The Meeting #TBofBTT

This post is a bit late in coming, as I am sure that you are all dying to know how the meeting went. I can confirm that it was interesting. Whether or not it was productive is harder to judge - and that will only become clear in the coming weeks and months.

The meeting itself was late yesterday afternoon, and I took the opportunity beforehand to meet and brief a number of MPs, including my own constituency MP, Hywel Williams. This was probably more immediately productive as the Welfare Reform Bill Committee begins line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill today, and briefing members is important. I am very lucky to have worked as a parliamentary researcher for Hywel, and thus have some inkling of how to get things done in Westminster.

I know now that many MPs are trying to find out what has happened to the DLA reform consultation, which seems to be in limbo at the moment. I have also got people digging into the Personal Independence Payment Objective Assessment Development Group. This group keep popping up, but nobody seems to know who they are. Very cloak-and-dagger!

Work and Pensions Question Time was quite interesting, in the sense that Chris Grayling and Maria Miller managed to find some empty answers to all questions on ESA and DLA. One exchange had me laughing as a Conservative MP asked and obviously planted question on DLA reform, conveniently allowing Maria Miller to give a spirited account of her rhetoric on PIP. My visit to Westminster was recorded in the Commons Hansard records for posterity by this question:

Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC): What account does the Secretary of State take of arguments by disability campaigners such as my constituent, Mr Rhydian James, who points out that much of the increased cost of the system is due to demographic matters and to reduced under-claiming?

Unfortunately, Iain Duncan Smith responded with unintelligible babble about the universal credit, desperate to avoid the question.

The big meeting itself took place in on of the Committee Rooms in Westminster - quite an impressive setting! Kaliya was the hero of the meeting, making argument after considered argument. We had agreed beforehand that she would do the talking, as she is far more articulate and measured than I could ever be. She certainly impressed those we were meeting.

I was disappointed that some of the others present insisted on making their arguments personal and emotional, which did not strengthen our case. That said, I am a person who deals best with policy arguments and this may just be about my choices in making an argument. The end result of the meeting was as one would have expected - no firm commitments either way, although it did seem that our arguments were listened to.

Either way, it is out of our hands now. Overall, we did what we had intended to do - made our arguments without compromise. I am glad we went, though I have that nagging doubt that the lobbying and briefing I did beforehand was the more productive part of my day. We shall see.

- this is a personal account, and not a reflection of The Broken of Britain's views