Oral Answers to Questions

Vicky Foxcroft Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to the shadow Minister, Vicky Foxcroft.

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

Thousands of disabled people are due to lose £150 because the Government are removing their eligibility for the warm home discount. The Chancellor has announced that they will receive an additional £150 in his cost of living emergency package, but robbing Peter to pay Paul merely puts disabled people back where they started. How does the Minister think this does anything to address their cost of living crisis?

[Chloe Smith]

The shadow Minister needs to look at this in the round, because we have a set of cost of living payments designed to support the households with the lowest incomes. That is the right approach, as I have cited from the Resolution Foundation, and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation also says that this is a very welcome way of doing it because it targets support to where it is most needed. In addition, we are recognising how disabled people do have further costs, and that is why we are also putting in place the £150 that is targeted on those with the means-tested lowest incomes.

[Vicky Foxcroft]

I am really not sure that the Minister heard my question; maybe she has been rather distracted. Some disabled people will not be better off. The Government’s disability strategy was declared unlawful by the High Court, and NatCen Social Research’s report on health and disability benefits clearly showed the poverty that many disabled people are living in. Does the Minister not think it is time to finally start listening to disabled people and addressing their cost of living crisis?

[Chloe Smith]

We are. It is unfortunate that the hon. Lady cannot engage with the wider point that I am making around the nature of means-tested benefits—for example, the many on unemployment and support allowance or universal credit who are also disabled and who will benefit from the approach we are taking.