Welfare reform: are more cuts the answer?

Critics of Labour's proposed welfare reforms say benefit cuts will not boost employment

(Image credit: Rasid Necati Aslim / Anadolu via Getty Images)

Few Labour MPs entered politics to cut social security, but with a "cash-strapped" government "promising sweeping reform", they now face a "major test of loyalty" to Keir Starmer, said Politico.

Just eight months after winning power on a pledge to break with 14 years of austerity, Starmer is planning a "fresh overhaul" of welfare, including potential cuts to disability benefits.

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Cuts 'only option' government has left

Most are agreed that the benefit cuts will be "big and consequential", said the BBC's Henry Zeffman. The government will argue that it is a "noble and necessary mission" to "cajole" more people into work, but "plenty" of MPs and campaigners "would argue that cutting benefits does not necessarily boost employment".

For the government, there is also a more urgent motive behind the reforms. Chancellor Rachel Reeves "needs to find billions" to meet her own borrowing rules after rising debt costs "wiped out" her financial headroom, said Zeffman. And the truth is that, with "negligible economic growth and no public appetite for more tax rises", cuts are "the only option Starmer and his Chancellor have left", said Katy Balls in The Spectator.

This early in Labour's tenure, backbenchers may still feel "bound" to support the government over the rumoured cuts, rather than "speak their minds in public", said Isabel Hardman in The Observer. But it doesn't mean they're not angry at having to explain to their constituents why the Labour Party might remove their entitlement to disability benefits.

'Illusory hunt for savings'

For a government desperate for money, "there can be few more inviting targets than the British welfare system", said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times. Yet the current mess "is itself the product of a desire to prioritise headline savings over designing a well-thought-through benefit system".

Labour has a "real opportunity" to build a better, cheaper welfare system. But not if it gets "boxed into the same hunt for illusory savings that has characterised the recent past". The previous approach didn't work. "Let's not demand more of the same."

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Sorcha Bradley is a writer at The Week and a regular on “The Week Unwrapped” podcast. She worked at The Week magazine for a year and a half before taking up her current role with the digital team, where she mostly covers UK current affairs and politics. Before joining The Week, Sorcha worked at slow-news start-up Tortoise Media. She has also written for Sky News, The Sunday Times, the London Evening Standard and Grazia magazine, among other publications. She has a master’s in newspaper journalism from City, University of London, where she specialised in political journalism.