Disability Employment Gap

Mark Spencer Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

I am deeply disappointed. I suspect that lots of Government Members, many of whom were sold the ESA cuts explicitly on the promise that the White Paper would come through, will be deeply disappointed. In fact, I may find it in my speech to mention a few of them in a couple of minutes’ time.

[Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Owen Smith]

I am going to make a bit more progress and may give way in a minute.

Let us talk about ESA. Here is what the experts, not MPs, think about the cuts to the WRAG under ESA and how they will affect employability. Parkinson’s UK says:

“The cut to the WRAG will push people…even further from the workplace.”

Muscular Dystrophy UK states that the cut

“will widen the disability employment gap rather than reduce it.”

Mind’s chief executive, Paul Farmer, said

“Implying that ill and disabled people will be motivated into work if their benefits are cut is misguided and insulting.”

I could not agree more. It is grossly insulting to disabled people. I know that many Government Back Benchers feel the same way, because that is why they were so loth to give their votes to the Government on the ESA cut. In fact, many of them—[Interruption.] I am going to finish this point. Many of them did so explicitly because the Government promised to beef up support for disabled people. Let me quote a few Government Members and then I will give way to the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer).

I will first quote the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen), who said before abstaining on the vote:

“To secure my trust, I need to believe in the White Paper and that the £100 million will go some way to help those people. That is my warning shot to the Government.”—[Official Report, 23 February 2016; Vol. 606, c. 215.]

The hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) said that the

“White Paper is incredibly important to the matter we are discussing, because it is the replacement for what the Government are proposing to remove.”—[Official Report, 23 February 2016; Vol. 606, c. 222.]

The hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) said

“I was about to vote against ESA cuts when he”—

the previous Secretary of State—

“sought me out - he personally and angrily begged me not to”

and that he

“Promised me he was introducing a white paper which guaranteed enhanced and more easily accessible benefits for the seriously disabled”

in this country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Owen Smith]

I agree with lots of it, but the truth, as I have been describing, is that we have seen nothing but cuts. The shift from the Work programme to the Work and Health programme involves an 80% cut in support. Access to Work is dealing with fewer people this year than last year: 31,000 versus 34,000. Those are the facts, and the Government really need to check them. When the Secretary of State was the Secretary of State for Wales, he welcomed the Fit for Work scheme, but he has now scrapped it in my constituency. It is another scheme that is meant to be helping people, as Liz Sayce described, but it is being cut on the Government’s watch. That is the truth of the matter.

Where is this fabled White Paper? Where is it, the one that we have been waiting for all these months? Perhaps the hon. Member for Sherwood knows where the Government have it hidden and can tell us all about it.

[Mark Spencer]

I am grateful to the shadow Secretary of State for giving way. He talks about how strong the feelings are on the Government Benches and how much compassion there is around the issue of trying to get disabled people into work, but it is worth noting that the number of Government Members here to discuss the matter is more than double the number of Opposition Members. The number of Back Benchers here to support him in this debate has just gone down to single figures, which says quite a lot.

[Owen Smith]

Low-brow, low-ball comments such as that really do not help the debate. This is a serious debate. I am taking it extremely seriously on behalf of the Labour Front Bench, and I would expect better from even Tory Back Benchers than that sort of nonsense.

Where is the White Paper that we have been expecting? I will tell the House. A former Employment Minister—the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) may still be on the Front Bench, but I never seem to see her there any longer because I suspect she is too busy campaigning on Europe outside this House—promised it by the spring. The Secretary of State’s predecessor then turned spring into summer. This Secretary of State went one better and turned a White Paper into a Green Paper, kicking urgency, clarity and specificity down the road. It is another insult to disabled people who are seeing their incomes cut and their Motability vehicles taken away. In my view, it is yet another insult. After disabled people have been knocked from pillar to post with the cuts to ESA, PIP, universal credit, student grants and the Work programme, the Secretary of State, for all his warm words, is putting legislation to put some of those things right on the back burner. That is the undeniable truth behind the shift from a White Paper to a Green Paper. It is failing disabled people.

Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition will support the Government when we think they are getting things right, but we will stand up and be counted when they are getting things wrong. We applaud the establishment of the bold and ambitious target to assist disabled people into work, but we will call it a lie—a cruel lie—if that promise is revealed to be a pipedream without the resources and the will to make it come true.

The Secretary of State says he wants to start a new dialogue with disabled people. Well, we are waiting to hear it. More importantly, he says he intends to make a difference and halve the gap in employment that they face. Well, I am waiting to see it.