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Mr. Tony McWalter (Hemel Hempstead): Does the hon. Lady accept that the change allows the people she is talking about to move to incapacity benefit, which is more generous than severe disablement allowance?
Mrs. Browning: Incapacity benefit is means-tested and departs from the non-contributory nature of SDA. I have already acknowledged that the Government have increased the age limit to 25, but others over 25 will come within that remit for many of the reasons that I have given, but will for the first time fall foul of the contributory rule. I do not want to repeat what I have already said, but for some people with a lifelong disability, often one present from birth, it is appropriate to extend education and training for as long as possible, perhaps well beyond 25, not necessarily because there is a great expectation of them fulfilling a role in paid employment, but because it is a therapeutic programme that may be in their best interests, depending on the type and severity of their disability. I ask the Government to look again at the detail for the few who will be affected by the abolition of SDA, particularly the typical programme for some of the very young people for whom education and training will go on for a very long time in their own best interests.
Mr. Frank Field (Birkenhead): I wish to bring the House back to the chilling speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman). He was assuredly right to say that Labour Members have much to congratulate the Government on in welfare reform and other areas. Because he was so conscious of the time available, he failed to remind us that he was a member of the previous Labour Government. I shall come back to that point at the end of my speech.
I hope that there are few who are keener than I am on new Labour. For long years I sat on the Opposition Benches as a member of a party that found it difficult to keep its core vote, let alone take the argument beyond that to win elections. However, we have to remember that parties have histories. We are new Labour, but we were the Opposition. That helped to form our character and led us to present ourselves to the electorate in a certain light.
When the Tories attacked the national insurance fund a dozen times or so, we did not oppose them for fun. When we stayed up all night, it was not because it was our only weapon, because we did not need sleep, or because we were ideologically driven by an opposition to means tests; we did it because we saw what Tory policies were doing to our communities. The Tories' endless attack on the welfare state that they inherited and their endless push to means-test were undermining decent working-class morality in our constituencies. They used the power of the state machine to teach people not to work, not to save and not to tell the truth.
When we are taken through the looking glass, like Alice, in our constituencies, knowing that people trust what we say, we can see how deeply corrupting that form of welfare has been. We had to attack what the Conservatives did to our communities, denying people jobs in shipyards and steel mills and throwing them on to means-tested benefits, mocking their every decent
instinct. People were penalised if they saved or if they told the truth, and woe betide them and their chances of getting help if they found employment.
New Labour comes with a history, which has helped to form us. Our opposition was not theoretical, but one that represented the heartlands of our communities. It was a plea that we should have welfare reform which would make difficult decisions, but would build with the grain of human nature and exhort the most decent aspects of mankind--not denigrate or undermine them.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton--perhaps without knowing it--gave vent to why the Bill concerns some of us so much. Whichever way we vote tonight, most will do so with heavy hearts and, at some stage, the Bill will come back to us. If one of the reasons for reform is what the Conservatives--that gang over there--did to manipulate unemployment figures and to push people on to incapacity benefit, the solution is to deal with that evil.
The solution is not to say, "Never mind who you are. Never mind what your circumstances are. Never mind what your contribution is. We will get some of you later to get the bill down." Maybe hon. Members on both sides have not been as careful as we should have been when raising individual points about people being treated badly under the benefit integrity project. Perhaps there has been a loss of nerve. The job of policing benefits remains to be done, and is wholly separate from what the Bill is about.
I want to speak to amendment No.12, because clause 53 is an attack on what the Green Paper on welfare reform said and what the Prime Minister has told the country that welfare reform is all about. The Green Paper said that we would move slowly but carefully to a system of contract welfare. We would make sure that it was transparent, that people would build up their entitlements, that they would rely on them and that they would be rewarded for doing so. Clause 53 strikes at the very heart of that concept. Clause 53 also strikes at the Prime Minister's comments about wishing to move us from a something-for-nothing society to a something-for-something society. How can we justify the two clauses that we are debating if we take seriously, as I do, what the Prime Minister has said and continues to say?
My right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton referred to the duty that we have as Labour Back Benchers to sustain our Government and to help direct our Government. He talked of some of the difficulties that previous Labour Governments got into with House of Lords reform. I must remind him of the anguish that some of us feel at this stage of the debate.
The 1974 Labour Government were committed to introducing child benefit but, for certain reasons, decided that it would be best to put that commitment aside. There was a leak of Cabinet papers, and some hon. Members faced action under the Official Secrets Act. Some who were in the House then--they are listening to the debate now--bravely spoke in favour of Labour reasserting that promise. They must have felt the anguish that those of us debating the clauses today feel. They had to go through the fire.
There is no case for us to behave irresponsibly. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton said, the Whips should have done their job. That is their duty--to get the Government's business through today. Unfortunately, we as Back Benchers have two duties to balance. One isto sustain, with pride, our Government. The other is that when we look back on our stewardship, we do so with real pride in what the Government have achieved.
On the new deal and so many other matters, the Government have made such a clear difference from those characters in the Conservative party who used to occupy the Government Benches. Their policy was to drive people off the rolls, to strengthen the hands of staff, to harass claimants and to push them out. We have not done that. We have provided a £5 billion budget, and people have to behave responsibly, carefully and maturely. However, there are real options. There was clear, red water between our reform programme and what the Conservatives did in power.
In looking back at the Conservatives' dozen attacks on the national insurance fund--which we so opposed--what is the difference from what we are proposing in clauses 53 and 54? Where is the clear water between both sides? It is marvellous to see the Conservative Moonies who have had a mass conversion to national insurance. The Unification church would blush at the way in which the Conservatives have taken to their new roles. If I were not so nervous, I would be able to remember the high priest of the Unification church. We could choose which Opposition Member fulfils that role.
This day will pass and, whatever difficulties we have, we are part of this great party that will deliver the reform programme. Of course, we must bear in mind--as my right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton said--what happened to the last Labour Government. However, we must look also at what Back Benchers have managed do to in sustaining and directing the Government. I am sure that we will be successful in that.
I make this plea to Ministers. They will win their vote tonight, given the size of the majority. Many who support them will do so easily, but many others will do so with heavy hearts, and they will be looking for real changes when the Bill comes back from the other place.
Mrs. Theresa May (Maidenhead):
In his comprehensive and measured speech, the hon. Member for Kingswood (Mr. Berry) referred to the delegations taken by the all-party disablement group to meet Ministers over the past two years to discuss the issue of disability benefits, particularly when there were reports in the press that such benefits were under threat.
When I was the joint chairman of the all-party group, I was able to be a member of a number of those delegations, alongside the hon. Gentleman. What was noticeable about Ministers' reaction to our concerns about the threat to disability benefits was their consistent insistence that there was no Treasury-led intention to cut
the amount of money that was being paid in disability benefits, and that any savings would come from disabled people being helped back into the workplace.
That intention was repeated by the right hon. Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke), when he referred to the joint statement by the then Secretary of State and the all-party disablement group in March 1998, which said:
The Government have said that the changes to incapacity benefit in clauses 53 and 54 are necessary because an awful lot of people are currently in receipt of incapacity benefit who, frankly, are not eligible for it; but they have produced no concrete evidence to support that argument. They make the political assertion--it has been repeated today by several hon. Members--that it was all the fault of the previous Government, who used incapacity benefit to get people off the unemployment figures; again, I have seen no hard evidence for that.
As some Labour Back Benchers have said, if the Government really believe that people are incorrectly receiving incapacity benefit now, the solution is not to prevent disabled people from receiving it in future. The Government argue that something must be done about incapacity benefit because of the increasing numbers of people claiming it. The hon. Member for Kingswood set out the statistics on both the number of claimants and the amount that is being spent, showing that argument to be wrong. Even if his figures are wrong, the Government have failed to appreciate the fact that many people--especially women--are now in the work force and can qualify for receipt of incapacity benefit, whereas in the past they would not have been able to do so.
The answer to the problems that the Government have identified is not what is proposed in clauses 53 and 54. Those proposals will hit genuinely disabled people who deserve to receive incapacity benefit because they are incapable of work.
Disabled people with progressive and deteriorating conditions will be especially badly hit. People with multiple sclerosis, for example, may work full-time for many years and contribute to national insurance and then become unable to work full-time as their condition progresses but, wanting to remain as long as possible in the workplace, they may move into part-time work, eventually falling below the lower earnings limit. Such people may then work for a period without paying the national insurance contributions necessary to qualify for incapacity benefit. When they become completely incapable of working, they will be disqualified from claiming the benefit.
"There was agreement that future savings would come from helping disabled people to get jobs rather than reducing benefit entitlement."
That theme was repeated in the Green Paper where, on page 54, the Government said that, over time, less money would be spent on incapacity benefit
"as more people make a successful return to work and fewer people remain on benefit."
Sadly, clauses 53 and 54 break that commitment.
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