Scottish Labour MPs back 'progressive' UK Government welfare reforms

Five Scottish Labour MPs have backed the UK Government's anticipated welfare reforms.

Ministers are expected to confirm more than £6bn of cuts as the government focuses on getting more people into work.

Disability payments are amongst the areas set to change, with those applying for Personal Independence Payments subjected to tougher tests, while the way Universal Credit is calculated will change to incentivise job-seeking.

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall has said too many people are "taking the mickey" by living on benefits instead of working. 

On Sunday, Pat McFadden, minister for intergovernmental relations, said the rising costs of the benefits bill is "not fair on the taxpayer".

Now five Scottish MPs have joined Labour colleagues in a letter to Kendall backing reform, calling it "a truly progressive endeavour".

The 36 backbench members of the "Get Britain Working" group said the UK faced a "crisis of economic inactivity", with three million people unable to work due to poor health.

They said the government had a "moral duty" to address the issue and the group will "press for fundamental change to our welfare system to support work".

The letter said the current system "acts as a barrier against finding work, making it riskier for people with health conditions to look for work and often failing to offer them the support they need".

And, in a signal that they will support the anticipated cuts, the MPs wrote: "We understand that delivering this new social contract requires hard choices to be made. We welcome the work that has begun to rebuild our welfare system, and we are fully supportive of it. We believe reforming our broken system is not only necessary, but also a truly progressive endeavour."

Signatories include Dunfermline and Dollar MP Graeme Downie, East Renfrewshire MP Blair McDougall and Frank McNally, who represents Coatbridge and Bellshill.

Livingston's Gregor Poynton and Joani Reid, who represents East Kilbride and Strathaven, make up the five. 

The cohort is a fraction of Scottish Labour's 37 MPs.

On Sunday, McFadden said reform should be expected "pretty soon". He told Sky News: "We have over nine million people of working age in the country who are not working, and some of those are earlier retirees and so on, but about 30 per cent of those are people on long-term sickness benefits – about 2.8m people."

"The cost of this has gone up by about £20bn in the past few years.

"Furthermore, the 'do nothing' trajectory, if you like, is for it to rise to over four million people by the end of the decade.

"That's not fair on the people involved, and it's not fair on the taxpayer.

"So yes, we do have to act on this to make sure that we give everyone in the country the opportunity to work."