THE much-leaked proposals to slash welfare benefits saw the light of day last week. The Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall spent two hours responding to MPs’ concerns on Tuesday, with the headline target for reducing health and disability-related benefits by £5 billion dominating the headlines. 

The rising number of people on benefits is a major problem. One in eight people aged 16 to 24 is not in work, training or education, a shocking statistic which poses a major headache for the whole country. The benefits bill has ballooned since Covid and is forecast to double within four years from the baseline of the international banking crisis of 2007-08. 

The risk for the UK Labour government is that any positives from the green paper proposals will be overshadowed by the scale of the cuts to vulnerable low-income households. Iconic disability right campaigner Tanni Grey-Thompson described the cuts as “brutal and reckless” because they target disabled people as the problem.