Welfare Reform Bill

I am grateful to be called to speak in this debate. It seems that I might be the only Member who wants to vote against the Bill. Perhaps I can explain to the House and to my constituents why I find myself in that position, at a time when a genuine radical heads the Department for Work and Pensions and his team is committed to reform. Why am I unhappy that we are going through this dance in trying to put this reform programme on the statute book? For different reasons, I agree with the concluding comments of the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb)—I doubt whether much of this Bill will ever see the light of day. If we had introduced it in our first Parliament—I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was probably too young to vote then, let alone lead the team—we would have lived up to our manifesto declarations and hopes for reforming the welfare state, not just because we were in favour of reform but because we wanted to look at where the new stresses were as society evolved and to share the risks and costs. This Bill was hatched and drafted when we all—or at least most of us—believed that there would be no end to the boom. That is why we agreed to the reforms of Jobcentre Plus, why we agreed to reductions in numbers, why we voted through reductions in staff. However, the world that our constituents now confront is a very different world from the one we thought this Bill might apply to. It is a world in which unemployment is already beginning to rise, and to rise fast. If we last another year before the general election, I hope that any Bill we introduce will be relevant to the welfare reform issues that our constituents face. I hope that I am the last Member to deny that some, maybe many, people should be more actively reintroduced to the work routine, or whatever the current jargon is. However, there have always been some people, even at the height of the boom, who wanted work but could not find it. Many of our constituents now hitting the dole queues might have worked their whole lives since leaving school and have paid 10, 20, 30 or 40 years of contributions. When they go to register, however, they find not just that they might be offered only a couple of minutes with Jobcentre Plus staff, who are now so pressed to get through the queues of people, but that they have to elbow their way between people who have never paid taxes and who have never contributed to the national insurance scheme, yet who will draw exactly the same as they will, notwithstanding their 10, 20, 30 or 40 years of paying contributions. Those constituents do not believe that the Bill meets their needs for welfare reform. Last Friday we discussed one aspect of what welfare reform should be about: redundancy payments. Should not people who have worked hard and whose jobs are snatched from them expect to receive more compensation, so that the landing is not as tough as it would otherwise be? Should there not be a benefits system that supports people who have worked in the past—for whom work is part of their DNA—rather than putting them through the mill that we are creating, involving yet more sanctions and more doubt about whether people genuinely want to seek work? Given my track record, I doubt that many of my constituents think I am not tough enough on the group who do not genuinely want to seek work. However, the Bill totally ignores the new poor: people who are already registering at jobcentres and who are desperate for work, scrambling for jobs, and willing to downsize in terms of the jobs and the wage packets that they accept because they think that work is so important. What does the Bill offer them? It offers them nothing. That is why I think that tonight has been a charade when it comes to establishing whether someone is a welfare reformer. We could divide on Third Reading. We could vote against this measure. We could say that it does not in any way meet the requirements of our constituents. However, we are not going to do that. We are going to disappear into the night without a vote. I hope that before the year is out, when the unemployment totals reach unimaginable proportions, the House will get serious about welfare reform; but I think that when it does, we will not hear much about today's debate.