Kemi Badenoch MP responding to the Second Reading of the Welfare Bill

Today [Tuesday 1st of July 2025], Kemi Badenoch MP responded to the Second Reading of the Welfare Bill in the House of Commons.

Kemi Badenoch MP, Leader of the Conservative Party, said:

“We are staring down the barrel of a crisis that no serious government can ignore.

The welfare system no longer works as it should. What was once a safety net has become a trap.

A system designed to protect the most vulnerable is now encouraging dependency and dragging this country into deeper debt.

The welfare system is a crucial safety net for the poorest and the most vulnerable in our society.

So, I was quite surprised, Mr Speaker, at the tone the Secretary of State decided take today.

She thinks she can stand there and get away with the fiction that all of this was caused by the last government.

So let me refresh their memories, especially for those who were not here at the time.

In 2010, we inherited 8 per cent unemployment and we brought it right down.

The last Conservative Government reformed welfare to introduce Universal Credit and our reforms helped ensure that unemployment more than halved, and was at a near record low.

What have we seen since they came in?

Unemployment has risen every single month since Labour came into office.

During our time, indeed 800 jobs were created for every day that we were in office, and at the same time, until the Covid pandemic, we kept spending under control, cutting the deficit every year.

But Covid changed everything.

Now we face a new reality.

It is delightful to hear them laughing. I remember us sitting on that side of the House, and they were demanding that we spend more and more and more ore money. Thank God it was Conservatives who were there under Covid, Labour would've bankrupted the economy.

Mr Speaker, we face a new reality.

Under this Government, every working single day, every working single day, three thousand people move onto incapacity benefits. Three thousand people, every single day. That is a 50% increase, than when we left office. A 50% increase.

They have only been in power one year, Mr Speaker. Imagine what is going to be like after the next four years. A 50% increase, three thousand people onto incapacity benefits every day.

That's not normal. It is not sustainable. And it is not acceptable.

Spending is spiralling under Labour.

[INTERVENTION]

We have 28 million working people, propping up 28 million not working.

The rider is getting heavier than the horse.

Health and disability benefits were £40 billion before Covid.

By 2030, on this Government's spending plans they will hit £100 billion.

[INTERVENTION]

By 2030, on this Government's spending plans we will hit £100 billion on health and disability benefits alone.

That is more than we spend on defence.

And this should make everyone in this House stop and think.

Because this bill does nothing to fix that problem.  And that is why we cannot support it.

The Conservative Party are the only party in this House urging restraint.

And unless this House acts, they will bankrupt our children.

They will bury the next generation under a mountain of borrowing and debt.

And they will do it not because we had no choice but because they lacked the courage to choose.

A fundamental and serious programme to reform our welfare system is required, and this bill is not it.

This bill a fudge.

And I feel sorry for the Right Honourable Lady, she looks as if she's being tortured.

This is a rushed attempt to, we all know why this is happening, we all know why this is happening.

This is a rushed attempt to plug the Chancellor's own fiscal hole.

It is driven not by principle, but by panic.

The changes were forced through, not because they'd get more people into work but because someone in 11 Downing Street made a mistake.

It is clear that these changes were not designed to introduce fundamental reforms.

How did we get here?

Last year at her first Budget, the Chancellor left herself no headroom. That same Budget killed growth, meaning that unemployment has increased every month since Labour took office.

This is a good time for me to remind the House again, that every time Labour leave office, they do so with unemployment higher than when they came in. And they are doing it again.

[INTERVENTION]

[INTERVENTION]

And when the economic outlook worsened this spring, she chose to force through these changes to welfare, designed not to reform, not to improve system, but to address a hole in her numbers. These changes were Rushed for Rachel as we say, Mr Speaker.

I watched when the Chancellor made that budget. 

It was quite clear she had no idea of the consequences of her decision, but the country should not have to pay for the mess she has made and neither should disabled people. 

Even with these changes in this bill, welfare spending would still be billions higher at the end of the Parliament slowing down how much you increase spending is not a cut. We need to get this under control.

[INTERVENTION]

Despite the obvious flaws in this bill, we offered to support benefit changes in the National Interest.

We agreed to support the Government if they could make three simple commitments. Not unachievable or unreasonable commitments.

That first they had to cut the overall welfare bill, because we are spending far too much already.

Second, if they would get more people into work.

And third, if they would stand by the Chancellor's own commitment that – with taxes at a record level because of her choices – she wouldn't be coming back for more tax rises.

What did we get from the government? A sneery response indicating they could manage on their own. How's that going?

And what happened instead, the number of MPs opposed to this bill grew until the inevitable U-turn finally came, announced by press release despatched after midnight, a panicked letter setting out that the reforms had been gutted, and now the bill is more incoherent than it was at the beginning.

[INTERVENTION]

The bill is more incoherent now than it was right at the beginning. It doesn't do the job at all.

Reforms which were not enough in the first place, will only now cut £2 billion from a ballooning budget instead of £5 billion.

And they will create a new welfare trap and a two-tier welfare system.

Right up until the last moment, the Government kept pushing and pushing, ruling out changes, sending their poor weary ministers, and ambitious backbench bootlickers out on the airwaves.

And then, as we have seen before, at the last moment, they abandon you, they abandon you after all of that.

They have all been hung out to dry, Mr Speaker.

The Government does not care how it has made their backbenchers look.

And it's not the first time.

Week after week, the Right Honourable Lady was sent here to say with a straight face that she was right to cut Winter Fuel Payments, that there would be no turning back. That the country's finances would simply collapse if she didn't take pensioners' fuel money and give it to the trade unions.

And her backbenchers sucked that one up.

They muttered and they grumbled.

But each of them went back and told their constituents that their Winter Fuel Payments were being confiscated to ‘fix the foundations'.

And only once pensioners had sat in the cold all winter, and the Chancellor had tanked the economy, and up and down the country Labour MPs had the door slammed in their face, did they finally accept that it was a mistake.

This time, when asked to line up behind a Bill that cuts money from older disabled people with physical disabilities, a bill that, according to their own modelling, gets no one into work.

Funnily enough, lots of them didn't fancy another go.

Perhaps they will think twice next time the Chancellor comes to them with a bad idea.

[INTERVENTION]

But it is quite clear that Labour MPs will surely feel emboldened to push for more unaffordable changes to our welfare system, including to the two-child benefit cap.

So, let's be clear. Part of the reason these plans have been so rushed and badly thought through is because of the mess the Chancellor has made.

This is an attempt to find the quickest and crudest savings possible.

To plug the hole, she has created in the public finances.

But the Chancellor is not the only one to blame.

It is beggars' belief that the Labour Party came into office after 14 years in Opposition with absolutely no serious plan for reforming welfare. What were they doing for all that time? What were they doing?

The welfare bill is already totally unsustainable, and it is only getting worse.

[INTERVENTION]

Health and disability benefits are forecast to rise to £100 billion

That will mean one in every 4 pounds raised in income tax will be paying for these benefits. This is not sustainable.

Until the pandemic, we on this side of the House had spent years bringing down the benefits bill and getting people back into work, including millions of disabled people.

Talent, energy and ingenuity, there are not confined to those in perfect health. If we want to afford public services, improve people's lives and compete globally, we cannot afford to consign so many people to a life out of work. Weve got to get them into work.

I do believe the whole House agrees the systems need change, I think we may disagree what exactly that change looks like.

But what we have in front of us today is just a big mess.

[INTERVENTION]

I do believe the whole House agrees the systems need change, one way or another.

But what we have in front of us today is a big mess.

Neither fish nor fowl.

Because of their hasty concessions, we now have a two-tier benefit system

Under which people already on benefits will be incentivised to keep them.

And there are other issues, why, for instance, should someone diagnosed with Parkinsons after November 2026 receive a lower payment than someone diagnosed a month prior.

We need to fix a whole load of problems.

For instance, we need to filter out people who are gaming the system.

We need to redesign the system so that genuinely disabled people do not find it Kafkaesque.

And we need a fundamental rethink about who we can afford to support and why.

One in four people in this country now self-report as disabled.

This is an extraordinary state of affairs.

We clearly cannot afford to support all of them. We should focus support on those with the greatest need.

Many people with disabilities live full and independent lives, contributing to society.

Research published by the Centre for Social Justice last week, shows that you could save up to £9 billion by restricting benefits for lower-level mental health challenges such as anxiety.

So, Members opposite ask what we would change. That is one of the things we would change.

And findings published by the Taxpayers' Alliance today shows that people with conditions, conditions that included acne and food intolerances are getting benefits and getting entitlements like Motability.

We already know that the impact assessments for this Bill show that it will get no one into work.

Those are not my impact assessments, those are their impact assessments.

So, the Government should think again, and we will support them to do so.

We support replacing remote or online assessments for claimants with face-to-face assessments. That simple change alone could dramatically reduce the number of new claimants.

Before the last election, we outlined reforms that the new Government rejected out of hand, will the Secretary of State return to them?

Because these changes we are discussing today are rushed and confused.

And rather than the fundamental reforms which we so badly need, we have been presented with a botched package of changes, watered down, and carved apart in the face of backbench pressure.

There is no way we can back this.

So, instead of allowing her backbenchers to dictate policy, the Secretary of State should go back to the drawing board.

Cut the overall bill, get people into work, and eliminate the need for new tax rises.

That's a programme we will support in the national interest.”