Welfare

Lincoln Jopp Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Employment (Andrew Western)]

Given that time is short, I hope that my hon. Friends will forgive me for not being able to respond at length and reflect on the excellent contributions that we have heard. However, I want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Alex McIntyre)—whom, of course, I will meet, as he requested—and my hon. Friends the Members for Wirral West (Matthew Patrick), for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan), for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis), for Croydon East (Natasha Irons), for Banbury (Sean Woodcock), for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis) and for Glenrothes and Mid Fife (Richard Baker) for their passionate speeches. In particular, I want to highlight the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Michael Payne), whose demolition job on the Opposition’s proposals was truly something to behold.

In her opening speech, the shadow Secretary of State suggested that it was a little early for the panto season. However, people could be forgiven for their confusion, given that the Tories have rushed out their Christmas wish list of cuts somewhat early this year. Before turning to those particular proposals, however, I want to comment on some of the other points made by the shadow Secretary of State.

We agree that the number of unemployed young people is unacceptable. The number of young people not in education, employment or training was, of course, up by 250,000 in their final three years in office. We commissioned the Milburn review, the youth guarantee and the youth jobs grant because we are determined to right their wrong.

The hon. Lady said that reforming welfare is not cruel. Again, I agree with her, but the Conservatives’ plans are not welfare reform; they are cruel cuts. She said that we cancelled their reforms, but it is worth remembering that their 2023 consultation on reforming the work capability assessment was ruled unlawful.

Let us turn to some of the specific proposals in the plans that the hon. Lady spoke to, which would push hundreds of thousands of children into poverty. Half a million young people would be impacted by the Conservatives’ proposal to reinstate the two-child limit, with well over half the children affected in families that are in work. The Child Poverty Action Group has said that the Tories’ measures, including the reinstatement of the two-child limit, would cause

“the biggest overnight increase in child poverty since records began.”

It is absolutely shameful.

The Conservatives’ changes to housing benefit would exacerbate homelessness and add costs. They have proposed to reduce local housing allowance to the 10th percentile of local rent, instead of the current 30th percentile. Expert organisations have said that this would dramatically increase homelessness, as well as displacing costs to local authorities, the NHS and other public services. The director of the Chartered Institute of Housing says:

“At a time when record numbers of households are already struggling with housing costs, this would almost certainly increase financial hardship and homelessness. Any short-term savings to the welfare bill could quickly be outweighed by higher costs to councils, the NHS and other public services”.

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way on welfare bill savings. Can he confirm that the Labour party’s 10-year plan will contain detailed plans for reducing the bill?

[Andrew Western]

As the hon. Gentleman is aware, we have been clear that we will set out our proposals for welfare reform next year. They will be scored by the OBR in the usual way.

Turning back to the Conservatives’ proposed changes to local housing allowance, I have already quoted the Chartered Institute of Housing. I rather prefer the slightly snappier comments of the chief executive of Shelter, who said:

“Making more families homeless does not save the government money.”

It is not rocket science, but it needs explaining to some Members of this House.

The Conservatives have not said what would happen to British people, including children in households that contain foreign nationals. They have not set out how a household with a foreign national and a British citizen partner would be treated. Universal credit is, of course, a household benefit. Would that household be treated as a single person claim, instead of a couple claim? Would the household lose all eligibility? What about households containing foreign national adults living with British citizen children? Would the Tories’ policy on foreign nationals hit the income and living standards of British people? From the information available to us at present, it certainly seems that that would be the case.

Let us turn to the laughably ambitious £13.7 billion that the Conservatives claim they can save by reforming disability and sickness benefit. They say that this would be achieved by introducing more detailed and holistic assessments with tighter eligibility criteria, but the current contracts, which they signed us up to, run until 2029. They say that they can deliver all this by 2030, yet those contracts include a target for face-to-face assessments of just 20%. It is undeliverable.

Of course, that is before one considers that the Conservatives’ costings are predicated on claimants’ primary condition only. The shadow Secretary of State quoted the IFS, which has been very clear that most people in the cohorts that the Conservative party hopes to take benefits away from actually have multiple conditions, and often three or four. The Tories have no idea what those people’s conditions are, so the numbers are just total fantasy. Overall, they refuse to say how many households or individuals would lose out.

The hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) said that the Conservatives were protecting pensioners. That is not the case, because the transition from PIP to attendance allowance that they will force on people reaching pension age could cost somebody up to £4,160 a year. That would be someone on the higher rate of PIP for both daily living and mobility moving on to the higher rate of attendance allowance, so it could in some cases be more. I suspect that the Conservatives do not know how many people would be affected, I suspect they do not have a precise figure for how much it will save, and I fully expect—now I have pointed out that they are not, in fact, protecting pensioners—that that proposal will disappear, because many of these things do not stand up to scrutiny.

The challenge with the proposals the Conservatives have put forward is that they are not worth the paper they are written on. A serious Opposition would have done their homework properly, but what do we have instead? They claim to have a plan for welfare that works, but who exactly does it work for? Not for the children plunged into poverty, not for the taxpayers who have to foot the cost, not for the pensioners who face a £4,000 cliff edge and not for the households facing homelessness. We know how punitive policies turn out: more hardship, less opportunity and more pressure on the welfare state. This Government will not repeat the Conservatives’ mistakes. We are fixing the broken welfare system they left in their wake, and ensuring that everyone gets the support they need so that they can fulfil their potential and truly have a better future.

Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.