Five million Brits are being paid not to work as Rachel Reeves plans a £15 billion boost in welfare spending, including scrapping the two-child benefit cap.
Welfare bill set to soar under Reeves (Image: Getty)
Five million Brits are being paid not to work, as the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, plans to fork out even more in benefits payments in the Autumn Budget on November 26. Increased welfare spending could result in a £15 billion increase, according to analysis by a think tank, which would include scrapping the two-child benefit cap.
It comes as analysis by the Centre for Social Justice revealed that five million people are now on benefits, without any requirement to seek employment. Those figures comprise four million people on Universal Credit, and an extra one million on Employment and Support Allowance.
The figure has soared from 2.7million before the pandemic, in 2020 and includes some 1.5 million children living in a home with parents out of work.
Speaking to the Sun, the Conservative MP Sir Iain Duncan Smith said that it had become clear that “welfare is now in crisis”.
Sir Duncan Smith, who was the welfare secretary from 2010 to 2016, added that “before the pandemic, my welfare reforms brought workless households down to a record low”, which he claimed “meant hundreds of thousands more children grew up seeing a parent go out to work each day, transforming life chances forever”.
He added 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”.
The intervention comes after ministers ruled out, earlier this year, finding savings in the disability benefits system, despite calculations showing the cost of the system was expected to reach a whopping £ 27 billion by 2030.
Joe Shalam, the CSJ policy director, said: “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.”
Ahead of the Budget, the OBR is, according to Sky News, expected to downgrade the UK’s growth forecast until 2029.
Rachel Reeves is reportedly seeking around £ 20 billion to fill a Budget deficit, against a backdrop of a slower labour market, where job vacancies have declined and productivity has slowed.
The Department for Work and Pensions said: “The number of Universal Credit claimants has been increased as we have invited tens of thousands of people each month to move from the legacy benefits system to a modernised system.
“We’ve redeployed 1,000 Jobcentre staff to specifically support sick of disabled people into work, as well as delivered our Connect to Work programme which will support hundreds of thousands of sick or disabled people back to work.
