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Welfare Reform Bill

As the Secretary of State knows, we are generally supportive of the overall structure that was put forward in the Green Paper proposals and of which the Bill is an integral part. In the three key areas—incapacity and sickness benefit; getting lone parents into work; and getting older people into the workplace, or enabling them to remain in the workplace—we agree that there is a need for change in order to contribute to the Government’s target of 80 per cent. working age participation in the work force. It is essential to achieve that target in the face of a rising dependency ratio. I agree with the Secretary of State that we cannot afford to leave anyone behind in 21st-century Britain, so we are broadly supportive of the proposals that we are considering today, but I hope that he will understand that, within that broad support, there are a number of things that we want to question and matters that we want to raise. Welfare reform has been on the Prime Minister’s ““to do”” list since 1997. It struck me that there is a remarkable similarity between the language of the 1998 Green Paper and that of the 2006 Green Paper, which the Secretary of State published earlier this year. The 1998 Green Paper states:"““People who could work are too often consigned to a life on benefits; those who satisfy the…Test for incapacity benefits are effectively written off and given no help to make the most of their potential.””" Many Labour Members may think that the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) went a little far when she said that Labour had done ““sweet nothing”” to tackle incapacity benefit since 1997, but it is clear that, despite the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999, many of the aspirations in the 1998 Green Paper remain unfulfilled—hence the repetition of some of the language in this year’s Green Paper and many of the key elements of the Bill. Of course, the Bill and the accompanying notes leave a number of questions unanswered. That is partly an inevitable consequence of the structure of the Bill. It is very much a framework and I welcome the confirmation that the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform was able to give at departmental questions last week that draft regulations will be made available to the Committee before consideration of the relevant parts of the Bill. Part 1, as the Secretary of State has said, introduces the new employment and support allowance and the arrangements around it, which are inextricably linked to the recently announced roll-out of the pathways to work programme, which will support the measures in the Bill. We agree that a degree of compulsion in the employment and support allowance regime is appropriate, provided that adequate support is in place, especially for people with disabilities. Many people who have been out of the workplace for a long time will lack the self-confidence that they might otherwise have and will need firm encouragement to re-engage in work. The first point on which I seek clarification relates to the baseline for the Secretary of State’s announced target. The Government set out a target of a reduction of 1 million in the number of people on incapacity benefit. In its report, the Select Committee was critical of the lack of detailed baseline information and the Government have subsequently published that information. It shows that in any case—with no additional action whatsoever—it is expected that there will be a 360,000 drop in the number of people on incapacity benefit by 2014-15. That is thus the baseline number, without any of the measures in the Bill or the extended roll-out of pathways to work. Just so that we are clear about the backdrop against which we are conducting the debate, the target for the new regime is to deliver not a reduction of 1 million in incapacity benefit numbers compared with the existing baseline projection, but a 640,000 reduction. When the Secretary of State told the Select Committee that 1 million was ““a net figure”” and not a"““clever statistical sleight of hand””," he was right, because including 360,000 people who are already in the baseline as part of the net figure is a rather crude statistical sleight of hand. I hope that we are all clear that we are talking about a reduction of not 1 million, but 640,000.