Welfare Bill has been ‘rushed and botched’ says Conservative MP

We speak to Mel Stride, the Conservative Shadow Chancellor. Before the election he was Work and Pensions Secretary and announced plans to reduce spending on disability benefits.

Jackie Long: That vote just now – much closer than the amendment vote.

Mel Stride: Yes, and it just suggests complete chaos, how a government could get itself into a position where the only way it can win on a second reading. Now, a government hasn’t lost a second reading for over 40 years in the House of Commons. It got itself into this position because it managed to get the vote through simply by gutting the bill, taking virtually anything meaningful out of it, which is just extraordinary.

Jackie Long: The Tories’ position on this bill has been confused and disingenuous, many would say, from the start, opportunistic. Did you vote for the Bill or against it?

Mel Stride: So we voted against second reading. The reason is that it is not bringing forward the level of savings that we need to get this budget under control. But it is also not principled reform. So it has been rushed and botched to the detriment of hundreds of thousands of often very vulnerable people up and down the country. If you are going to reform welfare, you do it by looking at what those benefits are meant to achieve and fundamentally reforming them. You don’t do it by getting the Treasury to tell you to save a load of money at the last minute and pulling some quick levers. It doesn’t work.

Jackie Long: In the run-up to the last election, your party was talking about £12 billion…

Mel Stride: Yes, yes.

Jackie Long: …Worth of savings. You talk about damaging the lives of vulnerable people.

“If you are going to reform welfare, you do it by looking at what those benefits are meant to achieve and fundamentally reforming them.”

– Mel Stride

Mel Stride: Yes.

Jackie Long: That inevitably would have damaged the lives of many more people.

Mel Stride: Principled welfare reform is about being fair to the taxpayer and that means saving cost. It also means being fair to those people that need the support. We had consulted, for example, on PIP (Personal Independence Payment) already – a consultation that when they came into office this government completely ignored – as to different ways in which that benefit could work. We would have found a way through that would have both targeted support where it was needed but at the same time saved significant sums.

Jackie Long: I mean, that is absolutely the way all parties dress up welfare reform.

Mel Stride: We already made some in office.

Jackie Long: Your own track record in government on welfare reform was not good. You introduced… The Conservatives introduced PIP, saying it would save money. It actually cost money in the end. That is why we are here today.

Mel Stride: So, in government, we actually – as storied by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) – had made savings from the welfare bill of £5 billion, and the OBR said there would be 450,000 fewer people going on to long-term sickness and disability benefits as a result of our reforms. We had further plans to go much further, but in a principled, thoughtful way, not in this last minute botching that this government has brought forward.

Jackie Long: The Institute of Fiscal Studies says it is very easy to talk about 12 billion pounds worth of projected savings. Much, much harder to get there, which you know from your own party’s time in government.

Mel Stride: We had already achieved great…

Jackie Long: You talked today, we talked today about a massive rise in claimants. That began on your watch and before Covid.

Mel Stride: So Covid was a big issue, but if you take the number of 16 to 64-year-olds at working age with a health element to their benefit, if you could just keep that number static for the next five years you’d save about 15 billion. If you get it back to where it was pre-Covid you’d save about 30 billion. These numbers are absolutely achievable and we had the plans to do it, but we’ve done it through consulting, listening and looking at fundamental reform, not just suddenly slashing benefits left and right and centre.

Jackie Long: Many disabled people would point to the track record of the various Conservative governments and say they suffered very seriously under Conservative governments with benefit cuts…

Mel Stride: We did a huge amount, not least, helping people into work. The best thing, particularly for people with mental health problems and so on, is to give them the benefit of work. That regularity, that meeting with other people, that socialising, all of those kinds of things. We did a huge amount of that.

Jackie Long: When you were overseeing a burgeoning bill for disability benefits, you talked a lot about mental health, you talked about Britain’s approach to mental health is in danger of having gone too far. I mean, can you be clear about the mental health conditions that you think, under a Conservative government, wouldn’t be eligible for PIP?

Mel Stride: There are many elements of mental health issues that are eminently treatable, talking therapists in the NHS – we rolled out hundreds of thousands more of that kind of support – universal support that I brought in, which is helping people at work, staying with them for about a year to make sure they hold down those jobs. There are definitely positive things you can do, but as I say, what this government did is at the very last minute, because it was running out of economic road, it took these quick decisions and that’s why it’s all fallen apart.

Watch more here:

Welfare reform bill vote: what does it mean

‘There are other ways of making savings’ – welfare cuts rebel

The people opposing the government’s welfare reform bill