Do Labour know what they want from welfare reform?

Liz Kendall and her ministerial colleagues were forced to offer an hour’s worth of holding statements about the government’s welfare reforms this afternoon when they appeared at Work and Pensions Questions in the Commons. Those reforms are supposed to be coming in a green paper this week, probably tomorrow, but the Work and Pensions Secretary ended up dodging questions on whether she even had collective agreement from her colleagues.

Those questions came from Kendall’s shadow Helen Whately in the topical section. When Whately asked whether there had been collective agreement, Kendall replied that the shadow minister would have to ‘show a little patience’, before mocking the Conservatives for having no plans on welfare reform of their own.

Whately returned, pointing out that she ‘was listening very hard to that answer, and from everything I heard, she still doesn’t have the support of her cabinet colleagues with less than 24 hours to go’. She then demanded that ‘given the opposition of her party to welfare reform, can she assure me that her planned reforms will grasp the nettle and bring the benefits bill down?’ Kendall didn’t like that, saying these questions were coming from a party that had left people on benefits, before adding: ‘Unlike the party opposite who wrote people off and then blamed them to get a cheap headline, we will take decisive action, get people into work and get this country on a pathway to success.’

Kendall had used her first answer of the session to try to reassure MPs about the planned reforms, while giving nothing away. She said: ‘Before I answer, I want to say that there has understandably been lots of speculation about the government’s reforms to social security, and I want to assure the House, and most importantly the public, that we will be coming forward with our proposals imminently to ensure that there is trust and fairness in the social security system and to ensure that it is there for people who need it now and for years to come.’

Similarly, her colleague Stephen Timms told another MP that ‘I am sad’ that there had been so much speculation and anxiety about the reforms over recent weeks. Like Kendall, he encouraged MPs to wait for the detail of those changes, but offered no guarantees. 

These reforms are going to be among the most difficult that this government attempts, not just in terms of the politics within the Labour Party, but also the complexity of implementation. But what has been striking has been the lack of pitch rolling until about why welfare reform is necessary, or indeed what sort of reform.

There was a fair bit of talk today about abuse of the Motability system, and Kendall has been highlighting the need to help young people into employment for a while. But Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have only latterly started talking about the welfare bill being unsustainable, almost as though they’ve only recently noticed.

Previously, it was only really mentioned in terms of the interaction between an NHS that was running behind with treatment and people being unable to return to work. Now the talk is of the need to cut. Cuts and reform are very much not the same thing, even if they are driven by the same problem of a spiralling bill.

Indeed, reform can often be expensive upfront, even if it is the real way of ensuring that the bill doesn’t continue to grow, rather than a series of painful cuts here and there. Kendall’s argument was that the bill needed to be sustainable so that the welfare state could continue to support people into the future. What’s still not clear is whether ministers really know how to do that – still less whether they agree.