Welfare Reform Bill

I did indeed vote in the last Division, and in favour of an amendment to the Bill which we moved. However, as I have said, if the Secretary of State is pretending that anybody who votes for an amendment to a Bill is voting against the Bill, he has created a dangerous precedent for the Government in relation to their amendments to future Bills. That is a sign of complete desperation from the Government, because the Secretary of State cannot accept that we support him on this Bill and that the opposition to it comes not from the Conservative party, but from his Labour Back Benchers. There have been issues on which we have pressed the Government to go further. For example, we would have liked them to go further on the right for disabled people to have control over the services that are provided for them. Sadly, the Secretary of State is not going far enough on that, which I suspect is an issue to which we shall return in future debates on the Bill. Many of the provisions in the Secretary of State's Bill can be traced back to the Conservative party manifesto in the 2001 general election. Our "Britain Works" proposals advocated paying""private contractors a fee to take an unemployed person on, and a success fee if they find them a job."" We set out in our manifesto eight years ago the steps that we thought were necessary for welfare reform. The Government have finally come round to our proposals, although it is rather too late for many thousands of people. The Government had the opportunity to take on welfare reform earlier. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) was asked to "think the unthinkable". Unfortunately, the Labour Government were not prepared to adopt the unthinkable. The right hon. Gentleman, who is well respected across the House for the work that he puts in and for his knowledge and expertise, came forward with proposals, but the Government were not willing to accept them. The Government shied away from welfare reform at every previous opportunity that they had. We are grateful to them for introducing the Bill now, because it is better late than never for the thousands of people whose lives have been blighted as a result of the Government's unwillingness to grasp the nettle earlier. We welcome the Government's commitment on a disability living allowance for blind people. I am sorry about the tone taken on that issue by the Secretary of State. My hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean, the shadow Minister for disabled people, has always made it clear that if the Government found the money, we would support them. I note that the Minister for disabled people said in the Chamber yesterday that the Government could not find the money and that they would not be able to go ahead, but today they have suddenly found it.