So no reform to Britain’s bloated benefits system any time soon then. And Keir Starmer’s kicking of the can marked “welfare” down the road (yet again) has been swiftly, and with almost delicious irony, followed by new figures published by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). The Peter Mandelson affair has squeezed this little matter off the front pages. But the OBR report makes for remarkable reading.
Analysis shows that Britain will spend (better make sure you’re sitting down when you read this) an eye-watering 2.2% of its GDP on incapacity and disability benefits within two to three years from now. Put that into the bigger picture, and it’s estimated that we’re about to earn the dubious title of Top Spender On Benefits in the developed world.
You name the country, we splurge more on handouts. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States, the EU – we outclass the lot in our, er, generosity, and by a long chalk.
Will someone explain why almost one in four Brits – a quarter of all adults – is now parked in the disability rate corral, compared to much lower figures for other industrialised nations?
What’s wrong with us? Have we fallen under some kind of curse that only afflicts these islands? If so, its effects are remarkably swift on upping the numbers.
By last August there were an impressive 6.5 million Brits on benefits (out of work benefits, mind). That was up half a million since Labour won the election, a punchy rise of around 9%. That must be quite some bad magic at work, eh?
Let’s just say it. We live in a sicknote society.
Obviously there are millions of genuinely poorly folk too unwell either physically or mentally to work, and we must care and tend to them with generosity and compassion.
But equally obviously, now, a Herculean clearout of the Augean Stables is well overdue.
Some say it’ll be immigration that defines the next election.