With all the technological and medical advances we keep seeing, this should be a glorious era where all barriers to work are demolished. To a modest extent, we have seen this with people continuing to work as they get older. Men in the UK used to retire at 65 – finally eligible for a state pension after decades of physical drudgery. Eligibility for the state pension is now 66 and is due to rise to 67 between 2026 and 2028, and to 68 between 2044 and 2046. It should be raised further and faster to avoid the country going broke. But we also have millions continuing to do work of some kind or another past the official retirement age.
Yet for the population generally, the situation has been getting worse. More people are being written off by the system as unable to work. Fraser Nelson, the former editor of The Spectator, has been working on a Channel 4 documentary which will be broadcast next month on the sickness benefit surge, ‘telling the story from the perspective of those trapped in a system designed to help them’.
Last week, the Department of Work and Pensions released figures showing that the number of working-age people on long-term sickness benefit has reached 3.2 million and is projected to increase to 4.1m in just four years’ time. ‘This is a social and economic calamity, unaffordable on every level,’ says Nelson. ‘The waste of lives (let alone money) is on a scale that is hard to imagine.’
The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that ‘half of claims for Britain’s main benefit will be for poor health by the end of the parliamentary term, with the cost of payments for sickness topping £100 billion a year for the first time’.
So some pretty bold reforms are needed to avoid an already dire situation from getting even worse. That was roughly the offer from Rishi Sunak in his speech in April about growing welfare dependency. If you are unemployed and deemed available for work, the money you are paid – the standard allowance for Universal Credit – is much lower than if a GP signs a note saying you have ‘limited capability for work and work-related activity’.
Yet the cost of living is much the same for the sick, certainly the mentally ill, as it is for those seeking work. Rent, energy bills and groceries all burn a hole in the pocket. The level of benefits should be the same. If special equipment is needed – such as stairlifts – that should be a one-off. Sunak did not propose to go so far as equalising the benefits, but he did propose to diminish the perverse incentives and bring in more rigorous checks.
Liz Kendall, the new Work and Pensions Secretary, declared that even the timid changes proposed by the Tories would be ditched. But they can’t wish away the reality of a soaring benefits bill.
Thus we have the ‘Get Britain Working Again’ white paper containing employment reforms that ‘will be underlined by the principle that people who can work, will be expected to work with clear consequences if they don’t properly engage with the government’s employment support offer’.
There will be ‘inactivity trailblazers’ and ‘youth trailblazers’. A ‘Youth Investment Fund’, a ‘Youth Guarantee’ and a ‘National Youth Strategy’.
It is promised that:
An independent review will also be launched into how employers can be better supported to employ people with disabilities health conditions, and to keep them in the workplace, ensuring that more people can benefit from a sense of dignity, purpose and financial independence.
That sound you hear? It’s Keir Starmer kicking the can down the road. Labour had 14 years in opposition to consider these matters. Now they are in power, they promise an ‘independent review’ and the familiar alphabet soup beloved of politicians scared to take real decisions.
The only possible substance to the changes seems to be sanctions for those available for work who turn down a job or training. But as we’ve noted, the greater problem is the absurd and growing number written off as unable to work.
‘Mind the Disability Employment Gap,’ a new report from the Centre for Social Justice, states:
The new government have set an ambitious target for achieving an 80% employment rate Given almost a quarter of working-age adults now report a disability or a health problem causing substantial impairment, that target will never be met without making significant progress in supporting this group into work.
It adds:
Of those who state their health situation in the Labour Force Survey, the proportion of people in work who report a disability has risen from around 10% in 2013 to around 18%.
Problems can be made worse by a childish desire of a new government wanting to put its stamp on different initiatives – often causing disruption and delay. The report states:
It is disappointing that the new government has delayed the rollout of Universal Support, which was meant to begin in Autumn 2024 but is now not due to start until Spring 2025. It is not yet clear whether this is because changes are being made to the structure of the scheme or the interventions it will deliver. The new government also seems to be intending to rename the scheme.
Labour are hard-wired to believe that a compassionate approach means an ever bigger role for the state with an ever more generous offer of benefits. They don’t really believe in the moral case for personal responsibility. Their instinct is to ‘protect’ people from work and being ‘exploited’ by business. But nothing could be a better tonic for our mental health than the pride of independence, of making a contribution to the needs of others rather than being a supplicant of the bureaucratic leviathan. What better boost to self-esteem and cure for loneliness and depression than the shared endeavour of wealth creation? Of the appreciation of satisfied customers, the teamwork of colleagues and the gratitude of the boss?
Our society’s drift towards worklessness is a disaster. The Government is offering some rhetoric on the case for work. I am sceptical if they mean it – even more so if they have the courage and ability to deliver the changes required. Let us hope I am wrong.
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