Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

Rebecca Long Bailey Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford) (Lab)]

We all know the famous quote:

“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”

It is a litmus test for the morality and integrity of our country’s values. In recent years, the United Nations has twice reported on the conditions for disabled people in the UK, finding that there were “grave and systematic violations” of human rights. Sadly, the Bill as it stands will worsen this situation.

Despite concessions, and even excluding existing claimants, brutal cuts will still push hundreds of thousands of vulnerable, sick and disabled people into poverty. Existing claimants will live in fear that if their situation changes and they are reassessed, they could lose everything under the new system. Disabled children will look to the future with trepidation, knowing that in adulthood the support that would have helped them to live a full and fruitful life might not be there.

I truly welcome the proposals to support with a little help those who could work, but according to the Learning and Work Institute, the number of people who will be helped is nominal, at between 1% and 3%—a finding echoed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which concludes that we might expect increases in employment in only the tens of thousands.

Although the concessions made over the weekend are welcome, they create a two-tier system, as the amount of support that someone receives will now depend on when they made their claim. That is simply not fair, especially as those who require help need this support through no fault of their own.

Yes, it is clear that our punitive and broken welfare system needs reform—it drives disabled people into poverty. However, there should have been proper consultation with those most directly affected in order to build a system that truly nurtures, but that has not happened. The Government should have published assessments on the impact of these updated proposals on the poverty of future claimants, those undergoing reassessments and their carers, but they have not. The Government should have assessed the knock-on impact on local authorities, the NHS and the charity sector and the scope for non-payment of household debts as people pushed into poverty desperately seek help elsewhere, but they have not. We are being asked today to vote on a Bill and rush it through without consultation or knowing the full picture, and that cannot be right.

If this is about cost, I recognise the financial challenges facing the Government—challenges that are a direct result of 14 years of mismanagement and under-investment by the previous Government—but the sad thing is that there are alternatives. The Government could introduce higher taxes on extreme wealth, end the stealth subsidies for banks and tax gambling fairly and properly. The list of alternatives is endless.

Every single disability organisation is against this brutal Bill. If we ignore them and say that it is okay to treat one group of people as lesser than another and okay to neglect the vulnerable, undermine their rights and dignity and push them into poverty, what does that honestly say about the true measure of our society? I say to my colleagues on the Front Bench: please pull back from the brink now, before it is too late, and withdraw this Bill.