministers, of whatever political persuasion, who make such offensive remarks about disabled people should be kicked out of office immediately, never to return?

[Kate Green]

I do think that it is difficult for someone who expresses such views to remain in government and in that role.

Let us examine the policy record of the Government. Let us start with the bedroom tax—Lord Freud’s brainchild. Everyone knows that it is a disaster for disabled people. Many disabled people have lived in their homes for years. They have invested in adaptations, as have their families and local councils. Some people need an extra room for equipment or so that an overnight carer can stay. Some people have a condition that means that they cannot share a room with their partner. Many people are settled in their community, with care and concerned family and neighbours close to hand so that they can call for help when they need it. Now they are being forced to move, to cut back on other expenditure to pay the rent or to go into debt.

We all know of cases in our constituencies, such as that of a disabled grandfather, Paul Rutherford, who cares for his severely disabled grandchild, Warren. Extra space is needed in the family home to cope with all of Warren’s equipment. Paul has to rely on discretionary housing payment to pay the rent. Why should he have to go through the anxiety and indignity of pleading for the support that he and his family need? Have we lost all compassion? Have we lost all sense of people’s dignity?

Not only is the bedroom tax exceptionally cruel; it is failing to meet its objectives. Only about 7% of those who have been hit by the tax have been able to move to a smaller home. It is not saving the money that the Government said it would, either. Is it not time that Ministers admitted that this Freud tax is not working and got rid of it, as Labour has pledged to do?

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Having served with the hon. Lady on the Work and Pensions Committee, I applaud her commitment to these issues. She made an important point about the tone in which this debate must happen. Does she agree that what matters most is what all of us are doing as individuals and as part of the Government or the Opposition to support people with disabilities to get back into work? In that context, Gloucestershire county council is one of the best rated authorities in the country. Through its Forwards programme, it is working closely with the Government on a Disability Confident event that I am hosting on 14 November, which the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), will attend. Will the hon. Lady join me in saying that that is precisely the sort of thing that we need to do around the country to help people with disabilities to get into jobs and find ways of taking their lives forward helpfully and productively?

[Kate Green]

Of course, I welcome any initiatives such as those that the hon. Gentleman describes. I am looking forward to hosting a Disability Confident event shortly with my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) in our local authority. However, I think that we need to look a little more broadly than just at what we all do as individuals. It is the collective responsibility of Ministers and the collective policies of the Government that are under examination this afternoon.

When the Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform questions whether disabled people are worth a full wage, does he forget that under his Government, hundreds of thousands of disabled people are right now sitting in queues, waiting to be assessed for the financial support that they should be receiving from the Government? More than 300,000 people are awaiting an assessment for personal independence payment, which is the Government’s replacement for disability living allowance.

Can Members imagine what it must be like to become disabled as a result of a catastrophic event such as a stroke or a terrible accident; to have to spend a fortune on adapting your home, on transport to get to appointments, on new equipment and on adjusting to your new life; to have to give up work and to have less money coming in; for your partner to have to give up work as well to care for you; and then for your PIP award, which should be helping with the additional costs associated with your impairment, to become stuck in an enormous backlog?

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Kate Green]

No, I will make some progress.

We heard again this morning in Westminster Hall that the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), is determined to bring down the waiting times for PIP assessments to 16 weeks. That is welcome, but he should acknowledge that it is a less ambitious timetable than the 12 weeks from application to decision that the Government initially suggested in the PIP toolkit. Meanwhile, disabled people are left high and dry for months. I have constituents who have waited almost a year for an assessment. My constituent, Mr W, has even received compensation for the delay that he has experienced. I was shocked when I asked the Minister how much compensation payments had cost the taxpayer. In a written answer on 20 September, he told me that the Department for Work and Pensions is not bothering to keep a record.

Most pertinently, when the Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform says that the way to get more disabled people into employment is to cut their pay, I point to the failure of a raft of Government policies. The work capability assessment, which was introduced by Labour in a staged manner, was then pushed through by this Government in a botched rush. There is now a backlog: 600,000 cases are awaiting a first assessment. Reassessments have been put on ice altogether. People are waiting for weeks, in some cases with no money at all coming in, for mandatory reconsideration. There is a terrible record of poor-quality decision making and a huge number of cases have been appealed successfully. Just last week, The Independent reported that thousands of people with degenerative conditions are being put in the work-related activity group and denied the support element of employment and support allowance. Can Members imagine the anxiety that that must cause, not to mention the waste of resources?

At the same time, the number of people being put into the support group overall is rising rapidly. Far from getting people into work, more people are being cast aside by the coalition Government. People are being abandoned, exactly as happened under Mrs Thatcher, when incapacity benefit was used as a means of massaging down the unemployment figures. Of course disabled people who are not able to work must get the support to which they are entitled, but many disabled people could work and would love to work, and they are being truly failed by the Government.

The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) highlighted the number of people who have moved into work, but he should also acknowledge that the gap between the employment rates of working-age disabled and non-disabled adults remains at a stubborn 30%.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

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[Kate Green]

No, I will not at the moment, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, because I want to finish my point.

For a while under Labour that gap was closing, but now progress has stalled. The Work programme—the Government’s flagship programme for getting people into work—is totally failing disabled people, getting only around one in 20 into sustained employment. It is worse than if there were no programme at all.

One year after the last factory closed, 50% of Remploy workers are still without work. The number of people on the Access to Work programme, which helps with adaptations in the workplace to enable disabled people to work, has fallen by 1,800 since 2009-10, and more and more people are reporting difficulty in accessing it. Although last year the DWP claimed that it was expanding Access to Work to cover internships and placements, and that that would benefit hundreds of disabled people, on 9 September the Minister told me in a written answer that he could not provide me with statistics to show how many people had benefited. Meanwhile, the number of specialist disability employment advisers in Jobcentre Plus is down 20% under this Government, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) pointed out, Ministers are cutting the disabled students allowance by upwards of £70 million.

[Mr Stuart]

This is a difficult area in which to get policy right, and criticisms can be made of this Government and indeed the previous Government. What is the point of personalising this issue when Lord Freud was wrestling with exactly the issue the hon. Lady has just identified? How do we get the disabled into work, and how do we support them? If, because of their severe disability their commercial value is not right, how do we supplement that? That is what Lord Freud meant and I think the hon. Lady knows that. Perhaps she will put that on the record.

[Kate Green]

I will put on the record that it was not anybody making those remarks but the Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform. He is responsible for making decisions that affect millions of disabled people’s lives, and they took deep offence and were hurt by what they heard him say. Those remarks exemplify Government policies that are failing the objective that the hon. Gentleman describes. That is why we think it important to connect Lord Freud’s remarks with wider Government policy.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kate Green]

I will make some progress as I know that many other colleagues want to join the debate.

It seems that the Government are happy to accept a waste of potential, and the additional cost of leaving disabled people on benefits year after year is resulting in their spending £8 billion more than Ministers planned. I think we are all agreed: if we—including Lord Freud—want more disabled people in work, as Labour does, there are plenty of policy areas to consider and policies that could be improved before we start to talk of cutting pay.

We have already come forward with our ideas: to refocus the work capability assessment on its original purpose of helping to identify the package of support that a disabled person who could work would need in order to do so; to introduce penalties for wrong or poor-quality assessments by work capability providers; and to ask disabled people to be part of a process of reviewing and improving the WCA, as they have direct experience of it. We know that the Work programme is not working for disabled people. We have said we will replace it with a specialist programme of locally contracted support that will mean that local providers, who have best knowledge of local opportunities, services and other providers, will be able to design holistic support for disabled people, to enable them to prepare for work. Perhaps Ministers will heed our practical suggestions, and most importantly, perhaps they will heed our promise that under a Labour Government the tone of the debate will be different.

We should all be ashamed that disability hate crime continues to increase, and that disabled people report experiencing a stream of negativity and hostility towards them. Research by Scope last year, one year after this country proudly hosted the 2012 Paralympic games and celebrated our medal winners, found that 81% of disabled people said that attitudes towards them had not improved in the previous 12 months, with 22% saying that things had got worse. Some 84% of those who said that that had happened thought that media coverage of benefit claims and the welfare system had had a negative effect on public attitudes.

I am deeply ashamed that disabled people feel hounded and bullied in our country, and I am angry that DWP Ministers, if not actually using hostile and negative language towards disabled people, are certainly not doing anything to halt it. Indeed, the DWP is promoting it. In one egregious example recently, the DWP press office retweeted a derogatory story about disabled people on benefits that had appeared in the national media. Last month’s remarks by Lord Freud have done yet more damage.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Angela Maher, a brave mother battling angina with two disabled sons in my constituency, fell prey to a whispering campaign—“Why is she getting a car on benefits?” It culminated in her severely disabled son having stones thrown at him when he was in his wheelchair. She came to see me the day after the Chancellor’s speech on shirkers and strivers. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is absolutely shameful that the disabled should ever in those circumstances be branded as “shirkers”? It is a disgrace that we have a tone that has led to hate crime on the rise once again in 21st-century Britain.

[Kate Green]

None of us can feel proud when we hear that story. Hon. Members do not have to take my word for the concerns of disabled people. Michaela, a member of Trailblazers, Muscular Dystrophy Campaign’s network of young disabled campaigners, says of Lord Freud’s remarks:

“I’ve worked since I was 17 to improve, enhance and find full inclusion for those of us living life with disabilities. I’ve worked with a range of charities as a volunteer, pushing for better policies for a range of services, tried to give my voice to the cause and I can honestly say that I do feel more included in society today than ever before…What happened yesterday”—

she means the day Lord Freud’s remarks became public—

“has damaged our position. Lord Freud has enforced the idea that we are less productive, less valuable and by definition less human than the rest of society.”

That is how disabled people feel, and Ministers know how damaging Lord Freud’s remarks have been.

On 16 October the Secretary of State for Health said on “Question Time”:

“Well first of all, I don’t defend what he said, those words were utterly appalling.”

and the Minister’s colleague, the Minister for Employment, the right hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), said:

“you’re right those words will haunt him. I cannot justify those words, they were wrong.”

I know Lord Freud has apologised, but the damage has been done—done in deed and in word by the Minister and his Government. Disabled people deserve a clear signal that we know the offence and hurt that Lord Freud’s remarks have caused. This afternoon we can send them a clear message that we will not tolerate such language, and that we value and respect them as equal members of our society. This afternoon, we can vote for the motion before the House, and I ask hon. Members to do so.

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[Mr Harper]

I will set out some of the things that Lord Freud has done in government, but let me finish on the record of the Labour party, which is worth listening to. Some Labour Members may have to do some rapid rewriting of their speeches.

James Purnell, when Secretary of State, appointed Lord Freud to work on his proposals. Lord Freud served with the Labour party until January 2009. He then concluded that there was no appetite for radical welfare reform under the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). Lord Freud then joined the Conservative party and our Front-Bench team, of which I was a member at the time, to develop our proposals for welfare reform. James Purnell of course had similar thoughts about the appetite of the Labour party for welfare reform and he resigned from the Government five months later. He called on the Labour party to dump its leader, and thankfully for us the public did so a year later.

Lord Freud joined us, I have worked closely with him and he is passionate about getting disabled people into work. I know that the travesty of his character that the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston set out is unfair and unwarranted.

[Kate Green]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

I will take the hon. Lady’s intervention in a moment. It is worth adding that, for his work under the Labour party and under us, Lord Freud has not taken a penny from the taxpayer in salary.

[Kate Green]

I acknowledge all that the Minister says about Lord Freud’s personal motives, but as a Minister the language that he uses is important. It exemplified what disabled people feel, experience and live in their daily lives. Does the Minister not accept that that is why the remarks of Lord Freud, not as an adviser but as a Minister who takes decisions about disabled people’s lives, have caused so much hurt and offence?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady knows that Lord Freud’s mistake was to accept the premise of the question. The man who asked the question is the father of a disabled daughter. He was concerned about her ability in the past to get work. It was an honest question asked in an honest way. Lord Freud himself accepts that he expressed himself clumsily and that he had offended people. He apologised for that when the remarks were drawn to his attention. Any reasonable person would accept his apology.

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[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady will know that the WCA and the personal independence payment are not based on diagnoses of conditions; they are about the impact on somebody’s life. It is also—[Interruption.] Perhaps Members will listen to the reply. It is also worth making sure that people are getting the appropriate help. When someone is assessed the first time, it might be that they are found able to work. If their condition deteriorates and has a larger impact on their life, it is important for us to ensure that they get the help they need for that level of condition, so I think it is perfectly appropriate to reassess people at intervals of up to three years.

The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston mentioned the spare room subsidy, which this House has debated at great length. The basic issue is one of fairness and treating people in social housing the same as those in private rented accommodation. That was the position that applied under the whole of the last Government, and I am still waiting to hear how Labour plan to fund the reversal of that policy. It is also worth noting that the example she gave, if I heard her correctly, was of somebody who had received support from discretionary housing payments, which are exactly designed for people who need that extra support. I could not quite see what her criticism was.

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to the Minister for allowing me to answer that point. The issue about discretionary housing payments, as I know from my own disabled constituents, is the stress and uncertainty of receiving short-term award after short-term award and having to apply, then reapply and reapply. I frequently have to intervene with the local authority to ask it to make longer awards. Would it not be fairer, simpler and less costly for those claimants, as well as giving them much greater peace of mind, simply to make an award that recognised their housing needs?

[Mr Harper]

In preparation for the private Member’s Bill debate, I read through the guidance we give to local authorities on discretionary housing payments, which is clear that it is perfectly open to local authorities to make a long-term award where someone has a long-term condition. That was one reason why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out the amount of discretionary housing payments not just for the current year, but for the year ahead, saying that local authorities could make those awards with the confidence that the money would be available.

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[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I very much wanted to take part in this debate so I greatly appreciate being called to speak given that I must apologise to the House for not having been here for all the opening speeches. I was at a meeting with the Home Secretary that could not be changed. First, I add my congratulations to the newly elected Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) on her very good maiden speech. I associate myself with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) about the importance of her victory, which virtually the whole House will celebrate.

I am surprised that the Opposition are continuing their witch hunt against Lord Freud. I did not agree with the form of words that he used, for which he has apologised. I would have thought that after the drubbing the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), received on “Question Time”, they might have learnt their lesson about the pursuit of this individual for some remarks that he made in answer to a question by a family member of someone who was affected by this distressing issue without rephrasing their words. I think that is about the sum of it. I have spoken to him about this. He in no way marks down the worth of people with disabilities that have nothing to do with the economic value that they might add to an enterprise in the workplace.

We have to face the fact that while many people desperately want to work—to find an occupation where they can be of some value and make a contribution—there is sometimes an issue about whether their value can be recognised economically, and that might call for more Government intervention. The Opposition have not addressed that. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) put this very well, and he reminded the House that only 10% of people with learning disabilities are in work. We should all be ashamed of that and seek an answer to it rather than conducting a witch hunt against a man who is giving his time, without any remuneration at all, to try to help people with disabilities.

The Opposition have a track record in this area. For 10 years, before 2008 or thereabouts, almost 1 million people with disabilities were more or less parked on various incapacity benefits—out of sight, out of mind, with no review.

[Kate Green]

I want to put the record straight. People were parked on incapacity benefit going right back to the 1980s, and in the early 2000s the Labour Government began to explore policies that ultimately led to the employment and support allowance and work capability assessment, which were endorsed by both parties. It is not right to say that Labour policies parked people there only over the past 10 years.

[Margot James]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, which was slightly premature, because I was going to carry on to give the Opposition some credit for what they belatedly started to do in government —with, I must tell the House, the help of Lord Freud, which is an irony not lost on me.

We must not forget some of the things that the previous Government did. They appointed Atos. They left this Government with the legacy of a fairly draconian system that made no allowances for people with mental health issues who took part in work capability assessments in the early days. Some of those people had fluctuating conditions that meant that if they went for their assessment on a bad day, they might get somewhere, but if it happened to be a good day, they would not. No account was taken of that. This Government brought in Professor Harrington, who conducted a number of reviews that have humanised the system considerably. Now we are looking to find a new provider that will take the place of the Atos, which, as I have said, we inherited from the previous Government.

The previous Government did try to start getting people with disabilities into work, but they needed to will the means as well as the ends. It was not enough just to go round closing day centres and pushing people into the community. Their mantra was that everybody had to be in work before they could set about tackling discrimination, tackling the fact that a lot of businesses were ignorant about how to employ people with disabilities, and trying to change public attitudes. As a result of this Government’s more painstaking approach, some of those issues have been tackled at source, working with industry and employers. The number of disabled people in employment is up by 116,000 this year. Over 35,000 people with disabilities have been helped by the Access to Work scheme. I accept what was said earlier about the possibility that not everybody on the Work Choice programme is a proper candidate for it, but that is down to implementation, which all Governments wrestle with. The majority of the 27,000 people who have been helped have been eligible.

The companies that have been brought on board by the Government’s Disability Confident campaign have made a real difference. I pay tribute to Sainsbury’s and Waitrose in my constituency. Nationally, Sainsbury’s has employed 2,000 people with disabilities through its You Can initiative. I pay tribute to the Government for changing the whole ethos—seeing what people with disabilities can do. It really is a credit to the Secretary of State and his team that they have improved those people’s chances of finding work. The results are there for all to see.

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[The Minister for Employment (Esther McVey)]

I want first to congratulate the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) on her maiden speech. It was delivered with humour, confidence and skill. I look forward to her future contributions in the House. I would also like to pay tribute to her predecessor, Jim Dobbin, a Member of the House who was much respected and well liked in all parts of the House. He will be sorely missed.

Returning to today’s motion and debate, there is one point on which there is consensus and on which we all agree, which is that the words used by my noble Friend Lord Freud were wrong. And do you know what? He came forward immediately and said the same thing: he agreed. He apologised without reservation for his words and then went on to explain fully how he listened to the pleas of a father of a disabled child saying what he would do, who had used his same words. For clarity, nothing that my noble Friend said on that occasion was Government policy—not now and not in the future. National minimum wage entitlement applies to workers whether they are disabled or non-disabled. That is the Government’s policy.

Let me confirm that this Government’s overarching ambition is to enable disabled people to fulfil their potential and fulfil their ambitions. The UK has a proud history of furthering the rights of disabled people. I am pleased to say that even in these very tough economic times, this Government have continued that progress and continued to maintain this country as a world leader in the support it gives to disabled people, spending £60 billion a year on benefits and support for those who face the greatest barriers to enable them to participate fully in society. We spend nearly double the OECD average, a fifth more than the European average, double what America spends and six times what Japan spends. In every year up to 2017-18, we will be spending more on disability benefits than in 2009-10.

Let me explain what has happened over the last few years. No one would know this from listening to today’s debate, but there are now nearly 3 million disabled people in work, which is up 116,000 this year. Access to Work is helping more people—5,000 more than in 2011-12. An extra £15 million has been put into that programme. Attainment levels for pupils with special educational needs have increased since 2010-11 at both GCSE and A-level. The number of disabled students gaining their first degree has increased from nearly 32,000 to nearly 40,000 now. We have also reduced the proportion of disabled people in relative income poverty. These are the things that are happening. Social participation has increased. Sports participation has increased. Those are the facts that we need to set out.

We have heard Members of the House deliver some powerful speeches today. Let me turn first to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), who said, “I want to look past labels; I want to make the world a better place. Isn’t that why most of us came into this House?” I believe that is true. He talked about the work he has done on disability hate crime. When I was the Minister for disabled people, I visited the work he was doing providing safe places for people to come forward and explain what was happening to them. He has played a key and crucial part in the journey towards people feeling able to come forward and talk about the issue.

Many Members asked why we, in the epicentre of democracy and the home of free speech, should not be able to talk about the matters that really concern the public. Should we not be able to tackle them head-on, without shying away from some of the difficult issues? Was that not what Lord Freud was trying to do? My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) said that most clearly, as did my hon. Friends the Members for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) and for Ipswich (Ben Gummer).

I want to move on to something that I hoped today’s debate would touch on, but it did not. I am going to read out what a mum, Candice Baxter from Grimsby, said. It would have been better if more time had been devoted today to listening to what some people who heard Lord Freud’s words had to say about them. She said:

“My daughter’s ambition is to get a job in an office. She has Down’s syndrome. She thinks that, if she works hard, someone, somewhere will give her a job. At £6.50 an hour, it’s never going to happen.”

Maybe at something else, it could. She continued:

“The minimum wage protects from unscrupulous employers. But for my child, it is a barrier to meaningful employment. Indeed, because of the minimum wage, she is destined for a life of short-lived, voluntary non-jobs”.

This is the mother of a disabled child, and she wanted this issue debated here today, but we never debated it. What we did was just talk about what Lord Freud said. This demonstrates what parents of disabled people wanted the debate to be about. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who should have talked about that, did not do so.

[Kate Green]

rose—

[Esther McVey]

I will not give way. I have listened to points raised for several hours, and many of them were wrong, particularly those about the Work programme and how we are helping disabled people through it. Over 60,000 people have got a job from the Work programme, which is now on track to deliver a 17% higher performance than Pathways to Work. That means it is supporting an additional 7,000 people back into work. Furthermore, the Work programme is helping more people than any previous employment programme did, which I think needs to be put on the record.

When we talked about Remploy and the staff who used to work there, a couple of points made by the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) were wrong. In fact, 80% of former employees have now found jobs or are receiving specialist tailored employment and support to help them find one. These are the sort of things we are doing to help disabled people, as well as helping an extra 116,000 people into work in the last year.

When we talk about positive initiatives moving forward, I was delighted to be part of the Government who introduced Disability Confident, which was about moving forward and working with employers. How do we best engage with employers? It is about having a conversation with and listening to them, but it is equally for them to understand—this is where we started the conversation with employers—that the disability pound is worth £80 billion a year. It makes sense for employers to get involved with the disability movement and employ more disabled people. When they looked at the issue in a logical way and thought about who were the people shopping in their stores and listening to the things they were saying, they realised that they should get on board with Disability Confident. I am pleased to say that 1,100 companies are involved. That conversation has partly led to 116,000 more disabled people getting into work this year.

As for media coverage, we all agree that it is totally wrong to stereotype people or depict them in a negative way. That is why I was pleased to arrange a round table and to secure a motion for moving forward with some of the main players in the media to make sure that they employed more disabled people—not just in front of screen, but behind screen. They are now creating the programmes and the words said and moving forward so that everybody is portrayed in the best possible light.

We have to reject the motion, because it is absolutely wrong, although many Government Members suggested that it would be best for us not to vote on it, and for the Opposition to remove it. We have every confidence in Lord Freud, who has done so much—working for both this Government and the Labour Government—to advance the status and the job outcomes of disabled people.

Question put.