Rachel Reeves faces call from her local Labour party to abandon welfare cuts
The Leeds West and Pudsey Constituency Labour Party (CLP), which campaigned to return Ms Reeves to Parliament in the general election as its local MP, has agreed to write to her 'as soon as possible' to make clear it does not support the cuts.
The local party branch passed a motion opposing the cuts, seen by the PA news agency, when it met this week.
The Government's plans, set out in a Green Paper earlier this year, would tighten the eligibility criteria for the main disability benefit in England, the personal independence payment (Pip).
Restricting Pip would cut benefits for around 800,000 people, while the sickness-related element of universal credit also set to be cut.
The package of measures are aimed at reducing the number of working-age people on sickness benefits, which grew during the pandemic and has remained high since.
The Government hopes the proposals can save £5 billion a year by the end of the decade.
In its motion opposing the plans, the Leeds West and Pudsey CLP said disabled people 'are not responsible for the state of the national finances and should not be made to pay the price for Tory economic mismanagement'.
The CLP also acknowledged welfare reform is important, but urged the Government to 'focus on reducing the taper' – the rate at which benefits fall off once someone has found work.
The local Labour group resolved to write to both Chancellor Ms Reeves and Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall to 'articulate our proposed cuts to disability benefits – whether by reducing rates, implementing higher thresholds, poor quality assessments or increased conditionality – as soon as possible'.
Opposition on Ms Reeves's patch comes as the Government appears at risk of a major rebellion from its backbenchers over the plans.
Some 100 Labour MPs – more than a quarter of the party's parliamentary numbers – are reported to have signed a letter urging ministers to scale back welfare cuts under consideration, according to media reports.
The private letter to Labour's chief whip is separate from a similar one last week, in which 42 MPs said the cuts were 'impossible to support'.
Speaking during a recent Westminster Hall debate, Ian Byrne, the Labour MP for Liverpool West Derby, said he was willing to 'swim through vomit' to vote against the cuts.
Others including Richard Burgon (Leeds East), Rachael Maskell (York Central), and Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) also confirmed they would vote against the plans when they spoke during the debate.
Ellen Clifford, from Disabled People Against Cuts, said the campaign group supports the Leeds West and Pudsey CLP's move.
She added: 'We hope that the Chancellor takes note of the contents. The scale of the proposed cuts is horrific and will destroy communities, break public services through additional pressures and could well negatively impact the economy.
'They are cruel, badly thought through and entirely performative. Voters will not forget or forgive politicians who back these cuts.'
The Chancellor's team, approached for comment, pointed to her previous messages to Labour MPs on the welfare cut proposals.
When asked last week what her message to concerned Labour backbenchers was, Ms Reeves said: 'I don't think anybody, including Labour MPs and members, think that the current welfare system created by the Conservative Party is working today.
'They know that the system needs reform. We do need to reform how the welfare system works if we're going to grow our economy.'
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Telegraph
39 minutes ago
- Telegraph
How benefits fraud exploded – and milking the system went mainstream
Sara Morris, a 50-year-old from Stone, Staffordshire, is not the first middle-aged jogger to showcase their exploits on social media. In posts on Facebook, the mother-of-three – and member of the Stone Master Marathoners – advertised her exertions in scores of running events, including 5k and 10k races. The difference for Morris was that rather than just showing off, her posts betrayed her as a benefits cheat. In 2005 she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, but in 2020 she exaggerated the extent of her condition to claim Personal Independence Payment (PIP). She claimed that she could not stand at her cooker or get out of the bath, and that she was so anxious she ended up in tears when she went to the pharmacy to collect her medication. She did not mention long-distance running. At Stoke Crown Court last July, Morris was sentenced to eight months in prison for dishonestly making a false statement to obtain a benefit, having been overpaid £20,528.83 between October 20 2020 and April 25 2023. Between May 2019 and December 2022, an investigation found that she competed in 73 races. She accepted that her benefit application 'crossed over into the realms of dishonesty'. She served nine weeks. Last week, in a proceeds of crime hearing, in the same court Judge Graeme Smith ordered Morris to repay £22,386.02 within 28 days or serve nine months in prison in default. Benefit fraud remains stubbornly high since the pandemic Morris's case is so blatant as to verge on the comic. But Keir Starmer will not laugh at the timing of the hearing, in a week when he has faced calls for higher spending and warnings of lower growth. On Monday, the Prime Minister revealed the results of Lord Robertson's Strategic Defence Review, which included a pledge to build up to 12 new attack submarines and increase defence spending from 2.3 per cent to 2.5 per cent of national income. He had barely finished the announcement when it was reported that Nato would oblige him to commit to increasing defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035. On Thursday US defence secretary Pete Hegseth pushed for five per cent. Meanwhile, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development predicted that the UK economic growth would slump to a measly one per cent next year, hit by uncertainty over Donald Trump's tariffs regime and higher-than-expected inflation. Even if Starmer manages to reform the welfare system, as he has promised – and his handbrake U-turn on winter fuel payments suggest this will be easier said than done – it appears inevitable he will have to put up taxes, too. It's never a popular decision, and especially not when there is a perception among the vast majority that criminals and scammers are fleecing honest taxpayers. And that perception is borne out by the statistics: benefit fraud has remained stubbornly high since the pandemic, while convictions for the crime have fallen. Telegraph analysis of Ministry of Justice data shows that the number of people sentenced for key benefit fraud-related offences has plummeted from 4,154 to 685 since 2017. Such is public concern that Britons overestimate the true extent of benefit fraud. 'We find that the public estimate that about 24 per cent of the entire welfare budget is being fraudulently claimed, whereas the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) estimate 2.2 per cent of benefit expenditure is 'over paid',' says Ben Page, CEO of Ipsos. Yet in a department as large as the DWP, even a small percentage can mean a huge loss. In its report last year, the DWP reported a top-line figure that 2.8 per cent of its £268 billion total benefits outlay (which includes around £160 billion on pensions, less susceptible to fraud), or £7.4 billion, was lost to fraud. This year fraud was down to 2.2 per cent, or £6.5 billion – a sum that has more than doubled since 2020 – with a further £1.9 billion on claimant error and £1 billion official error. If fraud was its own block of spending, it would be not far from how much the government spends on the entire legal system (£8.6 billion), and more than higher education (£7.2 billion), foreign aid (£7.2 billion) and potholes (£7 billion). It would be enough to buy you a Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier with change for 11 F-35s to put on it. A 1p cut in income tax would cost just £6.4 billion. There were 7.5 million people on Universal Credit in January 2025, up from 6.4 million people on Universal Credit in January 2024. The most recent data show that there were 39,000 new 'starts' – people receiving benefit – per week in that month from 47,000 claims, implying an acceptance rate of 83 per cent. High profile fraud cases, even if they represent a minority of claimants, are infuriating for the rule-abiding public and toxic for government. Sara Morris's was not the only recent case to make headlines. Last May, three women and two men from a Bulgarian crime gang were jailed for between three and eight years each for a £50 million benefits fraud, the biggest in British history, which involved thousands of fraudulent claims. Sentencing Gyunesh Ali, one of the gang members, Judge David Aaronberg said Ali had committed fraud 'on an industrial scale'. In December, Halton council announced it would have to write off more than £240,000 of unpaid welfare fraud debt owed by Christina Pomfrey, a Runcorn grandmother, after her death. Pomfrey had received more than £1 million in benefits over a 15-year period, having lied that her MS had left her blind and in need of a wheelchair, before she was arrested. In 2020 she was sentenced to three years and eight months, after what the judge called 'staggering' dishonesty and 'determined benefit fraud on a substantial scale'. In October 2023, Hossein Ali Najafi, 57, who was born in Iran, was sentenced to 29 months in prison for falsely claiming £349,000 in benefits, using two identities and 26 bank accounts. 'Fraudsters like Hossein Ali Najafi abuse the benefits system, which exists to support people who are in genuine need,' said Maqsood Khan, senior crown prosecutor of Mersey Cheshire Fraud Unit. Gaming the system And so on and on. Benefit fraud has rocketed in recent times. A State of the Nation report commissioned by David Cameron's government in 2010 estimated the total fraud to be £1 billion. In 2011/12, the DWP estimated that fraud was worth 0.7 per cent of the total budget. (The government's counting method changed after 2018.) The figures rocketed up during the pandemic, particularly in Universal Credit. According to the National Audit Office's analysis of the DWP data, the Universal Credit overpayments due to fraud and error went from £700 million in 2018-2019 to £1.7 billion the following year and a whopping £5.5 billion the year by 2020-2021. Last year's record figure for Universal Credit fraud was £6.5 billion. Fraud in other areas, such as housing benefit, meanwhile, remained stable or fell over the same period. State pension fraud is extremely low, with less than 0.1 per cent overpaid due to fraud or error. The fraud rate in Universal Credit amounts to around 10 per cent of the overall Universal Credit spending; bearing in mind this only registers the fraud that has been caught, the true figure may be higher still. That's not counting the men and women – perhaps following tips gleaned from a 'sickfluencer' – who are gaming the system but technically within the letter of it. It has been argued that one factor in the shocking rise in Universal Credit fraud has been the move away from in-person assessments to remote ones, often conducted over the phone. Last year Peter Schofield, the DWP permanent secretary, blamed the 'underlying growth of fraud in the economy' for the increase. Reporting on the 2024 figures, the National Audit Office's Gareth Davies said it was clear the DWP 'no longer expects Universal Credit fraud and error to return to the levels seen before the significant increase during the Covid-19 pandemic'. A DWP spokesperson told The Telegraph: 'We are bringing forward the biggest fraud crackdown in a generation, as part of wider plans that will save £9.6 billion by 2030. 'Thanks to our efforts we have reduced fraud by around £800 million – with over £400 million of savings in Universal Credit alone in the last year. We are absolutely clear we will not tolerate any waste as we protect taxpayer's money.' Joe Shalam, the policy director of the Centre for Social Justice, a think tank, who previously worked at the DWP, believes that there has been a cultural shift in recent years towards seeking out benefits. 'The rise in benefit fraud is analogous to the rise in shoplifting,' he says. 'A population-level change driven by wider economic forces, like inflation and the cost of living. Such casual lawbreaking was highlighted last week when Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary and putative successor to Kemi Badenoch as Conservative leader, released a widely-shared film in which he confronted some of the passengers on the Tube, thought to be as many as one in 25 of the total, who push through the barriers without paying. Corroding faith in government But there is a cultural dimension to it as well. The welfare system has an implicit or assumed sense that everyone who is 'entitled' will not necessarily apply for it. We're seeing a cultural shift where people are much more likely to say 'my neighbour is receiving X, why am I not?' says Shalam. 'There are some cultural and economic factors that make it harder to get back to a pre-pandemic norm.' In March, for example, it was reported that the Motability scheme, which provides taxpayer-funded cars to those claiming PIP benefits, had signed up 815,000 people last year, an increase of more than 170,000 in a year. Claimants can apply for a new model every three years. The Motability fleet is the biggest in Europe, valued at more than £14 billion. On social media, there are accounts dedicated to showing their followers how they can secure a car for themselves, too. All of which can corrode faith in government, says James Frayne, a veteran political strategist. 'Since the late 2000s, when everyone had to tighten their belts, there has been increasing exasperation that some people are wrongly living off the fat of the land by claiming benefits they aren't due,' he says. 'While people get angry at cases of systematic criminal fraud, they can get just as angry at individuals they think just can't be bothered to work. It all adds up to this sense that nobody seems to be able to govern Britain properly. Inevitably, the anger at those milking or ripping off the system rebounds towards politicians.' Soon after winning the general election last year, Keir Starmer announced that cracking down on benefit fraud would be a priority for his government. In his speech to the Labour Party conference in September, he said that new legislation, following a policy mooted by the Conservatives, would let investigators 'root out' fraud with similar powers of 'search and seizure' to those enjoyed by HMRC. This would compel banks to hand over financial information about their customers where there was reasonable suspicion of benefit fraud. The plan was designed to save the taxpayer £1.6 billion over five years and free up more money for public services. Another proposal, announced in January, was to strip benefit fraudsters of their driving licences. Starmer's reforms have met with resistance. Neil Duncan-Jordan, who was elected the Labour MP for Poole last year, has proposed amendments to the bill that would ensure only those suspected of fraud would be surveilled. Writing in The Guardian, Duncan accused Starmer of 'resurrecting Tory proposals for mass spying on people who receive state support' and that under the proposed legislation 'welfare recipients would be treated as suspects, simply because they need support from the state'. The vast sums of money lost to benefit fraud are also an incentive for a government to crack down on it, to free up money for other projects. Recent comparative international studies are thin on the ground, but Britain might learn from Finland, a high-trust society with a relatively simple benefits system and high rates of digitisation, where fraud rates amount to less than half a percentage point of the total paid. According to the latest report by Kela, the Finnish welfare institution, there were 1,104 suspected cases of benefit 'misuse' in 2024, amounting to €7.2 million (£6 million); the number of cases has been stable over the past five years. In the UK, failing a cultural reversion away from seeking out every benefit you might be entitled to, Shalam believes technology might improve efficiency. 'Analysing and assessing all the information about people's claims and their condition takes a huge volume of human resource,' he says. 'There's a lot of potential in AI to crack down on fraud and make sure the system is going to those who need it most.' Ultimately the people most angry about benefit fraud are those working on the front lines, says Amber Rudd, who was secretary of state for work and pensions from 2018-2019. 'The people who mind most about [fraud] are the people who work in the job centres,' she says. 'They find it really upsetting and frustrating. They are trying to help other people. When I went round the job centres it was the first thing they wanted to talk about. Fraud takes many different forms. The abusive form, forcing single mothers to go in and apply, then there are the multiple frauds where someone has a system. 'It's like the bank robber who says he robs banks because 'that's where the money is'. There's money being handed out; there is inevitably going to be fraud. I thought at the time we could do better with technology trying to weed it out. But it's going to be a constant battle.' In attempting to mitigate Sara Morris's sentence, her lawyer Paul Cliff conceded that her application to the DWP 'did not give the full picture,' but that 'running was one of the ways she tried to manage her MS'. 'She lost her home because of financial problems,' he also said. 'And was struggling to keep her head above water financially.' As he tries to placate an increasingly angry electorate while balancing Britain's precarious books, Keir Starmer may sympathise with her.
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The National
an hour ago
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UK will not officially recognise Palestine at UN conference
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