Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

This has been an interesting and instructive four and a half hours. There have been some excellent contributions, including from some Government Members, although not from the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), who has just spoken.

I say to the hon. Members for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr Evennett) and for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) that we should not reinvent history but learn from it. Having been the Secretary of State for Education and Employment for four years and later briefly the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, I think that there are real lessons to be learned from our efforts to change the system. Unless those lessons are learned, we will reinvent the wheel all over again and there will be disappointment for those who believe that this Bill is the bee’s knees. Unfortunately, it is not. In 1998, when we set about reducing the unemployment claimant count to under 1 million for the first time in a quarter of a century and the labour force survey figures to below 1.5 million for the first time in 30 years, we did so not just because the economy was expanding and there was growth, but because we were helping people from welfare into work.

Work is the best form of welfare; making work pay is the right thing to do; promoting independence is sensible and logical; encouraging people to be self-reliant, including through thrift and savings, really does make a difference; and honesty in the benefits system is something that we should all aim at. The only problem is that the Bill does not achieve those things. If it did, I would be wholeheartedly in favour of it. I ask Ministers to take another look at the Centre for Social Justice report and to compare it with what is on offer this afternoon in this Bill.

I will use the example of disability living allowance, purely because I know more about issues relating to sight loss than about most other aspects of disability and welfare, despite my ministerial experience. Both with the universal credit and DLA, we are in danger of moving in the opposite direction from that which the Government say is their policy. The introduction of the personal independence payment removes automatic entitlement for certain defined groups with specific challenges, including blind people. I do not speak about these issues very often in the House, but if we remove the care component we also remove the mobility component, which is about to be expanded in April, as was agreed to by Members in all parts of the House and hard fought for by those responsible over a considerable period. To do that will have a perverse effect, and the opposite effect to that which was intended. Instead of promoting a can-do approach that makes it possible for people to get out of a position of dependence, the proposal will trap people in that position.

The perversity is best demonstrated on page 16 of “Disability Living Allowance reform”, which was published in December. It gives examples of what the system will mean and talks about testing whether someone is capable of

“planning and making a journey, and understanding and communicating with others.”

However, the whole purpose of disability living allowance was that because they received it people were able to do those things, not that it trapped people by doing those things for them. Whereas the work capability assessment is about what someone can do, the new test for disability living allowance, under its new title, will be about what they cannot do. That leads to dishonesty, with people presenting what they cannot do in their worst circumstances, not in their best. With the new universal credit, people will be encouraged to save but then penalised when they do.

Every step in the Bill that will have a positive outcome is trumped by an administrative complexity that will make the situation worse. We are all in favour of simplicity, but the problem is that simplicity does not usually lead to equity. That is why we have ended up with the complex system that Members have described this afternoon. If we could have produced a simpler system quickly and easily, we would already have it. We laid out principles in September 2005 that I believe have stood the test of time, but unless the Government listen, and unless they review and understand what has happened in the past, we will go through the same problems all over again.