THE new Work and Pensions Secretary, Stephen Crabb, explained to the House of Commons on Monday (above) that the Government’s proposed cuts to disability benefits, first announced in last week’s Budget, had been scrapped.

Mr Crabb, formerly the Minister for Wales, was promoted to his new position after Iain Duncan Smith resigned from the Cabinet on Friday evening, in protest at the cuts to the Personal Independence Payments, which help to cover the costs of long-term care and assistance for disabled people.

The cancelled cuts have left a £4.4 billion hole in the Chancellor George Osborne’s Budget, but Mr Crabb insisted that there would be no more money cut from other benefits to make up the shortfall.

Mr Crabb, a Christian who began his political career as a graduate on the CARE (Christian Action Research and Education) leadership programme, grew up on a council estate in Wales, supported by a single mother who relied on benefits and told MPs that “behind every statistic is a human being, and perhaps sometimes in Government we forget that.”

Paul Vallely