Welfare

Michael Payne Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2026 Commons Chamber

[Michael Payne (Gedling) (Lab)]

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate, not least because it gives this House an opportunity to remind the Conservative party of a rather inconvenient truth. The welfare crisis facing our country did not begin on 4 July 2024; it was inherited on that day from a Conservative party that had 14 years to fix our welfare system, tackle economic inactivity, improve employment opportunities for disabled people and build a health service capable of getting people back into work. What did the Conservatives leave behind? They left millions of people economically inactive because of long-term sickness; a welfare system that too often wrote people off, rather than helping them back into employment; NHS waiting lists at record levels; and a generation of young people facing barriers to opportunity.

The welfare bill rose by £33 billion in the final year in which the Leader of the Opposition was in the Cabinet, and there was an increase of a quarter of a million young people not in education, employment or training in the final three years of the Conservative Government. That is not a record to boast about, but a record to apologise for, yet here we are, listening to Conservative Members—the very few who are present for this Opposition day debate—lecturing this Labour Government about the very problems that they created. They have apparently now discovered the answer to those problems: £36 billion of welfare cuts, and all during a cost of living crisis.

The ink is barely dry on the Conservatives’ proposals, and already the highly respected Institute for Fiscal Studies has raised serious questions about the credibility of their numbers—serious questions, by the way, that the shadow Secretary of State did nothing to address in her opening remarks. The Conservatives claim that they can save £14 billion by restricting health-related benefits for people with certain mental health conditions and with back and joint problems, but the Institute for Fiscal Studies points out that disability benefits are assessed according to the impact of a person’s condition, not simply the name of their diagnosis. The IFS also highlights that two thirds of personal independence payment recipients with a mental health diagnosis also have a physical health diagnosis.

I ask Conservative Members a very simple question: how exactly will they distinguish between somebody who is genuinely unable to work and somebody whose illness they have decided is not serious enough? Will it be a Conservative politician making that judgment, a Treasury spreadsheet, perhaps, or an arbitrary list of conditions drawn up to make their sums add up? Illness does not become less debilitating simply because a politician decides it is too expensive, nor does disability disappear because the Treasury wants to save money.

Then there is the Conservatives’ proposal to save £9.5 billion by restricting benefits for foreign nationals. Again, the IFS questions the certainty of these savings, pointing to the possibility that eligible individuals will seek to obtain British citizenship. There is a further problem with their figures, because the Department does not routinely publish a breakdown of benefit expenditure by nationality.

The Opposition need to explain precisely how they have calculated that £9.5 billion figure, what assumptions they have made about eligibility and future behaviour, and how much of that money they genuinely expect to save. Identifying a group of people and attaching a multibillion-pound saving to them is not the same as demonstrating that the saving can actually be delivered. A credible fiscal proposal needs to account for the people who acquire citizenship, those whose immigration status changes, and those who would remain eligible for support under existing rules. The IFS has already raised questions about the assumptions underpinning the Conservatives’ figures, so before Conservative Members start banking £9.5 billion in savings, perhaps they could explain how they intend to achieve them. A headline figure is not a costed policy, and a projected saving is not a saving until they can demonstrate where it will actually come from.

Perhaps the most extraordinary criticism of this approach comes from within the Conservative party. We have been here before: in 2016, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith)—I notified him that I would mention him in this debate—resigned from David Cameron’s Cabinet over its approach to welfare cuts. He warned that the reductions in welfare for working people had “gone too far”, and criticised an approach to balancing the books that placed an unfair burden on the poor and vulnerable. These are the words not of a Labour politician, but of the man who designed the Conservative welfare programme and championed universal credit. I seriously think that Conservative Members should reflect on that. If even the architect of their own welfare reforms when they were last in government recognised that there was a point at which welfare cuts went too far, what exactly makes them think that another £36 billion of ill-thought-through cuts is the answer now?

I have to say that the use of the phrase “foreign nationals” intrigues me. Let me be clear: foreign nationals, in the main, are not entitled to benefits. They have no recourse to public funds. A look under the bonnet exposes the groups of people the Conservatives propose taking support from: 50,000 people who came here on humanitarian visas—half of whom, by the way, are in work. And who is entitled to a humanitarian visa? Ukrainian refugees, people who came here because they worked alongside our troops in Afghanistan, and British national overseas visa holders, particularly those from Hong Kong who are living in our constituencies.

There used to be consensus in this place that supporting the people I have just listed was virtuous, and that our commitment to our allies was unshakeable. Do the Opposition really think that the British public support cutting support for Ukrainian refugees, former soldiers and translators who worked with us in Afghanistan, and those fleeing oppression in Hong Kong? That is why they rely on such broad and politically convenient labels as “foreign nationals.” Examine the actual groups of people who would be affected, and the Conservatives’ proposals become much harder for them to defend. That is precisely why we should look beyond the headline figures and examine who would pay the price of these cuts. The next category the Conservatives talk about is refugees—people who came to this country fleeing war, persecution and famine; people who were vetted extensively and awarded refugee status by our country. The Opposition propose cutting off their access to benefits entirely. That is who they are referring to.

[Helen Whately]

What the hon. Member is saying about our policies is not correct.

[Michael Payne]

It would be really interesting to hear why it is not correct, because I have read the proposals referred to in the speech in detail. It is absolutely clear that that is who the Opposition are referring to when they use the phrase “foreign nationals”. If they want to bank made-up savings on the backs of refugees, they should come out and say so.

The next category is people with indefinite or limited leave to remain; the shadow Secretary of State mentioned them in her speech. As mentioned earlier, many of these people will simply seek British citizenship, meaning the Opposition’s claimed savings are illusory at best. It is also worth pointing out that 110,000 of these people are in work, so their benefits will likely be lower than the Opposition’s figures imply. That fact also completely blows a hole in their argument that contribution should be the basis of our welfare system. Those people contribute. They are our care workers, our nurses, and our NHS staff.

This is where the Conservatives’ argument becomes particularly difficult to understand. They tell us that welfare should reward contribution, and that people who work hard, pay taxes and contribute to our country should be recognised, yet they propose restrictions that could penalise people who are already doing precisely that. They cannot stand at the Dispatch Box championing contribution on Monday, and then propose taking away support from the people who contribute on Tuesday. Surely the test of a welfare system is not simply where somebody was born, but whether the rules are fair, whether a person is contributing where they can, and whether they receive the support to which they are entitled.

Finally, the remaining categories are “other” and “no immigration status recorded”. According to the Department’s spreadsheets, to which the Opposition have linked in their report, the “other” category includes “individuals no longer receiving UC payments”, so any savings attributed to that category are highly questionable. As for the “no immigration status recorded” category, there is as much chance that these are British nationals as not.

So what does that all mean for the £9.5 billion identified in savings? After accounting for the fact that the figure is likely to be inaccurate, accounting for those who seek British citizenship and accounting for the fact that the final two categories either contain no one claiming benefits or may not even contain foreign nationals, any remaining savings come from cuts to support for refugees, Ukrainians we have found homes for, Afghan interpreters we have an obligation to, and care workers, nurses and NHS staff we rely on.

Let us be clear about what we have established: the Conservatives have announced £9.5 billion in savings, but their own assumptions need rigorous scrutiny. Some of the people affected are refugees, some have supported our armed forces, and some are already working in our public services. Some may not even fall within the category that the Conservatives claim to be targeting. This is a very long way from the Conservative party of old, which used to be credible when delivering savings.

Let me turn to their proposal to move disabled people from the personal independence payment on to attendance allowance when they hit pension age. My word—a disabled person who worked their entire life, having assiduously saved, will finally reach the age at which they can retire, only to find that the Conservative party has ripped their personal independence payment away. I wonder how many Conservative Members have explained that proposal to the older disabled people in their constituencies. This is the problem with the Conservative welfare policy. The savings are announced in billions, but, as the Minister said earlier, the consequences are felt in individuals and families. The nasty party is truly back.

Let me be clear and unequivocal. I believe in welfare reform. I believe that those who can work should be supported and expected to work. I believe that taxpayers deserve a system that is fair, sustainable and protects public money, and I believe that fraud and abuse should be tackled robustly. Ministers should be commended for the work that they are already doing in that regard.

I also believe something equally important—that people who are genuinely sick, disabled or unable to work deserve dignity, security and compassion. Those principles are not contradictory; they are the foundations of a decent welfare state built by William Beveridge and people whose shoulders we in this House sit on. They are precisely why I support the approach of this Labour Government under the leadership of this Prime Minister. Rather than simply announcing make-believe cuts and hoping for the best, this Government are reforming the incentives within universal credit and investing £3.5 billion in employment support by the end of the decade.

We are providing personalised help to people who have too often been abandoned by the system. We are increasing the standard universal credit allowance above inflation while protecting existing recipients of the health element and those with the most severe lifelong conditions. We are supporting people into employment, not simply pushing them into poverty, and we are recognising that welfare reform cannot be separated from fixing the NHS, improving mental health services, investing in skills and creating decent jobs.

In Gedling, I meet constituents who want nothing more than the opportunity to work, contribute and build better lives for themselves and their families. They include people living with disabilities who face enormous barriers to employment, people with long-term health conditions who desperately want treatment so that they can return to the jobs that they love, and parents who work hard, pay their taxes and still struggle to make ends meet. They do not need another round of political finger-pointing or simplistic slogans like those we heard today from the shadow Secretary of State. They need a Government prepared to do the difficult work of reform. That is what this Labour Government are doing.

The Conservatives had 14 years to build a welfare system that works. Instead, they left behind a system that too often trapped people in inactivity, failed to provide the support that they needed and left taxpayers facing an increasingly unsustainable bill, as the Minister set out earlier. Now, from the comfort of opposition, out of office, they have produced a plan built around £36 billion of cuts, with serious unanswered questions about whether their figures add up.

Perhaps the most revealing part is that even their own former Work and Pensions Secretary warned nearly a decade ago that welfare cuts had gone too far. The lesson seems to be one that the Conservatives have chosen to forget. Welfare reform is not simply about how much money can be taken out of the system or somebody else’s pockets. It is about whether we can help people into work, protect those who cannot work and build a system that is sustainable for the long term.

They failed to fix the system when they had the power to do so. Now they want the country to believe that they have all the answers. Well, the British public have seen the Conservatives’ record, and this Labour Government will take absolutely no lectures from the architects of the very crisis that Ministers are now clearing up.

We will vote for welfare reform. We will protect those who need protecting. We will support those who can work into good, secure employment, and we will build a welfare state that is fair to taxpayers, compassionate to those in need and worthy of the country that we all aspire to be. That is the Labour difference, and it is one I am proud to defend.

[Several hon. Members rose—]