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Welfare Reform Bill

I welcome the tone of the debate on both sides of the House. It has been a positive discussion. That reflects the briefing papers that I received—perhaps other hon. Members were also deluged by them—from various organisations with an interest in welfare reform. There has been a general welcome for the principles of the Bill, although inevitably there was concern about the detail. I want to concentrate on the first half of the Bill, which deals with disability and getting people with disabilities and ill health back into the workplace. Many other things in the Bill are also important, such as provisions covering lone parents, people over 50 and housing benefit. I am afraid that I do not have the expertise in housing benefit that my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) has. She said that she had an unhealthy interest in housing benefit. I am glad to say that I do not, but I do know that it is very important to many of our constituents. They are often in a benefits trap because of housing benefit. That is a particular problem for those in the private rented sector. Their rent is so high that they cannot afford to get into work, but they cannot get a council house because, although their housing provision is extremely expensive, there is nothing wrong with it and the council think that they are adequately housed. However, the problems that my constituents face are nothing compared with those that the constituents of London MPs must face. I do not know how people can afford to live and work in London, because of the huge cost of housing. It is important that the debate has been couched in the tone that has been used today. It has taken a long time for us to get to this stage. I remember a journalist at the last Queen’s Speech saying that the Government would have to face down their rebels on welfare reform and that there would be huge opposition to it. Instead, we have discovered that there is no major opposition on either side of the House. That is a tribute to officials and Ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions, who have managed to change the tone of the debate by talking about welfare reform as a positive thing that will be good for people. They have said that it needs to be done, and that as a result, people will be better off. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry), I have spoken to disabled people and they have been apprehensive about what reform means. MPs take reform to mean change for the better, but in the collective memory of many disabled people, ““reform””, ““welfare reform”” and ““benefit reform”” have meant changes that have resulted in them being worse off, with a worse service and less money from the Government. It has taken a long time to change their perception and to build up trust in the Government’s actions as being something to their benefit, not to their detriment. One way in which the Government have done that is by having examples of good practice that they can point to. Those examples are not only in the pathways to work projects. Many hon. Members mentioned specific programmes in their constituencies which have worked. Aberdeen Foyer has been incredibly successful in dealing with predominantly young people who live on the margins of society and who are often recovering drug addicts. It has delivered a number of welfare-to-work programmes, including progress to work and getting people to the job-ready stage, capable of doing a work-focused interview and getting into work. The examples exist to show that such success is possible. Whether it is down to DWP staff themselves, the third sector or, in some cases—this is particularly true in Glasgow—the private sector, there are models that work. That has begun to allay some of the fears of many disabled people. It is also important that reform is not about saving money. Although ultimately it should save the Government money—partly because when people get off benefit and into work they will contribute to the Exchequer in the form of paying taxes, rather than taking from it—that is always a side issue. It must never be the central issue for any kind of welfare reform. The aim is to make welfare work for people, and for it not to be a barrier. One of the big disincentives to work has been the welfare system itself. We talk about the different barriers that disabled people face, but disability or ill health is often not the primary barrier to disabled people getting into work. Sometimes that is three, four or five strands down the list. Child care and travel to work may be bigger barriers than a disability. There is no doubt, however, that the welfare system is one of the main barriers to work. That cannot be a good system.