Esther McVey MP: speeches

Speeches

• 1 Jul 2025 · Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill · Hansard source

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• 1 Jul 2025 · Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill · Hansard source

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  Have the Government taken legal advice as to whether it is lawful to treat people with the same conditions, disabilities and circumstances differently within the benefits system? It is morally unacceptable, but does the Secretary of State believe that it is lawful?

• 1 Jul 2025 · Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the Secretary of State give way?

• 26 Jun 2025 · G7 and NATO Summits · Hansard source

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  I welcome the increase in defence spending. Will the Prime Minister take this opportunity to explain where the money is coming from, particularly as his Government continue to weaken our economy and when another expensive benefit U-turn—on top of the winter fuel U-turn—is on its way?

• 29 Apr 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill · Hansard source

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  I wish to speak in support of new clause 11, entitled “Publication of results of pilot schemes”. Make no mistake: this Bill allows for a massive expansion of state powers. It will permit mass financial surveillance of the public. It is a massive overreach by the state, so of course it requires close scrutiny. It requires the publication of those results, and then they must be analysed. Let me put this in context. Before the covid years, fraud and error across the tax and benefit system were at an all-time low. Then, in 2020, after a state-imposed lockdown—another massive state intervention—unprecedented financial support was set up for millions of people, in a rush of panic, with the full support of Members on both sides of the House. I exclude myself from that, but very few Members opposed the arrangement, and it opened up all sorts of new vulnerabilities in the system. This support was set up only because of a blanket stay-at-home mandate from the state. It was the state that opened up those fraud vulnerabilities, and it was the state that saw, as a result of those impositions, many millions more people claiming universal credit. Let me give the House the figures. In March 2020, 3 million people were receiving universal credit. By November that year 5.8 million were receiving it, and in January 2025 the number was 7.5 million. Just as the heavy-handed state intervention of lockdown left the public paying a very high price, I am concerned that the Bill, another heavy-handed state intervention, will also leave the public paying a very high price. As Big Brother Watch states, the Bill will introduce “an unprecedented system of mass financial surveillance; create a second-tier justice system for people on the poverty line; undermine the presumption of innocence; result in serious mistakes risking the freedoms and funds of our country’s elderly, disabled and poor; and turn Britain’s once-fair welfare system into a digital surveillance system.” I have said it before and I will say it again, lockdown was an experiment inflicted on the British people without their consent and that experiment failed. The Bill will be another such experiment on the British public.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Welfare Reform · Hansard source

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  How precisely will these benefit cuts be realised, given this Government’s anti-business Budget, which has seen businesses close at the fastest rate since Labour was last in office? Of those still standing, 30% are planning to cut staff to cope with the increase in employers’ national insurance contributions. Where are the jobs? We know Labour is the party of the magic money tree; is Labour now the party of the magic jobs tree, too?

• 17 Mar 2025 · Benefit Reforms: Disabled People · Hansard source

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  When I was a Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, working with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on reducing welfare dependency, getting 1,000 more people into work each and every day, and delivering record numbers of people into work, the Labour party opposed us every step of the way. Can I take it that the Government’s recent conversion to reducing the benefit bill is only about conning the Office for Budget Responsibility into thinking that they will balance the books after their disastrous Budget, rather than because they really believe in it?

• 20 Jan 2025 · Points of Order · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will recall that on Thursday afternoon I led a Backbench Business debate on the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, during which lots of critical comments were made about the MHRA. I specifically made reference to the minutes taken from meetings of the Commission on Human Medicines for the vaccine benefit risk expert working group. On Saturday, following the debate, the MHRA removed the minutes from its website. I should be grateful for your guidance and advice as to what can be done to ensure that those minutes are put back on the website immediately, and without alteration. Surely public bodies should not be using debates in this Chamber as an excuse to remove information that is in the public interest.

• 10 Sept 2024 · Social Security · Hansard source

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  Who would have thought that a Prime Minister not even in office for 10 weeks would be so out of touch with the public? Yet here we are, and yes this Prime Minister is so out of touch, along with the Chancellor and the whole of the Cabinet who are going along with and supporting this cruel policy. The Chancellor should be under no illusion: the public know that this decision to rob millions of pensioners of their winter fuel allowance, for which the Government have no mandate, has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with cynical political calculation. The haste with which the change is being made is breathtaking. All benefits regulations are required by law to be considered by the independent Social Security Advisory Committee. That is generally done in advance of the legislation being laid. In this case, however, the Labour Government has opted for the urgency provision, which allows SSAC consideration to be retrospective. Some say that is bypassing SSAC scrutiny. As well as evading that scrutiny, where is the Government’s impact assessment on removing winter fuel payment from these pensioners, particularly in the light of the latest information that bills will be rising by £150 this year?