Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

John McDonnell Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)]

We have had a passionate and eventful debate. We have heard the concerns, and the Government will amend the Bill, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have set out, but the system we have inherited does not work. Uniquely in the G7, our employment rate is still lower than before the pandemic. Every other G7 country has got back to where it was before, or better, but we have not. The system is trapping hundreds of thousands of people needlessly in low income and inactivity. It tells people that they cannot work, and for many of them that is simply untrue. We have to change that.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Ind)]

I am sorry to come in so early in the Minister’s peroration, but we have limited time. Can I have the assurance, on the concession given this evening with regard to the Timms review, that its outcome and recommendations will be in primary legislation, not delegated legislation?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

Let me say a little about the announcement I made in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) earlier on. We have listened to the concerns expressed in the debate, specifically about the new four-point threshold being implemented before the outcome of my review. As I have said, we will in fact move straight to my review and make changes to PIP eligibility activities and descriptors only following that review.