What do Jeremy Hunt’s welfare reforms add up to?

In his Budget speech, Jeremy Hunt made a great play on how Conservatives value work. Tories love talking about this but in fact they have just presided over a catastrophic increase in benefits. Before the pandemic there were 4.2 million on benefits: at the last count, 5.2 million. Given the mass worker shortage, this is quite a scandal. So what is being done to change this?

Hunt referred to tighter conditions in welfare conditionality, but the OBR don’t seem to think it will move the dial, with just 10,000 moving back to work. It does think the £20 billion package on childcare will help, broken down as follows:

60,000 more in (part time, 16h/week) work from more childcare subsidies for the under-twos
15,000 more in (part time, 16/week) work from more childcare for parents on benefits
15,000 more in work from tighter welfare conditionality for parents and carers
10,000 more in work from tighter disability allowance