The Conservative policy document, titled "Welfare That Works," outlines a strategy to reduce the national welfare budget by £36 billion. Over one-third of these reductions would come directly from sickness and disability benefits to counter what Badenoch calls a culture of dependency. While Badenoch claims the Labour Party views such spending reductions as cruel, the current Labour government is concurrently preparing its own report by Alan Milburn to refocus young people on their workplace capabilities.
Key points
Kemi Badenoch argues that existing spending levels on working-age benefits actively cause…: Kemi Badenoch argues that existing spending levels on working-age benefits actively cause harm to the broader UK economy.
The policy aims to shift state support away from perceived dependency by evaluating what…: The policy aims to shift state support away from perceived dependency by evaluating what individuals can contribute rather than their limitations.
Advance publication of the spending cuts is intended to prevent voters from experiencing…: Advance publication of the spending cuts is intended to prevent voters from experiencing unexpected surprises under a future Conservative administration.
Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1
Good morning. It is quite easy for politicians to declare that they will cut the welfare bill by X amount – but much harder when they have to explain exactly who will lose out. This is summed up by a good anecdote about a former chancellor (Ken Clarke, according to some versions, but it could have been any of them), who gave this reply when asked for cuts that would save £1bn:
So, do you want one million people to lose £1,000 each, or 10 million people to lose £100 each?
Today Kemi Badenoch is giving a speech to launch a policy document, Welfare That Works, explaining how the Tories would cut welfare by £36bn. That’s 36 million people losing £1,000 each, according to the logic of our notional chancellor, although of course it is not quite as simple as that. All of these cuts are ones that the Conservative party has proposed already, but what we are getting today is a bit more detail about how some of them would be implemented in practice, and a big overall argument…
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