Disability Employment Gap

Debate between Owen Smith and Caroline Spelman

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

My hon. Friend is completely right. As we all know, the truth is that there was a set of targets for savings to be made from the social security budget. Those targets were set by the Chancellor and passed down the road to those at Caxton House, who have set about carving up disabled people’s benefits in order to meet those targets. It is frankly shameful that people are being dragooned into this process, being treated poorly and demeaned by it, and at the end being less likely to stay in work or find work. That is very clear.

[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Owen Smith]

I will give way in a moment. I just want to make a few more points about universal credit, then I will happily give way to the former Minister for disabled people.

Let us move on to the work allowance under universal credit. This is another way in which the Government are penalising disabled people in work. One million low-paid disabled people will be on universal credit when it is fully rolled out, and thanks to the cuts to work allowances that this Secretary of State has introduced, they will all be about £2,000 a year worse off than they are at present. What does the Secretary of State think that cut will do for the life chances of those people? What does he think it will do to help him achieve his mission of halving the disability employment gap? Does he think that earning less will make people more or less likely to stay in work? I think I know the answers to those questions, which is why Labour is clear that we will reverse those cuts.

[Mrs Spelman]

The fact is that the Government spend £50 billion a year on benefits to support people with disabilities and health conditions. Does the hon. Gentleman not want to turn his attention to how we are going to reform the system, rather than simply harking on about how much money is being spent? I think he knows better than that.

[Owen Smith]

I said 20 seconds ago that one way in which I would reform the system would be to reverse the cuts to the work allowances under universal credit. That would clearly make work pay for 1 million disabled people in this country. I would start there, and I shall mention myriad other things later that the Government could do.

I would also reverse the cut to the support for disabled students. Getting qualifications is even more important for disabled students than it is for non-disabled people in this country. This summer, disabled students will be looking at their options and considering whether they can afford to go on to higher education, and they will be grossly disappointed to learn that the Government have already made it harder for them to do so through the decision to cut the disability student allowance which supports nearly 70,000 disabled higher education students.