Welfare reform is about priorities, first, second and third. It isn’t about cutting costs for the sake of it. Quite frankly, we in the UK have a choice, because we have to start taking defence seriously.
We can keep funding an out-of-control benefits system or take the money out of health or education. The answer should be obvious to all. Defence is not optional. It’s the first duty of any government. Doing nothing is not an option.
On welfare, the numbers alone are shocking. Their starkness alone should be a wake-up call to anyone who is in even the vaguest contact with fiscal reality.
By 2029, Britain will be spending ÂŁ100 billion a year on sickness benefits. To put it in perspective, that is at least one and a half times what we spend on defence. Worse, over a million foreign nationals are now reported to be claiming UK benefits.
Taxpayers are being asked to fund a system that doesn’t work for those it is meant to help, doesn’t prioritise British citizens and doesn’t give our armed forces the money they need in a world more dangerous than any we have ever known. We like to think we are Europe’s leading military power. So how can we justify spending more on welfare than on our own defence?
The welfare bill is spiralling because Labour has lost control. Since they took office, 2,000 people a day have been signed off sick on definitions that, even on the admission of the Health Secretary, are too loose. We have 3.3 million people on sickness benefit. Up by one million in five years.
Once on benefits, people rarely come off. Just think about what that means for a minute. That is real tragedy for millions of real people. That’s millions of people spending their working lives not working. Worse still, the biggest rise is among young people: those who should be entering the workforce but are instead signing on.
Britain is turning into a nation hooked on state dependency - and worse, some among the left seem to actively encourage this dependency.
Britain's welfare bill is spiralling because Labour have lost control - Robert Courts KC
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Make no mistake, this is hitting the economy hard. If just a million people moved from welfare into work, it would generate an extra £30 billion in tax revenue and slash £11 billion off the welfare bill. Even if Labour’s own estimates are to be believed, tackling welfare dependency could give Britain one of the fastest-growing economies in the G20.
But this isn’t just about waste, or even the wrongful priority of resources. The left live under the illusion that a ballooning welfare bill is in some way kind to people. It isn’t. It is immoral to trap people in benefits, to shackle them to a system that robs them of ambition, dignity, and independence.
The welfare state was meant to be a safety net, not a way of life. Yet for millions, that is precisely what it has become. In towns like Birkenhead, half the working-age population is on benefits, despite jobs being available. Why? Because the system makes it more rational to stay on handouts than to work.
There is nothing compassionate about this. This is a slow-motion economic and social disaster, created by the left. So don’t even think about welfare reform in terms of economic necessity if you don’t want to: it is a moral duty whether the left like it or not. Getting people back into work shouldn’t be seen as punishment. It’s empowerment: giving people self-respect, financial security - and a future.
When people work, they contribute, they build communities, and they set an example for future generations. Instead, Labour’s welfare state encourages dependency and idleness, robbing people of opportunity under the guise of “compassion” and “support”.
If Starmer has any vision for his party, he should make fixing this crisis his mission and, let’s hand it to him - it would earn him his place in history. But will his MPs, wedded to the failed ideals of a bloated welfare state, let him?
Keir Starmer must back Liz Kendall in taking action on our bloated welfare bill.
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And there’s the problem. Fixing welfare means taking on Labour’s sacred cow. Keir Starmer knows this is a crisis. He’s a smart guy. He will know that the welfare numbers don’t add up. But his own MPs are in open revolt, calling benefit cuts “unacceptable.” Liz Kendall, the Work and Pensions Secretary, may well want to take action - but does she have the backing for something with political risk?
Labour MPs are panicking, torn between reality and ideology - and this from the party for whom moving one million people off welfare and into work used to be the stuff of dreams, not nightmares.
That reality is that tough choices have to be made. Welfare reform is not just about saving money. It’s about restoring the values - hard work, entrepreneurialism, get-up-and-go - that made Britain a great country in the first place. It’s about ensuring that work pays, that those who can work do work, and that the economy rewards effort. The days of handouts need to end: it’s the moral as well as the practical thing to do.
