DWP boss Liz Kendall under fire for 'ignoring' disabled people over PIP cuts
Liberal Democrats MP Steve Darling slammed DWP minister Ms Kendall, asking: "What went wrong?" Ms Kendall replied: "Forgive me for not agreeing with the characterisation that you put forward. I have never started with pound signs or spreadsheets.
"I've always started with what I believe can help people with long term health conditions and disabled people build a better life for themselves." Mr Darling asked twice: "Why did you ignore disabled people?"
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The DWP minister replied: 'We are not ignoring disabled people. They will be at the heart of the Timms review." She said: "This department ends up picking up the pieces of the problems that are deep rooted from many other government areas and we've got to change that.
"Poor health, poor opportunities, low skills, not enough jobs. Those are the problems we have to tackle together. We are at the sharp end of it." She added: "We have to start shifting resources into the things that really help create better lives for people.
"We are spending I believe too much on the costs of failure, and not enough on the better health, better jobs, better skills that we need. That is extremely difficult to shift because people rely on those benefits and they've built their lives around them.
"But unless we grapple with this, benefits alone is not the solution to a better life." She said: I think action speaks louder than words, we have taken action to tackle child poverty." Mr Darling asked: "Can you explain why you haven't published the child poverty strategy so far?"
He said: "You are very well avoiding it. Why haven't you published the child poverty strategy?"
Ms Kendall replied: "We want to get this right, we understand there will be funding implications and we think its really important that we spell out a comprehensive strategy. But we have not had slippage on tackling child poverty, we're putting that into action."
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