Slashing billions from the benefit bill and cutting the size of the civil service does not mark a return to austerity, Sir Keir Starmer has insisted, vowing that “we are not going down that route”.
There is mounting unease at the prime minister’s plans to cut welfare spending by up to £6bn but Sir Keir said “part of the problem we’ve got with our public services is what was done to them a decade or so ago” by David Cameron and George Osborne.
“We are not going down that route, none of our plans go down that route,” the PM vowed.
He added that under Labour there is “no return to austerity”.
But deputy chief executive of think tank the New Economics Foundation (NEF) Hannah Peaker said: “Balancing the books on the backs of some of the most vulnerable in society is austerity, no matter how you want to spin it. After over a decade of brutal spending cuts, the UK has the weakest social safety net in the developed world.”
Sir Keir made the promise after announcing he was axing NHS England to bring the health service back under government control amid a wider drive to streamline the civil service. Now, he said, it was time to turn attention to the benefits system, which is also in need of reform.
He said: “When it comes to welfare, there are important principles: We must support those that need support, but equally we must help those who want to get back into work, into work. And, at the moment, the system doesn’t do that.”
He said the current welfare system “cannot be defended on economic terms or moral terms”, adding, “We’ve set up a system that basically says ‘if you try the journey from where you are into work and anything goes wrong, you’ll probably end up in a worse position than when you started’.
“And so, understandably, many people say ‘well, I’m a bit scared about making that journey’, therefore we’re baking in too many people not being able to get into work. And that’s across the board.
“I use the example of young people, because I just think it’s so tragic that people who are just starting their journey in life are already stuck in a system that won’t let them get to where they need to be, in my view. And that is not a good thing, I don’t think, for them or for the country.”
But Sir Keir’s insistence that his cuts do not amount to a return to austerity are unlikely to quell growing unease among Labour MPs at the planned reduction in welfare spending.
It comes a day after a Labour MP poised to rebel over the cuts said she “could not look her mum in the eyes” if she voted for the proposals, estimated to save between £5bn and £6bn.
Nadia Whittome, who has spoken publicly about living with multiple disabilities, said “you cannot incentivise people out of sickness”.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It was wrong when David Cameron cut welfare, it would be wrong for us to do that now. It’s not disabled people who crashed the economy or who are responsible for rising rents or falling living standards. We must not scapegoat them for the failures and the political choices of conservative government.”
Fellow left-winger Diane Abbott said Sir Keir was seeking to “balance the government books” on the back of disabled people.
The NEF meanwhile has warned the government’s planned benefit cuts will actually end up being £1.5 billion bigger than current plans suggest.
Its economists have warned that government plans to close the gap between payments to those on universal credit (UC) and those claiming disability benefits would take an extra £1.5 billion off of payments to ill and disabled people.
“We urgently need honesty from the government about the scale of the cuts they have planned,” NEF head of social policy Tom Pollard said.
He added: “We have seen a very real increase in the scale and complexity of poor health and disability in the working-age population, compounded by a cost-of-living crisis, crumbling public services and poor-quality, insecure work.
“We should be tackling these underlying causes and supporting more people to work and live independently where possible. But slashing the incomes of people in this situation will fail to deliver sustainable savings and will make millions of people’s lives even harder than they already are.”
Hailing the abolition of the “world’s biggest quango” in NHS England, Sir Keir said scrapping the body would cut bureaucracy and boost democratic accountability for the health service.
He also described the “overcautious and flabby” civil service as “overstretched, unfocused and unable to deliver the security people need today”.
