Rebecca Smith

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

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1,245 held · 653 searchable for Rebecca Smith. The searchable lines are below in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 5 of 10.

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1. “The Fostering Network is calling on the Government to introduce a national recommended fee framework for foster carers, which would reduce the unfair variation across the country. It would be interesting to hear the Minister’s response to that call. To fix the chronic problems facing children’s services, the Government must focus on encouraging more people to become and remain foster carers, which I know they are seeking to do. Many people already have the skills and the compassion to open up their home to a child in need. Often, all they lack is the right incentives and support, so I am encouraged by the Government’s national action plan, which acknowledges the urgent need for systemic reform. However, the plan will succeed only if carers feel properly recognised and sustained over the long term.”

   House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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2. “Anything that encourages a consistent home for young people is vital. One thing I have not had time to mention yet is the use of supported lodgings, which we have talked about before. Ultimately, I have seen the success of enabling young people to stay within a home, so anything that encourages that is definitely worth pursuing. Many parents give up work to foster; in fact, about 60% of foster carers do not work. Foster carers provide a professional service, and they should not be expected to do so on a shoestring. Only a quarter of foster carers say they feel their fee is sufficient to cover essential living costs. Better financial support would increase their autonomy to make decisions that are in the best interests of their children.”

   House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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3. “Schools right across my constituency already have inclusion bases, but often there is already tension between the schools and the parents, who want better support through EHCPs, which they are having to wait for. What is the Secretary of State’s thinking on ensuring that the relationship between schools and parents remains strong, and that we do not inadvertently pit parents against teachers, given the new role that schools will play?”

   House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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4. “The two-child limit is a way of saying that work should pay, that taking responsibility should matter and that the system should stand with those who pull their weight.”

   House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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5. “I will speak in part to amendments 1 and 2, although we will not vote on them this evening. Essentially, I am speaking because we do not believe that scrapping the two-child limit and lifting it in this way is the way to tackle child poverty. When the Conservatives introduced the two-child limit in 2017, we did so for one simple reason: fairness. We believed then, as we do now, that people on benefits should face the same financial choices about having children as those supporting themselves solely through work. Nine years later, we stand by that principle. The welfare state should be a safety net for people in genuine need, yet too many people feel that the welfare system has drifted from its original purpose. They see a system that rewards dependency while working families and individuals shoulder the tax burden.”

   House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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6. “Without a working parent at home, children miss out on seeing the rhythms and rewards of working life—the morning alarm, the daily routine, the pride of earning a wage and the discipline of saving up for things that matter. This Government seem bent on disincentivising work and destroying jobs.”

   House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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7. “In terms of holistic solutions, we know that work is the single most transformative route out of poverty. Work provides stability, self-respect and the crucial stepping stones to a better future. We should be doing everything we can to ensure that families on universal credit can access meaningful employment. As I have said before, children in long-term workless households are four times more likely to be materially deprived, and they are 10% more likely to end up workless themselves. When we were in government, Conservatives oversaw a consistent reduction in the number of children in workless households, yet under Labour that number has reached a nine-year high: there are now 1.2 million children living in homes where no parent has worked for over a year.”

   House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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8. “We know that poverty decreased under the last Government; I will make some progress. True compassion for families in poverty means offering sustainable solutions, not just sticking plasters. We need to tackle the root causes of poverty, rather than masking the symptoms. That means dealing with structural issues that damage children’s life chances, rather than simply handing out more cash to families. It is worth noting that the two-child limit has had no significant negative effects on school readiness for third and subsequent children in England. School readiness is the cornerstone metric of the Government’s opportunity mission. Labour and other opponents may criticise the cap for all sorts of reasons, but scrapping it will not be a cost-effective way of improving children’s educational development.”

   House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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9. “We will crack down on the abuse of Motability, we will stop handing out benefits to foreign nationals—because citizenship should mean something—and we will stop giving benefits to people with low-level mental health problems, to ensure that we can target support to the people who need it most. Under Labour, the overall benefits bill continues to balloon. By the end of this decade, health and disability benefits alone are set to reach £100 billion—I did read that right. Scrapping the cap is fiscally irresponsible and Labour knows it. This Bill will only increase the tax burden on hard-working men and women whose household budgets are already being stretched to the limit.”

   House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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10. “Spending other people’s money is an easy way for the Government to feel good about themselves, but that money must come from somewhere. This Government are only pretending that they can afford to scrap the cap; originally, they said that doing so was unaffordable. That is true—the cost of this policy will be about £3.5 billion—but instead of sticking to his guns, our Prime Minister has capitulated to his Back Benchers. It requires backbone to bring the welfare budget under control, and backbone is exactly what Labour lacks. In contrast, previous Conservative Governments did indeed control spending; until the pandemic, spending on working-age welfare fell in real terms. That is why we have committed to save £23 billion.”

    House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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11. “How can it be fair to expect working parents to subsidise other families’ decisions that lie beyond their own financial reach? We also must not forget the single people whose household overheads are higher than in dual-income households. In 2024, there were 8.4 million people living alone in the UK—nearly 30% of households. They, too, should not be saddled with the extra tax burden that scrapping the two-child limit will inevitably create. This Labour Government prefer handouts to hard choices. Giving away cash will always be more popular than exercising fiscal responsibility—the Back Benchers like it, and the left-wing think-tanks like it. The families who will get thousands more pounds every year like it, and who can blame them?”

    House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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12. “I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, which provides me with a great opportunity to say something that I realised again while preparing for this debate. We know that lots of working people claim universal credit, but what we do not know is how many hours those people work, which would enable us to ascertain how many of them are full-time workers and how many are part-time workers. Of course, if they are full-time workers, there is one argument to be made, but if—as I would assume—the vast majority are part-time workers, we need to be encouraging them to work more hours. Later in my speech, I am going to get to a point where this is a problem, given all the other passported benefits that they get once they are entitled to universal credit.”

    House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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13. “There is an entire shadow system working alongside universal credit. As I have mentioned, passported benefits are costing the taxpayer £10 billion every single year. They include healthy food cards, discounted broadband and free prescriptions. Together, they distort work incentives, leading to a cliff-edge denial of entitlements when a claimant comes off universal credit. Many parents want to work, but are better off remaining on benefits once they factor in their loss of eligibility for those extra entitlements. Yet again, they have been let down by a system that should be supporting them into work, not trapping them on benefits.”

    House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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14. “Scrapping the two-child cap gives families on benefits a choice that many working households can no longer dream of: the ability to grow their family without facing financial choices. This unfairness erodes trust in our social contract. The social contract is an implicit agreement between citizens and the state that gives the state its legitimacy. People work and pay their taxes; in return, they trust the state to step in if they fall on hard times. They trust the state to spend their taxes responsibly on their behalf, but the welfare system has become totally lopsided. Over half the households in this country now receive more from the state than they pay into it. Taxpayers are supporting a system larger than themselves. Scrapping the two-child limit will further exacerbate the imbalance. The problem does not stop there.”

    House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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15. “Even the cost of relaxing at the pub with a beer is rising. We cannot lift children out of poverty by making the whole country poorer, as my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) has argued so persuasively. When inflation rises, spending power falls. The money people earn buys less, because each pound is worth less than before; indeed, the money people receive on benefits is also worth less because of inflation. Families feel it at the checkout, at the petrol station and with every bill that drops through the door. Inflation not only squeezes families’ budgets, but narrows their choices. With the cost of everyday essentials continuing to climb, many working families are being forced to delay or even abandon plans for another child.”

    House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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16. “I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Of course how we care for the most vulnerable is the mark of our society, but as Conservatives we do not believe that it is simply about trying to lift them up by giving them extra cash. All we are doing is changing the relative poverty measure; we are not suddenly lifting all these people out of poverty because we are giving them more money. We do not know what they are going to spend that money on. What we need to do is spend the money not on sticking plasters, but on putting things in place that actually have a systemic impact. We need to bring people from long-term poverty into a long-term position in which they can afford what they need. Inflation has soared to nearly twice as high a level as when this Government entered office. Food prices are rising. Utility bills are rising.”

    House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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17. “When the Prime Minister suspended seven of his own MPs in 2024 for voting to scrap it, he did so on the basis that the policy was simply too expensive. He has now bowed to pressure from his Back Benchers, but nothing has changed—it is still unaffordable. Why are this Government preparing to spend billions by removing the two-child limit, when they cannot even get a grip on rising unemployment? We should be expanding real routes into work, not deepening incentives to remain on benefits.”

    House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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18. “I am not particularly well today, so the right hon. Lady will forgive me if my memory is foggier than normal. That is why I am wearing my glasses, and it is why I am struggling not to cough throughout this debate. I am happy to have a conversation with her afterwards, but testing me on those sorts of things at this particular time is perhaps not the kindest thing to do. The two-child limit is about basic fairness to working parents—the very people whose taxes fund our welfare system. They are already making tough decisions about the size of their own families, and we cannot exempt people on benefits from those hard choices. Scrapping the cap is a direct insult to the working families on whom this country relies. The Government should remember the case that they once made for keeping the cap.”

    House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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19. “I have been wanting to mention this point throughout the debate, but I have not had the right opportunity. Obviously a large number of these new clauses look at reporting back. I appreciate that the child poverty strategy involves a lot of reporting back, but is the Minister aware that the Department for Education does not yet have the records of which local councils have taken up auto-enrolment for free school meals? While the child poverty strategy has introduced universal breakfast clubs, there is no matrix to be able to decipher whether auto-enrolment for free school meals is working. In some cases, such as in the county that I represent, that has meant a significant amount of money for those local authorities deliberately to try to tackle poverty. Will he look into tackling that?”

    House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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20. “Young people in my constituency, many of whom have to travel long distances from rural areas, are concerned about the cost of bus fares, especially since the increase from the Conservative £2 bus fare cap to a £3 bus fare cap under Labour. In fact, many are supportive of the Transport Committee’s recommendation that bus travel should be free until the age of 22, to enable easy access to education and work. What response does the Minister have for those young people?”

    House of Commons12 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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21. “Will the Prime Minister show some backbone and consider finding a slot for primary legislation as a matter of urgency, or at least consider adding this to the King’s Speech later this spring, assuming that he is still in charge of the legislative programme by then?”

    House of Commons11 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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22. “Q2. Last year, Plymouth was named the national centre for marine autonomy and given a defence growth deal. However, the small and medium-sized enterprises in the unmanned surface vessel sector, many of which are based at Turnchapel Wharf in my constituency, are having their work held back because of out-of-date regulations from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. Last week, I was told that draft regulations exist, but that they require primary legislation. Without those new regulations, many of the vital SMEs developing autonomous vessels that have dual commercial and defence use are at risk.”

    House of Commons11 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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23. “Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the problems with the current process for local government reorganisation is that there has been no direction on how the funding will work out? We have some proposals on the table that would leave enormously vast rural communities in constituencies such as mine neighbouring towns and urban centres that will see this as an opportunity to get what they want. This settlement does not give those rural councils any confidence that they will get the money they need once local government reorganisation has taken place.”

    House of Commons11 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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24. “Ultimately, if train staff do not feel empowered, we can have all the byelaws in the world that we like—we have them on buses and in the streets, too—but they need people to feel empowered, able and confident to take action under them. I am not convinced that we have that at the moment.”

    House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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25. “I appreciate that the Minister is trying to reassure us that the methods that the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage wants to implement already exist, but I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman would have tabled new clause 57 if those byelaws were being routinely implemented on trains, which is what he seeks. We have all been on trains where no one around is empowered, equipped or minded—because they are not confident enough, or are intimidated by the person—to act in that way. Can the Minister spell out a little more what the statistics are for that byelaw being used, and whether it is utilised to its fullness? Will he commit to see whether it is adequate?”

    House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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26. “The point is that responsibility currently sits with train operators to enforce the byelaws. Just yesterday, I was sitting in a quiet carriage, and it did not say anywhere that making noise would break byelaws. If the Minister is suggesting that the operators will maintain that responsibility, I do not see how the status quo will change with the existence of Great British Railways. Perhaps this is an opportunity to give the responsibility to Great British Railways rather than the transport operators, and to improve signage to ensure that people know that violence against women and girls or adverse noise will not be tolerated. We cannot just have posters; it has to be in places where people can see it and understand it. A simple “Please be quiet” does not seem to be doing the job at the moment.”

    House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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27. “Plymouth city council is eager to install a cycle path in my constituency, but because it will use an old railway track, the road will have to be closed for 14 months. I was unable to attend a public meeting in my constituency last night at which more than 50 constituents turned up to say how unimaginative the council is being about the diversion required. In principle, rails to trails is a good idea, but let us not be naive about the impact on communities where we seek to turn old infrastructure into a path suitable for walkers, wheelers, cyclists and horse riders. There is always a cost to taxpayers and a physical impact on their daily life. Although I am not against rails to trails—indeed, there are similar successful schemes in my constituency—such projects can be deeply inconvenient to develop.”

    House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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28. “Whether we call it restoring your railway or not, I call on the Minister to ensure that we continue to look at branch lines, particularly for Tavistock, which would link Plymouth dockyard, and all the defence work going on there, to the wider population, and enable cars to come off the road. Yesterday, the A386 in my constituency was closed for the majority of the day because of a car that flipped, meaning that commuters, schoolchildren and people going about their daily business were trapped and could not get in or out of Plymouth, which is the 15th or 16th largest city in the country. I do not think that is acceptable. All we need is an additional railway station. Let me turn to the rails to trails programme, which I did not think would be relevant but unfortunately has become so.”

    House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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29. “The line goes from Exeter to Okehampton, which is slap bang in the middle of Dartmoor and not very easy to access by road, and has allowed people who live there to get to work, leisure and whatever else in Exeter. The Dartmoor line is also why the reopening of Tavistock station was being looked into, as part of the restoring your railway fund, before the new Government scrapped it, with the money being put back into HS2 and the Manchester to Crewe line. The restoring your railway fund was a success, even if it was not as successful as the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage would have liked—but it only existed for a few years. Knowing what we do about the timescales for railway works, it was very good.”

    House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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30. “It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. I had not planned to speak to the new clauses, but as they are pertinent to things going on in my constituency, I will make the most of the opportunity to have the floor. In principle, new clause 12, on the restoring your railway fund, is a good idea. The hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage was cynical about the scheme, but it has had some significant successes. It reallocated money that was being spent exclusively in the north of the country to other parts of the country, such as the south-west. I believe the Minister will admit that the Dartmoor line has been hugely successful. The latest statistics show that 775,000 journeys were made between its opening and March 2025, so I assume we will have probably hit the magic million mark by now.”

    House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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31. “I welcome the Government’s commitment to increase the number of face-to-face PIP assessments to 30%, up from the very low rate of 5% in 2024, but I urge them to be even more ambitious with their target, to ensure that constituents like mine are accurately assessed and receive the help they need. In conclusion, as I return to the image I began with, the barbell is getting heavier by the year, with welfare on one side and pensions on the other, and still the hard-working taxpayer stands in the middle doing all the heavy lifting. The Government are doing far too little to ease that pressure. Working families are paying the price for a system that grows ever more expensive, while true reform moves at a crawl. It is time for a welfare system that is fair to those who need support and fair to those who pay for it.”

    House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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32. “For context, she has also been diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder following a traumatic experience in the military and is currently on a long waiting list for treatment. Statistically, she is unusual; fewer than one in six PIP claimants are in employment. It seems bizarre that the DWP assessors are happy to downgrade someone in this situation, who is in work and genuinely needs the higher rate of PIP to help her carry out that work, yet the Department seems reluctant to stem the tide of benefits claims from people with less severe mental health issues. That is why a Conservative Government will end sickness benefits for low-level mental health problems, to ensure that support is targeted at people who need it most.”

    House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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33. “She had a Motability scooter, which enabled her to get to the office and around London when required, but after her last PIP review, which took place over the phone, she lost her higher rate of PIP and thus her scooter. She then received a puzzling letter from the Department for Work and Pensions, which wrongly claimed that full-time work indicated she had reasonable mobility, despite the fact that her entire home is adapted for her accessibility requirements. My constituent is a highly capable woman who is skilled at advocating for herself as well as her father and, indeed, her fellow veterans, but she admitted that she felt too stressed to open the letter for a few weeks, meaning that the reconsideration window had timed out by the time she fully processed the DWP’s decision.”

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34. “That is not to say that there are not those in dire circumstances for a vast number of reasons, but ultimately, when we are looking at people in general, that is the reality we need to deal with. Under our watch, the number of children in workless households fell consistently. Under Labour, the number has reached a nine-year high, with 1.2 million children now living in homes where no parent has worked for over a year. Turning to the topic of personal independence payments, I would like to ask the Minister about a disabled constituent I caught up with at the weekend. She is a veteran who served in the Royal Navy for 19 years and is now an unpaid carer for her elderly father. She works full time, mainly from home, and commutes to London a few times a month.”

    House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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35. “At the heart of Conservative philosophy is a belief in personal responsibility—taking control of our future through hard work and aspiration. If we are serious about tackling child poverty in the long term, it is vital to deal with the effects of intergenerational worklessness and not just rely on social security. Children in long-term workless households are four times more likely to be materially deprived and 10% more likely to end up workless themselves. For every parent who does not go out to work, there is a child who misses seeing a positive example of work modelled to them—the early alarm clock, the daily routine, the reward for an honest day’s work and the ability to save up to buy important things.”

    House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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36. “Last week, we heard endlessly that the Government’s child poverty strategy and the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap will bring half a million children out of poverty, but it is worth noting that we are talking about relative poverty. That can never be eradicated, because it refers to a household income below 60% of the median household income. The only way to reduce relative poverty is to raise the incomes of the poorest faster than the middle or compress the income distribution. An overemphasis on relative poverty has underpinned a misleading left-wing argument that exaggerates the need for income redistribution. I worry that we will end up paying people to be so-called middle-class if we continue as we are.”

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37. “Thirdly, for those who really do need these extra schemes, there is a labyrinth of bureaucracy that slows down the process of getting help. These piecemeal entitlements distort the system. From a quantitative perspective, it is harder to see which poverty interventions are actually having a positive effect. It is also incredibly difficult for everyone to see whether this Government are succeeding at reducing poverty. I welcome the Government’s new emphasis on deep material poverty as a headline poverty metric, which is a far more holistic measure that captures how poverty impacts people’s daily lives and whether they can afford necessities.”

    House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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38. “Taken together, passported benefits give some families who are already on universal credit over £10,000 a year in extra support, costing the taxpayer over £10 billion, according to a new report from the think-tank Onward. These benefits need rationalising and streamlining within universal credit. Otherwise, we will continue to face three serious problems. First, passported benefits disincentivise people from entering employment. Any sensible person would think twice about starting a job if they faced a cliff-edge denial of additional benefits worth thousands of pounds once their universal credit tapers away. Secondly, we have a two-tier system. As a result of these linked benefits, individuals just outside the universal credit threshold often face greater financial hardship than benefit claimants.”

    House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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39. “Why should we make those parents bear the double burden of supporting their own children and subsidising other people’s? A fair system should not simply exempt families on benefits from making tough choices. Speaking of fairness, the issue of passported benefits desperately needs investigating. Last week, I highlighted the shocking statistic that one in four full-time UK workers would be better off on benefits than in work, but something that often gets overlooked is that people on universal credit also gain access to a raft of discounts and additional benefits such as free prescriptions, discounted broadband, healthy food cards and special savings accounts. There are over 20 of these schemes sprinkled across multiple Government Departments.”

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40. “As I said in the debate on the two-child benefit cap last week, keeping the limit would have saved the taxpayer £2.4 billion in 2026-27, rising to £3.2 billion in 2030-31, yet our current Prime Minister would rather throw some red meat to his Back Benchers than exercise fiscal discipline. He has caved in to their demands, even though scrapping the two-child benefit limit was previously ruled out by the Chancellor and was conspicuously absent from Labour’s manifesto. Conservatives believe in fairness for the working parents who make difficult choices about whether they can afford another child. Many working families do not have incomes much higher than the threshold for universal credit but are paying for others through their taxes.”

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41. “Living within our means is one of those sensible, mundane things that gives the Conservative party its reputation as a safe pair of hands for the economy. Of course, making welfare savings is far less likely to grab headlines—scrapping the two-child benefit cap or rolling out more free school meals is a far easier win—but getting the deficit under control is crucial to a healthy economy. When the Conservatives took office in 2010, the Government were running a deficit of 9%. By the time covid struck, we had brought it down to under 1%. That, in turn, enabled us to provide generous support to individuals and businesses during lockdowns.”

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42. “Concerningly, that number includes more than 300,000 people aged 16 to 24—young people with promising lives ahead of them whose ambitions are being stifled by a benefits system that would rather write them off. Labour is presiding over a youth unemployment crisis and seems unable to offer long-term solutions. There are already nearly 1 million young people in the UK who are not in education, employment or training. Over 700,000 university graduates are out of work and on benefits. One and a half years after taking office, this Government are still failing to tame the runaway benefits bill and rising unemployment rates. By contrast, the Conservative plan to get Britain working again will tackle youth unemployment by offering young people a first jobs bonus, which they can use to save for their first home.”

    House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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43. “Without their efforts or even more Government borrowing, there would be no welfare state at all, and we cannot pile more weight on to their shoulders indefinitely. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has already admitted that the long-awaited Timms review will not involve making welfare savings and is not likely to be published before 2027. It seems that this Government are shunning any attempts at reform over the coming year, and yet again, it is taxpayers who bear the cost of this delay. Right now, the UK is on the verge of becoming a welfare state with an economy attached. Over 40,000 people were signed off work every day by GPs over the last year, according to the Centre for Social Justice. Over 5 million people are claiming benefits with no work requirements, which is equivalent to over half of London’s population.”

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44. “However, given that this debate is largely a formality and there will be no vote on the motions, it is a good opportunity to take a step back and reflect on the pensions and benefits system more broadly—in the context of the motions before us, of course. First, let me highlight what I call the “benefits barbell”. At one end is the working-age welfare bill, which keeps getting heavier; at the other is the eye-watering cost of public sector defined-benefit pensions. In the middle of those two heavy weights is the hard-working taxpayer, straining under the load. Welfare and pensions both matter—they are pillars of a decent society—but it is Britain’s taxpayers who do the heavy lifting. They are the ones who get up before dawn, commute in all weathers and keep the economy moving.”

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45. “I wish to reassure the Minister about something that I said in last week’s debate on the two-child benefit cap. I shared something of my story, and said that we had lost child benefit as a result of the Labour Government coming into office in 1997. I was convinced I had said “family credit”, which was what I was supposed to say. When I read back over Hansard , I realised that, in my haste to get my point across, I had said the wrong thing, which explains why I caught sight of the Minister’s perplexed face from across the Dispatch Box. I have also corrected the record through Hansard. I can confirm that the Opposition support the usual increase in the guaranteed minimum pension, and the uprating of social security benefits.”

    House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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46. “I beg to move amendment 79, in clause 59, page 33, line 19, at end insert “in addition to a subsequent right to appeal to the ORR”. This amendment would enable a subsequent right of appeal to the ORR after going through the dispute resolution process.”

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47. “Amendment 87 addresses the shocking lack of consultation envisaged when GBR creates its crucial access and use policy documents by adding open access operators to the mandatory list.”

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48. “Amendment 77 ensures that neither the Secretary of State nor Great British Railways could take any step to implement any part of the access and use policy until it has been laid before Parliament for three months. That ensures that we are not blindly creating law when we have not even seen important documents relating to how that law will work in practice. Clause 66 lists the bodies that GBR will be required to consult before issuing its access and use documents: the ORR and Scottish and Welsh Ministers. That is it; they are the only ones that have that opportunity by right. There is no requirement to consult freight or other operators that might be affected. We think that that is an extraordinary approach.”

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49. “Amendment 217 would place requirements on Great British Railways to use the access and use policy to promote high quality service or competition. At the very least, legislation needs to point GBR in the right direction so that other users can hold their decisions to account. The amendment gives such guidance. Without it, all that is left is clause 18, the general duties for GBR, and a bold reference to the public interest. It is inevitable that GBR will consider the public interest and the interests of GBR to be the same thing. The Government must think again on this, because the long-term damage to the wider rail sector will be profound.”

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50. “That would mean sticking with the status quo and the existing access and use policy, avoiding the profound conflict of interest that clause 59 creates. If the Government decide to keep clause 59, which I assume they will, amendment 79 would enable a subsequent right of appeal to the ORR after going through the dispute resolution process. That would give open access operators a mechanism by which they could go to an independent regulator where necessary, giving them more assurance that they could survive in a new GBR world. That is a different point to the right of appeal under clause 59(6), which refers to the right to appeal the contents of a document. Amendment 79 requires a right of appeal to be included in the document itself.”

    House of Commons5 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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