Disability Benefits and Social Care

Debate between Liam Byrne and John Baron

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, and I will talk about Remploy at length later in my speech. I hope that he will intervene on me again at that stage.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

Welfare reform is long overdue. Will the shadow Minister explain why, when his party was in government, it did not get to grips with this matter? On disability living allowance payments, for example, there was a complete lack of transparency regarding where the money was heading. The previous Labour Government had plenty of opportunity to reform welfare, but they failed to do so. Will he explain why?

[Mr Byrne]

The Labour Government introduced some of the biggest reforms of the welfare system that we have ever seen in this country. That is why Lord Freud, in his review of the changes that we had made, said that the progress that had been made was “remarkable”. The hon. Gentleman would do well to study his remarks.

I want to return to the point about who is to pay the bill for this Government’s failure. Every Chancellor, every Cabinet and every Government have to make a decision on how the load is to be carried. The point at the heart of this debate is that this Government have decided that much of the load must be carried by Britain’s disabled people. New research from the House of Commons Library, which I am publishing today, shows that over the course of this Parliament, disabled people in our country will pay more than Britain’s bankers. Indeed, in the final year of the Parliament, disabled people will be paying 40% more than the banks. That tells us everything we need to know about this Government’s values.

The House should be grateful to Carers UK, and to the eight carers week charities, for the service they have done us by setting out the combined impact of these decisions. Their conclusion is blunt:

“It is a scandal that the UK’s carers are being let down in this way.”

The situation that confronts us is not going to get better; it is going to get worse. Scope reminds us that universal credit—if it is ever introduced—will hit disabled people 30% harder than non-disabled households, and that the halving of support for disabled children will cut £1,300 from their families. The Government’s arbitrary 20% cut to disability living allowance risks plunging 500,000 families into a financial black hole.