Welfare Reform Bill

I thank the Secretary of State for his welcome. I do indeed look forward to debating with him over the coming months, and I hope we can work together to find practical and sustainable solutions to some of the difficult issues that face us today. I particularly hope that we shall be able to agree on policies that will make a real difference to people's lives, especially as those people struggle to come to terms with the impact of recession. The Secretary of State may remember that I have shadowed the employment brief in the past. I am delighted to return to it, particularly as at that time also I was dealing with welfare reform. It has taken the Government some time to get here, but I welcome their conversion to the need for reform of our welfare system. Before I comment specifically on the Bill, let me pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). When he shadowed this brief, his work was radical and daring. Not only has that work informed Conservative policy, but it can be traced to the Bill. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for developing such a strong foundation of work that not only can we build on it further, but the Government have clearly taken it on board as well. Certainly a change of personnel does not mean, in any sense, a change of direction or commitment. I recall that on 21 July last year, the Secretary of State said to my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell:"““If something is the right thing to do for the country, that is exactly what we should do.””—[Official Report, 21 July 2008; Vol. 479, c. 533.]" On welfare reform, we will help the Government to achieve what we believe is right for the country—possibly, I suspect, in the face of opposition from some Members on the Secretary of State's own Benches. We believe that welfare reform is right for the country, and also right for people who find themselves out of work and relying on support from the state. We know that in Britain today nearly 5 million people are claiming out-of-work benefits, almost 2 million of whom have been claiming for five years or more. As we saw from the unemployment figures last week, that overall number is now rising quickly, and unemployment is at its highest level since 1997. But, of course, behind the numbers the human story is even starker. There are families in which generational worklessness is the norm. There are people who live their whole lives dependent on handouts from the state, and for whom benefit income is the only kind of income that they will ever experience. Work is not just a way of bringing in money; it is about giving people dignity and purpose, and it is also the best route out of poverty. As I have said, the Government are right to tackle this issue. Indeed, I thank them for the compliment that they paid us in drafting the Bill. It is refreshing to see so many of our own ideas being enacted. It will therefore come as no surprise to the Government when I say that we broadly welcome the direction that they are taking, and will support the Bill today. There are areas of concern which I want to raise with the Secretary of State, but first I wish to dwell on another issue, which no doubt the Secretary of State has had to face down and to which, indeed, he referred in his speech: the whole question of whether the Government are right to tackle welfare reform now, during a time of recession. I believe that it is right to press on with reforms. They have been needed for over a decade, and the Secretary of State's predecessors in the role have failed, often at the first hurdle. I am delighted to observe that the Secretary of State is not so faint of heart. His determination is, I believe, even more necessary now than it has been in the past 12 years of Labour government, precisely because we are experiencing an economic downturn. In view of the figures published last week showing that the number of unemployed has now hit 1.92 million—not including, of course, the redundancies announced in December and so far this month—providing better-targeted support for the unemployed is particularly necessary. There is a separate argument to be had about what Government should be doing to encourage the creation of more jobs and to protect those that remain, but that is not for our debate today. Today we welcome the Government's commitment to welfare reform, and, while regretting their failure to act earlier, recognise that given the greater number of people who will be relying on the welfare state in the months to come, improving and strengthening it are urgent tasks. There are some parts of the Bill that we welcome wholesale—for example, the measures on the right for disabled people to control the provision of services. The Government's own evidence from previous pilots of individual budgets shows that they give people more control over the care that they receive and lead to better outcomes. The Government need to ensure that this is made a real priority so that the many disabled people who could benefit from more personalised services are not made to wait any longer. However, there are other areas where I am disappointed that the Government have not gone as far as is needed with the reform of the welfare system. The right hon. Gentleman may like to be seen as progressive and determined. I fear he may be a lonely, dissenting voice among the ranks amassed on the Labour Benches. Perhaps that is why his rhetoric is stronger than his Government's actions. Nowhere is that more clear than in the lack of support these reforms are offering to people on incapacity benefit to return to work. When the Secretary of State published the Government's White Paper in December, he declared it was based on"““a simple idea that no one should be left behind, that virtually everyone should be required to take up the support that we know works.””" If only that were the case with the Government's approach to existing incapacity benefit claimants, because all 2.6 million of them will be left behind by these proposals. What is the Government's radical plan to help these people back into work? It is an interview in the jobcentre. That is all the support that the Government will offer to the 1.2 million incapacity benefit claimants who are over 50. The other 1.4 million IB claimants will get three interviews at the jobcentre. The right hon. Gentleman may have a different idea of support from me, but a plan to offer people who have been out of work for some years—decades, for some—an interview at a jobcentre is not radical or fair. It is no use saying that support will be available on a voluntary basis because, as the Secretary of State himself said, the take-up of voluntary schemes is very limited. The Government have admitted that only 5 per cent. of people on incapacity benefit take up such support already.