Few would argue with Labour‘s claim that the welfare system is ‘broken’.
The rapid rise in the benefits bill in recent years is startling and the projections for future increases are terrifying for anyone who cares about the state of the public finances.
Yet today’s proposed solutions look like a sticking plaster at best.
Liz Kendall’s proposals will trim £5 billion from the welfare budget, prompting predictable howls of anger from the Labour benches.
But the current official forecast for spending on sickness and disability benefits predicts a rise from £65 billion today to £101 billion by the end of the decade. Five years ago, the figure was £55 billion, meaning it is on course to almost double in a decade.
One in 10 people of working age now claim sickness or disability benefits. New claims for Personal Independence Payments (PIP) are running at more than 1,000 a day. One in eight young people – more than a million – are not in employment, education or training.
In this context, £5 billion barely scratches the surface.
No wonder that Sir Iain Duncan Smith, whose welfare reforms cut a much lower benefits bill by more than £30 billion, describes Labour’s plans as ‘peanuts’.
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall is laying out moves to save around £5billion amid fears spiralling costs are ‘unsustainable’
Graph shows how the benefits bill has been rising and is forecast to continue going up
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (pictured), whose welfare reforms cut a much lower benefits bill by more than £30 billion, has described Labour’s plans as ‘peanuts’
Ms Kendall told MPs that ministers ‘will not shy away from the decisions we believe are right’. Yet, that is exactly what has happened.
A plan to freeze PIP payments was abandoned following a backlash that included not just the usual suspects in the unions and the Labour Left, but senior members of the cabinet, such as Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband and Lucy Powell.
When the health secretary Wes Streeting sparked another row by mildly suggesting that there had been an ‘overdiagnosis’ of some mental health conditions, Downing Street refused to back him up.
To misquote the late Labour chancellor Denis Healey, when the PIPs squeaked, Starmer retreated.
There are some sensible measures in today’s package. Cutting the health payments ‘top-ups’ for those on Universal Credit will help reduce the perverse incentive for people to have themselves written off as being incapable of work.
Barring young people from claiming the top ups at all until they are 22 should help break a depressing pattern that sees thousands of youngsters go straight from school to a life on benefits.
Raising the bar for those seeking to claim PIP should at least reduce the rate of growth in what is now the main disability benefit.
Increasing the frequency of assessments for those who might one day be able to work should curb the number of people left to a life on the dole.
The result of these decisions will be tough for those who lose access to benefits they had previously felt entitled to. No-one on a low income will find it easy to make do with less.
But the reforms fail millions more working people who will continue to pick up an ever-increasing bill for a system Ms Kendall herself concedes is broken.
Keir Starmer (pictured) is facing stubborn Labour resistance to the proposals even before they are formally announced, with critics branding them ‘shameful’
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall is seen arriving in Downing Street on Tuesday
As she faced angry attacks from Labour MPs today, Ms Kendall made the startling admission that spending on benefits ‘will continue to rise… it is not a cut’.
‘I am not interested in being tough,’ she added.
Ministers have the parliamentary majority to drive through truly radical reform, regardless of the protests on Labour’s backbenches. The situation certainly demands it.
But faced with a backlash from their friends they have bottled it.