Can we SHRINK the Welfare State?
The David Vance BriefingRead More
When the modern Welfare State came into being in the aftermath of WW2, it was designed as a safety net for the few in the most need. That has all changed over the years as it mutated into a vast sprawling expensive comfort blanket for MILLIONS.
You can debate the intentions behind its creation but few will dispute that it now degrades people by keeping them trapped in a dependency culture whilst rewarding inactivity transferring £££ billions from the industrious to the feckless.
I am not saying EVERYONE on welfare is ripping us off, but the truth is too many are!
All of which bring me to yesterday’s announcement by Reform UK to cut more than £50 billion a year from the working-age welfare bill by 2030. I don’t even think this is particularly radical! I recall getting into a blazing BBC interview on this topic in 2014! To my way of thinking, Reform is simply proposing the minimum necessary response to a system that has lost all contact with both fairness and fiscal reality.
Let’s look at the crunch numbers. Total welfare spending this year stands at £353 billion. Strip out the state pension (which Reform rightly refuses to touch) and you are left with roughly £207 billion. Back in 2000, the equivalent figure was £59 billion. So it has almost quadrupled in 26 years. Cutting £50 billion from the £207 billion is ambitious — roughly a quarter of it— but ambition is precisely the thing that has been missing for years. There is also the matter of there being no viable alternative to it. We are already in a financial black hole and only radical change can sort it out!
The largest single element of Reform’s package is to target health and disability benefits including Personal Independence Payment. PIP claims have absolutely skyrocketed in England and Wales since 2019 from £2.4bn to £4bn now. So they are just shy of having doubled and that is simply unsustainable! The Reform plan is to take the time to reassess 2.89m working age claimants. This will mean modifying or even withdrawing cash payments for many, and replacing the current system with a much tighter Disability Needs Assessment focused on those with severe, enduring conditions.
Importantly, the most severely disabled will keep cash support. Others will receive practical, verifiable help with equipment, adaptations and transport through council-run schemes. Employers would take greater responsibility for the first two years of sickness absence via a new insurance model, offset by National Insurance cuts. This all sounds like medicine that we need to take and I fully support it.
Now critics have predictably responded to this plan by complaining there is “relatively little detail.” Fair enough but that can be levelled at opposition document. The UK has witnessed an explosion in claims for conditions that were once managed without any state cash and which cannot be waved away as pure need.
The current Welfare system has expanded far beyond its original purpose. It is moral and prudent to focus scarce resources on those with the highest needs. In addition, active support in areas such as therapy, physiotherapy, employment help will there others. This is what I would call a compassionate and sustainable system. Even Labour’s own review has concluded that PIP is “not fit for purpose.” but it is not willing to actually DO anything about it.
Another key feature of the plan is to recognise that genuine British citizenship should be the gateway to most working-age benefits. Reform estimates that ending eligibility for foreign nationals, including many Universal Credit claimants born overseas, could save around £20 billion. That is a decent financial saving and one that is necessary, Welfare should purely be for Brits.
To put this into context, more than a million Universal Credit claimants were born outside the UK, including hundreds of thousands of EU citizens with settled status. It’s estimated that roughly half of those EU claimants are in work, which makes the case for reform stronger, not weaker: the system currently subsidises non-citizens who are capable of self-reliance.
Of corse with every plan there are complications. Stripping benefits from settled EU citizens would require renegotiating the post-Brexit citizens’ rights deal and could invite reciprocal measures against Brits living in Europe. Some non-citizens might try to naturalise to retain entitlements. These are real issues but not fatal ones. A sovereign Nation is entitled to decide that full access to its welfare system is a privilege of citizenship. Reform has rightly acknowledged the trade-offs and still believes the prize — restoring the contributory principle — worth pursuing. That is grown up politics.
There were several other important elements to the plan that merit our examination. There are measures to reinforce the package: switching to a less generous inflation measure for benefit uprating (£4.8 billion), a serious push against fraud and error (£2.8 billion), and a requirement that long-term, work-capable claimants perform 20 hours of community work each week.
The last of these is not primarily a savings device; it is a cultural one. It reintroduces the traditional idea that able-bodied adults who claim from the community also owe something back.
Let’s be honest. None of this will be painless. In fact it will be a Herculean task! Reform’s own spokesmen agree!. Existing claimants will face reassessment and some households will see incomes fall.
The BIGGEST risk is political. You see several Reform seats and target constituencies have higher-than-average PIP caseloads and so they might lose these. Yet that risk is precisely why the plan matters and it shows courage from Reform! For far too long the establishment parties have treated welfare reform as too dangerous to go near. Starmer suggested a £5bn possible cut and his backbenchers rose up and forced a complete backtrack. The result is a Welfare bill that keeps rising while worklessness and mental-health claims continue their post-pandemic climb.
I totally understand those who say that the savings are perhaps overstated and that the implementation too hard. They said the same about all previous attempts to tighten disability benefits. The difference this time round is political will and a clearer ideological break: benefits for citizens first, cash focused on genuine severity, and an expectation that capacity for work must lead to contribution. All of this is fair and I congratulate Reform for having the cajones to put it out there
Our Nation cannot tax its way out of this problem, nor grow its way out while millions remain indolent. Reform’s £50 billion plan is the first serious attempt in years to treat the welfare state as something that must serve the country rather than be exponentially expand. That is not extremism. It is overdue realism.
It’s the Welfare reform we need.
STOP!
Please take a moment to support my work
I publish regular political analysis, overlooked history, book reviews and original commentary that you won’t find in the mainstream media.
Free subscribers receive every article I publish.
Paid subscribers receive everything above, plus The Saturday Briefing — my exclusive weekly analysis launching this September. Each edition will pull together the week’s most important political developments, highlight stories the mainstream media has ignored, and explain what they really mean.
If you value independent journalism and want to help support my work, I’d be delighted to have you on board.
