Labour is being warned it is no longer "the party of the workers" after bumper £32,000 handouts to people on Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) benefits. A survey by the Conservative Party has found that 625,618 households were each given more than £32,200 in welfare payouts last year – the average annual salary of a British worker after tax.
And 16,000 of those households received more than £60,000 in benefits – almost twice the average annual take-home pay. The Telegraph newspaper's Tom Harris warned: "With the benefits bill costing taxpayers £155bn a year – and rising fast – we face either radical reform or bankruptcy."
Warning of National Uproar
Harris wrote: "Real reform of the sort that is needed in our welfare system would cause national uproar. It would provoke anger in housing estates and in the House itself. It would make the government of the day tremendously unpopular." He added: "For good governance we need a government – and a prime minister – prepared to say 'No' to his back benchers, and prepared to suffer the unpopularity that comes with real leadership. Because government is not just about doing what's popular – in fact, it's almost never that. It is about, or should be about, deciding what's best for the country and getting on with it."
Conservative and Labour Responses
The Tories' leader Kemi Badenoch said: "Welfare must always be there for those who need it most, but it should never discourage work or reward dependency. The Conservatives believe in fairness, and that means those on welfare should have to make the same choices about their family as those who are not."
A Labour Party spokesperson accused the Conservatives of creating the universal credit system which "left too many people shamefully signed off and written off without support to get into work". They added: "We are fixing the system and investing £2.5bn in the Youth Guarantee to support young people into work, training and apprenticeships; re-balancing the incentives in the system and introducing the right to try work without triggering a reassessment."
