Welfare Reform Bill

I am sure it is true that all hon. Members have some experience of the operation of incapacity benefit and the way that the assessment process affects their constituents, but I suspect that those who have the most regular experience of that mainly sit on the Labour Benches, apart from the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Davies), who is in his place and who perhaps one day will be an hon. Friend. Most of those who represent seats where incapacity benefit has coagulated in the most extreme sense over the past 20 years are Labour Members. In particular, that is because in former mining, ship building or iron and steel constituencies where those industries have collapsed over the past 30, 40 or 50 years, there are now a very large number of people on incapacity benefit. I had not intended to speak in the debate on the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander) because many of the issues have already been set out. However, if I had gathered the same number of constituents from my constituency to have the same debate, it would have been entirely different from the tenor of the debate that we have had so far this afternoon. Many would agree with the view that the present system of assessment is wholly unfit for purpose, but they would do so from two completely different perspectives. Many who are users—who are in receipt of incapacity benefit—would say that the system of assessment is wholly unfit for purpose because too many people are losing incapacity benefit, but many other constituents would say that it is wholly unfit for purpose because it grants incapacity benefit to an awful lot of people who many of my constituents would consider not to be due recipients of that benefit. What that does to the economic life of the constituency and the economic expectations of young people coming out of school can often depress not just the local economic culture, but our economic aspirations. I wanted to speak in the debate because I have a strong memory of one man coming to my surgery three years ago. He stormed in and said, ““It’s outrageous. I had a heart attack in 1986 and I have been in receipt of incapacity benefit or invalidity benefit””—there have been various versions—““ever since. Now the doctors, on behalf of your Government, have said, ‘You’ve got to go to work because you’re fit to work.’”” As other hon. Members would have done, I discussed with him whether the processes had been carried out properly, but eventually I had to say that I was not a doctor and could not judge whether he was fit for work or not. I could not make such an assessment. The man replied, ““I knew it. You lot are a shower—a complete waste of time. The worst thing about your Government is that the benefit that you pay is so little that I have to go and mix cement on a building site every single day of the week!”” I know hon. Members will laugh, but what is extraordinary is not so much that he said that, as that he chose to say it to me, and that he believed it was a perfectly legitimate complaint for him to make. He believed that he had worked all his life and that he should be in receipt of that benefit, in order to make his weekly package add up and to make his life worth living, in his regard. Of course, the vast majority of us, if not all of us—perhaps not all of the community that I represent, but the vast majority—would say forcefully that that man was working and should not have been in receipt of benefit, and that that form of fraud is the worst form of theft because it is against the whole community, not just against individuals. That is why it is vital that we change the system of assessment in the way that the Government suggest.