Rachel Reeves informed ‘future is bleak’ as 1.5m given ‘no work’ advantages | Politics | News | EUROtoday

Experts have informed Rachel Reeves that the long run seems to be “bleak” after figures instructed the variety of folks claiming “no need to work benefits” from the DWP has risen by 1.5million since Labour got here to energy. Data revealed that 4.2million individuals are on Universal Credit with “no work requirements” after a rise in claims from people citing their psychological well being. Elliot Keck, campaigns director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, informed The Express: “The future of Britain is bleak if politicians don’t urgently get a grip on the tragedy that is Britain’s escalating welfare bill.

“Millions are overlooked of labor languishing on advantages, a lot of them with solely minor, treatable circumstances. Some in fact are merely abusing the system, and squeezing taxpayers to fund their lifetime of leisure. It needs to be the pressing precedence for the federal government to make use of each means at its disposal to deliver this invoice down drastically.”

Professor Len Shackleton, an editorial and research fellow at the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) and professor of economics at the University of Buckingham, said: “Unless one thing modifications, we are able to count on some additional enhance in no must work advantages.”

He highlighted a “worrying pattern”, which is seeing young people presenting with mental health problems, and “because the numbers of 18 to 24 year-olds who’re unemployed is rising (at the moment 13.7% price as in opposition to 5.1% for all over-16s) it’s cheap to imagine a few of these will migrate to no-need-to-work.”

Professor Shackleton added: “Permanently lowering the numbers on advantages would in all probability require laws. We can see Labour backbenchers haven’t any abdomen for this.

“Would a Reform or Conservative do better? Probably, but it’s not an easy task. The Conservatives want to return to in-person screening, which wouldn’t be a bad idea but would involve significant extra resources – and also you probably can’t rely on unionised left-wing civil servants to be sufficiently ruthless.”

He stated each Conservatives and Reform appear to need to “cut out whole categories of people,” together with overseas nationals.

“Good idea – but stand by for a barrage of human rights claims,” the economist stated.

“Another way of cutting the bill is to freeze benefits. This has been done in the past, but difficult to keep up for very long. If it was tied to scrapping the pension triple lock the savings could be considerable and might encourage some older workers to stay in work for longer. But good luck with that.

“We are in a large number, I’m afraid. Piecemeal ‘solutions’ don’t promise very a lot. We want a brand new Beveridge, however there isn’t any prospect of a consensus on this.”

The Express has approached the DWP for remark.