Disabled People

Debate between Liam Byrne and Robert Flello

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I shall come back to his point slightly later.

The Opposition believe in reform of the benefits system and of support and care for disabled people, but we also believe in one thing more—that fewer, not more, disabled people should live in poverty in this country. During our time in office, we drove down the number of disabled people living in poverty from 40% to about a quarter. That was not an accident; it was because of the most ambitious series of reforms to help disabled people that we have ever seen.

There was the appointment of the first ever Minister for Disabled People, the Disability Discrimination Act and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. There were great programmes such as Supporting People, the new deal for disabled people, new strategies for disabled children and Valuing People, and, crucially, there was the Equality Act 2010. Poverty in disabled households fell under Labour and now that progress has gone into reverse.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

There is a fundamental difference in how the reforms have been heralded in the media, too. When we were in government and we put those reforms through, we did so in a careful and considered way, whereas because of how the current reforms are being pushed through, the media are characterising people in certain ways. A constituent who is on disability benefit for severe mental health problems came to my office the other day with his head in his hands saying, “I know I’m scum. That’s what I read every day. That’s the way I feel I’m treated.”

[Mr Byrne]

The whole House will have heard my hon. Friend’s powerful story. I am afraid that too often in the past three years we have had not the politics of national unity, but the politics of dividing lines—dividing lines after dividing lines. When has this country ever achieved great things when we have sought to divide one from another? We have only ever achieved great things in this country when we have pulled together, but I am afraid that that is not the policy of reform we see from this Government.

Today we have one third of disabled citizens in our country living in poverty. That proportion has increased every single year this coalition Government have been in power. That is a disgrace, and it is only surpassed by the Government’s attempts to make it worse.

Today I want to set out the great pressures that now confront disabled people and ask, in the words of our motion, that the Government, for the first time, put together

“a cumulative impact assessment of the changes”,

because the Secretary of State has an important duty to fulfil later this year. He has a duty before the autumn statement to set before the Chancellor of the Exchequer the combined concerted impact of the changes he is prosecuting on disabled people. These changes are big and they are well known. They affect the roof over people’s heads, the cash they receive, the care they enjoy, the help for their children and the help for their carers, and, of course, the systems that are currently failing to give disabled people the chance to lift themselves out of poverty by actually going to work.

Let me start with an issue that I know will be much in the news today: the hated bedroom tax. Two thirds of people hit by this tax are disabled. We know that council housing in this country is allocated according to need, and very often disabled people are given accommodation that is suited to their need. They may have a room that is available for a carer or for equipment, but the accommodation they were given was allocated according to need. Now disabled people face a tax on that spare room. Disabled people now face the distress of debt, being torn from their neighbours, and cut off from help very often if they are on disability living allowance. This is a cruel and unusual punishment meted out to the most vulnerable in our society, and this Government should drop it, and drop it now.

Disability Benefits and Social Care

Debate between Liam Byrne and Robert Flello

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

Exactly. Workers in Remploy factories are doing a good, proper job of work, and the least that they deserve is a Government who are serious about giving them a future in work.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

Trentham Lakes Remploy factory in my constituency, which serves the very deprived area of north Staffordshire, is doing fantastic work for companies such as JCB, and is also working for the DWP in fulfilling contracts. Some of its workers have tried working in the outside environment during better times, but they have returned because they need not a separated environment, but a supported environment. Will my right hon. Friend pay tribute to the hard work that is done by people in places such as Trentham Lakes?

[Mr Byrne]

Let me echo my hon. Friend’s comment immediately. I do pay tribute to the work of people in Remploy factories, and I hope that the whole House will support that sentiment this afternoon.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Liam Byrne and Robert Flello

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Perhaps if Conservative Members had not tried to play politics and had thought the policy through, we might be in a better place this afternoon.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. In my constituency, as in that of the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), rents might be £500 a month. That is not the sort of rent that we see in London, but one thing the areas have in common is landlords who are quite happy to take the money as often as they can, but who are not so happy to look after the property that the tenants have to live in. There are a number of rogue landlords. Is that not where the fire of Government Back Benchers should be turned—on those landlords?

[Mr Byrne]

Absolutely right, and I shall say a few words later about the dramatic escalation in the housing benefit bill that the Department for Work and Pensions foresees. Somehow, that has not featured in this afternoon’s debate, but we will come on to those facts and figures shortly.