OVER the past few weeks Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall have all been saying the right things about Britain’s burgeoning welfare budget.
On Monday night, the Prime Minister told Labour MPs that the benefits system is rewarding the workshy while making life difficult for people who genuinely need help. “That’s unsustainable, it’s indefensible and it is unfair,” he said.
AlamySir Keir Starmer told MPs that the benefits system is rewarding the workshy while making life difficult for people who genuinely need help[/caption]
EPARachel Reeves has increased benefits in line with inflation while lumbering the working population with extra tax[/caption]
“People feel that in their bones. It runs contrary to deep British values that if you can work, you should.”
I can’t disagree with that.
So why don’t I feel confident that, come the spring statement in a couple of weeks’ time, the Government really will make the required changes?
Trouble is that Labour spent 14 years protesting about the evils of “austerity” whenever the then Conservative government proposed to remove so much as a bean from the welfare budget.
Labour remains stuffed with MPs who have a kneejerk response always to support benefit claimants against government cuts.
Britain’s welfare problem has crept up on us over the past decade.
The Conservatives actually made a good start in trimming the welfare bill and getting people back into work.
Between 2010 and 2017 the numbers of people on out-of-work benefits fell from 4.1 million to 3.6 million.
It seemed as if Tory promises to “make work pay” were bearing fruit.
Yet for some reason, the Conservatives lost their discipline.
From 2017, the numbers claiming out-of-work benefit began to creep up again.
This was well before Covid, but the pandemic did lead to an acceleration in benefit claims — which has failed to slow down in the years since.
There are now 5.95 million people claiming out-of-work benefits.
If current trends continue, estimates the Office for Budgetary Responsibility, by 2028 nearly one in 12 British workers will officially be too sick to work.
Some people, needless to say, blame “long Covid” for the rise.
But why has no other country seen such a shocking increase? And why do numbers continue to rise even now?
SWNSHundreds of thousands of people are being shunted on to benefits without any requirement ever to seek work[/caption]
Since the pandemic, there has been a huge rise in the number of Work Capability Assessments being carried out remotely.
Workshy underclass
While that was inevitable during lockdown, just ten per cent of claimants were assessed face to face last year.
Two thirds of WCAs are now carried out by telephone, while 13 per cent are mere paper exercises.
Surprise, surprise, claimants who don’t have to be assessed in person have a far higher chance of their claim succeeding.
Why has no other country seen such a shocking increase? And why do numbers continue to rise even now?
Of those given face-to-face assessments last year, 53 per cent were passed as unfit for work.
Among telephone interviewees it was 61 per cent and those given desktop assessments 99 per cent.
To put it bluntly: Hundreds of thousands of people are being shunted on to benefits without any requirement ever to seek work and without even being seen by a doctor or any other official.
It is hardly any wonder that we have ended up with an underclass of workshy people who would rather sponge off the taxpayer than put in a day’s work.
To compound the problem, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has increased benefits in line with inflation while lumbering the working population with extra tax.
She claims to have spared working people, yet more and more people are being sucked into income tax, and into the higher tax bracket, thanks to her decision to continue the freeze on allowances.
The 40 per cent rate, meant only for high earners when Nigel Lawson introduced it in 1988, is steadily becoming the standard rate of income tax. What kind of incentive to work is that?
With the spring statement, Reeves has a choice with welfare. Does she tickle around at the edges or does she attempt something much more radical?
There is nothing kind, or humane, about dumping people on benefits for years on end
Nearly three decades ago, John Major’s government tried the latter: It carried out a trial where 6,800 benefit claimants in Medway were put on compulsory work placements.
If they didn’t turn up, they didn’t get paid. Opponents damned it as “workfare” but the results were astounding.
Nearly half the people in the trial simply stopped claiming — presumably because they were claiming fraudulently in the first place.
Some of them might have been living abroad or didn’t even exist.
The trial was so successful that even left-wing columnist Polly Toynbee was impressed, declaring, “Workfare really works.”
But with Blair’s election in 1997 the momentum was lost and no government has attempted anything similar since.
Why not the present government? There is nothing kind, or humane, about dumping people on benefits for years on end.
Nor can the economy withstand such huge numbers of idle people — it is little wonder we have such feeble economic growth.
True, there will always be some people who are genuinely too sick to work and do deserve help.
But for the majority of people on out-of-work benefits, the days of idling should be brought to an end.
They should be assessed for work face to face, and if they pass, they should be given the choice: Accept a work placement or go without any help from the state.
EPAWork and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
