Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

Bobby Dean Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I cannot proceed with my speech without putting on record my admiration for the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Dr Tidball). She made a courageous and passionate speech, and I hope that all Members listened to it very carefully.

Let me start on a personal note. My dad is currently receiving PIP. He has been a proud scaffolder throughout his life, and Members should trust me when I say that he is not happy to be sitting at home. He would much rather be contributing to society, but his hips are giving up on him, and the NHS waiting lists are so long that he has been told he has no choice but to stay at home. Home life is difficult. He does not score four points on any particular measure, but he cannot move around as he used to, and he needs support to manage the basics. PIP does not solve everything, but it gives him dignity and independence, helping him to live his life while he waits for treatment. Cutting his entitlement will not incentivise him back into work. He needs no incentive. He just needs treatment. Following the Government’s recent announcement, I understand that my dad will no longer lose out, but the next person like him will. The Secretary of State talked earlier about a better tomorrow, but her proposals mean discounting the value of tomorrow’s disabled, suggesting they are less worthy of support than today’s. It is for that reason that I still cannot support the Bill.

Let me be clear. I agree that the welfare bill is too high, but we have to look at why that is. It is not because we have suddenly become a workshy nation, but because we have become less well. If the Government were serious about reducing the welfare bill, they would focus solely on fixing the root causes: chronic ill health, a broken social care system, and a mental health crisis among young people. While the Bill does good things—and I am sure that the reviews to come will propose more good things—to address the reasons for people being out of work, that is not its primary driver. The motivation for it was made clear in its timing, just before the Chancellor’s spring statement, with the core savings resulting not from helping people back into work but from tightening the eligibility criteria for a disability benefit. The Bill also removes carer’s allowance from thousands of unpaid carers—people who provide tireless, often invisible care that props up our NHS and social care system. Taking away their support is not just unjust, but economically reckless.

Let us be honest about the consequences. According to the Government’s own impact assessment, the Bill will push hundreds of thousands of people into poverty by 2029. How can anyone in this place look at that figure and truly believe that the Government are making these reforms to help people rather than to balance the books?

I appreciate that some will feel that the new deal struck over the weekend is a fair compromise, and in political theory it may be, but in practice it remains unsupported by disability groups and unsupported by the public. The majority in the country see the Bill for what it is: an unfair cost-cutting exercise. This is not reform; it is retreat—a retreat from compassion, from evidence and from the values that should underpin our welfare state.

I believe that there is a better way, a fairer way, one that supports people into work by investing in health and care rather than punishing them for being ill, one that helps disabled people to live independently rather than stripping them of the support that they need to survive, one that values carers rather than treating them as an afterthought, and one that does not create an arbitrary division between today’s disabled and tomorrow’s. That is why I will support the reasoned amendment tabled by the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and vote against Second Reading. We believe that reform must be fair, sustainable, and rooted in dignity.

My dad wants to work. He is not looking for a handout. He wants to be well again. I believe that there are many more like him, and that this Bill will make their futures worse. I urge Members to think carefully about the legacy of tonight’s vote. I say, “Vote for compassion, vote for fairness, and vote against the Bill.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I think every Member of this House would agree that welfare needs reform. I think about the constituent who was asked in a PIP assessment, “How long have you been autistic?” I think about other stories that are close to my heart, which I cannot repeat because they are not my stories alone to tell. The words come easily; the path to reform is harder, and I think many of us have walked that hard path in recent weeks. We have heard many points made in this debate, and in the short time available to me, I would like to respond to some of them.

A number of Members have sincerely suggested that there is something inherently wrong about creating a system where people’s treatment depends on the date of application, but I ask, how many people in this Chamber who have been a negotiator or a trade union member have voted for an agreement that involved red-banding a particular rate of pay? I think every representative of every party that has served in government has passed cut-off points into legislation. I remember leaving school around the time that the statement system in special educational needs started to be phased out in favour of EHCPs, and the consequences of that are with us to this day.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) said that we are being asked to place trust in Ministers, and in particular my right hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security and Disability. Following many discussions in recent weeks, I do have that trust, and I know that many Government Members have that personal trust. The fact that the review will now be co-produced with disabled people and disabled people’s organisations is a real and material change.

In this age of snap judgments, when we are expected to respond immediately to every manner of change and when politics in public is rewarded more highly than the politics carried out in private, the party system perhaps is not in good repute. But I know that many Members—I am one of them—have wrestled with their individual concerns and the desire to have collective discipline, without which there is no party and no programme, and nothing would ever get done. These are good and honourable principles to have. They must be moderated by a willingness to listen, and however it came about, people have listened today. The changes that have been made, as Ministers and officials will know, have been the subject of many long and, at times, difficult conversations.

We now have a Bill that removes the critical problem for many of us, which was that the change would have begun next November before the review was completed. That has been addressed. We are in the business of making material change for the people we represent. I think about the 10,037 PIP recipients in my constituency, with perhaps 1,000 more recipients of DLA, and the many more family members who will have the ease of mind of knowing that the changes we in this place have made will protect their income and security in life. The Bill still has some way to go over the course of the next week, but we must recognise progress when it has happened. I thank everyone in my constituency who has contacted me and taken time to meet. In all those discussions with officials and Ministers—

[Bobby Dean]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Laurence Turner]

I will not, as I do not wish to deny other Members the chance to speak.

All those representations were helpful and made a difference, and I am grateful to everyone who shared their story. I will be voting for the Bill tonight.