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🇬🇧 welfare reform lead to more spending. Libs 😆 🤡
Posted on: July 3, 2025 at 04:02:24 CT
JangoFett MU
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RISING COSTS
The proposed reforms are designed to reduce the cost of Britain's growing welfare bill, which the government has described as economically indefensible and morally wrong.
Annual spending on incapacity and disability benefits already exceeds the country's defence budget and is set to top 100 billion pounds ($137 billion) by 2030, according to official forecasts, up from 65 billion pounds now.
More than half of the rise in working-age disability claims since the COVID-19 pandemic relates to mental health conditions, opens new tab, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank.
The government had initially hoped to save 5 billion pounds ($6.9 billion) a year by 2030 by tightening rules for people to receive disability and sickness benefits.
But after the government conceded to pressure from its lawmakers, it said the new rules would now apply only to future applicants, not to the millions of existing claimants as had been proposed. Analysts estimated the savings would likely be closer to 2 billion pounds.
It was not clear how the additional last-minute change would impact the hoped-for savings in the welfare reform package.
Opposition politicians said the government would now have to raise taxes or cut government spending elsewhere to balance the public finances in the annual budget later this year.
The government has said there would be no permanent increase in borrowing, but has declined to comment on possible tax rises.
While Starmer is under no immediate threat, and the next election is not expected until 2029, his party now trails behind Nigel Farage's populist Reform UK in opinion polls.
John Curtice, Britain's most respected pollster, said this week that Starmer was the most unpopular elected prime minister in modern British history, and that voters still did not know what he stood for a year after he was elected.
Reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Andrew MacAskill and Alistair Smout, editing by Alex Richardson and Rosalba O'Brien
Edited by JangoFett at 04:05:20 on 07/03/25
The proposed reforms are designed to reduce the cost of Britain's growing welfare bill, which the government has described as economically indefensible and morally wrong.
Annual spending on incapacity and disability benefits already exceeds the country's defence budget and is set to top 100 billion pounds ($137 billion) by 2030, according to official forecasts, up from 65 billion pounds now.
More than half of the rise in working-age disability claims since the COVID-19 pandemic relates to mental health conditions, opens new tab, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank.
The government had initially hoped to save 5 billion pounds ($6.9 billion) a year by 2030 by tightening rules for people to receive disability and sickness benefits.
But after the government conceded to pressure from its lawmakers, it said the new rules would now apply only to future applicants, not to the millions of existing claimants as had been proposed. Analysts estimated the savings would likely be closer to 2 billion pounds.
It was not clear how the additional last-minute change would impact the hoped-for savings in the welfare reform package.
Opposition politicians said the government would now have to raise taxes or cut government spending elsewhere to balance the public finances in the annual budget later this year.
The government has said there would be no permanent increase in borrowing, but has declined to comment on possible tax rises.
While Starmer is under no immediate threat, and the next election is not expected until 2029, his party now trails behind Nigel Farage's populist Reform UK in opinion polls.
John Curtice, Britain's most respected pollster, said this week that Starmer was the most unpopular elected prime minister in modern British history, and that voters still did not know what he stood for a year after he was elected.
Reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Andrew MacAskill and Alistair Smout, editing by Alex Richardson and Rosalba O'Brien
Edited by JangoFett at 04:05:20 on 07/03/25
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🇬🇧 welfare reform lead to more spending. Libs 😆 🤡 - JangoFett MU - 7/3 04:02:24