Welfare Reform

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I probably have not explained this as well as I could have—I apologise to the noble Lord. We absolutely regard as the single biggest challenge the fact that the incentives are in the wrong place when it comes to universal credit. So we are doing two different things. First, we are separating support from your capability to work, abolishing the work capability assessment and looking at how a single assessment can be used to make the appropriate judgments, giving support on the basis of need.

Secondly, we are making absolutely sure that we do not put you in the position of there being perverse incentives, so you end up making decisions that would not be good for you in the long run. There are 200,000 disabled people who reckon that they could work now with the right support and would like to. We should start by giving the right support to those who want to work but simply are not able to. The noble Lord is right that we should be challenging everybody, making sure that they are making the right choices and supporting them, but the first thing to do is to get the incentives in the right place, or it will never work.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in continuing the cuts to the health element of universal credit and denying it entirely to people under the age of 22, the Government are offering in recompense the fast-track £1 billion support plan to get people back into work. Yet in a BBC report on 27 June, a senior DWP official was quoted as saying that the Government did not have

“a properly considered or deliverable programme”.

Another DWP official was quoted as saying that not much has been done since this plan was announced in March. How many officials are working on that plan and how far has it progressed?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I assure the noble Baroness that the department is absolutely focused on this. There is not one single aspect of these changes. We are trying to turn around the entire department, from one that had a very heavy focus, understandably, on processing benefits, to one that is focusing on supporting people into work. The crucial bit, as I mentioned earlier, is helping every individual work coach to focus on how we get somebody into work and support them appropriately. To correct one thing that the noble Baroness said, she mentioned access to PIP for young people. We consulted on that—

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

It was universal credit.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I apologise. We consulted on support for young people in the Green Paper and will look carefully at the results.

This Government are committed to making the lives of sick and disabled people better. If people have severe conditions and are never going to be able to work, they deserve to live in dignity and we will support them. However, if they could get a job and improve their own lives and those of their families, we will support them in that too. I hope that the whole House will want to support me in doing that.