Clause 1
Welfare Reform Bill
11:00 am
David Ruffley (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Bury St Edmunds, Conservative)
The hon. Lady is entirely right—I shall. There was a time when Her Majesty’s Conservative Opposition would have been seen to give 100 per cent. support to those representing capitalism without any ifs or buts. That is not true now. I tabled amendments which sadly were not called as part of your selection, Mr. Chairman, but which would have been in this group had they been selected. They were on the need to take employers’ attitudes into account over and above mental and physical health conditions. A communication was sent to me which said that the amendments that I had tabled along with my hon. Friends the Members for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt) and for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) were unhelpful, because we were saying that employers’ attitudes and the labour market disadvantage point need to be taken into account when judging what is limited capability. That the CBI has described me as unhelpful is a badge of honour that I wear with pride. Those were the words it used. It said that Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition spokesman on the Bill had put down an unhelpful amendment.
If I am unhelpful, I am glad to say that I am in good company because amendments in the names of other Committee members could also be described as unhelpful, and no doubt many outside bodies which contributed to the amendments might also be seen as unhelpful. To coin a phrase, we are all in this together. We need to discuss labour market disadvantage because the demand side of the equation is tremendously important. That is jargon for, “Will employers change their attitudes? Will exhortation work? Must we do more than merely exhort?