Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

Peter Bedford Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)]

So there we have it: a Prime Minister not in control, a Work and Pensions Secretary with her hands tied behind her back, and a Chancellor now scrambling to find ways to balance the books after months of reckless spending. This shoddy attempt at welfare reform has revealed something that the nation has learned over the last year: Labour did not plan for government. We all know that the welfare bill is enormous, with more than £150 billion being spent on benefits for working-age adults. A staggering one in four claim to have some form of disability; that is simply unsustainable.

The Government had a prime opportunity in their first year in office—their honeymoon period—to bring about long-term reforms, yet this half-baked Bill, which has already been hastily rewritten to appease hard-left Government Members, does not even achieve the £5 billion of savings originally intended. Worse, it leaves us with a two-tier system from a two-tier Prime Minister.

We all know why the Chancellor needs these savings: she will go down as the Klarna Chancellor—spend now, pay later. After all, she has blown taxpayers’ money on 25 more pointless quangos.

[Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Mr Bedford]

I am not giving away.

The Chancellor has also blown billions of pounds on GB Energy—a project so vague that no one seems to know what it does—while handing out inflation-busting pay rises to appease the unions. Now she cannot even claw back £5 billion of savings to keep market confidence as the country’s debt spirals out of control.

When the Work and Pensions Secretary tabled the Bill, Conservative Members gave her three reasonable asks. First, we needed the Government to commit to reducing welfare spending, yet as their screeching U-turn shows, they are incapable of tackling that problem. Indeed, the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts an increase of £60 billion in annual welfare costs by the end of the Parliament.

Secondly, we asked for a clear commitment that the Government would get people back to work. However, as was highlighted by the Secretary of State yesterday, the pathways to work programme will not be fully funded until the end of the Parliament, so it will arguably be inconsequential, weak and woefully underfunded.

[Phil Brickell]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Mr Bedford]

I am not giving away; I am going to make progress. The hon. Member can repay the favour sometime.

Thirdly, we needed a guarantee that taxes would not rise again in the upcoming Budget. But let us be honest: the Chancellor has only one move left—she will raid the pockets of hard-working families, which is something Labour promised not to do. Even today, we have heard rumours in the media that she is coming after people’s ISAs.

It is painfully clear that the Government have lost their fiscal credibility. I say to my constituents: I will always be there to support you and I will fight your corner when the Government come back again for more of your hard-earned income to cover their incompetence. This embarrassing failure of leadership from a Government who should be at the height of their power has led Conservative Members to conclude that we cannot and will not support the Bill.

Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

Peter Bedford Excerpts

Committee of the whole House & 3rd reading
Wednesday 9th July 2025 Commons Chamber

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

I will do my best, Sir Roger. I want to address new clause 8, tabled in my name. It is a procedural clause and I do not think it is particularly contentious.

Before I address the new clause, I want to say that I am still getting emails and still being met on the bus and at community events by people who are extremely distressed about this legislation going through. I want to put on record for my constituents that, as always, I will not vote for any legislation that cuts benefits to some of the poorest people I represent. I just cannot do that and I want that underlined.

Ironically, just to give some context, some Members may have listened today to an interview on the “Today” programme with George Osborne, who is now the chair of the British Museum, in which he was talking about the Bayeux tapestry coming to this country. I remember another tapestry, which was brought to this House when he introduced cuts to benefits for disabled people. It showed the names of the people who had committed suicide. Do hon. Members remember that? It was one of the most distressing things I have seen in my political life and I wept that day. I do not want that to happen again. Let us be honest, as sure as night follows day, if cuts go through on the scale proposed, people will lose their lives. People will suffer immense harm. Let us all understand that.

Members talk pompously about “The House at its best”, but last week’s debate was a good day for the House. People on all sides expressed their views, the Government responded, although not as far as I wanted them to respond, and the House held the Government to account. It is not often that we see that, but it happened, and the reason it happened was that we were dealing with primary legislation that hon. Members could debate and amend. I have put this new clause forward because, if the Government do anything, they should do it through primary legislation and not delegated legislation, which goes on in Committee, where there is no chance to amend it and it is often rushed through on a vote with no debate. This matter is so important that that is not the way we should operate as a House.

Last week, hon. Members on all sides of the debate showed how democracy should work in this Chamber. That is why my new clause says that the Government must bring forward primary legislation in draft form so that we can all see it—no bouncers any more—and it is not done as delegated legislation so that Members do not have the chance to amend it or properly discuss it. That is all I ask for, and to be frank, it is not contentious. I would expect the Government just to accept it, because it is the normal democratic process in this Chamber. I want to be able to go back to my constituents when the review comes forward, and say, “I argued your case, I tried to amend it, I won on some and lost on others—that’s democracy.”

I support new clause 11 tabled by the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Dr Tidball). It is truly an excellent setting out of how co-production could work. The only element on which I disagree with her is when the process moves on and we become dependent on the Government making a statement, which we could reject so that they could not move on. The problem with that is exactly the same as with delegated legislation: we cannot amend a statement. I have been here so long that I know what Governments do. They bring forward a statement including some good stuff that we cannot vote against, but there is also some bad stuff that we disagree with. If we cannot amend it at that stage, it is all or nothing, and as a result, we get bad legislation. None the less, the part of new clause 11 that sets out who should be consulted, be involved and elect the chair is critical.

I do not want to sound patronising, but the speech made by the hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge last week brought tears to my eyes, and it is not often a speech in this House does that. The justified anger that she expressed about what went on under the Tories moved me deeply, and I think it moved the whole House. I do not want a Member standing up in five years’ time equally angry about what we did in this legislation. I want us to be able to hold the Government to account, not aggressively but constructively, in a way that we can debate and amend, and hopefully we might even be able to build consensus. That is what my new clause is all about, and that is all I want to say.

[Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)]

I rise primarily to speak to the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately). However, I would like to begin by addressing the amendments brought forward by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. We were first presented with the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill in June. Then, after being held over a barrel by her Back Benchers, the Secretary of State returned to the House with something quite different. Then, at the eleventh hour on Second Reading, just last week, amendments 4, 5 and 10 were hastily drawn up. Why? It was to cobble together enough support to get something that resembles welfare reform over the line. Only a Labour Government could pledge to reduce the cost of something and end up doing the exact opposite. The people who will pay the price for this additional welfare spending are our constituents who get up early, work hard and pay their dues.

New clause 12 and the associated amendments are key to fairness in the system, key to protecting the social contract that underpins our society and, most importantly, key to balancing the books to support our economy. There is no way we can continue to have a situation where individuals receive their PIP payments after attending only a virtual session. There is no way we can continue to have a spiralling welfare bill driven by the over-medicalisation of conditions such as OCD and anxiety. And finally, there is no way we can continue to hand out benefits willy-nilly to those who have come to the United Kingdom without any means of supporting themselves. These are not fringe views. They are widely supported by the public, by working men and women across the country who do the right thing and who increasingly ask, “Why are we footing a bill for a system we no longer believe in?” The social contract is fraying, and the blame lies not with the public but with the state in allowing the system to drift and grow to unsustainable levels.

[Debbie Abrahams]

I hope the hon. Member does not mind my intervening on him, but I want to pick up on the point he was making about people that come to this country and take benefits. Is he aware that during the pandemic, for example, people who have leave to remain were unable to avail themselves of any social security support as they do not have recourse to public funds, and that they were left absolutely destitute? I hope he will withdraw his remark, because it is just not true.

[Mr Bedford]

I have a lot of respect for the hon. Lady, but I am not going to withdraw the comment I made, because there are people in that situation—

[Hon. Members]

No, there are not!

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order.

[Mr Bedford]

The social contract is fraying, as I said. When my constituent Nick, who works hard for the money he earns and pays into system, walks through his town centre, he asks himself, “What is the point? Why am I working harder than ever when the system rewards those that often don’t?” These amendments matter. They are not unfair; they are principled. They would ensure that the welfare system remained strong for those who truly need it, and fair for those who fund it. The hard-working British public expect us to act, and unfortunately, if the Government do not support our amendments today, they will be letting the public down.