Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Western]

This Government are acting now. We have already announced that all children in families in England that are in receipt of universal credit will receive free school meals, lifting 100,000 children out of poverty. We have capped the cost of school uniforms, and introduced a new crisis and resilience fund. Our Child Maintenance Service reforms will lift 20,000 children out of poverty, and much more will be done when the child poverty taskforce reports later this year.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Despite what those on the far right try to claim, the cost of living crisis remains the main issue that people face. One way to really help struggling families would be to lift the two-child benefit cap—that would lift hundreds of thousands of children across the country out of poverty, including many in my constituency. Is it not the case that the forthcoming Budget should announce that the two-child benefit cap will be scrapped?

[Andrew Western]

My hon. Friend will understand that I am not going to make policy from the Dispatch Box. What I would say to him, as I have already said to the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan), is that all available levers are under consideration as part of our child poverty taskforce, which will report later this year. We will do what it takes to bear down on child poverty. There are many levers that we can look at using to do so; we have pulled some already, and we will continue that work.

Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

Richard Burgon Excerpts

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

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to the many amendments that attempt to improve this Bill, which I signed in desperation, because I did not enter politics to strip vital support from those who need it, yet the Bill does exactly that. We are the party that created the welfare state, so we know the welfare state is not a handout—sadly, the debate on this Bill has characterised it as such—but a lifeline. Proposing to take that lifeline away from anyone who may need it is a betrayal of those we are elected to serve.

While I welcome the Government stepping back on some elements of the Bill, I do not believe they have gone far enough. As it stands, £2 billion is still set to be cut from hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled people who are already on low incomes, which cannot be right. That is why I am pleased to support amendment (a) to amendment 2, which appears in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), to scrap the cut to the universal credit health element entirely. We have to realise that disability rights organisations still do not support the cut at all. The impact assessments that do exist are inadequate or worrying, and thousands will still be pushed into poverty.

In truth, the announcement of the Timms review does little to quell my fears. This Government-led review will take place after the Bill takes effect. Whether or not the review is co-produced, the Government will be taking support away from disabled people and then consulting them on their views after the fact. The toxicity around the Bill means that it is being criticised by those whom it is meant to support, and that is really not a good start.

While I am pleased that the points element has been removed from the Bill, I still share the concerns held by many disability rights groups about what the Bill will truly mean for disabled people. That is why I have signed my name to amendments that will go some way towards making the Bill somewhat more humane. Amendment 38, which appears in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), would protect those with fluctuating conditions. New clause 8, in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), and new clause 11, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Dr Tidball), would fix concerns about the Timms review by ensuring it is followed by primary legislation and by mandating its implementation and co-production with disabled people.

Other amendments that I support include those to protect carers and to ensure that due regard is given to the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. We would be wrong to ignore the UN’s warning that the Bill will worsen the rights of disabled people. We have to remember that PIP allows many disabled people to access work. Cutting support does not incentivise work, but prevents it. The claim that these reforms would have boosted employment simply does not hold up. Let us not forget that the Bill was published three weeks ago, and was gutted on Second Reading with a further week to rush it through Parliament. That is no way to legislate on matters with such serious consequences.

We have a health crisis in our nation, especially in respect of mental health, and the answer is not to take financial support away from those who need it. If we want to reduce the number of people off work due to physical or mental ill health, we have to continue to address the issues in our healthcare system, and get on with the plans to allow people to access appointments and assessments to stop their ailments worsening. This is not how welfare reform should be carried out, and even at this late stage I urge the Government to throw this Bill out. Some may say that that would be mad, but surely it cannot be worse than what we have been doing this week.

We have to be frank about why the Bill was introduced. It was primarily about saving money, but it would balance the books on the backs of the sick and disabled. I am really tired of how we talk about the economy and about growth in this House as though this is a household bill and we can cut this or cut that. No one seems to ask a good economist and find out that we are meant to invest for growth. People keep telling me that I am young, which is patronising—and it is not even that true any more—but I still cannot find anyone who can give me an example of a time in history when cuts to public services or welfare have solved the issues of the day. That is the case again and again, and those discussions need to end.

There are many other ways in which we can save money. As many Members have pointed out, we could end tax loopholes or have a wealth tax. I was pleased to add my name to amendment 37, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles), which would scrap third-party PIP assessments. US multinationals are making millions of pounds out of those assessments, while humiliating people and/or getting it wrong.

We are told that all this is about getting people into work, but I just cannot see how we can continue to hold on to that idea. I reiterate that it may seem bad to drop the Bill at this late stage, but it cannot be worse than the debate we have had over the past couple of weeks.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Sometimes politics seems complicated. Sometimes the passage of a Bill through Parliament, especially with antics and shenanigans like those we saw last week, may confuse people. But actually, the issue before all of us when we vote tonight is very simple. Today, Wednesday 9 July 2025, are Labour MPs going to vote through cuts to universal credit that will take £2 billion from 750,000 sick and disabled people who are already on low incomes—people who will have been judged not fit to work? Will we put our name to a Bill that will, on average, take £3,000 off every single one of those 750,000 people? I think that if we had not had the complications with the Bill the week before, Labour MPs would find it very easy. They would see a Bill that asks us to take billions of pounds from low-income people in our constituencies across the country and find it very easy to vote no.

I ask my friends on the Labour Benches to cast their minds back to when they were first selected and first elected. None of us got into politics to take £3,000 a year off low-income people who are sick and disabled and on universal credit. It has been said that what is morally wrong can never be politically right. People outside this Chamber see the issue before us very clearly indeed. The Bill is being railroaded through, disabled people’s voices are being excluded, and when colleagues say, “Don’t listen to those who say we shouldn’t press on,” that means, “Don’t listen to disabled people.” I think we should listen to disabled people, and not one disabled people’s organisation supports the changes.

The reason the Bill is being rushed through a Committee of the whole House, rather than a Committee where disabled people and their organisations—people with lived experience—could talk to the MPs on the Committee, is because of a politically imposed artificial deadline that is there to save face. I welcome the changes made last week as a result of pressure from disabled people and Back-Bench MPs, but we are voting tonight on taking money off people on low incomes. We are voting tonight on whether we think, after saying last week that it was wrong to have a two-tier PIP system, that it is right to have a two-tier universal credit system.

The reality is that people will remember how we vote tonight. It has been said before, but I will say it again: some votes define us. They define us as politicians and they define how we view our time in Parliament. Disabled people who come to see us in our constituency surgeries will not understand if we, as Labour people, vote for this cut to universal credit tonight or abstain. We will live with that vote in every single constituency surgery between now and the next general election.

Let us take a step back and imagine that we did not have a Whip system in this House. Of course, all of us agree on 99% of things all the time. That is the reality, but if this were not a whipped vote, I think the vast majority of Labour MPs would vote with their conscience and with their disabled constituents against cutting universal credit. All the rest is sophistry. We will live with this vote. It is often said that the longer the statement on Twitter from an MP after a vote, the worse the decision they must have made. You start at the first sentence and by the time you get to the end, the constituents are thinking, “Did they? Did they really vote for that after all they said on the TV, in their tweets and in the Chamber?”

We are Labour people. This is not a left and right issue in the Labour party; this is a right and wrong issue. I say this: any Labour MP who votes against these cuts to low-income people on universal credit tonight will sleep soundly, knowing that they did all they could, on £90,000-odd a year, to stand up for their disabled constituents. That is what we got into politics to do. We should not plough ahead. We should vote this out.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the final Back-Bench speaker, David Pinto-Duschinsky, after which I will call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

Richard Burgon Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I wish that we were not here today. We do not need to be here today. There is nothing special or magical about this Tuesday—nothing at all. The deadline we have been given is to solve a political problem. That is why so many of us on the Labour Benches have been pleading with the Government to pull the Bill, go back to the drawing board and work in partnership with disabled people and others, including with the Timms review, to ensure that we get a welfare system that works for disabled people and others. There is no need to ram the Bill through other than to save political face. There is no need to ram it through at Third Reading next Wednesday in Committee of the whole House so that disabled people cannot give evidence from their experiences in Bill Committee. There is no need to do that at all. We should be solving this problem, not solving a political problem.

We are being asked to vote on the principles of the Bill, and all hon. Friends should be clear about what those are. They are on the face of the Bill. It says,

“to restrict eligibility for the personal independence payment.”

That is the purpose of the Bill. My colleagues and I did not come into Labour politics to restrict eligibility for personal independence payments. When I think about what we are being asked to vote for tonight, I think not just of my colleagues here, but of the disabled people who come to my constituency advice surgeries. I think of the disabled people who had hope in their hearts a year ago when a Labour Government were elected after 14 years.

Let’s be clear: this was not in our manifesto. The Labour party as a whole has not approved this, and the Bill has been rushed through. We need to be clear that if this were a free vote, it would be hard to find many Labour MPs at all voting for it. As my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) said, this is a matter of conscience, and we need to be clear about what we are comparing here. When we decide how to vote tonight, we are not comparing the Bill as the Government intended with the Bill as is promised; we are comparing the situation of disabled people across the country as it is now with the situation that will come to pass if the Bill is passed.

This Bill, which was brought—whatever the narrative—to save billions of pounds, with these concessions still cuts billions of pounds from disability support. No Government and no Labour Government should seek to balance the books on the backs of disabled people. That is not what any of us in the Labour family, left, centre or right of the party, came into politics to do, and that is why so many people are uneasy about this.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Emma Lewell) spoke clearly from her experience. She regretted not voting against the Conservatives’ welfare Bill back in 2015. I urge all colleagues to listen carefully to what she said because the truth is this matter does not end when the voting Lobbies close tonight; this matter will come back to haunt Labour MPs in their constituency surgeries Friday after Friday up to and including the day of the next general election. People will ask, “Why on earth did you vote for these cuts?” or “Why on earth did you sit on your hands?”

It is notable that 138 disabled people’s organisations are pleading with Labour MPs to vote for the reasoned amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central and vote against this Bill. I know the Whips and those on the Front Bench can make compelling arguments, but for me, the real compelling argument has been made outside this Chamber by those 138 disabled people’s organisations. It was very telling that, when asked yesterday by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) to name one disabled persons’ organisation that supports this disability benefit cuts Bill, the Secretary of State could not name one, because there is not one.

I honestly believe that for any Labour MP who votes for this Bill tonight or sits on their hands, that vote will hang like an albatross around their necks. I understand that some colleagues will feel they have to vote for disability benefit cuts out of party loyalty, but there are other types of loyalty in addition to that: loyalty to our consciences; loyalty to our party’s values; loyalty to our disabled constituents; loyalty to those who are really struggling and come to see their MP—people like me, on about £90,000 a year—and ask them for help. I do not want to be in my constituency advice surgery saying to those people, “You know how you’ve got a problem and you’re in a really difficult situation? Well, that’s because of the way I voted.”

I urge MPs to have the democratic dignity that comes today by voting with their conscience and voting to give disabled people outside this place what they have been denied for too long: dignity, respect, a voice in this House and a vote in the Lobby—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order.

Welfare Reform

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Liz Kendall]

The hon. Lady raises a really important point. Access to work is there precisely to support people who have needs over and above the legal requirement on employers to make reasonable adjustments. We need to fix that system because the backlogs are too long and not enough people are getting that support. That is precisely why we are consulting on the future of access to work. We will make the changes that people need, so that they can get the help they need to get good meaningful work and to stay in work, and we will deliver that as soon as possible.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Despite the changes, is it not the case that over 400,000 disabled people—our constituents—who need assistance to cut up their food, wash themselves, go to the toilet and dress themselves, will be denied PIP from next year, when they currently would have got it? Is not the reality that Labour MPs will have to deal with that, week after week, in their constituency surgeries? Would it not be better if, rather than trying to save political face, the Government pulled this artificial, politically imposed deadline of tomorrow? It is important not that we save face, but that we get it right.

[Liz Kendall]

Many hon. Members have understandably raised concerns because their constituents who are on PIP, right here and now, are extremely anxious, even though if they are still on PIP at the time when the changes come in, nine out of 10 of them will not be affected—they will be protected in future. The Timms review will look at this vital benefit going forward—the activities, the descriptors and the points they get—and I really hope that my hon. Friend will engage with us throughout the process to ensure that we get it right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Stephen Timms]

The OBR has published its assessment, and my hon. Friend is right that it has assessed that one in 10 of those receiving PIP in November next year will have lost it by 2029-30—one in 10; not the much larger proportion that we were hearing about earlier. Following that, we will be able to introduce the biggest ever investment in employment support for people out of work on health and disability grounds. We do not want any longer to trap people on low incomes for years and years; we want people to be able to enter work and fulfil their ambitions. That is what the investment will allow.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Is it not the simple and sad truth that any MP who votes for the upcoming welfare Bill will be voting to take PIP from disabled people who need assistance to cut up their food, wash themselves and go to the toilet?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

No. Members will be voting for reforms to open up opportunities for people who have been denied opportunities for far too long. We are putting that right.

Disabled People in Poverty

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

It is extremely disappointing that the Government are pressing ahead with the cuts. They should have learned the lesson from the winter fuel payment debacle. Ahead of the coming votes, we will hear a lot of Government spin about how it is really about helping disabled people, but it is not. Labour colleagues should remember one key thing: the Government plan to slash £7 billion from support for disabled people. They cannot cut £7 billion from disabled people and then credibly claim to be helping them.

The devastating consequences for our communities are clear: 300,000 to 400,000 more disabled people will be pushed into poverty, 700,000 disabled families who are already in poverty will be pushed deeper into it, and at least 800,000 disabled people will lose PIP—the support they rely on to eat, wash, dress and use the toilet. It is immoral and I will vote against it.

In conclusion, I say to Labour colleagues: this change will become a millstone around the necks of not just the Labour Government but every MP who fails to vote against it. In the coming days, Ministers will call in MPs, and there will be the carrot and the stick. They will be urged not to vote against the cuts, and all sorts of promises will be made. But the minute the vote has taken place, MPs will be dropped and their phone calls will stop being answered. From the day of that vote up to and including the day of the next general election, they will be left to face their constituents alone—left to pick up the pieces in their constituency as thousands are thrown into hardship.

I urge MPs not to sit on their hands but to vote against this change. It is immoral. But the Government should save us from that choice by thinking again and dropping these cruel cuts.

Winter Fuel Payment

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Torsten Bell]

It is usual for a Minister to thank the Member for their question, but I actually mean it in this case, because the right hon. Lady has completely proved my point that the Conservatives have learned no lessons whatever. They think they can come to this Chamber and call for more spending and oppose every tax rise—and they expect to be taken seriously ever again? They will not be.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

As a Labour MP who voted against the winter fuel payment cuts, I welcome this change in position, but I urge the Minister and the Government to learn the lessons. One of them is to listen to Back Benchers. If the Minister and the Government listen to Back Benchers, we can help the Government get it right and help them avoid getting it wrong. We do not want to be here in a year or two’s time with a Minister sent to the Dispatch Box to make another U-turn after not listening to Back Benchers on disability benefit cuts. If they listen now we can help the Government get it right.

[Torsten Bell]

It is important to listen to Back Benchers and to Front Benchers. It is even important to listen to Opposition Members on occasion, particularly when they are digging their own grave with their party’s policies. More seriously, the point that my hon. Friend raises is important: everybody on the Government Benches wants to make sure that this is a fairer country that is growing again—that wages are growing, that poverty is falling, that inequality is coming down. That is what we need to deliver. Sometimes that will involve tough choices, including all the ones that the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) opposes. Those choices will need to be made, because we are a party of government not a party of protest, but they are made in the interests of our values and of a fairer country and a fairer Britain.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Western]

As my hon. Friend will appreciate, the review has only been announced today. There are a considerable number of strands to it that will be led by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security and Disability. What I can tell my hon. Friend is that, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said earlier, that work is beginning this week by reaching out, as is entirely appropriate, to those stakeholder organisations, who will feed in to the purpose and scope of that work moving forward.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

6. What progress her Department has made on its review of the personal independence payment assessment system.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Liz Kendall)]

As I said in response to an earlier question, it is over a decade since PIP was introduced and there have been significant shifts in the nature of disability and long-term conditions in this country, as well as changes in wider society and the workplace. That is why our Green Paper announced our plans to review the PIP assessment, working with disabled people, the organisations that represent them, and others. We are starting that work today, inviting key organisations representing disabled people in to discuss the terms of reference, which we will publish, and we will continue to keep the House updated as our work progresses.

[Richard Burgon]

There has rightly been a lot of focus on the 250,000 people the Government’s own impact assessment says will be pushed into poverty by this cruel disability benefit cut, but the true impact on poverty will be even worse. New DWP figures, obtained from a freedom of information request, show that 700,000 families already in poverty will be hit even harder. It is wrong that that has had to come out through a freedom of information request, so will the Minister come clean today about the true scale of poverty that this disastrous policy will cause? Does it not fly in the face of what a Labour Government are meant to do—lift people out of poverty, not push them further into poverty?

[Liz Kendall]

My hon. Friend will know, as we have been very clear with the House, that those figures do not take into consideration the number of disabled people who we believe will find work through our biggest ever investment in employment support, Pathways to Work. Neither do they take into consideration the huge strides we will make with our forthcoming child poverty strategy. We have been more open and transparent than any previous Government, publishing all the poverty impact and other detailed assessments, because we are very happy to have this debate in the House and to put forward our case. Our mission is to get as many people as we can into work and on in their careers, with more income and better choices and chances: that is what a Labour Government are for.

Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Harold Wilson once said:

“The Labour party is a moral crusade, or it is nothing.”

We need to be clear, as millions of people outside this place are clear, that to try to balance the books on the backs of the poor and disabled is fundamentally immoral and un-Labour. The Prime Minister and the Government need not to plough ahead apace with this immoral, appalling plan, but instead to drop it now. Let us be clear: someone who needs assistance to cut up their own food and wash and dress themselves would currently get a personal independence payment, but they could lose it thanks to the Government’s proposals. That is completely appalling.

These cuts were cruel enough when the OBR estimated that 800,000 people would lose PIP, but a new freedom of information answer from the DWP estimates that 1.3 million people could lose it. The Government should come clean and say what the figure is. It is outrageous to have a vote without knowing the figures. I say quite clearly that if the Government do not drop this immoral plan, I will vote against these cuts to disability benefits. I know that many of my colleagues will do so as well.

Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 29th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Neil Duncan-Jordan]

Yes, and I am going to address that point shortly.

It is not the purpose of banks to act as an arm of the state, and compelling them to do so sets a very dangerous precedent that we in this House need to be aware of. We also know that organised crime groups, which are responsible for more than £7 billion of large-scale fraud, will evade detection by spreading funds across multiple accounts, beyond the reach of the algorithmic scanning that will be used to flag overpayments. It will be welfare recipients who are caught up in the net of bank surveillance, regardless of whether they are suspected of fraudulent activity.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his eminently reasonable and common-sense approach to this debate and on amendment 11. Does it seem to him, as it seems to me, that this legislation takes place in a wider context? Along with the proposed tightening of eligibility for personal independence payment, it moves us towards a hostile environment for benefit claimants, particularly disabled benefit claimants. We will end up treating them as suspects automatically. Does he agree that it was right for us to oppose this measure when the Conservatives wanted to do it? I tabled an early-day motion, signed by nearly 50 MPs, to that effect. We have to oppose this measure now. The best way to resolve it is by the Government accepting his eminently reasonable—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. That was a very long intervention. Perhaps we would be better off going back to Neil Duncan-Jordan.