Degsy

U-turns don’t come much quicker than this. At 8am on Thursday, the Chancellor appeared to tell the country he would cut welfare before the next election. Minutes later, Treasury spinners hit the phones to say they could not commit to this. No 10 even intervened to say: “We’ve never set an arbitrary target or timetable on that.” By 5pm, the Chancellor had done a reverse ferret. Labour, John Healey told us, would not bring the welfare bill down this parliament. It’s Hallowe’en, but this seemed more like the pantomime season: “Oh yes we will… Oh no we won’t.” Across Britain, people want to see welfare brought under control. I was ready to welcome the prospect of the Government planning to do something about it, even though they left it out of the Budget. But no. How and when the welfare bill is brought down is a serious question. To which Labour has a completely unserious answer. This is despite the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) revealing on Wednesday that Labour’s refusal to reform welfare will leave taxpayers paying for a working-age benefits bill almost £60bn larger than the one the Government inherited. Labour will break their own fiscal rules to pay for more benefits. Labour came to office with working-age welfare costing the taxpayer £164bn a year. The OBR now expects that bill to reach £207bn by 2029-30 and £222bn by 2031-32. That is a rise of 35 per cent in seven years. Paid for by working people – now, or in the future – as the Government borrows ever more. It should come as no surprise that Labour have yet again shown their true colours with their unwillingness to cut Britain’s ballooning welfare bill. But it’s not just that they are unwilling to make the tough decisions. It’s that they can’t even bring themselves to set out how, or when, they would cut welfare. Buried in the OBR’s documents is something the Chancellor would rather you didn’t notice. But as reported by The @Telegraph on Thursday, the Government is now on course to breach its own welfare cap, one of the fiscal rules, by £3bn in 2029-30. A year ago, it was set to come in £2bn under. That is a £5bn reversal in 12 months. This Budget was the Chancellor’s big moment to get a grip on spending and set out how he will pay for 3 per cent of GDP on defence. After all, he was famously the defence secretary who resigned over the Government’s failure to fund defence properly. Instead, he ducked it. There’s a pattern building up here: speak first and think later. Burnham and now Healey too. As Kemi succinctly put it, they suffer from foot in mouth. The Chancellor can’t just wish the welfare bill will come down. He needs to come up with a plan and take decisions. And get Labour MPs to vote for it. And there’s the rub. Labour backbenchers forced Starmer to back down on welfare savings. Burnham no doubt wants to avoid the same humiliation. He and the Chancellor want the country to believe they will cut welfare, but they have to reassure their MPs that they won’t. By contrast, the Conservatives already have a plan which would make £36bn in savings. And we’re happy to share it with the Chancellor. For instance, he could tighten eligibility for sickness benefits so they go to those who genuinely cannot work. He could move young people off benefits and into jobs or training. He could stop paying benefits to people who have not paid into our system. Kemi and I have even offered him the Conservative votes to get it done. Instead, Labour are kicking the can down the road yet again. Britain deserves better than a Chancellor who promises one thing at breakfast and retracts it at tea-time. Only the Conservatives have a plan to get Britain working and get the welfare bill under control.