Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Lords Chamber

Our review contained 11 recommendations, chief of which were to reverse the cut of the ESA WRAG component and the equivalent payment under universal credit, and to conduct a thorough impact assessment of the proposed changes to ESA WRAG, plus a raft of other measures to promote the employment of disabled people. This cut is estimated to save £640 million a year by 2020-21 but, as we have seen, this is at the cost of considerable further hardship for disabled people who are already poor and, by definition, unable to work. Furthermore, no assessment has been made of the additional costs to the NHS and social care services as a result of these changes, as well as other DWP benefits. Clauses 13 and 14 are all about making savings for the Treasury and have nothing to do with the interests of disabled people. They should be resisted. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, your Lordships will recall that, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, we had a very full debate, in which I participated, in Committee, so I shall simply summarise the contrary argument to that of the noble Lord. As I did then, I very much welcome the report that he and other noble Lords contributed to because it has many recommendations, some of which are in themselves very important for the delivery of future policy, and I hope that the document will be used in the future.

The essence of the argument is that the effect of Amendments 41 and 44 would be substantially to leave things as they are. However, things are not satisfactory as they are. Contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, it is not just about saving money, although needs must. We have to have regard to the necessity to reduce the overall welfare budget but, in truth, this is fundamentally about the benefit of those who have an albeit limited capability for work actually finding work.

The status quo is that we have a substantial number of people in the work-related activity group, 61% of whom want to work, but each month only 1% are moving off benefits. That is not good enough—it is what we need to move from, and we have to do all the things that are calculated to assist in that. Some of it I know we can agree on. The improvement in the availability of access to work, the extension of work choices, the development of the health and work scheme through to 2017, and the Government’s commitment of £100 million to support that programme are all very important. They are designed to help in the delivery of the objective that we share of halving the disability employment gap, which we also discussed fully on Monday.