Welfare Reform Bill

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the chance to speak on Third Reading this evening. I am glad that the Bill has finally come back to the House and I wish I could say that I thought the Bill’s passage through this place had improved it. I cannot with justice say that. We said from the outset that we wanted to approach this question in a spirit of national consensus.

The Opposition are proud of our record of delivering welfare reform in this country. I am glad that the Secretary of State referred to statistics from the Office for National Statistics that were published the other day because they were the same statistics that confirmed that by 2008 the claimant count was half the level we were left by the previous Government back in 1997. The number of people claiming unemployment benefit for more than 12 months in that year was down to a quarter of the level we inherited in 1997, so, no, it is not a surprise that his own welfare Minister, Lord Freud, said that our record of delivering welfare reform was remarkable.

On Monday night, I set out how I thought that further reforms should be made to toughen the responsibility to get back into work and to enshrine a culture of work in every community in this country. Throughout the passage of the Bill, we have sought to table amendments that would have improved it and allowed it to leave this place for the better. The Government have refused to listen and have refused to accept advice and amendments. The Bill presented to this House might have started with an instinct for compassionate Conservatism in action, but we have in front of us tonight a law that cuts benefits for people with cancer when the Minister says that they will not be ready to work by the time that cut hits them.

I said that we would not oppose the Bill on Second Reading to give the Government some space to improve it. We back welfare reform that gets people back to work and that simplifies the benefit system. We support the principle of universal credit and we support sanctions for those who are not trying hard enough to get a job. We support a cap on benefits if it saves public money, but this is where the agreement ends, not least because this Bill is so cold and so hard that it ends a tradition of compassion in the welfare state that we should conserve and not consign to history.

Once upon a time, this Secretary of State knew about compassion. In 2009, he said that the welfare state is a symbol of a compassionate and civilised society. I think that he has honourable intentions, but he has not presented us tonight with a Bill that is in an honourable state. It is, frankly, a disgrace that the Government have not found additional time to debate cuts to contributory ESA that would cut benefits to people with cancer before they are fully recovered. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) asked for additional time from the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), on Monday, but he refused to give the House that time.

To single out for the proposed cuts benefits that would allow cancer patients to go on receiving the benefits they need is unacceptable. It is unacceptable because it is an attack on compassion. It is unacceptable because we cannot ask people who are still battling cancer to start filling out job applications. It is unacceptable because most of us in the Chamber tonight will either have personal experience or families with experience of the truth that it takes more than courage to beat cancer and finding a job is not part of any recovery programme I have heard doctors recommend. Worse, this is a benefit that people have actually paid in for. Now, when they need it most, it is being taken away.

Ciaran Devane, the chief executive of Macmillan Cancer Support, said:

“Many cancer patients will lose this crucial benefit simply because they have not recovered quickly enough…This proposal in the Welfare Reform Bill will have a devastating impact on many cancer patients. We are urging the government to change their plans to reform key disability benefits to ensure cancer patients and their families are not pushed into poverty.”

Even at this late stage, I ask the Secretary of State to speak to his friend the Prime Minister and to sit down with cancer charities, disability groups and other campaigners to try to get this sorted out. I ask him to take heed of what Owen Sharp, the chief executive of the Prostate Cancer Charity, has said this afternoon:

“The changes to disability benefits will mean that a significant number of people with cancer will be left without vital financial support at a time when they need it the most…The current proposals in the Welfare Reform Bill will discriminate against cancer patients and should be amended.”

Perhaps the Government would be on stronger ground if only a tiny minority of people were affected, so the House is right to ask how many people will be hurt. On 16 May, the Government told us: 77% of people in the work-related activity group will not have recovered from their condition after a year, yet that is when their benefit will be cut. How on earth can that be justified? The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell gave us his answer in Committee when he said that

“this is a sensible measure”.––[Official Report, Welfare Reform Public Bill Committee, 3 May 2011; c. 655.]

It is a decision that is, in his words, “not about recovery times”.

Perhaps I could understand that argument if I felt that the Department had its spending priorities straight, but the truth is that its message is so harsh that it has had to hire media trainers to teach the Minister with responsibility for disability, the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller), how to spin her lines. The Department has passed to me documents that detail the media training bill for her, which equals three and a half months’ worth of somebody’s employment and support allowance, which would be cut. It is a shame that her expensive eloquence was not more convincing this afternoon. Cutting benefits for people with disabilities and hiring media trainers instead—that tells us all we need to know about this Secretary of State’s priorities.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Byrne]

I am afraid that I will not—[Interruption.] No, because the Secretary of State talked for well over the time we agreed through the usual channels this afternoon and he is now wasting—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Mr Rob Wilson, you have just toddled into the Chamber, do not shout across the Chamber in that way. [Interruption.] No, no; do not argue the point. [Interruption.] Order. I am telling the hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] I do not need any expression; I am telling him what the situation is.

[Mr Byrne]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I say to Liberal Democrat Members tonight that today is the deadline for advice on motions to their conference and one has found its way to me this afternoon. They should listen to what their grass roots are saying—that they should support the amendments that we tabled on Report. The Liberal Democrats should not be fooled by the idea that to succeed in politics one has to rise above one’s principles, and they should not betray the principles of Lloyd George, Beveridge and Keynes for the political convenience of the hour. They should show us, show people and show their grass roots that like us they have heard the voices of the vulnerable, who are calling on them to act—and to act tonight.

As if the cuts for cancer patients in clause 51 were not bad enough, they are rendered worse by the determination of this Government to leave people on disability benefits as prisoners in their own homes. On Saturday morning, my constituent Stephen McClaren came to see me. He has cerebral palsy, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, learning disabilities and he gets these mobility payments in order to help him to see his mum, go to the gym and live the quiet miracle of a normal life. These plans have filled him with fear. He and 80,000 disabled people are now worried sick about what the Government have in store for them.

The charities say that the changes are “fundamentally unfair”, so what is going on? The Prime Minister has said that the DLA mobility component will not be cut for those in residential care homes—that is what he told the House on 23 March—but the Budget book says that cuts to the DLA mobility component will total £475 million from people in residential care by 2015. Who is telling the truth? We now know that there is a review, but today is the Third Reading of the Bill. The Government want to change the law, but what is their policy? It is a secret. The Minister for spin, the hon. Member for Basingstoke has said, with her new expensive eloquence, that the Government

“have no plans to publish the findings of this work”.—[Official Report, 9 May 2011; Vol. 527, c. 1003W.]

Tonight, we are supposed to give the Government powers to abolish the benefit when their evidence for reform is to be kept secret. What a shambles.

The Bill violates every basic test of compassion and, just as bad, it also fails the test of fostering ambition to work. I know that the Secretary of State is trying as hard as possible to introduce reforms that will help to make sure that work pays, but he cannot honourably say that and give that guarantee for anyone with children because he cannot make up his mind how much parents are going to get for child care under universal credit. We are being told that that credit will be abolished tonight with no sense of what is going to come in its place.

In February, the Secretary of State was unable to say what the Government’s plans are. He told the House, not once but twice—most recently on 24 March, I think—that he would tell us, here in the House before the Bill got through the Committee stage, that he would publish his child care policy. Leaked documents from the DWP say that the cuts could disadvantage 250,000 people, cutting support almost by half, yet tonight we are at Third Reading and the Secretary of State still has not told us what his plans are for child care.

There are new penalties in the Bill for savers. There are new penalties for the self-employed. The Bill was supposed to be a milestone in the evolution of the Government and the compassionate Conservatism they espoused, but tonight they have been found out. We have a law to hurt cancer patients and a Bill to trap the disabled, confusion for parents and penalties for savers. Whether people are ill, disabled or working hard to do the right thing, the Government are determined to attack the benefits they paid to receive. We should stand up—