A Cabinet minister wriggled today as she was repeatedly pressed on whether young people face benefits cuts if they refuse to take up jobs or training.
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall was involved in a toe-curling exchange on Sky News as she was grilled about Labour’s new welfare crackdown.
Keir Starmer has vowed to squeeze the ‘bulging’ benefits bill ‘blighting our society’, promising ‘sweeping changes’ including a blitz on cheats and those who ‘game the system’.
Ms Kendall is unveiling a package of legislation on Tuesday to ‘get Britain working’, after officials forecast that more than four million people will be claiming long-term sickness benefits by 2030. That would be 60 per cent higher than before the pandemic.
But she dodged as she was repeatedly challenged by presenter Trevor Phillips on whether young people will be docked benefits if they do not accept opportunities.
An increasingly frustrated Phillips accused her of ‘dancing around’ the issue of whether there would be sanctions – which will cause tensions with the Labour Left.
Eventually Ms Kendall said that ‘if people repeatedly refuse to take up the training or work responsibilities there will be sanctions on their benefits’.
Pressed if that meant they will ‘lose benefits’, the minister replied: ‘Yes.’
Sir Keir used an article in the Mail on Sunday today to signal a new focus on domestic politics, after the extraordinary Budget tax raid and a backlash over his globetrotting fueled a slump in Labour’s poll ratings.
He said that the reforms announced this week will pave the way for ‘the biggest overhaul of employment support in memory’.
He wrote: ‘Make no mistake, we will get to grips with the bulging benefits bill blighting our society.’
‘Don’t get me wrong – we will crack down hard on anyone who tries to game the system, to tackle fraud so we can take cash straight from the banks of fraudsters.
‘There will be a zero-tolerance approach to these criminals. My pledge to Mail on Sunday readers is this: I will grip this problem once and for all.’
Labour’s plans include giving the NHS a role in getting people back to work, such as employing tens of thousands of people who are economically inactive for health reasons in non-clinical roles.
Ms Kendall’s White Paper is also expected to include the placement of work coaches in mental health clinics.
She said that she believed ‘many millions’ of disabled people and those with long-term health problems want to work, and ‘we need to break down the barriers to that happening’.
‘Look, don’t get me wrong, the benefits system can incentivise or disincentivise work. But there are many other things we need to do to get people back into work,’ she said.
‘I do not want an ever-increasing benefits bill spent on the cost of failure, people trapped out of work, terrible for their life chances and paid for by the taxpayer. We need big reforms to make that happen.’
Ms Kendall said young people have a ‘responsibility’ to take up opportunities for work and will face sanctions if they do not do so.
‘We will transform those opportunities for young people, we will put in place a youth guarantee so everyone has the chance to be earning or learning,’ she told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.
‘But in return for those new opportunities, young people will have a responsibility to take them up.
‘Let me tell you why, because if you lack basic skills in today’s world, that is brutal. If you are out of work when you’re young, that can have lifelong consequences in terms of your future job prospects and earnings potential.
‘So, we, the Government, will face up to our responsibility, unlike the last government, of having that guarantee in place.’
She said young people she had spoken to said it was ‘better for their mental health’ to be in work.
But the minister declined to commit to implementing Tory plans that could have seen 400,000 people denied as much as £400 a month.
The Work and Pensions Secretary told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: ‘We will deliver those savings, we will bring forward our own reforms. You will hear more about this when we launch our white paper on Tuesday.’
Asked whether those people will be able to keep their benefits, she said: ‘I’m saying we will bring forward our own reforms. You wouldn’t expect me to announce this on your programme. But my objective is that disabled people should have the same chances and rights to work as everybody else.’
The number of people claiming incapacity benefits is forecast to rise from 3.2 million last year to 4.2 million in 2029 – costing Britain £35.5 billion by the end of the decade.
In 2019, there were 2.5 million people claiming these benefits, at a cost of £17 billion.
In his MoS article, Sir Keir tried to reassure the Labour Left that he is not aping Tory policies by saying that the reforms will not ‘sow division’ by describing people on benefits as ‘shirkers’, but would instead ‘treat people with dignity and respect’.
He singled out shadow chancellor Mel Stride, who was Work and Pensions Secretary in Rishi Sunak’s Government, for supposedly having ‘picked fights instead of governing’ and using ‘meaningless rhetoric to grab headlines’.
But a Tory Party spokesman said: ‘Labour’s hollow promises on welfare reform will fool no one. When the last Conservative government introduced messages to tackle the growing benefits bill, Labour opposed them every step of the way.
‘At the Budget, instead of following in our footsteps and taking difficult decisions on welfare to fund public services, Rachel Reeves instead reached straight for the tax lever.
‘This new government has no clue what is needed to get people off benefits and back into work.’
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that it is not clear why the costs of benefits have increased so much in the UK since Covid because the trend has not been seen in other countries.