Sir Keir Starmer today pledges to crack down hard on the ‘bulging benefits bill blighting our society’ as he tries to steal the Tories’ political clothes over abuses of the welfare system.
The Prime Minister uses an article in today’s Mail on Sunday to promise ‘sweeping changes’ to try to tame the £137 billion bill for welfare benefits – including a blitz on cheats and those who ‘game the system’ – vowing: ‘No more business as usual.’
His most hardline comments yet on the issue come as Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall prepares to announce a package of legislation on Tuesday to ‘get Britain working’, after officials forecast that more than four million people will be claiming long-term sickness benefits by 2030 – 60 per cent higher than before the pandemic.
Much of the rise is due to an increase in benefits for mental health conditions, which account for more than a third of all disability claims.
The amount spent by taxpayers on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) claims alone has shot up from just £700,000 a year in 2013 to an astonishing £292 million today, a rise of more than 41,000 per cent.
The announcement marks a new push by the Prime Minister to focus on domestic politics, after his globetrotting to international summits earned him the Westminster nickname ‘Never Here Keir’ and Labour’s poll ratings plummeted following a backlash against the Budget.
Sir Keir says that the reforms announced this week will pave the way for ‘the biggest overhaul of employment support in memory’.
He writes: ‘In the coming months, Mail on Sunday readers will see even more sweeping changes. Because make no mistake, we will get to grips with the bulging benefits bill blighting our society.’
‘Don’t get me wrong – we will crack down hard on anyone who tries to game the system, to tackle fraud so we can take cash straight from the banks of fraudsters.
‘There will be a zero-tolerance approach to these criminals. My pledge to Mail on Sunday readers is this: I will grip this problem once and for all.’
But a Tory Party spokesman said: ‘Labour’s hollow promises on welfare reform will fool no one. When the last Conservative government introduced messages to tackle the growing benefits bill, Labour opposed them every step of the way.
‘At the Budget, instead of following in our footsteps and taking difficult decisions on welfare to fund public services, Rachel Reeves instead reached straight for the tax lever.
‘This new government has no clue what is needed to get people off benefits and back into work.’
Labour’s plans include giving the NHS a role in getting people back to work, such as employing tens of thousands of people who are economically inactive for health reasons in non-clinical roles. Ms Kendall’s White Paper is also expected to include the placement of work coaches in mental health clinics.
The number of people claiming incapacity benefits is forecast to rise from 3.2 million last year to 4.2 million in 2029 – costing Britain £35.5 billion by the end of the decade. In 2019, there were 2.5 million people claiming these benefits, at a cost of £17 billion.
In his MoS article, Sir Keir tries to reassure the Labour Left that he is not aping Tory policies by saying that the reforms will not ‘sow division’ by describing people on benefits as ‘shirkers’, but would instead ‘treat people with dignity and respect’.
He singles out Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride, who was Work and Pensions Secretary in Rishi Sunak’s Government, for supposedly having ‘picked fights instead of governing’ and using ‘meaningless rhetoric to grab headlines’.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that it is not clear why the costs of benefits have increased so much in the UK since Covid because the trend has not been seen in other countries.
Associate director Tom Waters said: ‘It can’t just be long Covid or the cost of living crisis by themselves, because these apply elsewhere as well. If these trends continue it will mean very difficult choices, cutting spending elsewhere or increasing taxes.’
The £137 billion bill for benefits for working-age people includes £90 billion for disability and £35 billion for housing benefit. A further £166 billion is paid to pensioners, taking the Government’s total social security expenditure to £303 billion, which is nearly 11 per cent of the country’s GDP.
Under the new reforms, the NHS is also likely to be tasked with working more closely with Jobcentres, linking local health and work and skills support as part of a drive to devolve more decision-making to local areas.
More detailed plans to reform welfare payments linked to health conditions will be announced in the new year.