Work pays, so they say, but not under this Labour government it doesn’t.
PM Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves (Image: Getty)
Finally, a Labour politician who has the courage to say what millions have long thought. “Shameful” is how former Cabinet minister Alan Milburn described the fact taxpayers spend 25 times as much on welfare handouts for young people than supporting them into work.
The future for Britain under Labour – both immediate and long term – is frightening.
There are, as near as damn it, one million young people not in work, training or education (NEET). Unemployment rose to 5% in the three months to March, while job vacancies now stand at their lowest level since April 2021. Meanwhile, Britain’s benefits bill – seen by many as a limitless cash machine – is £333.7bn and counting and accounts for roughly 25% of total Government expenditure.
Mr Milburn, who served as Health Secretary in the Tony Blair Government, pulled no punches when he said: “This is the failure of the welfare system, but it’s a failure, I’m sorry, of the school system, the skills system, the health system.
“We’re not prioritising getting young people into a situation where they can be learning or earning and instead we’re transporting them into the world of benefits with incalculable costs for their life chances.”
And there, in a nutshell, is Labour’s plan. Can’t work, won’t work? Don’t worry, the good old taxpayer will support you.
Shameful: Mr Milburn is scathing about the scale of welfare dependancy (Image: Getty)
Welfare spending has reached record highs because of soaring claims for long-term sickness and mental health conditions, like anxiety and depression, and a myriad of behavioural disorders.
There are now more than one million people claiming a combination of Universal Credit (UC) health, housing and Personal Independence Payment (PIP), with seven in ten 10 UC health assessments involving mental health conditions, and PIP claims for anxiety and depression up threefold since 2019.
Many on welfare can claim £2,500 a month thanks to Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves refusing to get to grips with a system that is clearly being played. Instead, they are happy to tax families to the hilt to pay for those who refuse to pull their fingers out.
Mr Milburn’s report into how Labour is enabling a generation to see work as a chore rather than a commitment that promotes self-discipline and pride is set to be published this week. And it will make for grim reading at a time when the economy is falling off a cliff edge.
This weak Labour Government was forced to shelve some of its planned welfare reforms because of a backlash from its activist backbenchers, meaning the handout crisis will only get worse.
By the end of this Parliament, the annual benefits bill is set to soar to £406.2bn.
Mr Milburn said: “What is shameful…is we’ve uncovered in the course of this review (that) for every £25 that we spend keeping young people on benefits, we spend only a pound helping them get into work through employment support.”
Today, the TUC will urge the Government to “turbocharge” support for young people after its analysis reveals more than one in four 24-year-olds in England do not have Level 2 English and Maths – the very basic standard of literacy and numeracy.
Those without it are likely to end up in low-paid work.
Predictably, the unions blame the Tories for numbers that in 2021 stood at 747,000 but by 2024 had risen to 921,000, yet remain strangely mute about the bloated benefits bill that is soaring under Labour and a Government that champions welfare dependency rather than self-reliance at the same time as hammering those in work to pay for those who are not, or cannot, be bothered.
Mr Milburn said: “Labour is what it says on the tin. It’s the party of work. Work gives purpose. Work gives income. Work gives meaning.”
The figures tell a very different story – one that hard-working taxpayers think rewards the idle.