Youngsters without a job see doing a day’s work as ‘stressful’, Liz Kendall has warned, as she vowed to get them off benefits.
The Work and Pensions Secretary also said those who are on benefits but shouldn’t be are taking the ‘mickey’.
But her tough language was undermined last night as it emerged that Labour is ditching the Tory crackdown on ‘sick note’ culture.
In an interview with ITV News, Ms Kendall said of out-of-work youngsters: ‘I think there is genuinely a problem with many young people, particularly the Covid generation. But we can’t have a situation where doing a day’s work is in itself seen as stressful.’
She recounted a time she had visited a supermarket to find there were some young people ‘who felt just turning up on time or working the day that they needed to’ was stressful, and not simply part of life.
Asked if there were too many claiming benefits and pretending they couldn’t work, she said: ‘There are people who shouldn’t be on those benefits who are taking the mickey and that is not good enough. We have to end that.’
Ms Kendall was also asked about a survey by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) which revealed that 49 per cent of benefits claimants say they could never work.
She said she was ‘under no illusions about the scale of the challenge’ in changing this.
She added: ‘I believe more of those people could work. But even if we just start with those who say they can, we need to do more to get them back into work.’
Ms Kendall said the country needs to focus on the extra £20 billion that would need to be spent on sickness and disability benefits during Labour’s administration.
She denied being ‘bullied’ by the Treasury to save money on the benefits bill and insisted she and the Chancellor were good friends.
It came as the Telegraph reported Sir Keir Starmer has scrapped Conservative reforms aimed at ending Britain’s ‘sick note culture’.
The plan to let specialists rather than GPs decide whether people were fit to work was designed to tackle an increase in ‘fit notes’.
In 2022, these hit 11 million, more than double the five million in 2015.
A Labour minister confirmed in the House of Lords this week that the plan has now been ditched, the paper reported. Baroness Sherlock said: ‘The Government has no current plans to reform the fit note in terms of the content of the form or the healthcare professionals who are legally allowed to issue them.’
The DWP confirmed it was the first time the Government has said publicly it is not going ahead with the reforms. A Labour source told the paper they were lacking in detail.
The number of Britons unable to work owing to long-term sickness hit a record 2.8 million in early 2024, up from 2 million pre-pandemic.
A DWP spokesman said: ‘We inherited a broken welfare system, with a spiralling benefits bill and soaring inactivity levels. We are already testing new approaches to the fit note system in economic inactivity hotspots as part of our wider plan to Get Britain Working.’
They added that reforms would be brought before Parliament in spring and that these would aim to overhaul the ‘broken assessment process’ which ‘pushes people towards welfare instead of work’.