In the Spectator, Fraser Nelson explores the U.K.’s pressing welfare crisis, citing a surge in mental health complaints, scepticism about proposed reforms and the crucial need for public debate before 2024. Here’s an excerpt:
Worklessness scars our great cities: In Manchester, 18% are on out-of-work benefits. In Glasgow and Liverpool it’s 20%, in Middlesborough 22% and Blackpool 25% – figures that would be scandalous in a depression but this is in the middle of a worker shortage crisis. The costs surge every year. Britain has somehow succeeded in making the most expensive poverty in the world.
In short, the rise of mental health complaints has discombobulated the welfare system with high numbers being sent to the economic scrap heap deemed unable to do any work. It’s now at almost 40,000 a month:
The last pre-Budget report proposed a crackdown on conditionality which I regarded too little, too late. But was I being too mean? This is now assessed by the Office for Budget Responsibility but it takes a few weeks for this to feed through into the DWP caseload forecast, one of the most important documents to not be reported. The update was released before Christmas and it shows that the disability benefit caseload is expected to rise by an average of 920 a day for the next five years.
The previous forecast envisaged just over 1,000 a day, so Mel Stride’s reforms do make a difference. But a small one. This remains a full-blown crisis that will have to be dealt with by whoever wins the next General Election because of the financial cost: So big that it’s measured as a share of GDP rather than in mere billions.
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