Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Jarvis Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

6. What steps she plans to take to ensure that disabled people are adequately financially supported in her planned reforms to benefit entitlements.

[Liz Jarvis (Eastleigh) (LD)]

15. What steps she is taking through the benefits system to support disabled people.

[The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)]

We will be reforming the current broken system of health and disability benefits. We will bring forward a Green Paper with proper plans very soon, setting out how we will help disabled people who can work to do so, while fully supporting the most severely disabled as well.

[Sir Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That balance will be at the heart of the Green Paper that we are bringing forward. We will deliver proper employment support for disabled people, which has been taken away since 2010. We will deal with the incentives to inactivity that the current system presents. Of course, there will always be people who are unable to work through disability or ill health, and we are committed to fully supporting them too.

[Liz Jarvis]

My constituents in Eastleigh who support and help to care for disabled family members are desperately concerned about any potential cuts to benefits, including personal independent payment. They include Laura, whose son is registered blind, and Debbie, who helps to care for her disabled daughter and is herself disabled. Can the Minister reassure my constituents that disability benefits for people who are unable to work will not be cut?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I am concerned about the level of anxiety and speculation that has been around over recent weeks. I am sad that that has happened and that people have been concerned, but the current welfare system is failing the very people it is supposed to help—the people it is there for. Our aim is to make the system sustainable so that it will be there for people now and in the future. When the hon. Lady sees the proposals, I think she will see how we will deliver on that commitment.