I have a clear plan to get people back into work & help save £12bn a year from UK welfare bill – our system must be fair

FAIRNESS is a fundamental British value. So, our welfare system must be fair.

Fair to those who need it and fair to those who pay for it.

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If we don’t have a clear plan to deal with the challenges facing it, there’ll be a huge waste of human potential, an increased benefits bill and higher taxes for you.

We Conservatives are compassionate and believe that those who really can’t work should be supported.

During the pandemic we created furlough to save millions of jobs and protect people’s livelihoods.

But unlike the last Labour government, we are not prepared to simply park people on benefits for life.

It isn’t right to write people off, to sign them off sick when there is work they can do, a contribution they can make.

For me, it is a moral mission to help as many people as possible back into work.

In the decade before Covid, we were reducing the number of people not in work or training every year.

But since the pandemic, there has been a surge — 850,000 — in the number of people being signed off sick.

Alarmingly, the biggest rise in economic inactivity has been among young people.

We cannot have this waste of potential where those who are in the prime of their life — when they should be working hard so they can get on and start a family — are instead not working.

I won’t accept more and more of our young people being parked on benefits, this wouldn’t be right or fair.

A job gives you not just the chance to earn but a sense of purpose.

Over half of those being signed off have a mental health problem such as anxiety or depression, but for many with mental health challenges, work will help give them a sense of purpose.

If we don’t address this problem then we risk letting down our young people and creating a deep sense of injustice among the taxpayers who have to fund our welfare system.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown might have been prepared to place large number of people on out-of-work benefits while importing foreign workers, I am not.

GETTING BRITS BACK TO WORK

I want to reduce immigration every year. That means we must get our own people back to work.

The amount we are spending on benefits for sick and disabled people of working age has increased by two-thirds since the pandemic struck.

It is already more than what we spend on our schools, more than what we spend on policing and more than the entire transport budget.

And this amount is on course to rise by more than £20billion by the end of the decade.

We all know that the longer people stay on welfare, the harder it is to get back into work — so we will take bold action to make sure that people find a job

Rishi Sunak

Labour might be prepared to tolerate these higher welfare bills — which will turn into higher taxes for you — but we Conservatives are not.

We have a clear plan to save £12billion a year from the welfare bill by 2029.

We will do this by expanding mental health treatment so that people can get the help they need.

We will reform disability benefit system to halt the unsustainable rise in claims and make sure we target support at those who need it most.

We will reform how the benefit system assesses someone’s ability to work so it looks at what you can do as well as what you can’t — so we don’t condemn those who can contribute to a life on benefits.

We all know that the longer people stay on welfare, the harder it is to get back into work — so we will take bold action to make sure that people find a job.

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There are a third of a million healthy people who have been unemployed for 12 months.

With close to a million job vacancies in our economy, these people should be able to find work.

So, anyone who doesn’t cooperate with their Work Coach and accept an available job after they’ve been out of work for 12 months will have their claim closed and their benefits removed.

And to help make sure work always pays, we are cutting the double tax on work, saving the average worker £900.

Labour left us a system where those moving from welfare into work lost nine out of every ten pounds they earned.

This was wrong: work should always pay. Universal credit ensures that it does and we will move all benefit claimants onto it, to make sure that work is always rewarded.

Nothing offends people’s sense of fairness more than welfare fraud.

So, we’ll use a new fraud bill to protect taxpayers’ money and clamp down on those who cheat the system, building on the £7.7billion we’re forecast to save from the steps we’ve taken in this parliament.

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Whenever you attempt to reform welfare, the usual suspects accuse you of lacking compassion.

But the opposite is true. There is nothing compassionate about paying them to be at home, leaving them to a lifetime on benefits.

We have a clear plan to get people back into work.

That is the choice on welfare at this election.

A Tory Party that will get people back into work or a Labour Party that doesn’t have the courage to tackle this issue and will let the welfare bill spiral, leading to a huge waste of human potential and higher taxes for you.