It was clear from the start that this was largely a domestic dispute. The Labour benches were as tightly rammed as they are for prime minister’s questions and everyone had come determined to have their say. No longer willing to be sidelined by ministers as “noises off”. No one had just turned up because they had nowhere better to be.
On the other side of the Commons, only a handful of Tory backbenchers had made the effort to show up. Fair enough. The disabled and the vulnerable have never really been their priority. To be charitable, maybe they just found it a bit awkward intruding on the government’s private grief.
If Liz Kendall had any nerves about facing down her own party with the concessions – or measures, as she preferred to call them – that had been forced out of the government, then she kept them well hidden. It’s counterintuitive to imagine that some Labour MPs came into politics to make life harder for some disabled people, but Liz might just be that person. She knows – as we all do – that the welfare system isn’t working properly. That we have a far higher proportion of people on benefits than almost every other European country. But she is prepared to make life worse for people with disabilities as collateral damage. For the greater good and all that.
For the first five minutes of Kendall’s statement, you would have been hard pushed to know that for much of the last week she and Keir Starmer had been scrabbling around to prevent a rebellion that could have killed off her welfare changes at Tuesday’s second reading. Liz spoke of her commitment to equality and social justice, how she was creating real opportunities and support. Just not necessarily for everyone. “The system we inherited doesn’t work,” she said. No one was going to disagree with that.
Then we got to the concessions. Sorry, measures. I will try to keep up. Liz had come to all this entirely on her own. Had no idea so many of her own MPs were not just unhappy but furious with it. First, she wanted everyone to live entirely in the present. Well, between now and November next year. It seemed to work for her. Here was the deal. Everything would continue as is till November 2026. After that, anyone who becomes disabled would have to look after themselves. It would teach people to be more responsible. To think harder before they went down with life-changing illnesses or injuries.
I can’t say fairer than that, said Liz. People get stuck on legacy benefits the whole time. A two-tier benefits system was the norm. Nothing to see here. You win some, you lose some. It was time to treat personal independence payments on a first come, first served basis. But look, Liz continued, I’m a listening kind of woman. And I’m listening now. Only she didn’t appear to be hearing the murmurs of discontent coming from the benches behind her. She was in a world of her own. She will go to her grave swearing she has always been one of the good guys.
Listening also involved announcing a review of Pips in consultation with various disability charities. Only this review was going to have a novel twist. It wasn’t actually going to listen to anyone or accept any recommendations because the changes to Pip were going to come into force regardless, well ahead of any report which that nice Mr Timms, a junior minister in the department, might publish. Sorry but not sorry. Liz knew she was right and that was all there was to it. But people with disabilities would feel they had been included. Which was nice.
Liz took off her glasses as she neared the end. To show she meant business. There would be an extra £300m of real money for employment support. Not pretend money. Money that has already been announced. It would all cost £2.5bn and she hadn’t a clue how it was going to be funded. But that was the chancellor’s problem, not hers. It was she that had made her do this. It wasn’t easy, she said. Something of an understatement. Her own MPs were twitching, desperate to have their say.
First we had to sit through the reply of Helen Whately, the shadow work and pensions secretary. She had plenty to say about how she thought the welfare bill might be cut – stop paying out for less serious mental health disorders – but nothing on why previous Tory governments had failed to make any of the necessary reforms. You could almost feel Helen dying a little as she sank into her own irrelevance. Kendall merely observed it was all the Tories’ fault and that they had caused the two-tier system. The very two-tier system she had only just defended. Liz does need to stop living entirely in the present. It’s playing havoc with her memory.
During the next 90 minutes or so, the only person defending the reforms was Liz. Not even one Labour MP came to her rescue. The closest we got was the odd damning with faint praise. Thank you for making some concessions, but do you think you could go away and come back with something a little better? We’re all for reform. Just not at the expense of the most vulnerable.
Debbie Abrahams expressed concerns that the review would be pointless as the reforms were going ahead anyway. Liz praised her insight. That was precisely the point of the review. Never start a review before you know what the conclusions are going to be. Rachael Maskell said she hadn’t come in to politics to push 150,000 into poverty. Liz shrugged. You win some, you lose some.
The chorus of disapproval got even louder. Vicky Foxcroft was also dismissive of the review. Andy McDonald asked for the bill to be pulled. Florence Eshalomi wanted to make sure carers would be protected. They would, said Liz. But only up till November next year. After that carers should stop enabling newly disabled people by refusing to look after them.
Come the end, Kendall looked out on her feet. Even her righteous certainty seemed to have taken a small dent. But we’d all be back again on Tuesday for the second reading. Liz would have to suck it all up again. And hope that the whips had done their job in keeping the number of rebels as low as possible. This hadn’t quite been a humiliation. But losing the vote would be.