Welfare reform is one of many unfinished projects in British politics. The Tories made a lot of noise about cutting benefits when they were in government, and did make huge changes to the overall system. But they failed to meet even their own targets for savings, and the bill has been on the way back up again for a number of years. It’s almost as though the reforms that caused such a lot of fuss under the Conservatives didn’t achieve their stated aim of making the welfare state affordable and fit for the 21st century.
The Conservatives had exactly this impossible tension in their approach to benefits. At one end, there was Iain Duncan Smith with his “moral mission” to overhaul and simplify the benefits system into universal credit so that people didn’t lose out when they went back into work. And at the other, there was George Osborne, who needed to cut public spending, and also didn’t trust or respect IDS.
Welfare reform is often seen as being difficult because it is emotive, and that is true. It affects the lives of the most vulnerable people in Britain, and for Labour it is part of the party’s identity and heritage. But it is also difficult because there is this tension between the imperative to cut quickly, and the long-term need to reform the system so that the bill does not end up rising again. Perhaps Reeves would be having to make these difficult cuts even if the Tories had achieved their aims on welfare reform. But it seems unlikely.
square ISABEL HARDMAN
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DWP sources say that this iteration of welfare reform is different because the Conservatives were so focused on making sure that universal credit survived, they never got around to the other essential reforms on making job centres work properly to get benefit claimants back into meaningful, long-term employment. There is now much more of a focus on helping work coaches.
This makes it even harder to cut appropriately or reform in a lasting way, because all those policies could be based on assumptions that turn out to be totally wrong.
Even if Reeves does actually achieve – rather than just announce – the savings that she wants, without proper reform, there will have to be another round of cuts at some point, as the drivers behind the bill rising have not been addressed. There will have been a lot of pain, far less gain, and then someone else will have to do it again.
Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator
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