It’s not cruel to rein in an out-of-control system that is wasting vast human potential. But Andy Burnham doesn’t seem to care.
Last week, the Conservative Party laid out our plans to end foreign nationals’ entitlement to social housing. It, of course, prompted hysterical reactions from the usual suspects, complete with lurid predictions of raids and families being dragged from their homes.
Back in the land of reality, the proposal is rather more straightforward. Under our changes, first trailed at our party conference in 2025, as we remove tenancies from foreign nationals the homes would pass straight to the British families at the top of the waiting list, lifting those households off local housing allowance and into secure, affordable homes of their own.
This policy is common sense, saves the taxpayer money, and removes another pull-factor for immigration. Typically, Labour and their allies in the charity sector just complained about unfairness and worried about foreign-born public sector staff losing their council houses. Apparently those on the Left think asking people to find a rental property, as the vast majority of British young people already have to do, is some extraordinary cruelty. Their idea of fairness appears to have one curious omission: the British families who were waiting first.
Conservatives are not against people from other countries coming to our country and contributing. But we also expect them to pay their own way while living here. Britain cannot afford to foot the bill for foreign nationals to live in social housing when over 1.3 million UK-born households are currently on council home waiting lists.
I’m not surprised Labour MPs were the most hostile to this policy. All they want is more welfare, they don’t even care who gets it. It’s why I say they are no longer the Labour Party, they are the Welfare Party.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. The Welfare Secretary Pat McFadden himself essentially admitted it when he told Peter Mandelson: “Every meeting I have [with Labour MPs] is ‘who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others?’” Labour MPs didn’t let Starmer cut welfare spending, and they won’t let Burnham do it either.
The reality of Britain’s spiralling welfare dependency is staggering. The Government’s own projections say that an extra 2.2 million people will start receiving sickness benefits between the last general election and 2030. Or, to put it in Andy Burnham-speak, almost four times the population of Manchester.
In cash terms, welfare spending on working-age people and children will rise by £52bn over that period. That’s an extra £750 for every single person in this country, every single year. We are spending more on welfare than we take in Income Tax.
This soaring bill has catastrophic consequences for our country.
The most immediate is the devastating waste of human potential. Then there is the impact on the working population, who watch as money that should be in their bank accounts instead goes straight into the pockets of those who could and should work.
The end result is a deep mistrust in society, with those who get up early and go to work every single day increasingly resentful of those whose curtains stay drawn and cars never leave the driveway.
To only offer up vague platitudes on welfare reform, as Andy Burnham has done, isn’t just a failure to prepare for government, it’s a complete failure of leadership.
Our plan to remove foreign nationals’ entitlement to social housing, and Labour’s reaction to it, shows why Conservatives are the only party that can be trusted to get the welfare bill down. I’ve changed the party’s approach and, as a result, we are the only party with a credible, thought-through plan to cut spending by tens of billions of pounds.
We will end eligibility for low-level mental health problems like anxiety, bring back face-to-face assessments, and reassess all existing disability benefit claimants under new criteria within 12 months. We will remove entitlement to welfare for all non-UK citizens, excluding those with EU settled status, and do the same with social housing. We will also reintroduce the two-child benefit cap, because I believe it is only fair that those on benefits should have to make the same choices about having children as those who aren’t.
There will be a lot of anger, a lot of cries of how tough we’re being. But by making these changes we will create a benefits system that is there for those who really need it, and new incentives to work for those who shouldn’t be getting handouts.
Britain is running out of time. The number of people claiming Personal Independence Payments has already risen by around half a million since Labour entered government. I have offered to work with Andy Burnham to fix the system. He still hasn’t replied to my letter. So, I make the offer again.
Burnham must know that reducing the benefits bill isn’t what Labour MPs got into politics to do. If he wants to do something about welfare, he will need Conservative votes.
Politicians owe it to the next generation to get the welfare problem fixed. This is the common sense approach, it is my approach, and it is the approach of the Conservative Party that I lead.
