Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

Debate between Richard Burgon and Bell Ribeiro-Addy

Committee of the whole House & 3rd reading
Wednesday 9th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to the many amendments that attempt to improve this Bill, which I signed in desperation, because I did not enter politics to strip vital support from those who need it, yet the Bill does exactly that. We are the party that created the welfare state, so we know the welfare state is not a handout—sadly, the debate on this Bill has characterised it as such—but a lifeline. Proposing to take that lifeline away from anyone who may need it is a betrayal of those we are elected to serve.

While I welcome the Government stepping back on some elements of the Bill, I do not believe they have gone far enough. As it stands, £2 billion is still set to be cut from hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled people who are already on low incomes, which cannot be right. That is why I am pleased to support amendment (a) to amendment 2, which appears in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), to scrap the cut to the universal credit health element entirely. We have to realise that disability rights organisations still do not support the cut at all. The impact assessments that do exist are inadequate or worrying, and thousands will still be pushed into poverty.

In truth, the announcement of the Timms review does little to quell my fears. This Government-led review will take place after the Bill takes effect. Whether or not the review is co-produced, the Government will be taking support away from disabled people and then consulting them on their views after the fact. The toxicity around the Bill means that it is being criticised by those whom it is meant to support, and that is really not a good start.

While I am pleased that the points element has been removed from the Bill, I still share the concerns held by many disability rights groups about what the Bill will truly mean for disabled people. That is why I have signed my name to amendments that will go some way towards making the Bill somewhat more humane. Amendment 38, which appears in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), would protect those with fluctuating conditions. New clause 8, in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), and new clause 11, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Dr Tidball), would fix concerns about the Timms review by ensuring it is followed by primary legislation and by mandating its implementation and co-production with disabled people.

Other amendments that I support include those to protect carers and to ensure that due regard is given to the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. We would be wrong to ignore the UN’s warning that the Bill will worsen the rights of disabled people. We have to remember that PIP allows many disabled people to access work. Cutting support does not incentivise work, but prevents it. The claim that these reforms would have boosted employment simply does not hold up. Let us not forget that the Bill was published three weeks ago, and was gutted on Second Reading with a further week to rush it through Parliament. That is no way to legislate on matters with such serious consequences.

We have a health crisis in our nation, especially in respect of mental health, and the answer is not to take financial support away from those who need it. If we want to reduce the number of people off work due to physical or mental ill health, we have to continue to address the issues in our healthcare system, and get on with the plans to allow people to access appointments and assessments to stop their ailments worsening. This is not how welfare reform should be carried out, and even at this late stage I urge the Government to throw this Bill out. Some may say that that would be mad, but surely it cannot be worse than what we have been doing this week.

We have to be frank about why the Bill was introduced. It was primarily about saving money, but it would balance the books on the backs of the sick and disabled. I am really tired of how we talk about the economy and about growth in this House as though this is a household bill and we can cut this or cut that. No one seems to ask a good economist and find out that we are meant to invest for growth. People keep telling me that I am young, which is patronising—and it is not even that true any more—but I still cannot find anyone who can give me an example of a time in history when cuts to public services or welfare have solved the issues of the day. That is the case again and again, and those discussions need to end.

There are many other ways in which we can save money. As many Members have pointed out, we could end tax loopholes or have a wealth tax. I was pleased to add my name to amendment 37, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles), which would scrap third-party PIP assessments. US multinationals are making millions of pounds out of those assessments, while humiliating people and/or getting it wrong.

We are told that all this is about getting people into work, but I just cannot see how we can continue to hold on to that idea. I reiterate that it may seem bad to drop the Bill at this late stage, but it cannot be worse than the debate we have had over the past couple of weeks.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Sometimes politics seems complicated. Sometimes the passage of a Bill through Parliament, especially with antics and shenanigans like those we saw last week, may confuse people. But actually, the issue before all of us when we vote tonight is very simple. Today, Wednesday 9 July 2025, are Labour MPs going to vote through cuts to universal credit that will take £2 billion from 750,000 sick and disabled people who are already on low incomes—people who will have been judged not fit to work? Will we put our name to a Bill that will, on average, take £3,000 off every single one of those 750,000 people? I think that if we had not had the complications with the Bill the week before, Labour MPs would find it very easy. They would see a Bill that asks us to take billions of pounds from low-income people in our constituencies across the country and find it very easy to vote no.

I ask my friends on the Labour Benches to cast their minds back to when they were first selected and first elected. None of us got into politics to take £3,000 a year off low-income people who are sick and disabled and on universal credit. It has been said that what is morally wrong can never be politically right. People outside this Chamber see the issue before us very clearly indeed. The Bill is being railroaded through, disabled people’s voices are being excluded, and when colleagues say, “Don’t listen to those who say we shouldn’t press on,” that means, “Don’t listen to disabled people.” I think we should listen to disabled people, and not one disabled people’s organisation supports the changes.

The reason the Bill is being rushed through a Committee of the whole House, rather than a Committee where disabled people and their organisations—people with lived experience—could talk to the MPs on the Committee, is because of a politically imposed artificial deadline that is there to save face. I welcome the changes made last week as a result of pressure from disabled people and Back-Bench MPs, but we are voting tonight on taking money off people on low incomes. We are voting tonight on whether we think, after saying last week that it was wrong to have a two-tier PIP system, that it is right to have a two-tier universal credit system.

The reality is that people will remember how we vote tonight. It has been said before, but I will say it again: some votes define us. They define us as politicians and they define how we view our time in Parliament. Disabled people who come to see us in our constituency surgeries will not understand if we, as Labour people, vote for this cut to universal credit tonight or abstain. We will live with that vote in every single constituency surgery between now and the next general election.

Let us take a step back and imagine that we did not have a Whip system in this House. Of course, all of us agree on 99% of things all the time. That is the reality, but if this were not a whipped vote, I think the vast majority of Labour MPs would vote with their conscience and with their disabled constituents against cutting universal credit. All the rest is sophistry. We will live with this vote. It is often said that the longer the statement on Twitter from an MP after a vote, the worse the decision they must have made. You start at the first sentence and by the time you get to the end, the constituents are thinking, “Did they? Did they really vote for that after all they said on the TV, in their tweets and in the Chamber?”

We are Labour people. This is not a left and right issue in the Labour party; this is a right and wrong issue. I say this: any Labour MP who votes against these cuts to low-income people on universal credit tonight will sleep soundly, knowing that they did all they could, on £90,000-odd a year, to stand up for their disabled constituents. That is what we got into politics to do. We should not plough ahead. We should vote this out.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Debate between Richard Burgon and Bell Ribeiro-Addy

Committee stage
Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon]

That is a very helpful intervention, because it illuminates the fact that I am afraid the hon. Member, and other Conservative Members, do not believe in individual liberty. We believe in collective rights as well as in individual rights. The trade union has to notify the employer of the dates of strike action, yet the Government Minister is saying—I mean the hon. Member; I am sorry to accidentally promote him, although he might get a promotion for that intervention. He is saying that individual workers should have to notify the employer about their intentions. That goes against individual liberty, against civil rights, and against individual freedoms. Thereby we see what this Government are proposing.

Anti-trade union laws mean that workers are denied their fair share of the wealth they create. In this era of neoliberalism, which has lasted decades, the race to the bottom has seen the share of the economy going to wages plummet from 60% to less than half today. Wages go down as profits go up. This Bill is happening now because workers are fighting back. This Bill is an attack by the Government on trade unions. If what the Government are saying is true, they would be pleased to accept my new clause, although I am sure they will not. If they have nothing to hide, let a court rule on this. Our country is often in breach of its international workers’ rights and duties. It is in breach with this Bill, and it does not bring us into line. We need to level up the rights of workers in Britain with the rights of workers elsewhere.

Let me tell the Committee—I will finish on this point—that workers in my constituency and across the country are sick to death of being attacked by bad bosses and by a bad Conservative Government. They are sick of being the poor relations of workers in other countries in Europe when it comes to hard-won workers’ rights. Workers in this country deserve better and it is about time that the Government stopped attacking them.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in support of the many amendments to which I have put my name, and indeed of any amendment that would make the Bill unrecognisable from its current form. Fundamentally, this Bill is so wrong that we should not even be debating it. I am proud to declare my membership of Unite the union, and I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests for the support I receive from other unions.

The Conservative party continues to talk about our trade unionists with such contempt, as if they are some separate class of people. My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) put it absolutely right when he said that they are just ordinary people. They are the representatives of working people in this country, and Government Members would do well to put some respect on their name.

Hon. Members will find no shame on this side of the Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) put it well, because trade union money is the cleanest money in society. Perhaps there is a lot more shame on the other side of the Committee, or perhaps it is just that if we were to spend our time going through all the Government Members’ murky interests, we would be here for some time and not get to hear their speeches.

Our trade unions call the Bill “undemocratic, unworkable and illegal”, and they are rightly considering legal action if it passes. As we have heard time and again, it likely breaches article 11 of the International Labour Organisation’s constitution. But we have seen that the Government have absolutely no issue with breaking international law.

I was shocked to find myself agreeing with a fraction of something said by the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg). However, I could not quite understand how he did not arrive at the conclusion that he would vote against the Bill. He lost me on his blanket acceptance of Henry VIII powers. A basic British primary school education tells us that Henry VIII was not a particularly democratically minded man, or a reasonable one. In a modern democratic society, there is no place for such powers or such men.

How many times have we seen those powers used recently in Government legislation? Far from being an exception, they have become the rule. It has also become the rule that the Government fail to publish impact assessments, which is bad practice from a bad Government who know that their bad policies will impact some of the most vulnerable people in our society. We have passed legislation in a day when we have needed to, and this legislation is being done at an unusual speed, so why do we need those powers? To put it clearly, our constituents do not send us to this place for a small group of people from the Conservative party to make all the laws unchecked.

I want to go over some of the claims that Ministers have made about the Bill. They say that other countries have similar agreements on curbing strikes. That idea needs debunking. Yes, others have such agreements, but the context is very different. Anti-trade union laws are far more severe here than in other countries, as are the sanctions for breaking such agreements. To use Italy as an example, a worker could lose the equivalent of two hours’ pay. In this country, they could lose their job and livelihood and be blacklisted, with no recourse to claims of unfair dismissal. Our unions could also face unlimited fines.

Another claim is that the legislation was a 2019 Conservative manifesto commitment. Well, so was providing the resources that our public services need and the recruitment of additional doctors and nurses—when exactly will the Tories meet those commitments? The reality is that our public services are in crisis and medical professionals are leaving in droves, forced out by understaffing and falling real-terms pay.

The Tories have no mandate for the Bill, because, again, the 2019 Conservative manifesto had only one reference to minimum service levels, which was as follows:

“We will require that a minimum service operates during transport strikes.”

There is nothing at all about imposing that on NHS workers or firefighters, or on other workers in the future, but that is exactly what the Government want to do. In addition, that sole paragraph dealing with minimum service levels goes on to say:

“Rail workers deserve a fair deal, but it is not fair to let the trade unions undermine the livelihoods of others.”

It is not true in the slightest that the Government, who are interfering so blatantly in the current dispute, are providing a fair deal for rail workers, or that strikes undermine the livelihood or safety of others. Our trade unions are striking not just for pay and conditions but because of the poor levels of service that the Government have driven their sectors to.

Pay freezes have also been imposed even though cumulative consumer price inflation in the two years to November was more than 16%. Official projections from the Office for Budget Responsibility suggest that real pay will fall again in 2023 unless there is a big pay rise.

I do not want to spend all my time talking about the Conservative manifesto, because, as the Committee will imagine, it is not my favourite document. The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) asked what would be in our manifesto. My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) laid it out quite well, but if Conservative Members want to hear more about what will be in the Labour party manifesto, they should encourage their colleagues to call a general election so that we can give them one and they can have a good read of it.

The Government claim that there is no money left, or that their miserly pay offers are the work of an independent pay review body. That has already been widely exposed as incorrect. The review bodies’ entire terms are set by the Government. Ministers have found hundreds of millions in funds to subsidise the rail companies for strike losses; in fact, they have admitted that it would have been cheaper for them to settle the dispute. That shows that the Government’s real aim is to break trade unions, but trade unions will not be broken. They have the support of people right across this country. If the Government continue to attempt to restrict the right to strike, all they will have on their hands is more strikes.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Richard Burgon and Bell Ribeiro-Addy

Committee stage & Committee of the Whole House (Day 1)
Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab) [V]]

I wish to speak to my new clause 7, which would require the Government to publish an assessment of the effect on tax revenues of introducing a 55% income tax rate on income over £200,000.

The coronavirus crisis has not only shone a spotlight on the deep inequalities in our society and their deadly consequences, but deepened them. Deep inequalities scar our nation. As we come out of this pandemic, if we are to learn the lessons and build a more equal, less divided and more inclusive society, then we need to address decades of failing tax policy. Ensuring higher taxes on those on the very highest incomes has an important role to play in building that fairer society. Since Thatcher, the Tory mantra has been that low taxes on the rich benefit everyone, but years of keeping taxes low for the very rich did not in fact boost economic growth; instead, it allowed inequality to run completely out of control. That has been proven by new research by the London School of Economics and King’s College London showing that reducing taxes on the rich leads to higher income inequality that has an insignificant effect, in any positive fashion, on economic growth or unemployment.

In short, trickle-down economics has been a lie. Now is the time to acknowledge that and address it by creating a fairer tax system. My amendment calling for a new 55% income tax rate would target those on very high incomes of over £200,000 per year—the richest part of the top 1%, or about 300,000 people. The current highest income tax rate is just 45% for those earning above £150,000—not much more than for those earning £50,000. Yet 40 years ago the average top income tax rate for the wealthy OECD member countries was 62%. The top income tax was 60% even under Margaret Thatcher, so perhaps even the Thatcherites on the Government Benches will consider offering their support for the amendment. This increase would affect less than 1% of the population—about 200,000 people, according to HMRC.

There has been huge suffering in our society over the past year, yet the very wealthiest in our society—the billionaires and the super-rich—have exploited this crisis to further line their pockets. We cannot go on layering inequality on top of inequality. Now is the time to act. Publishing an assessment of the effect on tax revenues of introducing a 55% income tax rate on income over £200,000 would be an important stepping-stone towards building a fairer and better society. That is why I would like to press my new clause 7 to a vote.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab) [V]]

I speak in support of amendment 15 and new clause 8 in my name, and amendments and new clauses in the names of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon).

My amendment 15 is tabled with the aim of highlighting the importance of the so-called £20 uplift for tax credit recipients from the covid-19 support scheme, and the damage that the Government’s decision to not continue this beyond September will cause. In March 2020, the Chancellor announced a temporary uplift of £20 per week to universal credit via the standard allowance of the working tax credit basic element for the 2020-21 financial year. A one-off payment is being made to tax credit recipients to cover a six-month period from April to September 2021 to continue this support.

As Members will know, payments from the covid-19 support scheme for working households receiving tax credits are being introduced under the Coronavirus Act 2020. Clause 31 introduces an exemption from income tax for payments made to tax credit recipients. My amendment 15 would require the Government to publish an equalities impact assessment of the provisions of clause 31, which must cover the impact of the provisions on households at different levels of income, people’s protected characteristics, equality in different parts of the United Kingdom and regions of England, and child poverty. That is because while the £20 per week top-up will temporarily be retained, helping some 6.5 million families for a further six months, this does not allay the fears that families will have going into next winter. Rather, it is clear to almost everyone—Action for Children, Child Poverty Action Group, Save the Children, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the trade union movement and so on—apart from the Government that the £20 increase and the associated tax relief, as per clause 31, should be made permanent and paid to all claimants, given that poverty levels were already too high pre-pandemic. Extending the £20 uplift is vital because struggling families cannot keep afloat without it, but that will be as true in six months as it is now.