Welfare bill will 'still be spiralling upwards' despite reforms, Mel Stride warns

You'd like to have great expectations of defeating it

We have very low expectations, I'm afraid, of everything this government does. The chances are this will limp over the line

The metrics will be there. But the Conservative position, can you spell out to us how you're voting against it

On what basis? So, really on two bases. It's not principle welfare reform

You have to be thoughtful and do it properly if you're going to reform something that's going to affect millions of people

Firstly, it's not going to save enough money. the welfare bills are still going to be spiralling ever upwards

And the second thing is it's actually going to be very unfair to some vulnerable people who are caught up in the sheer bluntness

of the way in which they pulled at this lever at the last minute to try and make the savings

And make no mistake, what has actually happened here is they've mismanaged the economy

So Rachel Reid, the Chancellor, has blown all that fiscal headroom she had. In order to try and patch it up, she turned around at the very last minute

and said to DWP, find me £5 billion. That not what should drive a welfare policy It should not be struggling around for money at the last minute as they been forced into It should be proper principled reform And on that basis we vote against

Is it worth pointing out that the PIP benefits payouts have simply gone through the roof

And that started during COVID, started during the Conservative government's watch. Part of the problem is that people aren't processed face-to-face anymore

We've seen astonishing data out today. There are now huge clusters of people claiming to have anxiety and depression

in the Welsh Valleys, in Merseyside, in County Durham. It has to be said these are Labour voting areas

And Liz Kendall said none of those claims will be looked into

There will be no retrospective looking back at what clearly could be wide open to abuse

So on the one hand, this problem did start on the Conservative watch

but surely we need to be clamping down these claims and thoroughly and vigorously cross-examining them all

Yeah, absolutely. You have to have a proper assessment process and so on. When we were in power and I was Secretary of State at Work and Pensions we had actually started a consultation on how to reform PIP and my concern was that PIP was far too blunt as a benefit It was a cash transfer payments to lots

of people with lots of different conditions, some of whom would be much better, for example

if it's a mental health condition, getting some kind of support rather than simply cash year in

year out. That's the way you fundamentally reform benefits to do two things. Firstly

target appropriate support on those that need it, but secondly, get the bills down

because the welfare bill, including with PIP, is spiralling ever outwards. Did you regret that, as a Tory government

for taking away those in-person questions on PIP? That seems to be identified by the big spike after 2019

We know why it happened, because of Covid. So that's allowed people to get away with it

That happened back when the pandemic was on, when it was physically impossible to actually meet..

But that was on your watch, Mel? Well, not when I was Secretary of State, as it happened, But nonetheless it hard to see how you could have face assessments during lockdown for example where it was illegal to actually meet up in that way But yes that is part of the issue But it all comes back to fundamental reform And all of these problems come back to the fact that Rachel Reeves suddenly needed to save some money at the last minute DWP were told to fine billion That is not

the basis of the people who can't afford it. You should not be reforming welfare on that

basis. Just right now, as it's breaking now in Westminster, we looked at the government

will offer the implementation of the four-point threshold, which is how you calculate PIP payments, after the TIMS review

Do you know what that might cost? So I don't know. I mean, they originally started at about £5 billion in savings

It's fallen to £2.5 billion on the current concession. It might mean less savings

What matters is where it lands at the end of something called the forecast period

so rather than what happens in the early years of the change. But you've got to assume hundreds of millions of pounds

Being cut. so right now that could be... At the end of the day, Chris, all your viewers need to know

is this bungling, this chaos, is going to lead to more tax rises in the autumn

So taxpayers up and down the country, working hard, are going to pay the price for all that we're discussing