The government has pledged to press ahead with welfare reforms that would save £1.6bn, despite being defeated on the plans yesterday in the House of Lords.
Peers voted against or amended clauses in the Welfare Reform Bill that would affect benefits for young disabled people and cancer patients.
They rejected cuts to the Employment and Support Allowance for young disabled people, doubled the time limit for means testing them and voted to exempt people with cancer from any time limit.
The government wanted to end the ’youth provision’, which allows some young people to receive the contribution-based Employment and Support Allowance, which replaced Incapacity Benefit, even though they have not been able to work and build up National Insurance. The peers voted this down by 260 votes to 216.
Ministers also sought to means test disabled youth and people with cancer receiving the ESA after a year. The peers’ amendment doubled this to two years for young people and threw it out for people with cancer.But employment minister Chris Grayling today confirmed that the government would seek to reverse the defeats when the Bill returned to the Commons.
He said: ‘What we're saying is not that the welfare state is not going to be there for those people who have got genuine need. Of course it is. Those people who have no other form of income will continue to receive support from the state, not just through the Employment and Support Allowance, but through other benefits as well.
However, he added: ‘What we can't do is provide support for people who've got other financial means.’
The reforms would introduce a form of means testing that already exists for Jobseeker’s Allowance, he said. This is based on the principle that ‘you get something back in recognition of the contributions that you've made, but that something back cannot last indefinitely’.
Labour said that the government was defeated because its plans ‘tried to cross the basic line of British decency’.
Shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne said that the government’s plan to means test the ESA for cancer patients after a year failed ‘the basic test of fairness’.
He added: ‘In the year of the Beveridge Report's seventieth anniversary, this government has sought to break one of its core principles – a welfare state based on a fair contributory bargain. In seeking to break that bargain on the backs of cancer patients, they have shown they have no interest in keeping that bargain.’
