Reeves has one big ally in slashing benefits: the public
A cottage industry has grown up on TikTok that has nothing to do with dancing or cats. Earnest-looking men and women explain to thousands of people willing to watch ways to 'pass' assessments for welfare benefits. You can spend hours scrolling through them.
Uber receipts are, apparently, useful for showing that you find it difficult to walk outside. Takeaway bills show an inability to cook; grocery deliveries an inability to shop. It is seemingly important to explain that it takes you a long time to get into or out of the bath. Forgetting to go to the lavatory, or misremembering directions can also gain points. Viewers are urged to 'get a pen and paper and write this down'.
We spend more on incapacity and disability benefits than defence. About 3.7 million people who are of working age receive health-related welfare – 1.2 million more than in 2020. If 400,000 of those people could find work, it would save £10 billion via higher tax revenues and lower benefits bills.
GPs – who sign people off – are not occupational therapists and know little about work. One Conservative official I spoke to, who was formerly a government adviser, told me that 94 per cent of 'fit notes' were signed 'not fit'. Doctors deal with illness, not employment.
Once people are off work, capability assessments are de minimis. As a House of Lords report revealed in January, 'there is a disincentive for claimants to apply for and accept work'. They languish at home and may receive a phone call every now and again – the moment the TikTok advice kicks in. Young people in particular too often move straight from education onto sickness benefits.
The grinding logic of the need for reform is unarguable. That does not mean demonising those who need support getting back to work, or who are dealing with conditions that mean they are incapable of work. Those who suffer most from our present malaise are those who most need the payments – lost within an ever-increasing multitude of those who could work, but don't. The noise is drowning out the signal.
Baroness Grey-Thompson has warned politicians to take care, linking the payment of disability benefits to the debate about assisted dying. 'If you are disabled and terminally ill and your benefits are cut, making life intolerable, it's obvious more people will feel forced down this route to end their lives early,' she said, linking the payment of disability benefits to the debate about assisted dying.
Some in Labour are suffering their usual fits of conscience over the issue, unable to distinguish between 'values' and the practical reality. Continue as we are and the benefits bill will have risen to £100 billion by 2030. That is four times higher than the extra cash raised by the economy-sapping increases in National Insurance contributions. Imagine what a sliver of that money could do for schools and the health service.
The public has had enough. Few want to return to the harsh language of 'scroungers' and Peter Lilley's 'I've got a little list of benefit offenders' to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan. But they do want action and what has been described to me by one person close to government as 'tough love'.
New research from the Good Growth Foundation, a think tank, reveals that 60 per cent of the public believe that benefits provide too much support to people who don't want to work. The figure is only marginally lower for Labour voters. Benefit reform is, rightly, popular. This is not a right-left issue, it is a right-wrong one.
'Is it worth going back to work?,' said one Birmingham man interviewed for the research. 'People need to be given a liveable wage. £1,000 for sitting on my arse, or £1,050 for doing 40 hours a week?' Ill-health benefits are £400 a month higher than job-seeker benefits.
'Too often, people who want to work are written off by the welfare system.' said Praful Nargund, director of the GGF. 'Our research shows that the vast majority of those on sickness and disability benefits want to work but feel unable to do so. There is nothing progressive about social isolation.'
The government has to lead, but business also has a role. Nargund suggests a NICs holiday for firms that help people off long term benefits and into work. In the 1970s a category of work called 'light duties' was a less daunting on-ramp back to the factory or office. We should find a 2025 equivalent. A 'right-to-try' approach would de-risk a return to work for those who fear a long term loss of support because they have attempted an often difficult move back to employment. They should be applauded, not penalised.
Benefit reform is the latest test for a Labour government that has – usefully – a little more spring in its step. Difficult decisions are easier when confidence is flowing – as it is in the party's upper echelons. Ukraine, higher defence spending and cuts in international aid are all popular with voters. The Left of the party is in retreat as Keir Starmer pushes rightward in the hunt for a political prospectus that works.
Number 10 has also spotted something on the right which brings them a few smiles of satisfaction. Kemi Badenoch is facing a painful political squeeze as the government eats her lunch on benefits reform, a smaller state and a retooling of the NHS. Even Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, had to admit that the Conservatives should have rid the UK of the 'world's largest quango', NHS England. It took a Labour Secretary of State for Health, Wes Streeting, to do so.
The big target, though, is still there for the Opposition leader, who is making a major speech this week on the future of Conservatism. The economy contracted in January and 'growth' is the gnawing failure that the government has little prospect of reversing, benefits reform or not. Its lack of understanding of market dynamics and Milton Friedman principles have left it seeking state-led solutions where there are none. Capitalism has one talent – creating wealth. It should be allowed to do so.
The modern welfare state came into being after the Second World War, but its Labour founders would not recognise it now. This is the time for a reset, for a clearly set and enforced requirement for individuals to be supported on a path to work that is good for them and good for the country. The Labour Party is the party of work. Or it is nothing.
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