In the run up to November’s budget we hear dire warnings even from government websites:
“ This government inherited a broken social security system, with costs spiralling at an unsustainable rate and millions of people trapped out of work. The case for change is stark:
“Since the pandemic, the number of PIP awards has more than doubled – up from 13,000 a month to 34,000 a month. That is around 1,000 people signing on to PIP every day – that is roughly the size of Leicester signing up every year.
But recent research is casting doubt on the very figures being used.
Chris Giles writing in the Financial Times points out that welfare costs are NOT spiralling.
“Projected total welfare payments, at around 11% of national income a year, are lower than when David Cameron was prime minister even though there are now more pensioners”.
Office for National Statistics’ labour force survey reports non-employment rates for 16- to 64-year-olds are still close to the record lows … this is better than the best periods in the Thatcher, Major and Blair governments. Source ONS.
But what about the sensational increases in benefit claimants?
Since Universal Credit was introduced and pension ages have increased we are not measuring the same things. Professor Ben Geiger of King’s College London has tried to control for these effects. He found that “the current level of out-of-work claims is not any kind of record; it’s similar to 2014-15 levels, and noticeably lower than 2013”.
Its clear there is little evidence behind the suggestion that we are becoming a nation of benefit spongers. Yes after years of austerity many of the health and social care structures which would have kept workers healthy and at work are very seriously weakened. Yet it appears that as the benefit system is made harsher and more punitive people, far from ‘shirking’, are struggling into work. And let’s remember too its estimated that its much cheaper to pay benefits to older people that the state pensions they would have been entitled to.
Government ministers and whips too have used the unevidenced spiralling welfare costs argument, with the backing of reactionary tabloids, to attempt to justify welfare cuts and have taken extraordinary measures to discipline Labour MPs who refused to go along with this.
Its time to reinstate the MPs who rightly objected to these cuts and rebelled. We must restore cuts to disabled people and the sick – and apologise too for the circles of bureacratic Hell which they are increasingly put through. Its time to focus of the budget not on benefit cuts but on taxing “those with the broadest shoulders”.
Personal view Mark Ladbrooke, Secretary SHA.