Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

Emma Lewell Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Emma Lewell (South Shields) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) for her diligent and careful work over recent months. I am sad that we have ended up here. No matter what, and regardless of the concessions, a vote for this Bill today is a vote to plunge 150,000 people into poverty and to tighten the eligibility criteria for those who need support the most.

Some of us have been here before. In 2015, when the Tories pushed through their Welfare Reform and Work Bill, I and other colleagues were persuaded to vote for it on the promise that we could change it in Committee. It did not change, and although we voted against it on Third Reading, the damage was done, because the nuances of the stages of a Bill are completely lost outside this place. The result was that the savings predicted never materialised and employment levels did not increase. Instead, there was an increase in poverty, an increase in suicides, strain on the NHS and other public services, and, in the long run, higher welfare spending and reduced growth.

[Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful case. None of us should take any lectures from the Conservatives. She and I were here when the bedroom tax was introduced. We can have many moral arguments about welfare reform, but the bedroom tax saved very little in the end, which shows that this way forward is not the way to help people into work and ultimately cut our welfare bill.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Emma Lewell]

I am sorry, but I am concluding my comments.

Just as in 2015, constituents will never forgive us, and it will haunt those MPs who vote for this Bill. I, of all people, should know.