Our ‘something for nothing’ mentality is plunging us into crisis – here’s why
Keir Starmer’s ruthless suspension of seven Labour MPs who voted against the Government on the two-child benefit cap has sent shockwaves through his party. And removing the whip for six months is more than a mere slap on the wrist. As to whether the likes of John McDonnell and Rebecca Long-Bailey, both close allies of Jeremy Corbyn, will have it restored in time is another matter entirely.
While I disagree with the seven mutineers’ ideology – after all, why should hard working parents subsidise people who shouldn’t be having more children they can’t afford – the crackdown on rebellion has laid clear the tone of the new government. The Prime Minister is prepared to combat indiscipline in the party. Though such tough measures may well come back to haunt him in time.
But this row is just the tip of the iceberg. The stage has now been set for the bigger battleground: welfare reform. It’s a thorny issue Keir Starmer knows will generate even more pushback from his MPs at key votes.
The new Work and Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall, has her work cut out for her. With welfare spending at record levels, she’s announced an ambitious plan to get 80 per cent of the working population actually working. The current rate is 72 per cent; pre-pandemic it was 74 per cent.
But if Kendall wants to keep up with the Government’s bid to grow the economy, she has no choice. It just won’t happen without raising productivity within our workforce and introducing serious welfare reform. So, like Starmer, Kendall is preparing herself for battle.
And we should all support her.
Simply put, our welfare state is in crisis. And the country simply cannot continue on its current trajectory. Recent ONS figures show 5.6 million people are currently receiving out-of-work benefits – that’s one in four people in major cities across the country. How is that even possible at a time of mass migration and record job vacancies?
While the Tories have been tying themselves up in knots over migrant boat arrivals, we have sleepwalked into an unsustainable crisis of mass unproductivity inextricably tied to our “something for nothing” culture. Well, enough is enough.
On disability benefits alone, the number of claimants is double what it was pre-lockdown- with claimants set to rise by 1,000 a day, every day, for the next four years.
Universal credit, too, has seen a steep rise in claimants, increasing from around two million in 2020 to just under four million as of last December. And there appears to be no end in sight, with mental health claimants indefinitely unable to work over issues such as anxiety and depression.
Many, ironically, are able-bodied, educated people under the age of 35. No self-respecting society should ever tolerate this. It is effectively a race to the bottom.
If we carry on as we are, we will doom Britain to an irreversible reliance on cheap foreign labour, depressed wages, and an increasingly burdened middle-class eager to seek greener pastures elsewhere.
So, what is Liz Kendall’s plan to change this? How will she stop the influx of mental health claimants swamping the system and preventing otherwise fit people from working? More importantly, how will she push back against members of her own party and associated pressure groups that have spent the last 14 years frustrating government plans to seriously reform the welfare state?
I don’t envy her. Taking a “tough love” approach to welfare is never easy, nor is it popular. And for a Labour minister, it can feel even traitorous. But the moral case to put an end to this current madness has never been clearer, nor stronger.
The current system is so fraught with fraud and inefficiencies that, last year, it cost the DWP £9.7billion in overpayments (almost four per cent of total benefit expenditure) – money that could have been otherwise spent on investment, training, and development.
Moreover, the current system disincentivises work, with benefits claimants not seeing a significant increase in net income when in full time employment.
Ultimately, I suspect the new Work and Pensions Minister will stick to her predecessor Mel Stride's Work Capability Assessment reform. She will almost certainly have to means-test disability benefits and prevent GPs passing the buck by failing the patients they should be encouraging to improve their mental health – rather than letting them sit at home on benefits.
To even stand a chance of hitting her 80 per cent target, she will have to find creative ways of going further – much to the chagrin of Labour backbenchers.
She has already indicated that the current system is no longer fit for purpose, being designed to “address the problems of yesterday”. Nonetheless, when the time comes, Keir Starmer will realise that there is a big difference between suspending dozens of MPs compared to a mere seven.
