logo
Labour's benefits reforms are absolutely necessary and long overdue

Labour's benefits reforms are absolutely necessary and long overdue

Yahoo13-03-2025

One overcast Saturday morning in 2002, I was holding an advice surgery for constituents in Castlemilk, the poverty-stricken housing estate in the south-east corner of my Glasgow Cathcart constituency.
It was a relatively quiet session, but a visit by two young men has remained in my memory ever since. They were about sixteen, had just left school and one of them (his mate was only there to offer moral support) wanted to know how to claim out-of-work benefits.
The boy was explicitly looking for long-term financial support that would excuse him from the task of ever having to seek work or full-time education. When I asked him what physical ailment prevented him from getting a job, he replied with a knowing smirk towards his friend: 'Bad back.'
I didn't ask if any of his own family members were claiming what was then known as Incapacity Benefit; I didn't have to. There were few families in the area, then or now, whose income didn't rely at least in part on the largesse of the state, despite the fact many members were of working age.
Even before I became an MP, I had toured my local constituency Labour Party branches urging members to support the Blair Government's efforts to reform the system.
I probably used many of the clichés and blithe assumptions that Labour MPs use today to defend their support of the Work and Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall, and her plans to institute genuinely radical reform: that Labour is the party of work, not of benefits.
The clue in the name! Many people on out-of-work benefits want to work; they just need more support to do so.
Neither of these statements is strictly true. Yes, Labour was founded to represent the working classes in Parliament. It's also true that one of its founders, Keir Hardie, had little time for those who chose worklessness over employment.
But culturally, today's party is dominated by middle class activists to whom the prospect of a Labour Government forcing benefit claimants into work is anathema. And while the claim that 'many' might prefer work to benefits is in some degree true, it is far too small a degree to make much difference to the economic necessity of reform.
And that is the fundamental challenge that Kendall and the Government face: if Britain is to be transformed in a way that will radically reduce the numbers claiming out-of-work benefits, it will need to disappoint – nay, enrage – many of its supporters.
It will need to annoy a large proportion of the people within the party itself, and also a considerable number of (well-paid and productively employed) media commentators and other stakeholders.
There is, of course, an economic case for reducing the cost to the state's finances. And this is especially crucial now because the excuses people come up with are getting more absurd.
In previous decades the preferred excuse of my young constituent and many others for claiming benefits was 'a bad back'. This is a conveniently unevidenced malady. But today more psychological – and therefore even less provable – ailments have become more popular among those hoping to leave the burden of honest labour behind them for a life of watching daytime TV.
The numbers claiming to suffer from stress, depression and even PTSD (which, oddly, affects many who have not served in the Armed Forces) has swelled the claimant numbers.
Britain simply can't afford to continue to fund a situation in which a large proportion of the population is allowed to claim benefits rather than earn a living and pay taxes. This is a truth that can either be faced now, when there remains some opportunity to address it, or in the future, when the rot will have gone too far to stop the country from sliding into national decline and bankruptcy.
Which is where the moral case for Kendall's mission comes in. Labour's Left-wing has been most vocal in its opposition to reform, which is only to be expected: what is the point of being on the Left at all if you don't seize every available opportunity to broadcast your morally superior concerns for poor people that callous Right-wingers, even in your own party, don't care about?
But there is no moral case for living off the hard-earned taxes of those who actually have a job. And there is nothing noble about allowing those who suffer from a range of mental illnesses to remain at home when you know that having a job and working side-by-side with colleagues will do far more to improve their mental health than the status quo ever could.
These are hard truths that previous Governments, including the Labour Government I served, managed to avoid. Electoral considerations always prevailed over the optimistic rhetoric of ministers. This meant that reform was downgraded to a mere tinkering at the edges of the benefits system.
Kendall's appointment as Work and Pensions Secretary was one of Keir Starmer's most astute decisions. She is ambitious and supremely capable. But more importantly she understands what is at stake if she fails. She is far from the heartless caricature that her opponents in the Labour Party describe. In fact she could well be the saviour of countless working class communities that have been scarred by generations of political failure.
But that success depends on difficult short-term decisions that will be drastically unpopular and which will have some painful consequences for some people. It would be easy for the Government to abandon this project for the sake of electoral advantage and popularity. That would be more than a mistake: it would be a betrayal of the very people the Labour Party claims to represent.
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Why Starmer's homelessness reform could see Britain overrun by rough sleepers
Why Starmer's homelessness reform could see Britain overrun by rough sleepers

Yahoo

time18 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Why Starmer's homelessness reform could see Britain overrun by rough sleepers

The 'tent city' on Park Lane, in the central reservation near Hyde Park Corner, comprises 23 tents, tables, office chairs, shopping trolleys and washing lines. A neatly stacked pile of bin bags lies to one side while Lime bikes have been discarded around the settlement. A handful of large white signs are stacked up, reading: 'I'm hungry, God bless.' Those living here suggest there is little difference between their circumstances and those of the thousands of rough sleepers across the country, who will be decriminalised under plans announced by Sir Keir Starmer this week. To tourists, residents and those working in the surrounding Mayfair streets, however, the scene might more aptly be described as illegal camping. 'It's not good at all, but we don't have a permanent place where we can wait for approval from City Hall [for housing],' says Mihai, 54, from Romania, the only inhabitant prepared to speak to The Telegraph, who refuses to give his surname. 'Would you like to live here?' He says he has lived at the site for two years, has indefinite leave to remain in the UK and works as a cleaner. He has also camped at Marble Arch and in Hyde Park. There were more people in the camp previously, he says, but they have gradually been found housing. A mile to the east, at Tottenham Court Road, Mel, 60, who also refuses to give his surname, lives in another encampment with his nephews Danny, 27, and Liam, 22, and their dogs, Cain and Sierra. Mel was born in west London and says he used to have three full-time jobs – in sales and advertising, as an estate agent and as a supervisor at a bowling alley – but has been living on the street for six years since he was kicked out of his council house over a dispute with a neighbour. 'It's not a choice for me living on the street,' he says. 'If it was, I wouldn't have been here for nearly seven years now.' He adds that Romanian migrants are more comfortable living this way. 'People from other places have a tent mentality,' he says. 'What bugs me is we're a first-world country, and these people don't have the understanding that when you come to a better country, you have to make yourself better. You can't just stand on the corner drinking beer and whistling at women. It's easy for them because they grew up in desolate countries.' The situation in central London encapsulates the complexity of legislating around homelessness. On Tuesday, the Government announced plans to decriminalise rough sleeping, continuing a Tory proposal from 2022 to repeal the 1824 Vagrancy Act. The Bill was originally brought in to deal with rising homelessness after the Napoleonic Wars and has long been considered out of date, with references to 'vagabonds' and 'rogues'. 'We are drawing a line under nearly two centuries of injustice towards some of the most vulnerable in society, who deserve dignity and support,' said Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister. 'No one should ever be criminalised simply for sleeping rough and, by scrapping this cruel and outdated law, we are making sure that can never happen again.' To ensure the police still have authority to combat antisocial behaviour, the Government promised to create new offences, including facilitating begging for gain and trespassing with the intention of committing a crime, both of which were previously included under the 1824 Act. Experts warn legislation against begging may yet rub up against the European Convention on Human Rights; in 2021, the court ruled that Switzerland had violated human rights when it fined a woman who had been begging. Homelessness is a global issue, of course, and there is a huge range of government responses to it. While Britain is moving to decriminalise rough sleeping, America has gone in the other direction. Last year, the US Supreme Court ruled that punishing rough sleepers was not a 'cruel and unusual punishment,', as prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. Homelessness has become a pressing problem in several American cities, most notoriously San Francisco. An estimated 771,000 Americans were homeless last year, more than any year on record. Since the ruling, at least 163 municipalities have passed rules banning camping. There are signs that policy is working. Last year, the California governor, Gavin Newsom, promised 'no more excuses' for the state with the highest 'unsheltered' rate in the country. Since encampments began to be cleared after the Supreme Court ruling, California's rate has stabilised. While, nationwide, homelessness increased by 18 per cent, in California it rose by just 3 per cent. In Fresno, California, members of the public can now report camps via an app. Rough sleepers could face fines of up to $1,000 or a year in prison, or they can ask to be taken to a shelter to discuss treatment or housing. When asked about whether the new rules were simply moving homeless people out of sight, Jerry Dyer, the city's Republican mayor and its former police chief, recently told The Economist: 'I'm sure there are people that have now chosen places that are less visible publicly, which is not a bad thing.' Some fear that the relaxing of rules in the UK will lead to the proliferation of rough sleeping seen in California prior to last year's Supreme Court ruling, in which Park Lane-style encampments spread across the country. 'San Francisco is the worst example but loads of these Left-wing-run cities in America have taken an approach of non-enforcement of laws around rough sleeping and petty crime,' says Fred de Fossard, the strategy director of the Prosperity Institute and a former Tory special adviser at the Cabinet Office, highlighting the absurdity of the UK taking such an approach when the United States is tacking in the opposite direction. 'Repealing the Vagrancy Act paves the way for [American levels of rough sleeping] here. This, in turn, will lead to a clamp-down in the future that will be 'more authoritarian than people are comfortable with and it will be entirely avoidable because we have taken a misguided, short-termist approach to these laws. This will fortify these encampments and make it harder for police to get rid of genuine criminals.' Certainly, those in charge of clearing encampments such as the one at Park Lane may wish police had similar powers to their US counterparts. The problem has been rumbling on for years. Last month, a court granted Transport for London (TfL), which owns the land, a possession order to remove the camp on Park Lane. A TfL spokesman said: 'We had to take enforcement action to regain possession of the site on two occasions last year; however, a number of people have returned with tents and other belongings.' David Spencer, the head of crime and justice at Policy Exchange, a think tank, and a former Met Police officer, says the situation at Park Lane encapsulates the difficulties facing those trying to disperse groups of rough sleepers, and the risks of removing their powers. 'Aggressive begging, rough sleeping and associated antisocial behaviour are things residents bring up all the time with the police,' he says. 'The reality is that they are issues which the police and local authorities are not able or willing to get to grips with. The police would never look at arrest and prosecution in the first instance, but what the Government is doing is removing the backstop, taking away almost any power the police has to deal with it. 'What we risk is a constant slide towards the degradation of our public realm, with government, police, authorities seeming to take a more permissive attitude to things like graffiti, begging, rough sleeping, fare dodging, which come up all the time with law-abiding people going about their lives,' he adds. 'People are sympathetic to those who find themselves in these situations, but we risk taking away the backstop that lets authorities do something about it. If we look at Park Lane, things have really got out of control. While some rough sleepers in central London beg, others manage to work, often in marginal gig-economy employment as delivery drivers or kitchen porters. Others choose to leave offered accommodation altogether. In June 2023, dozens of asylum seekers camped outside the accommodation they were offered in Pimlico, having balked at the prospect of sleeping four to a room. Signs by their camp read: 'This is a prison, not a hotel.' The Home Office stated that the accommodation was offered on a 'no-choice basis' and met 'all legal and contractual requirements.' In May 2024, Sadiq Khan pledged to end rough sleeping by 2030, and secured £17 million in central funding to do so. But if dealing with homeless people who want to find accommodation is difficult enough, what to do about those who – like the asylum seekers in Pimlico – prefer to sleep outside? Rough sleeping is only the most visible form of homelessness, which can also include living in temporary accommodation, sofa-surfing – sometimes called 'hidden homelessness' – and statutory homelessness, where a tenant has been served an eviction notice. The nature of rough sleeping can be difficult to quantify. According to the Ministry of Housing, which collates estimates from local authorities, there are around 2,000 rough sleepers in London, a figure that has more than doubled since the pandemic. Its data show that in that period, rough sleeping has risen across the country, in some areas by many multiples, including 1050 per cent in Charnwood, Leicestershire. Other sources put the figures much higher. According to the homelessness charity St Mungo's, there were 4,427 people recorded rough sleeping in London in the first quarter of 2025, an increase of 8 per cent on the same period last year. 'More people are becoming homeless and people are staying homeless for longer,' says Sean Palmer, the executive director of strategy and transformation at St Mungo's. 'It's getting more difficult to move people off of the streets, because there's not a supply of social housing, there's a block at the end of the system.' Rough sleeping has already been in effect decriminalised, with only five people sentenced for 'sleeping out' in England and Wales since 2017. Begging prosecutions have also fallen: the 160 sentences handed down for begging in 2024 was the lowest annual total on record, less than a fifth of the series high in 2018. But Palmer says the law can still have a deterrent effect on people seeking help: 'The Act as it is now isn't good for our clients, people suffering from homelessness and people rough sleeping. Sometimes it encourages them to hide more because they don't want to be criminalised and are less likely to receive the help and support they need to resolve their homelessness.' He says Mungo's clients come from a wide range of situations. 'It could be problems with the housing market, problems with money. A lot of people are bouncing around insecure accommodation and eventually they run out of goodwill and end up on the streets. Often our clients have backgrounds in the care system, sometimes in the military. Often people are leaving a government institution – they might be discharged from hospital, or be being moved on from the asylum system, or they might have left prison. 'I can't see how criminalising someone is helpful. We see the numbers of people coming out of the criminal justice system into homelessness. Feeding them back into the criminal justice system for being homeless, or feeding people who are homeless for other reasons back into the justice system, seems entirely counterproductive.' Proposed new offences target aggressive beggars and gangs, rather than individuals. The cautionary example of the US, however, shows what can happen when authorities have insufficient powers to disperse rough sleepers. The knottier issue at the heart of legislation is that many people don't think camping ought to be illegal and have great sympathy for those who find themselves homeless, even if they object to the sight of tent cities in some of London's most prestigious areas. The legal fudges reflect this Nimbyism. It also means that as a political issue, rough sleeping will not be moving along any time soon. Additional reporting by Ollie Corfe Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.

Senedd members tackle ‘existential crisis' for democracy
Senedd members tackle ‘existential crisis' for democracy

Yahoo

time23 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Senedd members tackle ‘existential crisis' for democracy

Senedd members called for urgent action to tackle the "existential crisis" of abuse, harassment and intimidation faced by politicians on social media. Plaid Cymru's Adam Price, the first out-gay man in his party to be elected to national office, warned prejudices based on sex, race and sexual orientation have been reinvigorated. He told the Senedd: "It is getting worse by the day, and it really represents an existential crisis for our democracy and our society." Mr Price said: "For our democracy to be effective, it has to be diverse. "Diversity trumps ability. "It's a piece of evidence in social science." The former Plaid Cymru leader called for a focus on representation of trans women and men, a community "under siege," to ensure their voices are heard in the Senedd. Mr Price highlighted harmful comments below news stories involving him in recent weeks. "That certainly won't deter me and I hope it won't deter anyone else," he said. "But we've got to do something about it collectively, haven't we?" Labour's Hannah Blythyn expressed concerns that Wales could go backwards in terms of equality of representation at the next Senedd election. Ms Blythyn told Senedd members: "I very much made an active decision when I had the opportunity to stand in this legislature because of the make-up – that there were more women here, that it was more representative." Jane Hutt, Wales' social justice secretary, acknowledged the rise of abuse, harassment and intimidation towards politicians, candidates and campaigners. She outlined voluntary diversity and inclusion guidance for political parties which aims to ensure democratic bodies are truly representative of all the people of Wales. Ms Hutt said safety costs will be exempt from spending limits for Welsh elections. Conservative Altaf Hussain warned guidance on equal representation risks crossing a dangerous line. He said: "Equality of access cannot come just by bureaucratic diktats or targets." Plaid Cymru's Sioned Williams said progress on underrepresentation of women in politics has slowed, warning the voluntary guidance was published "far too late." "Wales belongs to everyone," she said. "Everyone must have a voice in our nation's future."

Reeves announces £6 billion to provide millions of NHS tests and procedures
Reeves announces £6 billion to provide millions of NHS tests and procedures

Yahoo

time2 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Reeves announces £6 billion to provide millions of NHS tests and procedures

Rachel Reeves has announced a £6 billion investment to speed up tests and treatment within the NHS, after setting out huge year-on-year rises in the health service's budget. New scanners, ambulances and urgent treatment centres are among the things which the additional cash will pay for, with the aim of providing up to four million more tests and procedures over the next five years. The announcement comes after the Chancellor put NHS funding at the heart of her spending review on Wednesday, raising its budget in a move worth £29 billion a year. This comes, however, at the expense of other areas of public spending. The new £6 billion funding will help to meet the Government's target of reducing NHS waiting lists in England, the Chancellor claimed. 'Over a decade of underinvestment from the previous government put the NHS on its knees, with people across the country unable to get the care they need. We are investing in Britain's renewal, and we will turn that around,' Ms Reeves said. She added: 'Part of our record investment will deliver four million tests, scans and procedures, so hard-working people can get the healthcare they and their families need. 'There is no strong economy without a strong NHS, and we'll deliver on our Plan for Change to end the hospital backlog, improve living standards and get more money in people's pockets.' The latest spending commitment will help patients get access to diagnostic scans and treatment in places such as shopping centres and high streets, speeding up their diagnoses. The Government hopes this will help to cut NHS waiting lists, meeting Labour's goal of ensuring the health service carries out 92% of routine operations within 18 weeks. Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: 'Since taking office we have been relentless in our drive to cut waiting times for patients, delivering over 3.6 million extra elective care appointments and reducing the overall waiting list by over 200,000. 'The £6 billion investment we are announcing today will generate millions more vital diagnostic tests, scans and procedures for patients across the country.' On Wednesday evening, Ms Reeves said the Government was 'confident' it could meet its pledge to reduce waiting lists after giving the NHS a 3% annual increase in funding at the spending review. Some health leaders are, however, sceptical that the Government will meet its target, despite the funding boost provided at the spending review. Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents all health organisations, warned 'difficult decisions will still need to be made as this additional £29 billion won't be enough to cover the increasing cost of new treatments, with staff pay likely to account for a large proportion of it'. He added: 'So, on its own, this won't guarantee that waiting time targets are met.' Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of the King's Fund charity, said: 'The Chancellor said she wants the public to have an NHS there when they need it. 'It is hard to see how all the things she mentions: faster ambulance times, more GP appointments, and adequate mental health services and more can be met on this settlement alone. 'Particularly when large parts of this additional funding will be absorbed by existing rising costs, such as the higher cost of medicines, which are currently being negotiated, and covering staff pay deals.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store