It was an ominous start to the day of Rachel Reeves’s Spring Statement, when she had to rush out messy, last minute changes to Labour’s package of welfare reforms. To unhappy Labour MPs, this confirmed their belief that the policy is Treasury bean-counting masquerading as reform.
They’re not wrong. The current trajectory was unsustainable. We were on track to spend £1 in every £4 of income tax on health and disability benefits by 2030, according to the Policy Exchange think tank. Tightening the qualifying criteria for Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and more frequent reassessments are clearly sensible and necessary. But looking at where the government has failed to reform, such as by raising the age you can first claim PIP to 18 and making it a conditional benefit for the under 30s, reinforces the belief that they are not motivated by the strong moral case for change.
When I was leaving school, the two most common options were university or gap year (often followed by university).
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