The trouble for Keir Starmer is that for all the noise he and his ministers have made about reforming the benefits system, the measures announced on Tuesday amounted to something less than a damp squib. Radical, they were not.
Liz Kendall, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, seemed to regard the whole thing as an opportunity to bash the Conservatives. Pensions minister Torsten Bell, a former director of the Resolution Foundation think tank, gave a tone-deaf interview with Newsnight’s Victoria Derbyshire, in which he came across as robotic and utterly devoid of empathy, unable to answer the most simple and direct of questions. It was a car-crash interview of epic proportions. He came across as Alan B’Stard on steroids.
Bell should have been more honest. These reforms, such as they are, are driven entirely by the need to save money, rather than with a clear vision for improving the benefits system. And even on that, they fail.
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The measures announced are intended to save a paltry £5bn a year in 2029 and 2030, in a Department of Work and Pensions annual budget of £276bn. So for all the heat and opposition generated by these reforms, all they have achieved is a tiny saving of the department’s budget by 2030. It’s pathetic. It wasn’t worth the political candle.
So what else could they have done to save money without losing further support? Personal independence payments (PIP) are a lifeline for many, but once you have been approved for PIP, you get the payment regardless of how much your income is.
A second area the Government failed to address was the burgeoning Motability scheme, under which people with disabilities are entitled to a new car every three years in order to help them get about, in exchange for some of their benefits.
Motability Operations is the largest single purchaser of cars in the UK. I spoke to one car dealer who told me that 80 per cent of his annual sales were to Motability customers. Nationally, nearly one in five new cars sold falls under the scheme. There appear to be few restrictions on the size of cars that can then be ordered, and then replaced every three years. Insurance, road tax, breakdown cover, servicing, tyre and windscreen costs are all met by the taxpayer, as well as installation costs for home electric charging points.
The reforms announced this week do not hang together, as will be proven once Parliamentary scrutiny commences. And then there will have to be Round Two. Oh dear.
Iain Dale presents the Evening Show on LBC Radio
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