Minister appeals to Labour MPs to support welfare bill

ODN

Education minister Baroness Smith appeals to Labour MPs to support the controversial bill on welfare changes, saying, “it’s only a Labour government that can reform the welfare system”. Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn

Transcript

00:00I know that my colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party understand that what we've got at

00:04the moment is a broken welfare system that we inherited from the Tories. It means that you are

00:10often, if you're a disabled person, even if you want to work, trapped out of work because you

00:16can't get the support you need to get into work. It means that if you're never going to be able to

00:20work, you're subject to this constant reassessment. Well, our reforms will get rid of that. And we've

00:27also listened to what those Labour MPs have said. And we're now going to be safeguarding people who

00:32are now on PIP, not making any changes to them. And we're also going to be working alongside disabled

00:39people in their organisations to improve the whole process of assessing people for that PIP support.

00:46I think that's a good way in which we've listened to the concerns that Labour MPs have brought from

00:52their constituencies. And I hope that they will now recognise that it's only a Labour government

00:57that can reform the welfare system in the way that enables it to be both a safety net and a

01:03springboard to opportunity. That's a responsibility of Labour governments to do after the years of

01:09dithering and failure that we've inherited from the last government.

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