Welfare

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Stephen Timms]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the importance of tackling fraud—my hon. Friend the Minister for Employment took the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery Bill) through this House—and about ensuring there is always support for those who have no alternative but to depend on the social security system, and we will always do so.

Since the general election, 1 million more people are in work and the rate of increase in welfare spending as a share of GDP over the new Office for Budget Responsibility forecast is expected to be half what it was in the previous Parliament. That is very positive progress, but there is a great deal more to do, and turning that inactivity-opportunity equation around is key for young people, because the longer they are left on benefits or out of work at the start of what should be their working lives, the harder it is to come off those benefits, and the worse and longer lasting are the consequences. That is why we are making a £2.5 billion additional investment in the youth guarantee to get more young people earning or learning.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

The Minister is outlining the progress he wants to make in getting people back into work, and I know he has put a lot of hard work into that, but the reality, as we know from talking to businesses, is that they do not want to employ younger people now, because of the decisions taken by the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer: lowering the threshold for national insurance and increasing employer national insurance; increasing the minimum wage at a higher rate than for older people; and passing the Employment Rights Act 2025. Businesses perceive it to be too great a risk to be worth hiring somebody who does not have the experience others may have. I say openly to the Minister that those issues must be addressed if he is to open up the market and get young people back into work.

[Sir Stephen Timms]

We are taking initiatives to do exactly that. Contrary to what the right hon. Gentleman has said, I would say that employers want very much to give opportunities to young people, because they know that their future depends on that.

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[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

I am going to take a slightly different tack in this debate because as the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), said, one of the reasons why welfare reform is needed is to cut the bill because we have to invest more in defence. That is being pushed down the road—the Government say that we may get to 3% of GDP by the end of the decade and 3.5% by 2035, but we know that what was asked for in the strategic defence review would not even get close to funding that.

I am going to say something that makes it feel like it is the 1930s: war is coming. How are we going to fund that? It is vital that we reduce welfare spending, because as my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent said, we cannot have welfare security without security. That lies at the heart of this question. As the Leader of the Opposition said, it is not just that we have to fund defence; we have to be able to fund defence, and we are not able to do that now.

[Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)]

Here is some crude maths: if we want to get to 3.5% on defence, it will cost about £30 billion extra a year, so where will that money come from? Furthermore, why are the Conservatives not supporting the Government on restricting the triple lock, because that would help with funding the future defence budget?

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

The first thing I will say to the comment about the triple lock is that the Prime Minister has done what the Prime Minister usually does: he said he is going to reform the triple lock but then said nothing else. It is very difficult to comment, given that we do not have a clue what he might be talking about. My second point is that it is not about how much the defence review would cost; it is about the fact that it has to be done. We have threats coming towards us—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. The right hon. Gentleman, as an experienced Member of the House, will know that the debate is about welfare, not defence. I can see where he is going, but he needs to tie it more closely to the motion.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

Well, the reality is that the motion is about welfare reform, which is about saving money. Members on the Opposition Front Bench have outlined the savings that we could make, and there has been much comment from the Government Benches, not least the accusation that people with mental health conditions are being stigmatised. There have also been accusations concerning people’s inability to work if they have an ADHD diagnosis. I would counter those accusations by arguing that when someone is told that, because they have a certain condition, they should not have to go into the workplace, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Many statistics have been thrown about in this debate on the increase in welfare from 2022, but in reality that period covers a time when a group of people left the school system and went straight on to welfare. It is all very well dismissing what happened during the pandemic, but it is crass, quite frankly, to say, “Well, it had no impact later on; that was all down to you.” The Leader of the Opposition has made it clear that, yes, welfare was not properly reformed, and the adjustments that needed to be made to universal credit did not happen during our time in power. That is a fact. It changed because people felt they needed more support and said, “Well, if you were going to give it on those grounds, you can give it to me on these grounds.” Of course, the other side of it is that an adjustment has not been made for the fact that there are now plenty of social media instructions on how to cheat the system. We have to address those issues, and we have to be able to understand what is being said.

To the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), who said that welfare was running out of control, I say that it was his leader who said back in March 2022, at the start of the war in Ukraine, when people’s mortgage rates started to rise, that the Government should be paying for those increases. That is a ridiculous policy, and it speaks to this whole idea that the Government should step in for every aspect of life that people find a bit hard. Life is hard. When we talk about people having anxiety, it is called being an adult, in a lot of ways. We all have anxiety. Most people in this building could lose their job tomorrow and would find that hard. That is anxiety. [Interruption.] There is a bit of chuntering from Members on the Government Benches; I know they are probably all nervous because they do not know whether the Prime Minister is going to go to the country. There has been plenty of speculation about that—bring it on, I say.

The reality of the situation is that if we carry on telling people that they do not have to go into the workplace because they have been diagnosed with something, and if we put more and more labels on them, it will become impossible to get them back into work, because they keep being told that they have a reason not to want to work, and to a certain extent they have been led down that path over quite a long period of time.

Welfare reform is necessary, but the things being said in this debate are all about future ideas. Nothing solid is coming across. There is a lot of theory coming across, but without savings we will not be able to invest in the defence and security we need to ensure that people have a secure nation and welfare security.

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[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

Going back to the speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), when she was the Minister of State for Employment, I was her Parliamentary Private Secretary. We would sit through many a Westminster Hall debate secured by the Opposition, who are now the Government, complaining that we just were not spending enough. They said about every reform we brought forward, “Not good enough. You need to spend more.” There was never any attempt to reduce the welfare bill.

[Simon Hoare]

My right hon. Friend is right. As I said in an intervention on the hon. Member for Wirral West (Matthew Patrick), the Government had 14 years to plan for this great reform and modernisation of welfare, and they did nothing with it. They arrive in government, and precious little happens.