Israeli minister: BBC chief should resign over Glastonbury hate chant

0:02The Telegraph.

0:30Camilla: Visit telegraph.co.uk slash newsletters today.

0:40Camilla: Death, death to the IDF. That's the chant that has dominated all of the coverage of Glastonbury since Bob Villan appeared on stage. We're going to be discussing the controversy with Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Shiren Haskell and asking her whether she thinks heads should roll at the BBC. And we're also going to talk about welfare reform on Tuesday. The big bill comes before the House. It's been watered down. Left-wing MPs still don't like it, but Tories say it doesn't go far enough. And we talk to Ian Duncan-Smith, the man who introduced Universal Credit, to explain why the bill is a damp squib.

1:17Camilla: Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tomini. And me, Tim Stanley.

1:31Camilla: Tim, did you watch Glastonbury? No, I did not. But I did see a clip of it on Twitter. And it was a performer called Bob Villan saying this. Death to the IDF! Death to the IDF! Death, death to the IDF! Death, death to the IDF! Death, death to the IDF! Death, death to the IDF! Death, death to the IDF! Hell yeah, from the river to the sea, Palestine must be, will be, inshallah, it will be free! What I find astonishing about this is obviously Bob Villain, it's two rappers. It's some kind of tribute to Bob Villain. It's Bob E with an I-E and Bobby with a Y. They're two people both called Bobby. And do you like what they've done with Villain?

2:13Camilla: Yeah, it sounds like a drag name. Well, isn't it V-Y-L-A-N? It's like a young enterprise company spelt wrongly. They're trying to be villains. You see what they're doing? But forgive me, Bob Dylan's Jewish, Robert Zimmerman. So I found that quite ironic. I sort of looked at the scenes in Glastonbury with the Palestinian flags flying and people actually repeating this chant and thinking, sorry, but there were slight echoes of Nazi Germany. Like, we have a crowd of people. We're going to incite hatred and violence towards another group. And then there's a bunch of trust funders and crusties and other people who think that we're in the middle of a climate emergency who celebrate in it.

2:53Camilla: I mean, are people actually deranged or stupid or both? It's Nuremberg with weed and crunchy tunes. The prime minister heard it and it was too much even for him. He described it as appalling hate speech. The organiser, Emily Evis, described the chants as having, quote, very much crossed a line. And the BBC, which we shall discuss, has admitted that it should have pulled the live stream. Yes, so basically the live stream, admittedly, there is a situation where you're providing live coverage of Glastonbury. I think they're providing 900 hours of music. and so when it goes out, they had a choice at that point because they will have had about a five to ten second delay, I'm sure.

3:38Camilla: Do you just cut it and then go back to the performance and just cut the chant out? What you shouldn't do, in retrospect, is not cut it from the live stream and then leave it on iPlayer for five hours just to check the temperature and then to say to yourself, oh, hang on a minute, this does look as if it's inciting violence and indeed suggesting that a group of people, the IDF, should be killed. The ramifications of that for both Israelis, not least because we had the mass murder committed at a recent music festival in Israel on October the 7th, nearly two years ago. The ramifications of that for Israelis, and let's be honest, there are still more than 50 hostages in Gaza, and indeed by association Jews, is going to be pretty difficult.

4:25Camilla: The argument that was made here is, hang on a minute, we have Lucy Connolly accused of inciting hatred towards a group, in this case migrants. She gets sent down for 31 months. The police are still investigating Bob Vinnin. Apparently they're still investigating, even though it's just a five-second piece of clip that you have to analyse, decide whether it incites hatred and violence towards others or not, and then take appropriate action. This is a classic example of two-tier policing. Lucy Connolly's still in the slammer. This guy, presumably, I don't know what's going to happen to him, but there doesn't seem to be any urgency in dealing with this case.

5:01Well, he has spoken. I mean, one of the bobs, I'm not sure if it's E or I, said on Instagram, I said what I said. This is just worth hearing a little bit of. Yes, please. As I lay in bed this morning, my phone buzzing nonstop, inundated with messages of both support and hatred. Oh, poor thing. I listen to my daughter typing out loud as she fills out a school survey, asking for her feedback on the current state of her school dinners. There's too much information. He continues, as we grow older and our fire possibly starts to dim under the suffocation of adult life and all its responsibilities, it is incredibly important that we encourage and inspire future generations to pick up that torch that was passed to them, he continues.

5:38Let them see us marching in the streets, campaigning on ground level, organising online and shouting about it. Today, it is a change in school dinners. Tomorrow, it is a change in foreign policy. Camilla, I have a dream.

5:54Camilla: I love this idea that this guy is setting a great example to his daughter by literally calling for the death of Israeli soldiers. Yes. Like this is a thing to be welcomed and celebrated. Martin Luther King, I have a dream that someday we shall all have high quality school dinners and kill the IDF. But this man is, I don't know if you can be arrested for this, but he's a moron, right? Yes, of course. He's a moron but with a platform and he's got a lot of useful idiots in the crowd supporting him. I'm not saying I would like my authoritarian weirdos to be super intelligent because if they were, they might get further with it.

6:34But it's sort of extra galling when they turn out to be so self-regarding and thick.

6:39Camilla: I know. It's narcissism. But then like kneecap, all publicity is good publicity. I don't know about you but I hadn't heard of Bob Villain before the weekend and now everyone has. Maybe that is the intention of some of these protestations. And this brings us back to the question of two-tier justice. Earlier this year, footage was emerged of the ban kneecap at a November 2023 gig, appearing to show one person from the ban saying, the only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP. The Met Police investigated the ban but decided there would be no charge because the alleged offences happened beyond the statutory limit for prosecution, which brings us back to this question of Lucy Connolly is languishing in jail for 31 months for what she tweeted but it seems harder to arrest people for saying things when they are left wing.

7:26Camilla: I thought actually a Telegraph reader summed up the problem perfectly. Martin Davies responded to the Lucy Connolly article one of 15 ,000 people to do so and said if you are right wing your free speech is actually hate speech But if you are left wing, your hate speech is actually free speech. Yeah. Spot on that. Yeah. Well, to discuss this now is Shiren Haskell, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel. What was your reaction to what happened in Glastonbury? Because it's posing serious questions now of BBC's management. We've had this outburst, the BBC now saying, oh, in retrospect, we should have cut the live stream and not had it on iPlayer.

8:10Camilla: It follows a polled documentary on Gaza because journalistic due diligence wasn't carried out and some of the sources appear to be Hamas linked. We've had a whole row here over the very well-paid former BBC presenter Gary Lineker. Should the Director General, Tim Davey, consider his position, Miss Haskell? Well, Camilla, I was absolutely outraged by what had happened on the festival. and just a couple of hours ago the BBC pulled out their statement and I have to say that it's absolutely pathetic this is not a respond that the team should have pulled out the plug who should have pulled out the plug who's responsible for that this is literally someone calling for violence for ethnic cleansing for the destruction and the annihilation of the only Jewish state in the world and what someone should have.

9:12Camilla: So if there's no one that will take responsibility, if no one will be fired over such an outrageous thing, then I think that Team Davey should take responsibility and put the keys to his position because there has to be accountability for that. So many mistakes have been done. I mean, their coverage since the 7th of October should be investigated independently. There should be an inquiry in regarding to the BBC coverage. It was fully biased. Many mistakes were made. there should be an independent inquiry, but not just for the coverage since the 7th of October, but also about their coverage in the Middle East and also about how they address anti-Semitism in the UK.

10:09Camilla: How is it possible that something like that has been normalized in the UK? I just don't get it. Just to clarify that, Miss Haskell, are you calling for Tim Davies' resignation at this point? So I think if there's no one responsible for that, and if no one's going to be fired over such an outrageous thing, then Tim Davy should take responsibility and resign. Okay. When it comes to British Jews, the scenes that have unfolded, not just at Glastonbury, but actually since October the 7th, have been deeply disturbing for them. We've had a number of different surveys carried out by various groups, the Community Security Trust, the campaign against anti-Semitism, saying that there are many British Jews now questioning their own safety, questioning whether they want to remain in the UK.

11:10Camilla: Some of them, despite all of the problems that Israel is currently facing with regard to missile strikes from Iran and everyone else, would like to move to Israel and would feel safer there than in the UK. It's troubling times, isn't it? Absolutely. The rise of anti-Semitism is really worrying. Events like that, you asked yourself, how does racism, anti-Semitism has been normalized in the UK? The Jewish community feel threatened, violently been attacked. Camilla, Tim, and on a personal level as well. My cousin lived in London. Her daughter goes to a very good school in London. She was stabbed in the back with a little thing, like a needle, by a fellow student in school just because she's Jewish and nothing was done to them.

12:06Camilla: She is now studying, you know, by distance. she doesn't want to go to her school anymore after these kind of incidents so yes so Jewish community feels threatened violently attacked um and unfortunately there's not enforcement um and and there's no accountability and and obviously as Israel you know this is our indigenous land as Jews and it's always you know that from the foundation of it it was clear that this will always be a shelter for Jews. But you need to understand the Jews will always have a place, a home, a shelter. What will happen to you, to English, white English Christians in the UK with everything that is happening and the changes that are happening right now.

13:03Camilla: When you hear that rapper rapping in this festival with those chants of death, okay, what do you think his songs are about? As much as he hates Israel, he hates more the UK. He hates more England, the English culture. What was the song that he was singing about? You want your country back? I won't even repeat the curse that he said afterwards. what is that about? So you need to worry, you know, as much as we worried about the Jewish community, there will always be a safe place for them. What will happen to you, to the average British citizen? You see what's happening in the street, you see the rise of violence, you see them marching down the streets of London, when they are burning or stepping on the Israeli flag, along with it, they are stepping and cursing and burning also the British flag and the American flag and any other flag that actually, what do they represent?

14:08Camilla: They represent Western democracies with liberties, with women's rights, with freedom of speech, with freedom of religion? When did it become dangerous for Christians in Britain? I mean, I think it goes into such worrying levels that it's not just about anti-Semitism, but you need to be worried about your communities as well. Miss Hassel, can I just ask for clarity? because some of this hinges upon the phrase death, death to the IDF. Given the IDF is a foreign army, and given that it's engaged in controversial military action, why in the opinion of some people is it anti-Semitic to say death to the IDF?

14:55I assume you do interpret it to be anti-Semitic. Why should that slogan, in your view, apply to all Jews?

15:02Camilla: So first of all, there were two chants, And let's deep dive down into understanding that. The first one is death to the IDF. Israel has been fighting for the last two years against six different entities, terrorist organization who wants to massacre, butcher, obliterate every single living Jew in Israel. The only thing standing between the terrorist organization Hamas and between Jews being butchered is the IDF. The only thing standing between Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that's committed to the obliteration of the state of Israel and murdering Jews, is the IDF. The only thing between the murderous, vile regime of Iran calls death to Israel, it calls also death to the UK and death to America, but the only thing standing between that death cult and Jewish people being massacred is the IDF.

16:01Camilla: So when you are calling for the death of the IDF, it means you are calling for the obliteration of the safety net or the guardians or the protection of Jews in the only Jewish state. Most of us, all Israelis, particularly Jews, are serving in the IDF. I served in the IDF. It's mandatory for Jews to serve there. And the other sentence which calls for from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. From the river to the sea refers to the entire state of Israel. It doesn't call for a compromise, but it calls for the entire state of Israel to be liberated from Jews. That's what this slogan actually means.

16:52Camilla: And so this is a genocidal chant. That's why it's been forbidden for Gandalf in Germany to chant that, because it calls for the genocide of Jews. So how would you either refer to it, if not racist, genocidal chants against the Jewish people? Shiren Haskell, thank you very much indeed for joining us on The Daily Tea. Thank you very much. Camilla, what do you think? Should Tim Davy now go? I think probably on a balance of probabilities, he should certainly consider his position. I asked this of both Wes Streeting and Helen Waitley, the shadow working pension secretary, on my show on Sunday. This is what irritates me about politicians.

17:33Camilla: I said, should he consider his position? They wouldn't even say that he should or shouldn't. And I was like, my God, you can't even commit themselves to thought. Of course he should consider his position because he's vicariously responsible as director general for every single second of BBC output. And I just think how many more calamities can this organisation have before someone at the top has to take the rap? This is insane. They're pulling Gaza documentaries. Serious concerns have been raised about the reporting of BBC Arabic particularly. Concerns have been raised about the conventional BBC and how it's covered this conflict.

18:18Camilla: We had the whole Gary Lineker debacle that was allowed to go on for far too long. Now this, I mean, it's not good enough, is it? She's right to say it's not good enough to then say hours later, oh, with hindsight, we should have pulled it. I mean, why did it take that many hours? Why isn't your instinct to say, oh, my goodness me, we've just broadcast somebody calling for the death of others. Get that off online. Get it off the iPlayer. Yes, yes, yes. Someone inside is saying, oh, well, hang on a minute, you know, he's got a right to say what he wants to say, free speech and all that. It's like, well, no, if he had said death, death to the Palestinian people, do you think it would have been on iPlayer for five hours?

18:59But you know that if you speak to anti-Zionists, they will tell you that the BBC is basically a voice piece for Israel.

19:05Camilla: Yeah, I know. They see a very different thing. I find that really weird when people are protesting about how pro-Israel the BBC is. And I find the contradictions that this has raised concerning. So I generally think Lucy Connolly should have been let out of prison by now. I'm sceptical about policing free speech. Me too. And I'm not sure that kneecap or Bob Villan should feel the law on their shoulder. I'm not really happy with police. No, I know. I'm not really happy about police investigations into so-called hurty words. Yes. But I'm also unhappy that Lucy Connolly will be treated more harshly than this guy, potentially.

19:44Camilla: Why is that fair? The law should be applied equally or not at all. Yeah. And doesn't it feel in the case of where Streeting and his lashing out at Israel, they should get their own house in order, that some of what's motivating politicians' responses is constituency politics. Yeah, of course. It's Ilseford North. It's not a principled stand. No. There's a constant calculation at the back of their head how are my voters going to feel about this when they hear me speaking? Exactly. And funny enough, that leads us into the next conversation, because that rebellion over welfare is also down to what people are hearing when they're Labour MPs on the doorstep.

20:18Camilla: And we're going to be discussing it all with Ian Duncan-Smith, the man who invented universal credit, next.

20:32I'm Dominic Nicholls. I'm Francis Dernley. We're hosts on Ukraine The Latest from The Telegraph, the world's most listened to podcast on the war in Ukraine, with more than 120 million downloads. Every weekday since the full-scale invasion began, we've brought you on-the-ground reporting, expert analysis and the biggest interviews. From weaponry and military strategy to the reality of life in Russia and Ukraine, we follow the conflict from every angle. Listen daily, wherever you get your podcasts.

21:10Welcome back. All eyes are on the government's welfare bill, which was supposed to be tough in inverted commas, but the PM has returned from abroad and rewritten much of it so that it won't be quite so strong. There'll be a vote on it in the Commons on Tuesday. It's expected to pass because the Labour Backbench Rebellion has decreased from around 120 rebels to, some people are saying, about 50. Nonetheless, it's still controversial and a test of the ability of this Labour government to reform and to get key legislation through the Commons.

21:44Camilla: Here's the Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall speaking in the Commons earlier about the changes in the bill. We have listened carefully and we are making positive changes as a result. First and foremost, many members of this House, alongside disabled people and their organisation, have been very concerned about requiring existing claimants to score a minimum of four points on at least one activity to be eligible for the daily living component of PIP when they are reassessed after November 2026, and they've been concerned that the pace of change was too fast. I fully understand that even though nine out of ten people claiming PIP when the changes come in would be unaffected by the end of this Parliament, that this has caused deep and widespread anxiety amongst existing claimants because they rely on the income from PIP for so many different aspects of their lives.

22:42Camilla: So we will now ensure the new four-point requirement will only apply to new claims from November 2026. This means no existing claimants will lose PIP because of the changes brought forward in this bill and existing claimants of passported benefits like carers' allowance will continue to get them too. Now, some people have said they're concerned it will create a two-tier system. But I would say to the House, including members opposite, that our benefit system often protects existing claimants from new rates or new rules because lives have been built around that support and it's often very hard for people to adjust.

23:31Camilla: So, just to run through those concessions, the existing disability benefit claimants will not lose out, the government says. All existing personal independence payments, PIP payments, will remain on the current system. So that proposed tightening of the eligibility criteria will only apply to new claims from November 2026. That was going to be more immediate. 200 ,000 individuals in the severe conditions criteria group with the most severe lifelong conditions who are unlikely to ever recover will not be called for a universal credit reassessment. And then, in a nutshell, all existing recipients of UC and indeed those who meet the severe conditions criteria from next year will see their benefits rise at least in line with inflation every year from 26-27 to the end of the Parliament.

24:20Key thing is that those who currently receive benefits will largely emerge unscathed. The reform is now targeted at future recipients, which is good enough for some rebels, but not for hardcore rebels, and not also for the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham. And the argument on the left is that it is cruel to do this kind of thing in an era of austerity in which work doesn't pay and people are understandably depressed, etc, etc. But here's the thing. Left-wingers say the bill still goes too far, but Tories say it doesn't really do anything at all and that it's a missed opportunity. The Conservative Party has described it as a pathetic, damp squib.

24:58To explain why, we are joined by Ian Duncan-Smith, the MP for Chingford and Woodford Green, who is an expert on welfare reform, having been the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who introduced universal credit. So Ian, when you were in charge of welfare reform, you managed to save£31 billion. So can you tell us, what is our welfare bill now and how did it get so big? Well, it's risen dramatically and I'm going to give you the total figures for it. But the key areas of this are in the sickness and disability benefits area, which has rocketed up. It actually started, you can take it back really to around about 2012, 2013, when you saw the beginnings of what we would call a constant claim process.

25:41that was taking place. And I was just talking to some people the other day about this, and if you track that back, it runs parallel with very much the scale and increase in social media. It's had a huge effect on this. The messages that are sent out on it can be debilitating to individuals out there, but also the messages about how to get in and claim and what you should claim for and how to make that, and if you then get refused how you go to a tribunal and what you say at a tribunal. They're legion across the internet then, now, and much more even now. So it has two facets to it. One is, I think, to depress and to exploit.

26:18And the second part of it is to encourage a way to do it. We've got now, I think, and COVID, of course, then punched a staggering hole through it. When I left, we had the lowest number of workers' households since records began. That's completely collapsed. It's collapsed through COVID when suddenly the culture, I think, of what I refer to, I think in my article I wrote yesterday for the paper, a claim culture suddenly becomes the norm for lots of people who would never have dreamt of it. It's now invaded other groups in society that think, well, you know, it's there and we're going to do it because we got used to it while we were in COVID.

26:53So those are the problems that they face, any government would face now, trying to, how do you control that, get it down and get people to stop thinking of claiming your way out, but working your way out and finding ways for you to be able to be productive rather than sit at home getting worse?

27:07Camilla: I've got some stats. So I know that the number of people who could work but aren't in work is 9 million now since COVID. I know that the benefits bill, and we should be specific about this because I just had an email from a correspondent who said, hang on a minute, you're talking about overall welfare spend, which includes pensions. Of course, the pensions bill has gone up because of the generational divide with more older people than younger. So the welfare bill itself will still be higher at the end of this parliament than it is currently, and it's currently just over 300 billion. If you take the benefits part of that out, then the benefits bill has gone up by 86 billion in the last 10 years.

27:47Camilla: So when did you leave office? I left office, I resigned in 2016. 2016. So a decade on since Sir Ian resigned, basically, the benefits bill itself has ballooned along with the welfare bill. Now, we understand the need to pay people pensions, but I suppose the big problem is if you've got too many at this end of the generational wedge, so to speak, you've got that many pensioners. This issue around younger people, younger people being out of work, I think is the most pernicious. And yes, there's a COVID factor, this idea, well, we were told we could not go to school, we could have remote learning, I would like to live a flexible life, I would like to work only Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, or maybe not at all because I can have a life on benefits.

28:32Camilla: No one's going to question it, combined with this massive mental health time bomb that's gone off. In fact, let's discuss this. That parity of esteem between mental health and physical health. I remember we campaigned for it on the Sunday Express. Please do have respect for people with mental health conditions has now become a massive benefits problem. should people with mild anxiety, mild autism, mild depression, conditions like ADHD, Tim, get PIP, personal independent payments? Should they? Well, I have a statistic too, which is that mental health disorders now make up 55 % of the post-pandemic rise in disability benefits.

29:11So there's evidence that what you're saying is true. But before we get into that, I just want to very quickly establish one thing. So, Ian, you were in charge of welfare reform during the coalition period. You introduced universal credit. In 2012, what we're discussing here today, which is the personal independence payments, were created. So why did you not foresee this? We did. Why did your government create a benefit system which would obviously incentivize people to apply for benefits because of disability rather than worklessness? Well, there was already a benefit called disability living allowance.

29:44Right. And that had begun to be out of control at the time. And that was the general view. The idea of sort of top slicing or cutting it became really impossible to try and get that through both houses, which simply as it did stall later on. So the idea was to create a benefit that allowed, because there was no provision in mental health in that area and it was causing a huge issue. So what we tried to do was to create a new system that was very much scored rather than on judgmental points, but on points. In other words, you could see what people's condition was. You scored them points. They either fell within those numbers or they didn't, in which case they'd be rejected.

30:22The problem with any disability benefit, to be quite frank with you, lies in what happens next. You get refused and immediately you are advised straight to the tribunal. So you make an appeal. The tribunals, almost invariably it seemed to me, the vast majority certainly of cases, would overturn the original decision and put somebody on to the benefit. That was the case. If you talk to anybody at DWP about their frustrations, it's once they've made a calculated decision, then in the majority of cases it'll be overturned. You're advised, if you go onto the internet, how to make that claim, who you would take with you, what you would say.

30:59All of that is what the internet does for that and makes it really difficult. So the reality was to try and create something that slowed that process down at most, focused on those who needed it most. But like everything else, once there's something there as a target, you then move towards it. And the key problem here is that the general trends were there. But the real problem is the nature of what happened, I think, during COVID, which is just the beginning of where we are now, which is that we've encouraged and created really a kind of culture that says I'm too sick or too ill to do anything.

31:33So, for example, I thought the closure of the schools was probably the worst decision made by an elected government that I can remember because the very people that were least likely to be affected by COVID but most likely to be affected by not having education was the children. And we wrote a report at the Centre for Social Justice quite recently and we talked about the lost boys. and the reason is because there's a disproportionate number of boys that have disappeared from the schooling system as a result of that. These are the ones that will be feeding through eventually into the, if they haven't already started, into the benefits culture because they've been absent from structure for some time.

32:10Some will be on the streets, some will be committing crime. It's turning out to be a major problem. Getting them back, bringing them back into gainful employment is a huge problem for the DWP. The other bit was, frankly, if I'm critical at all, was creating more and more ways to give people money during COVID. So we had the furlough scheme, the bounce back loans, then the other business loans. And what was happening is I kept saying to the government, do not invent new systems because you haven't tried them. You don't know where the faults lie. Move on to the universal credit level and just hold them into a relationship with people that gets them back into work as soon as the work starts opening up.

32:46But everybody seemed to be competing to be the one that was able to give out more money. And that immediately made everybody suddenly, lots of people who wouldn't have ever thought of it before, oh, we can claim for all of these. And then there was fraud as well. So the conditioning of people changed quite significantly during that period. And it's what we're going to suffer from going forward unless we can break the idea that being out of work is better than being in work. Being in work for people with mental health conditions, particularly depression, anxiety. I arranged for the health service to claim that this is a health treatment.

33:20Work is a health treatment. Without work, your condition will get worse if you have mental health problems. Finding kind of work for people, stopping companies, throwing people out at the drop of a hat, making sure that people cling on to the idea of work is really critical if you want to change the direction of this. It's not just about cutting benefits. It's about getting people to realize that work is part of our lives. and without it, we will actually descend and get more and more ill and then it's a case of numbers.

33:47Camilla: Two people made interventions about this last week and I thought they were both interesting. We had Ali McGovern, the Labour minister, say, work is no longer a route out of poverty. She actually said that. You can check for it in Hansard. Point one. Then we have the Tory peer, your former colleague, Craig McKinlay, a man who, due to sepsis, lost both arms and both legs, saying last week, I've lost all my limbs and I'm holding down three jobs. Unfortunately, some people who are claiming benefits just need to get off their backsides. Discuss both points. Sir Ian? Yes, well, that's exactly the point.

34:25Lots of people still believe that I must work regardless and make every effort to do so, which was a condition when I was growing up very much the sense of how it was done. But as I said, the culture had shifted significantly, though, as I say, during Covid. into being, well, it's all right, isn't it, really? I mean, this is what we've been doing during COVID. There's nothing wrong with it. Getting people both back into work and kept in work. You know, there's a project going on at the moment which the government has set up to look at how do you retain people in employment who have sickness or disability.

34:57That's one of our weaknesses in this country is we have no system that helps businesses keep people in work and get them their treatment that's necessary at the same time. So we have to do a lot of looking at that. But the other bit of it is really, just making sure that people understand that work is a route out of poverty, by the way. And it depends whether or not you want to work or whether you don't. And that's the key bit. Being on mental health problems and then being out of work is a double whammy. If you have a mental health condition, except for the very, very, very extreme ones, most of them you will do better if you are in work because you'll have people around you, you have a society, you also have a purpose.

35:39all of these things. I remember talking to a GP some years ago when I set up the Centre for Social Justice somewhere in the East End and he said, oh, every day my whole surgery is crowded with people and I dish out antidepressants to them every day and they're all out of work and they're depressed. And an organisation called Tomorrow's People and said, well, let's set up one of the rooms for us to do work advice with them. And they did. So instead of signing off antidepressants, You sign them off to go and see the work coaches. They actually got people who were in difficult conditions back into work.

36:14And in one year, his antidepressants bill fell by 60%. And it was simply that people are depressed, alone in their houses. They come into the surgery because they need to talk to people. Work is all about curing that, about giving you a purpose to your life, without which you will get ill and you will lose a sense that there is something out there that you can better yourself on.

36:34Camilla: But mental health isn't in this bill. That's the interesting thing about it. This bill was meant to shave£5 billion off the welfare bill. It's now shaving£2 billion because the U-turn means that they're not shaving£3 billion. Yes. That means that Rachel Reeves now doesn't have the money that she thought she had to, I don't know, stave off tax rises in the autumn budget or whatever she was going to do with this money she was going to save from the benefits bill. Overall, the welfare bill will still be higher at the end of Parliament. And the mental health issue is not addressed at all. So this whole Labour storm in a teacup, I mean, it's about nothing.

37:09Camilla: There are no cuts. Or am I being too simplistic? There are two ways to approach welfare change and reform. Top slicing a benefit like that doesn't work. I resigned over it back in 2016. Sorry, top slicing, what does that mean? Well, that's what they've done. They take the criteria for claiming and getting PIP. There are various figures and scores on what you can and can't do. There's two things to pit. One is care and the other one is mobility. You know, you have to score on both of those. You can get one but not the other. It's moderately complex. But the reality is, though, what they've taken is they said, right, we'll just cut the level of the award and that will reduce the bill.

37:50Two things are a problem about that. Number one, I didn't think that would work. It won't work because by and large what will happen very quickly is that people will go to the tribunals almost immediately on most of that. So the scored figures for savings will not materialize and never would have done, I don't believe. Secondly, the problem is then that what you've done is you actually get to those who probably in some cases need it the most. So there's a huge chunk of people with cardiovascular problems, people who have severe arthritis, a load of conditions which will get hit by that, but not those that you want to deal with.

38:24The lesser conditions on entry, that's where you have to go. And that is gone missing. And the big area that we've been talking about is the growth in mental health claims into both benefits, both the sickness benefit and into the PIP. But that is not dealt with in this legislation, which is now anyway weakened because they've taken that away. My point in this is that if this is going to be the case, then you can say goodbye to any further reform of welfare in this parliament, which means essentially this growth will continue as charted. And the problem is that we will be writing off a generation of people who will never experience work and be unproductive in terms of society.

39:07Camilla: Will Starmer still be in work? Do you think, Tim? Is this existential for the Prime Minister? I think if anyone qualifies for a PIP payment, it's probably Keir Starmer. But it is, to be fair, very difficult to do welfare reform because I remember when you were doing it. And I remember going to one Conservative conference as a journalist, Camilla, you might have gone to the same one, where you had to walk past a barricade that had been put up by the police. And as you walked through it, protesters spat at you. Yeah, I think somebody tried to put a traffic cone on your head. Oh, that was later. That was later, yeah.

39:37Camilla: Yes, I was there. I was phlegmed. I was phlegmed on it. It was very unpleasant. We were called scum. Yeah. You know, I'm sanguine about it, really. My answer was I had a job to do. And I believe that what we were looking for was to reform our way out. But UC offers this government a thing that I didn't have, which is universal credit, bringing those work-based benefits together. And at last, the last two that I couldn't get the government to put in, one was tax credits, which is now coming in almost complete. And sickness benefit is coming into UC. Now, why is that important? It's very simple.

40:09If you claimed a sickness benefit, once you got the money, you were never seen again. I mean, you might have been checked occasionally. but by and large, a lot of them then found they bounced against the 16-hour work rule, which meant they either committed a criminal offence by working without declaring it, or they just didn't bother to work. So the whole thing was designed badly. But coming into UC, the difference now is everybody will be seen who's on sickness benefit. There will be a work coach who will be trained to deal with their mental health issues, if it's mental health or musculoskeletal, and they will look to figure out how they can get people into work so that they can sustain themselves.

40:44The trick is take away the 16-hour rule and say, I don't care how many hours you work on this benefit, because now you're on UC, you can taper that away. So the key thing is, for the first time ever, if the government was really thinking about this, you have a real opportunity to work with UC and with these other benefits to get people out of benefit and into work. That's where you save the money. And you also change lives. Once people are in work, they never want to come out of it again, because it's their life. you see can change this dramatically, and that's the difference. Instead of just going away and doing a temporary treasury cut, really invest in this process, and you will see a big turnaround take place and a beginning of an end to that high spiralling cost of mental health.

41:27Camilla: Sir Ian Duncan-Smith will be following the debate tomorrow. Thank you very much for joining us on The Daily Tea. Thank you. We will be back tomorrow at 5pm.

41:42Thank you.