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Welfare Reform and Incapacity Benefit

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and, if he will allow me, I would like to develop that theme in a minute. We have taken action to improve the quality and efficiency of the services that we provide in the Department for Work and Pensions by establishing, for example, Jobcentre Plus and the new Pension Service. That adds up to a record of substantial achievement, and it stands in stark and plain contrast to the period in which the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea was in office. As I said, he singularly failed to refer to that record at any point, which was probably a wise decision on his part. However, I would like to refresh his memory of one or two matters. When the Opposition were in power their policies meant that unemployment reached 3 million and there was a 300 per cent. increase in the number of people claiming incapacity benefit. Between 1979 and 1997, the number of people on incapacity benefit trebled from 700,000 to 2.6 million—the equivalent of 2,000 extra claimants every single week. The Conservatives’ dismal record of incompetence and failure wrecked families and communities the length and breadth of the country. They managed the extraordinary feat of creating 3 million unemployed not once but twice during their period of office—a unique achievement in 20th-century history—not that they cared very much about it. The right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), whose own contribution was to add 1 million to the unemployment figures as Employment Secretary was quoted as saying that ““unemployment never matters””. He will soon have the opportunity to reflect on the accuracy of his observation. The Conservatives were not content with raising the number of people claiming out-of-work benefits. Child poverty doubled, leaving Britain with the worst child poverty record in Europe. What did they make of that? The hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) told the House that"““all we hear . . . is poverty, poverty, poverty—la, la, la, always on the one note . . . It is just boring for Conservative Members.””—[Official Report, 22 October 1992; Vol. 212, c. 636.]" Last month, 51 Opposition Members voted for the hon. Gentleman to be their next parliamentary leader. By 1997, one in five families had no one in work, and one in three children were growing up in poverty. No one can claim that opportunity and security were more widely distributed during the Tory years. They were not—the reverse was true. The words of the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea this afternoon bear no resemblance whatever to the record of his party in government. Indeed, if there is any incoherence in the House today, it concerns the difference between his words and the actions of his party in government. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has a unique record, because he was a Minister for the entire period between 1979 and 1997. He cannot claim, as many of his hon. Friends have done in the past few years, that the record of the previous Government had nothing whatever to do with him. His problem is that it has everything to do with him. It is on his record that he and his hon. Friends will always be judged, not on their words. Even if he wants to airbrush the record and forget his party’s contribution, we will not do so.