Conservatives publish landmark plan to cut £36 billion from welfare bill
|
Ahead of a speech in Westminster by Shadow Work and Pensions
Secretary Helen Whately, introduced by Kemi Badenoch, the
Conservatives publish Welfare that Works - a detailed plan to cut
£36.1 billion from the welfare bill and get Britain working
again. Proposals will remove up to 2.5 million working
age welfare claims for low-level issues such as mild mental health
problems and bad backs, stop welfare payments for non-EU Settled
Status foreign nationals, and...Request free trial
Today [Tuesday 10th November], the Conservative Party is publishing Welfare that Works, setting out in detail our plans to cut £36.1 billion per year from the British welfare bill by the end of the next Parliament. This follows on from our headline announcements at Conservative Party Conference last month. These measures will result in substantial savings from the welfare bill, including:
Welfare that Works sets out a diagnosis of where and how the welfare system has gone wrong. This is based on rigorous analysis of misaligned incentives, decisions made by current and previous governments, weak accountability, and a failure to tackle legal barriers, such as the Human Rights Act and Public Sector Equality Duty, which have thwarted previous attempts at reform. In addition, Welfare that Works also sets out the Conservative Party's plan for youth jobs. We commit to halving employer NICs for 2124-year-olds, creating the Get To Work programme, and lifting the funding cap on apprenticeships. Andy Burnham's Labour Party has shown itself to be unwilling and unable to cut the UK's ballooning welfare bill, which is set to rise by £60 billion to £221.5 billion per year in 2031-32. This government failure is exemplified by:
Labour's answer to every problem is to spend more, borrow more and tax more. Only the Conservative Party has done the hard work to produce a workable, costed plan to bring the welfare bill down and support people back into work. Kemi Badenoch MP, Leader of the Conservative Party, is expected to say: Britain is now handing out more than £180 billion a year in benefits to working age adults. It's hard to comprehend just how big that number is. It's more than we spend on our army, our schools and our police combined. It is more than £4,000 for every taxpayer in the UK. It is more than the entire GDP of Ukraine. The weight of this welfare burden is crushing our economy and plunging us deeper and deeper into debt. There is no world in which the current system is sustainable and not just because of the cost. The question of whether we should cut welfare goes to the heart of what sort of country we want to be. It exposes a fundamental difference between Labour and the Conservatives. Labour MPs think cutting welfare is always cruel. They believe the kindest thing you can do for someone who is struggling is to tell them it's okay not to look after themselves. That there's nothing wrong with a life of dependency. And if you don't think very hard about it, I can see why you might believe that is kind. Of course, there are people who genuinely cannot work. People with serious illnesses and disabilities. People who need time to recover. We must have a safety net for those people But the reality is that millions of people can and do contribute to our economy to their families to their communities even when they face serious challenges. Double amputees run marathons. People who are housebound do wonderful creative work from home. People with autism run some of the biggest tech companies in the world. If you tell a young person that their ADHD means they are defective and will never amount to anything, that mindset is likely to be more destructive to their future than the condition itself. That is what our welfare system is currently doing. Conservatives believe in a system that looks at people through the lens of what they can do not what they cannot. .. Last week Andy Burnham delayed his 10-year plan until next year. It is too late to work out what you think once you're in government. If you want to change this country, you need to know exactly what you want to do and how you're going to do it. That is what we are doing. And that is why today the Conservatives have published our plan to save £36 billion from welfare . We're telling people what we are going to do now so that there will be no nasty surprises from us... such as cutting your Winter Fuel Payment... the Jobs Tax... or the Family Farm Tax... once we get into government. Helen Whately MP, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, said: The benefits bill is out of control. Labour has ducked the hard choices and now admits welfare spending will not fall on their watch. Meanwhile each working family will pay £50,000 on average to fund welfare under this Government. Labour entered office without a plan, cancelled reforms, U-turned on savings and are pitch-rolling for more spending. Labour MPs just want to keep on raising taxes to spend more on welfare. Only Conservatives have the courage to stand up for taxpayers. The Conservatives have done the hard graft in opposition to make the difficult choices to bring the benefits bill down. Our detailed plans will save £36 billion from the welfare bill. ENDS Notes to Editors: A copy of Welfare that works: The Conservatives' plan for Welfare Savings' is attached. The Conservatives will deliver £36.1 billion in savings. This will be through:
The Conservatives will remove up to 2.5 million working age disability claimants for low level conditions such as bad backs and anxiety:
The NEETs crisis has got worse under Labour:
Britain is not working under Labour:
Labour has lost control of the welfare bill:
Labour has no intention to reduce the spiralling welfare bill:
|