AS I am writing this, we still don’t know what the results of the Government’s vote on welfare reform will be. The Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill, as it is fully titled, has its second reading today.
Over 80 of the Government’s own MPs who signed a Reasoned Amendment, designed to scrap the Bill, haven’t signalled whether they will support Keir Starmer and Liz Kendall’s measures; leaving the whole passage of the Bill up in the air.
How the Labour Party got itself into this position is one question, but in my view, the more important part to look at is why they did, and what for.
Keir Starmer believes there is a ‘moral case’ for welfare reform. In some ways, I have sympathy with that view – but not in the way the Prime Minister has chosen to explain it. Whilst his ‘moral case’ revolves around the fact that there is too much money in the system, mine is centred on the failings of previous systems, and what we can do to fix them.
The ‘moral case’ for welfare reform is not so much a case to change PIP and Universal Credit, as it is to look at what has gone so badly wrong. Leaving 1 in 10 working age adults in receipt of welfare payments, as opposed to 1 in 13 when the last major reforms to disability and incapacity benefits (as they were then known) were brought in.
The ‘moral case’ is about fixing social care so that people have the pathways to proper, community-focused interventions, which do Government has been talking about: getting people into work, or whatever they can or want to do within society. The ‘moral case’ is about looking at the root causes of young people’s mental health crises, and what we can do to help reverse that worrying trend.
Crucially, none of my ‘moral case’ has anything to do with cutting PIP or fiddling unnecessarily with vital components of Universal Credit. When the Government first announced their plans, their own impact assessment said that 250,000 people in the UK would be pushed into poverty by 2030 because of their changes. 50,000 children were included in that number.
How that impact assessment wasn’t the final straw for these welfare reforms is beyond me. The first duty of Government is to look after its people, and this manifestly this Bill will not do that. Even when wrapped up as ‘reform’, everyone knew that this policy was, first and foremost, a £5bn cut. When you slash £5bn from a vital safety net, people fall through the net. Aside from those 250,000, up to 1.3m people would see their PIP affected. 150,000 Unpaid Carers are also set to lose their Carer’s Allowance.
These announcements were not communicated well, even the Prime Minister says that now, but that poor communication had a real-life impact on my constituents. They were, and still are, worried and scared that this Government didn’t take the time to properly understand the impact of these changes before announcing them in public.
Even after the monumental climb-down from the Government after over Labour 120 rebels signed an amendment to the Bill, the impact assessment still says that 150,000 extra people would be in poverty by 2030. Not only that but the new system of handling PIP applications is at risk of creating an entirely unequal scenario, with applicants split up by time of application when it comes to determining how much money they can get to support them living with their conditions. No wonder Scope, Mind, and so many other charities who work with people with disabilities hate this idea. No wonder the Secretary of State couldn’t name a single disability rights group who supported this idea in the House of Commons on Monday.
Today, I hope the Labour Party sees sense, and backs my Party’s Reasoned Amendment to these reforms, which would send Government right back to the drawing board. To do the job properly. The vote today will be close, is my sense, but I have faith in the decency of my fellow MPs.
The real worry is the Government. Governing without commissioning (or taking notice of) impact assessments; pandering to the right of UK politics whenever they can; and ignoring charities who are experts in their fields.
It was nearly a year ago that this Labour Government came to power, promising change and a better way of doing things. My question is, why are they trying to be like the Tories they replaced, especially on welfare, and supporting our most vulnerable?
I will be voting against the Bill, along with my Liberal Democrat colleagues, for the sake of my constituents and their carers. I will hold my head high as I do so.
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