The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been told it is 'scandalous' that six million workers earn less than many jobless claimants. Former Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has responded to Monday's call from the Tony Blair Institute for an overhaul of the welfare system.
Welfare Spending Concerns
The thinktank, led by former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, called for an 'emergency handbrake' on Britain's spiralling sickness benefits bill. There are concerns about the UK's welfare spending, with the DWP estimated to spend £77.1 billion on health and disability benefits this financial year, up from £49.1 billion before the pandemic in 2019. This compares to £146.1 billion that will be spent by the department on the state pension this year.
Duncan Smith's Response
The Conservative Party figure said: 'I agree with Tony Blair, who is now making a similar case for root-and-branch welfare reform. Even before this report was published, ministers had made clear behind their hands that, despite their overwhelming majority in the House of Commons, last summer's welfare rebellion showed that Labour's lefty backbenchers would simply not swallow the necessary changes.'
He told the Sun: 'With the modern Universal Credit system, ministers have the tools to get thousands back to work. Yet these have scandalously been laid to gather dust by almost all of my successors. The result is that more than four million people are now on benefits with no requirement to look for work.'
Duncan Smith added: 'Claims linked to anxiety, depression and other mental health conditions have soared. Online assessments and weak evidence requirements have blown open the gateway to health benefit top-ups.'
TBI's Perspective
Ryan Wain, Senior Director of policy and politics at the Tony Blair Institute, said: 'Up to 1,000 people a day are entering a system that, for most of them, offers no treatment, no route back to work and no plan. We are proposing a handbrake to fix that in the short term as the government rightly builds out longer term, wholesale reform on this broken system.'
He continued: 'Around a third of PIP assessments are completed without any external clinical evidence. 93 per cent of fit notes say 'not fit for work' with no adjustments. Fewer than 1 in 100 UC Health claimants move into work each month. A system with those numbers is losing the trust of the public - and when that trust goes, it is people with the most severe conditions who pay the price.'
'That is how you end up in a culture war over the existence of mental health conditions. Our proposal is the antidote to that not an example of it. The government is rightly committing resource and political capital to longer-term, fundamental reform of the welfare system. We support that. But the system is failing people every day and public confidence is eroding.'
