The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is initiating a significant benefits crackdown, with its initial focus set to fall on two specific welfare payments. This move comes in response to a stark new analysis revealing that five million people of working age are now receiving benefits with no requirement to seek employment.
Which Benefits Are First in Line for Scrutiny?
The government's renewed drive, emerging from the Labour Party's Autumn Budget, will first concentrate on Universal Credit and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). According to research by the Centre for Social Justice think-tank, more than four million individuals are on Universal Credit, with a further one million claiming Employment and Support Allowance, placing these groups most at risk under the new regime.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has pledged to address what she terms a “crisis” in the welfare system. The ballooning cost of benefits has become a central concern, with the current figure of five million workless claimants representing a sharp increase from 3.6 million in 2010. Although the number fell to a record low of 2.7 million just before the Covid pandemic in 2020, it has since surged dramatically.
A System in Crisis: What the Figures and Experts Say
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative Welfare Secretary, stated unequivocally that “welfare is now in crisis.” He attributed the previous success in reducing workless households to his party's reforms but warned that “soaring sickness benefits and the relaxation of benefit rules during lockdown, never to be turned back on, are costing the taxpayer billions and worse still, wasting the potential of millions of people.”
Echoing this sentiment, CSJ policy director Joe Shalam added: “Everyone can see the system is broken. With millions neither required nor helped into work and collapsing job starts among young people, we risk losing a generation.” The government's challenge is now to balance necessary support with the imperative to encourage people back into the workforce.
Political and Economic Fallout
The political landscape is equally fraught. Labour's Business Secretary, Peter Kyle, has acknowledged that “some of the decisions” made by the government contributed to an exodus of wealthy individuals and entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, the opposition contends that the current administration is resorting to tax increases on “hard-working people” instead of tackling the root cause of the spiralling welfare budget. The DWP crackdown starting this Wednesday marks the government's first major attempt to regain control.
