Last week, the government's ongoing turmoil over welfare policy came to a head, culminating in parliament's vote on the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill.

The debacle exposed deep fractures and indecision at the heart of government, as ministers scrambled to salvage a policy mired in confusion and retreat.

The resulting bill bears the hallmarks of that dysfunction.

It offers neither a coherent, principled approach to welfare reform, nor does it deliver meaningful savings to public expenditure.

The case for welfare reform is clear.

The cost of disability and sickness benefits has increased by 40 per cent since 2013, which is unlikely to be because the UK population is 40 per cent sicker or more disabled in the space of a decade.

Working-age health-related benefits alone have jumped from £36 billion in 2019/20 to £52 billion in 2024/25. Yet the Government's mishandling of this bill has abandoned even the modest savings it aimed to achieve, making tax rises ever more likely at the Autumn Statement.

The previous government delivered the biggest reforms to benefits in 70 years, introducing universal credit to ensure work paid.

Before the pandemic, it reduced both the benefits bill and claimant numbers, created 800 jobs a day and helped millions into work, recognising the value of work for mental health and wellbeing.

It reformed the welfare system to save £5 billion and to stop 450,000 people moving onto long-term sickness benefits, with plans to save up to £30 billion more.

Since the pandemic, costs have spiralled upwards, heading towards £100 billion by 2030, driven in part by rising claims for mild mental health and behavioural conditions. Yet, the Government has ignored practical solutions like fit note reform and tackling claims for common mental health problems, resorting instead to rushed, poorly targeted cuts.

Welfare reform, as the Secretary of State has observed, is not easy and is only achievable if the approach taken is clearly fair and well thought through.

The Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill is neither, or more accurately, the subsequently amended version of the Bill that the Government have told us to expect will be neither.

That version of the bill, which a vote in favour of the bill at second reading facilitates, will discriminate between people currently receiving personal independent payment (PIP) and those, with exactly the same conditions or limitations, who will receive it in the future.

That arises not because of any logical distinction but only because this was the compromise the government needed to make to get the Bill passed its own backbenchers. They then delayed a large portion of it during the debate itself.

This is not the right way to approach the significant challenge of welfare reform. I therefore voted against this bill.