Yet today, too many people are trapped outside the workforce, not because they lack talent or ambition, but because the system designed to support them doesn’t do enough to encourage them into work.

That is unfair to taxpayers, unfair to those who do the right thing every day and ultimately unfair to the people being left behind. It is a moral failure as much as an economic one.

Over the past year, I have spoken to people across the country who want to work but feel stuck. Parents desperate to return to employment but unable to find roles that pay enough to make work worthwhile. People with health conditions who could do some work with the right support, but are written off entirely by the system. Young people drifting onto benefits without the skills, confidence or even the expectation that work should be their destination.

We should never accept a Britain where households are better off on benefits than in work. That corrodes trust and fuels a deep sense of unfairness among millions who get up early, work hard and play by the rules.

Support must always be there for those who genuinely need it. But it must also come with a clear expectation – if you can work, you should.

Labour does not share that belief. Their Budget for Benefits Street showed that they simply don’t understand how angry people feel about paying ever higher taxes to fund lifestyles for people on benefits many in work can’t afford.

Instead of focusing relentlessly on jobs, skills and opportunity, Labour once again reached for its familiar comfort blanket of higher spending and an ever-expanding welfare state.

At the same time, their damaging jobs tax has made it more expensive for businesses to employ people. So they’re letting people go – and are even less likely to take a chance on someone who has been out of work, or a young person looking for their first job.

At precisely the moment the Government should be pulling every lever to get people into work, Labour is pushing them in the opposite direction. No surprise that unemployment has gone up every month since they came into office.

We also need to be honest about the cost of inaction. Not only the benefit costs, but the impact of long-term worklessness. Being out of work is bad for mental health. And the longer someone is out of work, the harder it becomes to help them back in. Trapping people out of work because you’re better off on benefits is not remotely compassionate – it’s actually cruel.

That is why welfare reform must start from a simple principle – if you can work, you should. And it should make financial sense for you do to do so.

We must also be honest about health and disability. Too many people are being written off as incapable of work because of relatively minor mental or physical health conditions, when with the right support they could thrive in employment.

Of course, there will always be those who genuinely cannot work, and they deserve security, dignity and respect. But that must never be used as an excuse to abandon everyone else to a life on benefits.

Labour should be reforming the system now. That means tightening eligibility for Personal Independence Payment for low-level mental health conditions, restoring face-to-face assessments and ensuring schemes like Motability are properly targeted. These reforms, as we have identified, could deliver £23billion in savings – money that should be used to cut taxes, back businesses and get the economy growing again.

If Labour will not take these tough but necessary decisions, Conservatives will. Because the alternative is unfair, unsustainable and wrong.

We need a different path. One that puts work, paying the bills and personal responsibility back at the heart of our social contract and restores fairness for those who do the right thing every day.

Helen Whately MP is Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Member of Parliament for Faversham and Mid Kent.