Welfare — House of Lords, 2016-03-21
Topic: Social Welfare
David Freud (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat the Statement made in the Commons by Stephen Crabb, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. The Statement is as follows "It is a privilege to stand here at the Dispatch Box as the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. First, I pay tribute to the work of my predecessor, the right honourable Member for Chingford and Woodford Green. My right honourable friend came into this job six years ago with a real sense of mission and purpose to transform people’s lives for the better, and he achieved some remarkable things. I intend to build on this success As a one-nation Conservative, my vision is to support everyone to achieve their full potential and live independent lives. That means people having the stability and security of a decent job, and children growing up in a home with the benefit of that stability. There are now over 2 million more people in work than in 2010, and almost half a million more children now grow up seeing a mum or dad go out to work each day. We are ensuring that these opportunities extend to all those in our society, including disabled people Today, there are more than 3 million disabled people in work. In the last 12 months alone, 152,000 more disabled people have moved into work, 292,000 more over the past two years. That represents real lives transformed as we support people with disabilities and health conditions to move into work and to benefit from all the advantages that that brings. But we are also supporting the most vulnerable, and are determined that those with the greatest need are supported the most Our reforms have seen support for disabled people increase. In the last Parliament, spending rose by £3 billion. We are now, rightly, spending around £50 billion on benefits alone to support people with disabilities and health conditions. Devoting this level of resources is the mark of a decent society Personal independence payments were introduced to be a more modern and dynamic benefit to help to cover the extra costs faced by disabled people, something that its predecessor benefit, the DLA, did not do. PIP is designed to focus support on those with the greatest need, and we have seen that working. For example, 22% of claimants are receiving the highest level of support, compared to 16% under the predecessor benefit, DLA Before Christmas, the Government held a consultation on how part of the PIP assessment works in relation to aids and appliances. As the Prime Minister indicated on Friday, I can tell the House that we will not be going ahead with the changes to PIP that had been put forward. I am absolutely clear that a compassionate and fair welfare system should not just be about the numbers. Behind every statistic there is a human being, and perhaps sometimes in government we forget that I can also confirm that after discussing this issue over the weekend with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, we have no further plans to make welfare savings beyond the very substantial savings legislated for by Parliament two weeks ago, which we will focus on implementing I want to turn directly to the welfare cap. First of all, it is right that we monitor welfare spending carefully. The principle of introducing a welfare cap is the right one, given the huge increases in welfare spending we saw under previous Labour Governments—up nearly 60%. The reality is that if we do not control the public finances, it is always the poorest in society who pay the biggest price, so we need that discipline. The welfare cap strengthens accountability and transparency to Parliament—something that simply was not in place under Labour. We make no apology for this. As we are required to do, we will review the level of the cap in the Autumn Statement when the OBR formally reassesses it, but I repeat that we have no further plans to make welfare savings beyond the very substantial savings legislated for by Parliament two weeks ago, which we will focus on implementing Against this backdrop, I want to build on the progress we have made in supporting disabled people. We made a manifesto commitment to halve the gap between the proportion of disabled people in work compared with the rest of the labour market. As I have outlined, we have made good progress in supporting disabled people into work, but to go further will require us to work in a way that we have not done before, to think beyond the artificial boundaries of organisations, sectors and government departments to an approach that is truly collaborative. That is why today I want to start a new conversation with disabled people, their representatives, healthcare professionals and employers. I want the welfare system to work better with the health and social care systems. Together we can do so much better for disabled people This is a hugely complex but hugely important area of policy to get right. Disabled people themselves can provide the best insight into how support works best for them. So I am determined that all views are listened to in the right way in the weeks and months ahead. I will be personally involved in these discussions. The events of recent days demonstrate that we need to take time to reflect on how best we support and help to transform people’s lives. That is the welfare system I believe in. I commend this statement to the House" That concludes the Statement.