Welfare — House of Commons, 2016-03-21
Topic: Social Welfare
Stephen Crabb (Conservative, Centre-right): With your permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement It is a privilege to stand here at the Dispatch Box as the new Secretary for Work and Pensions. First, I would like to pay a huge tribute to the work of my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith). He 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 that success As a one nation Conservative, my vision is to support everyone to achieve their full potential and to 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 a dad go out to work each day. We are ensuring 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 past 12 months alone, 152,000 more disabled people have moved into work, with 292,000 more in the past two years. That represents real lives transformed as we support people with disabilities and health conditions to move into work and benefit from all the advantages that that brings. 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 previous Parliament, spending rose by £3 billion. We are now, rightly, spending about £50 billion on benefits alone to support people with disabilities and health conditions. Devoting that level of resources to such an important group of people is, I believe, 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 its predecessor benefit, the disability living allowance, 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 worked 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 numbers; behind every statistic there is a human being, and perhaps sometimes in government we forget that. So I can also confirm that after discussing this over the weekend with my right hon. Friends 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 now focus on implementing. I turn directly to the welfare cap. 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 under previous Labour Governments—up nearly 60%. 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—and we make no apology for this. As we are required to do, we will review the level of the cap at the autumn statement, when the Office for Budget Responsibility 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 now focus on implementing Against that 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 we have not done before and 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. I am determined, therefore, that all views will be listened to in the right way in the weeks and months ahead, and 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, and I commend this statement to the House.