---

Welfare Reform

My Lords, I am bound to say that I find that contribution quite extraordinary. In terms of inheriting a passive welfare state, that is exactly the position: the numbers of people on incapacity benefit—and I gave them when I gave the Statement—had grown inexorably over two decades. They continued to grow after 1997 for a while, until we were able to reverse that trend. That was all focused, originally, on trying to get people off the unemployment statistics, because of the two recessions that the noble Lord’s party was responsible for, when it was in government. But it did nothing to help those people. We are still now having to deal with those challenges; people were put on incapacity benefit, paid a bit more if they had been on it for a year and effectively consigned to the scrap heap; they were given no support to move back towards the labour market. Many of them, irrespective of their health conditions, were perfectly able to move towards the labour market and to go into work. We have transformed that situation. There is more to do—and the Statement is very much focused on what more there is to do. But it is bizarre for the noble Lord to challenge us and ask why we have just woken up to these things. We have been engaged with these things since 1997 and the new deal.