Welfare Reform (Sick and Disabled People)

Debate between Kate Green and Guto Bebb

Thursday 27th February 2014 Commons Chamber

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Guto Bebb]

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

[Kate Green]

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

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Kate Green and Guto Bebb

Monday 13th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

I am prepared to accept that life is changing, albeit rather more slowly than the hon. Gentleman suggests, but let us not forget that the partnered mothers who work do so largely in part-time jobs and that their incomes usually make the smaller contribution to family budgets. Let us not forget the extensive evidence that continues to show that women fulfil the bulk of child care responsibilities. Let us not take the risk that by removing money from the main carers of children, whether that is the fundamental intention or not, children become the losers in the drive to achieve the glowing future that the hon. Gentleman seeks to describe. All the evidence suggests that money is most likely to be spent on children when it is paid to their main carers, so I am concerned that that should be built into our system as a default to ensure that that is where the money goes.

Other colleagues wish to contribute to the debate and we have had a full discussion on a number of issues raised by the proposed amendments, so I do not need to go into further detail on many of those points, other than to offer my strong support for amendment 26. As we move towards this fundamental change to our social security system, which Ministers themselves have described as the most far reaching since the introduction of the welfare state after the second world war, it is absolutely imperative that, if anything, more welfare advice is available, at least during the transitional period, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) has pointed out, because it will surely be needed. Today’s debate is reaffirming the fact that this will not be a simple benefit to administer in practice. If we are to maximise take-up and ensure that people receive their entitlements, which I know from our discussions in Committee is the goal of Ministers, it is vital that proper advice is in place to support people as they navigate their way through the introduction of the new system under the Bill.

[Guto Bebb]

It is a great privilege to be called to speak in the debate. Having been here all afternoon, I feel as though I am back in the Bill Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) must again send my apologies to Downing street, because I have decided not to attend a party there in order to be here this evening.

I wish to speak about four specific issues and to new clauses 3 and 4 and amendments 23, 24, 27, 28 and 29. Before doing so, it is important to set today’s good and wide-ranging discussions in context. It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who spoke with great knowledge and understanding on these matters in Committee and in her contribution to the House today, but an important point that we must bear in mind is this: the reason we need to look at changing the current welfare system is that it has not worked.

I challenged the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) on the figures for the number of people in the United Kingdom who have never worked, which worsened from 2000 to 2010, and the figures I quoted for Scotland were supplied by the Office for National Statistics. The figures for the United Kingdom are absolutely deplorable. The number of people who have never worked increased from 572,000 in 2000 to 841,000 in 2010, when the previous Government left office. As a Member who represents a Welsh constituency, it is disappointing to state that the figures in Wales also show a deterioration. The context for the welfare reform package, therefore, is the fact that the current system is not working.