Welfare Reform Bill

My hon. Friend has raised that matter before, and I shall be happy to look into the specific problems affecting her constituents, but she is right to say that the effectiveness of the Bill will depend on professional and sensitive interventions to help people to re-enter and remain in the labour market. That applies both to Jobcentre Plus and to organisations in the private and voluntary sectors, and I shall be happy to discuss those matters when I visit her constituency on Thursday. The Bill is the latest stage in the development of the welfare state. Extending opportunities has been at the core of the Government’s welfare and reform agenda since 1997, and it has involved the creation of Jobcentre Plus, the introduction of the new deal and the extension of the disability discrimination legislation. The Bill creates the employment and support allowance and initiates the national roll-out of local housing allowance, and is the next step along the journey to welfare reform. Contributors to the debate from all parties recognise that we have made real progress in recent times. Pathways is recognised to be the most effective initiative ever of its type when it comes to helping people to get off incapacity benefit and return to work. However, one point of collective criticism that I want to make is that we often frame the debate about incapacity benefit, welfare reform, employment and support allowance and all the rest in terms of statistics. They are important, and we have set ourselves the enormous challenge of helping 1 million to leave incapacity benefit over a decade but, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) noted, we all know from our constituency casework that people’s real life experiences and aspirations underlie every statistic. Recently, three people in particular have told me about their hopes and aspirations for the future, and I want to share what they said with the House. One case involves a young female paramedic in Motherwell. She has a brain injury, but more than anything else in her life wants the right to work again. Another involves a young woman from Reading whose mental health fluctuates and who talked with great passion and frustration about how society does not understand the nature of her condition. She too is determined to get a foothold in the labour market again. The third case involves a 29-year-old man who is recovering from cancer. He has two young sons: one has a disability, and the other was born with cancer. He told me that until recently he considered himself to be retired from work for the rest of his life. That young man had envisaged that for nearly four decades he would rely on incapacity benefit or employment and support allowance, but the personal intervention made possible by pathways has helped to transform his attitude to work and to his role in society. We all know from our constituency work that most people on incapacity benefit want the right to work. When they first claim that benefit, they want—and expect—to return to work. This Bill puts in place the legislative support to enable that aspiration to be fulfilled. Although the state has a duty to help people back to work and to provide support for those who suffer the most significant disadvantage, all who can do so have a duty to take up the support that is offered to them to make progress in preparing for, and gaining, work. I can again reassure the House, and the many organisations that have contributed to our debates, that we share the goal of making sure that the most disadvantaged and vulnerable are supported in the best possible way. The treatment of those who are terminally ill has been a concern to many. Let me reassure the House by saying once again that we will continue to look at ways to ensure that they receive the support, through the ESA and welfare reform proposals, to which they are fully entitled. Finally, the Bill is a legislative fulfilment of the traditional Labour and trade union demand for the right to work. For too long, too many long-term sick and disabled people have been written off by the welfare system to a life of dependency, entirely reliant on benefit and devoid of experience of the labour market. The Bill puts that wrong right, and I commend it to the House.