The government has rightly identified that the current welfare system is not fit for purpose. I welcome its intentions to get people back to health and back to work, for those who can such as my constituents in Middlesbrough & Thornaby East, especially given how so many people were denied that basic right by the last Conservative administration which cancelled so many programmes to help people back to work.
However, it must be done right. There is an opportunity to achieve the transformative change we need and which has been recognised, by also working with disability charities and others with expertise at ground level to try to create and construct a fair system that gives people the support they need.
Concerns
While there is much to be welcomed I am concerned that this social security reform package is being driven by an understandable demand to reduce spending but that more is needed to ensure the results are equitable and fair.
An initial reading suggests that such a reduction means either a five-year freezing of health-related payments for existing claimants, or a near halving of those payments for new claimants, with the uplift in the standard allowance not making up for this.
The change to personal independence payment criteria also appears likely to reduce incomes of people with many daily living activity limitations.
More information is needed
The measures have been announced with no impact assessments published alongside them and without a plan to consult on some of the key changes which worries me that there is too little information on who is impacted.
This will only drive fear in the way recent speculation has. Assisting those who can work is right, but we must deliver health and support reforms first.
I have already stated that I have been inundated with emails from worried constituents of mine in Middlesbrough & Thornaby East making it very clear just how terrified they are at the prospect of their social security benefits being frozen or cut.
The government must convince social security recipients, and disability and advice stakeholder organisations, that those who are dependent on these measures to hold their lives together will not be affected detrimentally, if it is also to convince MPs to support these proposals.
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