UK welfare benefit cuts and Universal Credit reform, Digi Mart USA News (United Kingdom): The Department for Work and Pensions has been warned that “crude cuts” may be the only way forward under Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Labour Prime Minister Mr Burnham and Chancellor John Healey have pledged to bring down the welfare bill, but have said there will be no “crude cuts” to welfare handouts.
Adam Smith, a former advisor to the Conservative Party, has warned that this may be the only option. He told the Telegraph newspaper: “The uncomfortable truth for Labour is that there can be no fundamental realignment of incentives away from welfare and towards work without some reduction in benefits.”
Smith, a former chief of staff to Conservative figure Sir Jeremy Hunt, added: “So restricting one element of Universal Credit will not be enough. Ministers also need to pull other levers.” He went on: “The reality is that Burnham and Healey cannot tackle the problem of young people out of work without fundamentally changing incentives.”
He continued: “And they cannot change incentives while promising that no existing claimant will lose out. If they try to have both, we will be left with another expensive programme that helps a few while the system as a whole drives worklessness, and the benefits bill, ever upwards.”
Issuing an update on the DWP cuts, Mr Burnham said last week: “I come at it a different way. I want to talk about how many people am I going to help into work?” He added that if the discussion starts with a set figure, it risks falling into a cuts agenda “without really thinking through how do you help people from where they are to a better position.”
He also said: “If you come at it through that normal Westminster mindset of saying ‘we must cut x amount from the system’, well, it will fail again. And that’s what we’ve seen in politics in recent times.”
