Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Lord Oates Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Lords Chamber

Constructive opposition is not the exclusive prerogative of any opposition party on its own. Some procedural give and take would add value to collective opposition and would make the constructive opposition that we try to deploy in this House more effective. It is on that basis that, of the two amendments Amendment 45 is by far the most significant. I will be delighted if my noble friend presses it to a Division and I will follow her happily into the Lobbies.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendment of my noble friend Lady Manzoor. One day before I entered this House the Government were defeated on tax credits. The Government were very upset but conceded the issue. Except that they did not—they found another way to cut support for hard-working people on low incomes. It was a more obscure way and they hoped that we would not notice it and that their attempts to bully this House might make us kow-tow.

As my noble friends Lady Manzoor and Lord Kirkwood have set out, these changes to UC have similar impacts on the same people as the tax credit changes. The Liberal Democrats strongly supported universal credit in government because we believed that it would increase work incentives. I am sure that the Secretary of State will be as dismayed as we are that his UC policy is being so consistently undermined by the Chancellor. I am sorry that we are not there any more to help resist that but we shall do so in this Chamber. If we opposed the tax credit changes, it is beyond me why we would not oppose these changes.

The Government have no mandate for the changes—quite the contrary. The Conservative manifesto says that the aim of welfare reform should be to reward hard work and protect the vulnerable. The changes in regulations do the opposite. Not only do they have no mandate, their manifesto requires that they should oppose such changes.

It would be great if Peers on the Benches opposite were to support us—although that may be rather hopeful—but, if they are not willing to do so, they should not trouble themselves to make protestations to the public that they are on the side of the working poor. I await with interest to hear the position of the Official Opposition. I hope that Labour Peers will support us and that, if they were planning not to, they will reconsider. What is the point of all the controversy and antagonism that took place over the tax credits votes if, only three months later, we allow measures that impact on the same people in a similar way to go through? If Labour does not support us through the same opposition that it showed in the House of Commons, as my noble friend Lord Kirkwood pointed out, there will not be any point in it weeping tears of regret when the impact of these measures comes to be felt by the public. It will not be able to wash away its failure to stand with us tonight and to stand up for working people.