Kemi Badenoch and Helen Whately: Welfare That Works

Today [Tuesday 10^th November], Kemi Badenoch MP and Helen Whately MP set out our plan for Welfare that Works.  

Please see the full text of the speeches below:

Kemi Badenoch MP,

Leader of the Opposition

Good morning,

If you want to change this country and I do, you need to know exactly what you want to do and how you're going to do it before you enter office.

Several months ago, we heard that Andy Burnham was working up a 10-year plan.

Then last week we were told that plan has now been delayed.

Presumably, that means it's now a 9-year plan.

Labour is a party two and a half years into office, but they still have no clue,

And it is because they did not do the thinking or the planning in opposition.

We are not going to make the same mistake.

I am so proud of the level of detail that every single one of my Shadow Cabinet is working through to solve the problems our country faces.

This Conservative Party is different.

We are different from Labour and different from Reform.

We are telling people now what we are going to do in government.

There will be no nasty surprises like Labour's Winter Fuel Payment cut or their Jobs Tax or their Family Farms Tax.

We will have nice surprises.

We are going to explain where every penny of savings will come from.

And that is why today, the Conservative Party is publishing our plan to save £36 billion from the welfare bill.

Let me put that number in context.

Right now, Britain is handing out more than £180 billion a year in benefits to working age adults.

It is 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.

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 and that there's nothing wrong with a life of dependency.

We disagree.

Of course, there are people who genuinely cannot work.

People with serious illnesses or severe disabilities,

We must have a safety net for those people.

But the reality is that millions of people can work 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 can't do anything, that is likely to be more damaging to their future than the condition itself.

Yet that is what our welfare system is currently doing.

We are going to change that.

Conservatives believe in a system that looks at people through the lens of what they can do, not what they cannot.

Labour think that if someone is struggling the answer is always to give them more money.

The Prime Minister even said that unless we give people benefits, they'll commit crime.

This is a terrible view of human nature.

In that interview Andy Burnham criticised our £36 billion of savings.

That is because he lacks the imagination, he lacks the will and he lacks the support of his party to even try to cut welfare.

So, you might think you've heard all of this from me before, and you'd be right, you have.

But I'm saying it again because the problem is getting worse.

Conservatives believe that real compassion means not writing people off.

We understand that a nation is built by millions of people getting things done every day, overcoming challenges, taking responsibility for their future.

That is why fixing Britain's welfare system and getting Britain working again is a moral mission for the Conservatives.

But it is not going to be easy.

We need a plan that is detailed and thought-through enough to survive contact with reality, and that is why we are here today.

Helen Whately is doing a brilliant job as Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary.

More than anyone in politics right now she is coming up with the plans that will reform the system.

She is going to talk you through the work that we have done

And then the two of us will answer questions about it.

Over to you Helen.

ENDS

Helen Whately MP,

Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

Thank you, Kemi.

Nikki is a mum in her fifties,

On universal credit since her job in a nursery became all too much.

Without qualifications and as she put it, no good at computers, she's been struggling to find another job.

But that's not why she came to see me.

Her real worry was her son, Jack, who signed on the moment he turned 18.

He's got autism and ADHD, but Nikki wants him to work.

She's frustrated the state is paying him money to stay at home and she desperately wants the job centre to get on his case.

But there's no sign of that.

So, Jack is literally left to his own devices, gaming in his bedroom most of the time.

Who would want that life for their child?

But stories like Jack's are increasingly common.

It's a disaster.

Hundreds of thousands of young people setting out on a life on benefits.

When William Beveridge set out his vision for the post-war welfare state, he did not foresee this.

A system to help widows, he war-wounded and the desperately poor,

Now paying benefits to 25 million people,

6.7 million of working age, but out of work,

700,000 under 25.

How has it gone so wrong?

I started my job as Shadow Welfare Secretary by going to see for myself.

Blackpool, Birmingham, Manchester,

Newcastle, Cardiff, Leicester, Margate even Germany.

Insiders have come forward to speak to me.

Jobcentre coaches, tribunal judges, PIP assessors, psychiatrists, GPs, charity workers,

All exasperated by the system they work in.

I've met families where three generations have never worked

And a young man trying to break that cycle,

Only to find his family told him to stop working because his alarm clock was waking them up.

People are making a mockery of the system.

Bragging about their free Motability cars, flaunting their new keys on TikTok.

They think it's a victimless crime, it isn't.

18 million households will each pay £50,000 in taxes for working-age welfare this Parliament.

Every pound claimed by someone exploiting the system comes from somebody else,

Someone who gets up, goes to work, and pays their taxes

and most likely will never afford a brand-new car.

This wasn't the aim of our post-war, welfare state.

It's the sign of a deeply broken one and we will fix it.

Labour has made benefits more generous and easier to claim.

Their taxes and red tape have destroyed jobs, so work is harder to find.

No wonder unemployment is up, inactivity is up and welfare is up.

Last time Labour left power, David Cameron's Government inherited high unemployment and a rising welfare bill.

In opposition, Iain Duncan Smith had already done the hard work on welfare reform.

We had a plan.

We introduced Universal Credit and we turned the economy around.

Hundreds of thousands of people came off welfare and went into work.

But then came the 2020s.

Benefit claims for mental health and neurodiversity started to rise.

We had the pandemic,

Assessments moved online,

Sickfluencers took to social media to coach people how to game the system.

And then Labour showed up with no plan.

They cancelled our reforms, u-turned on their own, and have flailed about ever since with neither the will nor the way to bring it down.

As my counterpart the welfare secretary said, all Labour MPs ask is how can they tax people more to pay for more benefits?

Not that reforming welfare should be done, to coin a phrase, through crude cuts.

It takes hard graft, working out who should get support,

What help they should get,

And how you make sure the system does what you intend it to do?

We have not gone about this by plucking a big round number out of thin air.

Today we are publishing the detail behind our savings policies.

We will tighten eligibility for sickness benefits,

So, you can no longer claim for mild mental health and routine back and joint pain,

And reform child DLA to move to a support-based model,

Saving £13.7 billion and £2.8 billion respectively.

We will end benefits for foreign nationals, saving £9.5 billion.

We will save £4.5 billion by reforming housing benefit and bring back the two-child benefit cap, saving £3.1 billion.

We'll strengthen the Household Benefit Cap,

End VAT exemptions for non-adapted Motability cars,

And crack down on benefit fraud, between them saving £3 billion.

And finally, we'll tackle long-term unemployment, saving another half billion.

Altogether, this takes us to £36.1 billion in savings.

We know this won't be easy.

We will need the courage of our convictions to see it through.

And if we're going to ask people to fund our welfare system, it needs to do what they want it to do.

That's why our plan is grounded in five clear and widely held principles,

Fairness, contribution, responsibility, welfare as a safety net, not a lifestyle choice, and living within our means.

Fairness because people on benefits shouldn't be better off than people in work.

Some households are getting thousands more in welfare than a full-time job,

And people who're working say to me why do I bother?

Our reforms will make work pay,

And we will restore the two-child limit, because working families don't get a pay rise when they have another child,

Nor should people on benefits.

We'll restore contribution in our welfare system.

Over a million people have been unemployed and claiming universal credit for over six months

Some have never worked.

If you've paid in, it's right you get help to get back on your feet, so people who've worked will continue to get Universal Credit as normal.

But those who've chosen not to work, will see their benefits drop by a third after six months,

And paid onto a Back to Work' card that can't be used for alcohol, cigarettes, gambling or cash.

For those who suggest this is a nanny state measure, not at all.

This is not their money; it is taxpayers' money.

We back personal responsibility.

The state shouldn't always be the first port of call.

As a British citizen there's an implicit social contract.

You pay in when you can, but anyone can fall on hard times.

There should be a safety net,

But our social contract has limits.

Our welfare state cannot support everyone who comes to Britain.

Migrants come here believing we will give them money, free healthcare, and a house,

That has to change.

We will stop giving benefits and social housing to foreign nationals with indefinite or limited leave to remain.

We cannot be a cash machine for the world.

We want people who are seriously sick and disabled to live with dignity,

But the number of people claiming PIP has doubled since 2019 to 4 million.

Our country has not got twice as sick.

Child DLA is rising rapidly too,

Half a million more children will be signed on under this government.

Some have serious illnesses but not all.

We are telling hundreds of thousands of children that they are disabled and that they need to have handouts from the state.

Most will go straight from DLA onto PIP.

We've created a conveyor belt onto a lifetime on benefits.

This is a terrible thing.

That's why we will reform child DLA and the PIP system.

1 in 6 PIP claimants say they don't have extra costs from their condition.

For those with milder conditions we will shift from cash handouts to treatment and support

And you won't get free Motability cars for anxiety and ADHD.

We are going to return welfare to its proper purpose, a safety net, not a lifestyle choice.

And finally, we need to go back to living within our means.

The best way to do that is to get people off welfare and into work,

Which brings me back to Jack.

There are almost a million NEETs.

Writing anyone off on benefits is wrong, but writing off a young person is unforgivable.

Next week Alan Milburn will tell us the answer to the NEETs crisis is to spend yet more money on subsidised work placements and ineffective government schemes.

We have a better plan.

Young people I speak to want real jobs.

So, we will halve Labour's Jobs Tax for under 25s

And scrap swathes of their employment rights act.

We'll bring back the Saturday job, the summer holiday job,

There'll be thousands more first jobs for young people

And our tough love' plan will get young people off welfare and into work.

Do not think for a second that Labour will fix welfare.

After two years and two Prime Ministers,

All they have done is kick the can down the road.

They u-turned on their welfare reforms,

They've admitted they won't make any savings this parliament.

As for Burnham's 10-year plan, there won't be any savings in that.

Thank goodness Labour are not going to get 10 years.

We know what needs to be done.

We have a plan.

No more taxpayers being taken for a ride.

Help for those who need it most.

Fewer people taking out, and more people putting in.

The bill back under control.

A welfare safety net, not a lifestyle choice.

We will fix welfare and get Britain working again.