Speeches by Whately.

“I will in a moment—I was hoping the Minister might have answers, but he does not. To this day, the Government have not published a full impact assessment setting out the truth about their policies. Is that because they do not know themselves, or because they do not want to admit the harm that they were willing to do? T…”

“Yes. My hon. Friend makes a really important point. He has been every effective in his use of parliamentary questions to scrutinise the Government and get data from them—they do not like to give it willingly. He identifies the long delays for pension credit approvals and therefore access to winter fuel payment. Some wi…”

“One of the things we would very much like to see is a full set of figures from the Government, but my hon. Friend makes a very important point. The Government said they wanted everyone who was eligible to sign up for pension credit and therefore be able to access the winter fuel payment, but if everyone had actually si…”

“My right hon. Friend is exactly right. As I said a moment ago, I do believe that some Labour Members have consciences, but I am not sure which ones. Are those with consciences the ones who are hiding away from the Chamber because they feel guilty and do not want to hear this debate, or the hon. Members here who are act…”

“My hon. Friend makes exactly the important point I am making, which is that if the Government thought what they were doing would affect just the very wealthiest in society, they were very wrong.”

“I beg to move, That this House calls on the Government to publish data on the number of eligible pensioners it estimates did not receive the Winter Fuel Payment in 2024–25; further calls on the Government to publish data showing the impact of changes to the Winter Fuel Payment on levels of pensioner poverty and the num…”

“I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement. She and I agree on one thing: the welfare bill is too high. Left unchecked, it will rise to £100 billion by the end of the decade. Spending more on sickness benefits than we do on defence is not the sign of a strong country. This is not just a question …”

“I asked about what has happened “since” the right hon. Lady’s party has been in government: it is her Chancellor’s tax on jobs and economic mismanagement that are costing young people opportunities. Instead of taxing jobs, Labour should have been ready with a plan for welfare reform at the time of the Budget. They have…”

“Back in the autumn, the right hon. Lady said “we will not allow young people not to be in education, employment or training.” How is it possible then that since Labour has been in office there are 100,000 more young people in exactly that situation?”

“We heard yesterday that the Cabinet had not yet seen the welfare plan that the right hon. Lady is apparently due to announce tomorrow. Given all the media briefings, the apprehension of disabled people and the growing number of people not working, none of us would want to see that delayed. Can she assure us that she ha…”

“I listened hard to the right hon. Lady’s answer but, given everything I heard, I still do not think she has the support of Cabinet colleagues, with less than 24 hours to go. It was a no. There is never a good time for millions of people to be out of work, but as the world gets more dangerous we can afford neither the b…”

“Wishful thinking is all very well, but let us talk about the facts. Those 47,000 people probably spent Christmas worrying about how they would pay the bills without a job, and they are now looking for work in an employment market decimated by Labour’s jobs tax. How high does the right hon. Lady forecast unemployment wi…”

“So the answer is that the Minister does not know. He does not know how many people are waiting for their winter fuel payment. He does not know how many people are stuck in the pension credit backlog. He does not know when they will hear about their claims. He does not know who has had help from their local council. He …”

“I welcome the Minister to his place. I have a simple question for him: how many people are still waiting for their winter fuel payment?”

“A strongly held Conservative principle is that public money must not be wasted. We hold this view not because we are mean, but because the Government do not have money of their own. What they have, they raise through taxation from all of us. A tiny fraction of every penny that they spend is yours, mine and everyone els…”

“Last week, the right hon. Lady described herself as the HR manager for the Government’s growth plan, so can Liz from HR tell me which of her colleagues should be fired for the addition of 47,000 people to the unemployment figures in December?”

“The welfare cap we are debating today was introduced back in 2014 by the Conservative Chancellor at the time, George Osborne, to hold the Government to account on the cost of our welfare system. Through the 2010s, in government, we broadly kept to that cap; it was part of the discipline we applied to the welfare system…”

“The hon. Lady will know—at least I think she will know—that the vast majority of what she set out in the White Paper was the continuation of things we were doing in government. In fact, if she has read it she will see that it even says that the youth guarantee is essentially a new name for a repackaged set of measures …”

“I will make some progress. In government, we were working flat out to tackle that problem. We were changing how we assess people’s capability for work, recognising that the world of work has changed. We developed WorkWell to help people with health conditions or disabilities find and stay in work, and we were reforming…”

“As I am sure the hon. Gentleman heard, I was just acknowledging the fact that the economic inactivity rate started going up in the run-up to and particularly following the pandemic. We have a particular concern, which I am sure the Government share, around growing inactivity among young people. It is a challenge that w…”