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Welfare Cap

I am pleased we are having this debate, although I am sorry that it is relatively short. My concern about the proposal before us is that it recognises an overspend on the welfare cap—I support the idea that we should be allowed to overshoot the cap—but hardwires decisions on welfare spending for the next five years. It therefore restricts any future changes to any element of welfare spending.

The cap does not include pensions and work-related benefits. What it does include, in particular, is disability living allowance, housing benefit and personal independence payments. Those benefits relate to the areas in which, it seems to me, there are often the greatest levels of poverty and people face the greatest problems in simply trying to survive. The Government have already removed the winter fuel allowance, which is included in the estimates for the next five years, and are maintaining the two-child benefit cap, which restricts the amount of money paid on benefits to families. I understand all the points the hon. Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher) made and the passion with which he made them, but the reality of not removing this ridiculous cap, put in place by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) when he was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, is that we have a lot of children living in desperate poverty.

Any Member who goes to a food bank—we all have food banks in our constituencies—and talks to the parents picking up food will find a wholly disproportionate number of, usually, mothers of children in very large families who cannot make ends meet because their benefits apply only to the first two children. We need to

get rid of the two-child benefit cap, but what we are being invited to support today will ensure that we keep it, while maintaining the removal of the winter fuel payment and boxing us in when it comes to what we can do to improve both the take-up and the availability of disability benefits as a whole. I must therefore caution the Minister and question her optimism. I recognise the need to overshoot the cap today because I understand why it has come about, but we need to look at the levels of poverty in our society.

I also understand all the points that have been made about the role of the Department for Work and Pensions in relation to people seeking work. In 1986, I was a member of the Bill Committee that took a sledgehammer to the then Department of Health and Social Security’s methods of supporting people who were out of work and helping them into work. We have suffered ever since as a result, and I am pleased that the DWP is reforming its ways of doing things and will help people into work by providing more advice and support. The reality is, however, that many people in this country suffer because of the mental health crisis that we are in, have suffered industrial injuries or are living in great poverty, and they need support. Surely we should be measuring the levels of poverty, the increased levels of child poverty and the educational underachievement of children living in poverty, rather than saying that the most important thing to do is limit the level of welfare spending.

There is a reason for that. I meet many people, in my constituency and in other places, who are receiving DWP benefits. Some are in work, some are unemployed and some have sickness problems and cannot work. They are not shirkers. They are not skivers. They are people who need help within our society. For too long we have had a culture of blaming anyone who seeks help within the law through our benefits system. I hope that we will hear a reply from the Government in which they accept the need for a re-examination of the levels of poverty in society and demonstrate a preparedness to change the welfare cap in the future to accommodate any increased needs that result from it. The thinking behind the cap was not about eliminating poverty from our society; it was all about limiting the level of welfare payments and the benefit that people gain from them.

In an intervention in the earlier debate, I pointed out to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury that huge infrastructure projects had gone massively over budget and had been financed. I support the Elizabeth line—it is a wonderful thing—but it was way over budget, like plenty of other projects. There seems to be one approach to investment in major infrastructure projects that run way over budget, and another when it comes to a welfare budget: anything that might go over will be prevented from going over by the Treasury. We cannot predict who will be injured next year, what illnesses will come or what needs will arise. Surely the principle of the welfare state must be that we help and support people when they need that help and support—and yes, help them to be available for work and get back into work, and say to employers, “You need more flexible working arrangements so that people can work part time.” We must look at the levels of unemployment among people with disabilities who simply cannot get work because the employment laws are not strong enough to require employers to provide work for people who, despite having disabilities, are well able to work.

I think we should be more cautious, rather than adopting a gung-ho approach and saying, “We are cracking down on welfare.” I want to crack down on poverty, I want to crack down on unemployment, and I want to crack down on those who prevent people from achieving the best that they can in their lives and in our society.

5.24 pm