I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate once again. I know that time is very short, so I will keep my remarks short and speak to Lords amendments 8B and 9B.
I would like to begin by thanking the Minister for the movement she has made so far on the flexible support fund and scrapping the 52-week permitted work limit. That is very welcome and a good move in the right direction. Although I disagree with the Government on this issue and I voted against the Government last week, I am concerned that this ping-pong is evolving into petty politics that is constraining the issue we should be discussing, which is the reform of welfare on a very technical point.
The Lords amendments are based on the amendment my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) and I tabled on Report. I would have welcomed that amendment coming back last week, as opposed to this week. We have spent a lot of time on this amendment. I will be voting against the Government tonight, but I feel we should be putting this behind us and moving forward to discuss the White Paper. I want the Minister to be aware that I will be publishing a Green Paper and inviting colleagues who are also concerned to contribute to it, so we can broaden the horizon out on what we would like in terms of welfare reform.
I want to reiterate the fact that the Conservative party considers it its proud duty to look after the disabled in our community. The Conservatives are very happy, ideologically, to provide a welfare state that helps those in need. When people fall on hard times, we will look after them. Nobody is trying to punish anybody in the Bill or in the amendments we are discussing. The reality is that my Conservative colleagues and I want to get to the same position as the Government, which is to help as many disabled people as possible who want to work to get back into work.