Labour's welfare rehash: New PM, same stagnant ideas

0:02The Telegraph.

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1:14Should children with ADHD be stripped of their benefits? That's Kemi Badenock's answer to Benefits Britain. Meanwhile, Labour's Alan Milburn wants to invest billions of pounds in rebuilding the welfare system for young people. But is this just a rehash of what we've seen under previous governments and even under Keir Starmer's? What he's trying to do is intervene to stop a whole generation of young people post-COVID going on to benefits while in their younger years and not looking for work and staying stuck on those benefits for their entire life. I get that. That's a very good idea. But I'm not sure.

1:53I just keep going back to, I don't see that as any different from what Keir Starmer was proposing to do. And that's where things are access to mental health. Think back to Theresa May. Every government has acknowledged a crisis in mental health provision, which still remains, by the way. Tim, we did a shout out in a previous episode as to what on earth management consultants actually do. What is it? Well, first of all, can I just say that there is an irony here that the government has commissioned Boston Consulting to help it with its 10-year plan. The Telegraph revealed earlier this month that Boston Consulting was being investigated by HMRC over its tax affairs.

2:29To be fair, we all are now. Well, indeed. That's life under labour. Listeners and viewers have messaged in to say, this is what consultants are. Oliver, at my business school, we used to say that consultants are people who ask you for your watch and then tell you what the time is. we've made a point in our companies to never use consultants except when it comes to spectrum auctions where unique expertise is needed every 10 years or so thank you andrew lincoln says i love the daily tea thank you especially when you are in tandem with tim you two seem to have an almost telepathic rapport what a moment okay do you know what i'm thinking right now i think you're thinking this is schmortzy and i must move on no i'm saying i'm thinking thank you andrew you're Correct.

3:11However, my main purpose in writing is to answer your question on today's episode about the role of a consultant by means of the following story. A consultant was in a London hotel on business and, feeling bored and lonely, decided to engage the services of an escort. After the deed had been done, she said to him, You're a consultant, aren't you? How on earth do you know that? he retorted. Because I had to do half the work myself, she replied. Ian McCord, regular correspondent, adds, Your item on management consultants has made me smile. One definition I've heard and used is they are the sort of folk who will tell you how to run your business, but not have the balls to run one of their own.

3:50Yes. Which I think is probably true. Shall we move on to a little inkling from the forthcoming Milburn report, which we feel like we've been waiting for for about a decade? Yes. In fact, it's probably not that long, but it's coming out next week. and we think it is going to say, shock horror, that young people's benefits need to be cut. It is reported that what Milburn wants to do is to move young people off sickness and disability benefits and into a pathway that leads them towards training and work. So they would no longer be able to claim the two main benefits of the personal independence payment PIP or the health element of universal credit and they would instead get a youth allowance paid at the same level as the standard rate of universal credit.

4:42Now, why is this significant? Well, when you go past 40, you start to realise you've seen it all before. Yes. And I've noticed in my life that there is a pattern. There are too many people on regular unemployment benefits, so a government does a clampdown. Yes. And then people start appearing on incapacity benefits instead. So the government does a clamp down. And then people start appearing on regular unemployment benefits instead. And we're now at the point in the cycle where people have moved from regular universal credit style benefits to being on a form of incapacity benefits. And so this government's going to do something about it.

5:22Now, the other thing I've got used to is every government comes in, realises there's a spending problem, seeks to save money, discovers that there is a huge political cost. So it says we're going to save money in the long run, but in the immediate term, we're actually going to spend more money in order to reform the system. Speculate to accumulate. Right. We had this conversation with Ian Duncan-Smith and Universal Credit as well. And what Milburn is saying is this is not just about kicking young people off benefits. Rather, it might actually involve spending more to get them off those benefits and into work.

6:01OK. Let's have a look at what Milburn, who was a former health secretary, we should point out, is planning to propose. He will recommend investing billions in employment support, including one-to-one personal advisors, work placements and job subsidies, resulting in young people being presented with a menu of options to help them find work. He will also call for immediate mental health support for those with mild attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, that is ADHD, autism and anxiety to ensure that they're not left languishing on NHS waiting lists for months or even years. And we will analyse each of those and whether they're right or wrong in a moment.

6:39But I just want to emphasise this point. Everything you have just said, I have heard before from previous governments, including this one. There is almost no difference in everything you have said with what Keir Starmer proposed when he came into office. The difference is Keir Starmer wanted to front load it with the cuts first. Yes. What Milburn is doing is trying to front load it with the additional investment into training first, which makes it more politically palatable to the left. We shall wait to see, however, if they actually swallow what Burnham will do, which is what Keir Starmer tried to do, which is limit who can get certain kinds of sickness benefits.

7:23Because unless you do that, there is absolutely no point to this reform. No, it looks as if Milburn is anticipating a backbench rebellion because he said this. I'm not saying that any of this will be easy or that it will be pain free because it won't. Candidly, it could mean that some people will get less financial support at the beginning of their benefit claim than under the current system. But actually, for young people, there's a different debate that we've got to resolve, which is whether the priority is their longer term life chances or just their immediate shorter term finances. Yes. I think what the current system does is prioritises the latter over the former.

7:59I believe that's the wrong choice and it needs to be the other way around. And he's absolutely right. What he's trying to do is intervene to stop a whole generation of young people post-COVID going on to benefits while in their younger years and not looking for work and staying stuck on those benefits for their entire life. I get that. That's a very good idea. But I'm not sure. I just keep going back to, I don't see that as any different from what Keir Starmer was proposing to do. And as for things like access to mental health, think back to Theresa May. Every government has acknowledged a crisis in mental health provision, which still remains, by the way.

8:38I have a friend who has a very complex and serious mental health condition. He couldn't get an appointment with a GP. he was in danger of missing getting his prescription. It is almost impossible to gain access to a state-provided therapist. So what does he do? He falls back upon private provision and has to dig into his pockets. And he has not paid enough money for him to do that without some form of state support. And in terms of state cost, by the way, it would have been far cheaper to have just given him the GP appointment rather than have a catastrophic series of events with somebody with mental health problems, not on pills, ending up in hospital.

9:18Exactly. Let's get on to ADHD in just a minute. Just in terms of whether this is radical enough, clearly it can't be if he's basically suggesting that you move youngsters on a certain type of benefits to another kind of benefit called a youth allowance. If you really wanted to do something radical, you would take up the suggestion of somebody like James Reid, who runs the UK's biggest recruitment firm, who says it's currently now 17 grand more expensive to employ somebody between the ages of 16 and 24 than it was before the Labour government took power. And that's because of the increase to the minimum wage and the increase on national insurance contributions by employers.

9:57And that's what's put people off employing younger people because they're saying to themselves, why would I employ a 16-year-old to wash the dishes when I could employ a 26-year-old to wash the dishes who also has experience to do X, Y and Z extra and pay them the same amount. We've got record youth unemployment. It's at a nine-year high. And critics on the right say that it's as a result of three economically illiterate labour budgets. Why wouldn't you actually say, if we are going to subsidise young people who are out of work using taxpayers' cash through the benefits system, why not do it a slightly different way?

10:33And this is the Reid suggestion. And say, do you know what, employers? You're not going to pay any national insurance if you employ somebody under the age of 24. We're going to remove that from your costs. This would then incentivise them to employ young people so they're not languishing on benefits. And Milburn makes a very cogent point. You go onto benefits at 16 or 18, quite hard to get off them, not least if there is a cycle of people being on benefits in your family. If your parents are on benefits, you're more likely to go on benefits. That's a statistically proven fact. Therefore, he makes a point about we're doing short term fixes rather than looking at the longer picture.

11:11But why wouldn't you use taxpayers cash to get young people into work rather than to keep them out of work? Yes. And I think that's a really cogent argument. Now, notwithstanding the fact, Tim, that I do appreciate that there are people young and old who are genuinely incapacitated, either mentally or physically, and are not able to work and may never be able to work. And therefore, of course, they're always going to merit state support. But just in the case of ADHD, because without betraying any confidences, I've got a great amount of experience with this within my own family. And we've all jumped through hoops and waited on lists and all the rest of it.

11:53I still can't fathom why. And I'm not talking about autism. I'm not talking about other conditions. I'm talking about this condition specifically. I want to make that clear before people try and cancel me and troll me or whatever. I think it requires a degree of school intervention. I think it might, as an adult, require a degree of work intervention to help people get through their day if they have what are regarded or described in some of the textbooks as disorganized minds. I'm very familiar with disorganized minds. I've never quite been able to fathom why ADHD is a condition that requires a state benefit intervention.

12:33and what's the argument for that you need transport for school because you can't catch a bus i'm not sure whether that is that right you need a benefit why aren't you able to go to school or work with adhd right i don't understand that okay well this is what mumsnet would say yeah and if this is clipped what you've just said will will offend a lot of people um is first of all it is to plug gaps in the system that i've just described so if you cannot get to see a doctor or a therapist who can help you on the nhs it might be that you require money to help you to see someone privately secondly it might be that you need to make adjustments to your life that cost money so for instance you talk about catching a bus well as you know one feature of ADHD can be intense disorganization.

13:30So it could be, for instance, that a parent needs to accompany someone to go to school. That parent might work. So in other words, they might be taking work off to do that, and that might cost them money. So I'm just suggesting the... No, I appreciate what you're saying in kind of practical terms, but I suppose I'm referring to, because there's all sorts of levels of state intervention. There's state intervention when it comes to transport for school, there's state intervention when it comes to subsidised motorbility cars, there's intervention when it comes to full-blown benefits, regardless of what they're changing all this into.

14:03Claiming PIP for ADHD or being out of work for ADHD, just that condition alone, I'm struggling to fathom. Well, and as of... And I'm speaking as somebody with personal experience of this condition. And I know people are now going to say, well, is it a condition that incapacitates mentally or physically? Well, as of October the 29th, if you have ADHD, you are qualified to get a third off your rail travel as well. And it's interesting to note that in 2016, there were around 200 ,000 people who had a disabled rail card in this country. And that figure has now hit 450 ,000. which brings us on to this question of which one is it are we becoming a more disabled country or is it that we're becoming more enlightened about disability but or so we're expanding support or does all of this just make perfect sense in the wake of covid that we have been through a pandemic pandemic is classically linked to physical and mental illness it doesn't just happen and go away and it could just be that it has left in its wake a sicker population that requires help but or do we have to simply say to ourselves that there is a limit to the state's ability to support the public for certain conditions and while we would expect the state to step in and help in the case of the incapacitated mentally and physically to the extent that they cannot attend a conventional school, they might not even be able to be schooled at all, let alone find meaningful employment.

15:49When we're looking at that, we want the full gamut of state support. But have we just opened the floodgates to people getting state support because they can, rather than because they are in genuine need of it? And, you know, something like a school run with children with disorganized minds to a greater or lesser extent is something that every parent in the UK faces every morning. It's difficult to do school runs and hold down jobs. I do it every day. Look, I think the Labour Party would say to you, and all parents need help with it. I mean, this is the thing. There is no limit to the left's understanding of what the So this is the absolute definition of nanny state.

16:34And my counter argument to that is no. When you decide to have children, as problematic as those children might end up being, you have to take responsibility for them emotionally, financially. If you're impoverished and you need some help, that's when you apply for income top up. Right. But we brush our children's teeth. We give them breakfast. We ensure they get into school on time. We ensure that we back up any school measures with at-home discipline, support and help educationally. We make sure that they're fully rounded human beings who are emotionally intelligent as well as achieving all that they can in the classroom.

17:12That's a parent's job. How much can the state bring up a child? That's the point I'm coming from. And this isn't for me to be cruel. As I say, I've personal first-hand experience of one of these conditions. And I'm just questioning whether the state has expanded too far to start giving handouts when actually I'm not sure how that helps the condition. Essentially, what helps ADHD kids is either rest breaks in exams, extra time, a card to hold up in class saying, I need a timeout. Just give me a moment to refocus. It's positioning in the classroom. You could use the same measures as an adult at work.

17:52This is the thing. I think what we're seeing is a classic left-right divide about how do you tackle social problems. And the left's point of view tends to be what can the state do to help? And it would mean closer regulation of the labour market to protect people who are in jobs and then active help to get people off welfare and into employment. What the right would say is, no, let's create the environment in which it's cheaper to employ people and therefore people get jobs and therefore they get better paid and they can look after themselves. Under Labour, we are entering the realm of breakfast clubs for everyone.

18:35We just feed everyone, right? And part of the problem with Labour's vision is society has evolved and become so much more complicated. When it's the 1930s and you're dealing with the very basics of hunger or pandemic, then state intervention is quite simple and universal. That's the most efficient way to do it. When you're living in 2026 and you're dealing with such complex, sometimes controversial diagnoses of conditions such as ADHD, and you're asking the government to make decisions about who gets money and trying to make life as easy for those people as possible, as a calculation, it becomes so much more involved.

19:15So much more complicated. And as we can see, quite a lot more expensive. Do respond in the comments. And I was very specific in what I said. Please do note this. I'm not talking about children or adults with complex conditions, a number of conditions. I'm talking about a solitary ADHD diagnosis. But as we discussed with Kemi, do you want to put the state in the position of saying to parents, I think your child isn't as unwell as you think they are. Well, we asked the conservative leader that at a press conference earlier this week.

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21:38Kimmy Badenot, thank you very much for joining us. Now, you have said you want to save around$2.8 billion by rejecting some claims for child benefit for conditions like autism and ADHD. You say you want to reject up to 70 % of claims. Now, this is something which is given to people on the basis of need, not diagnosis. The money isn't a vast amount to the individuals, between the£30 and£200 a week. Do you really want to be the politician who says to parents with children with those difficult conditions, I don't feel your child's condition is either real or severe enough to justify receiving this small amount of taxpayer cash.

22:16What we want to do is bring common sense back into the system. There are a lot of people who need help, not money. And what we want to do is make sure that they get that help. We're spending a lot of money on benefits that could actually go into other ways of supporting people. What we have done today is set out£36 billion of savings, and we're making it very clear where the money is coming from. What we want to do as a Conservative Party is have an honest conversation. No surprises. People need to know what's coming, why we're doing what we're doing. We have seen a huge increase in diagnoses.

22:53Even the government's own experts are saying that the prevalence of the diagnoses don't necessarily match up. And let's explore why that is happening. but if the answer is always well here's more money here's more money we're going to run out of money and in fact that's actually what we're seeing happen now. But just to be clear that benefit is paid on the on the basis of the child's need to receive it not necessarily a diagnosis. What are you saying here? You're saying directly to those people I don't believe you need it but they're applying for it because they believe their child needs it. Well that's not what we're saying at all.

23:25What we're saying is that we need to make sure that the system functions and we need to make sure that we are doing the right thing. People always have needs, but we also need to make sure that we are giving them what we believe is right for them, not necessarily what they are asking for. And this is the challenge with being in government. It means making some difficult decisions. But the reason why we have so many problems in our country now is because there have been many very sensible and reasonable requests, which should have had a no instead of a yes, because they're not sustainable, because we can't afford them, because there's something better.

24:00It doesn't mean that what they're asking for is bad. What we're saying is that there's a better way and the Conservatives are thinking about what that better way is. I'm going to caveat this question by revealing that I do have ADHD in the family, so I'm very familiar with the condition. If you were going to take a common sense approach, you might just say that it isn't a condition that qualifies for any benefits whatsoever. Why do you need benefits if you've got ADHD? Well, I think that that's a very interesting question. And this is what we are exploring. I'm not a medical expert. So what I'm not doing is carrying out, you know, giving my own opinion on a medical situation.

24:39But there are people out there who are, and they're saying that we need to start looking at this completely differently. And we all have people in our families with these conditions or with disabilities. So we understand the difficulties and we are taking that into account. But as Helen Whateley, the shadow work and pension secretary said today, it is not possible that we are twice as sick as we used to be in 2019, yet PIP claimants have doubled. You look at the numbers and something very weird is happening. We have more people now reporting as disabled since 2022 than Ukraine, which is actually at war.

25:16We know that there is fraud in the system. We know that the system itself is not carrying out proper checks and balances. and what we want to do is just reform it so that it works properly. Okay but you understand Tim's point centrally which is as a mum I can make an evaluation of my own children perhaps ask for some interventions in school to help them but say that actually I would draw the line at state intervention because I don't think it's merited. You as a mum are going to have to turn around to Britain's mums and dads and say well actually I'm going to take a decision on this and say that your children don't qualify for the stuff that they're already applying for so to Tim's point that's very hard isn't it because then that doesn't just talk about taking away benefits but possibly interventions like for instance transport to school anyone on a local council will tell you that is very very hard to do to give to take something back that's already been given well what I would say to those parents is that there is a better way there is a better way and we understand what it is that they're dealing with but we also have to look at what's happening on the other side, that we're running out of money, we're taxing a lot of other people who maybe even have to deal with the same difficulties, their businesses are closing, they're losing their jobs, and we're not able to provide these services.

26:31Just simply giving what people ask for doesn't mean that the money is always going to be there to provide for them. So we need to look at whether we as a country are actually growing enough, earning enough, to be able to support the welfare system that we have. Otherwise, there's not going to be a welfare system or any of this support at all. I think it's bold, courageous to have this conversation with the public because you're going to get a lot of pushback. And what some people will say is this is not a matter of over-diagnosis. It's a matter of better understanding of disability. That as our understanding of how autism functions grows, more people are being diagnosed with it.

27:10And that's the right thing to do. but they'll feel angry that they'll feel what you're saying as you're casting judgment upon that diagnosis. No, there is no judgment on anyone's diagnosis. But what we are seeing from those who do understand is actually quite a lot more nuanced than that. I mean, I've read people like Simon Baron-Cohen and what he's saying on autism. It's very interesting that, yes, we do understand it more, but that doesn't mean that everything that's happening is what is right for people with autism. And we need to make sure that we are honest with the public about what needs to be done.

27:45One of the good things about setting out our figures and setting out our plans, that people can challenge them. So we welcome the scrutiny. If people say we don't think this is right, I want to hear them out. But what we're not going to do is cower and hide and not talk about it and just hope that the problem will go away. That's what Labour is doing. And it's not $183 billion. You want to cut$36 billion, but the bill itself is going up by$30 billion by the end of this parliament. So you're only really proposing to cut a rise. Are you going far enough with these savings? Well, we've got to start somewhere.

28:19And what we're not doing is going to pluck a random figure out of the air. I mean, even the conversation we've just had, you said that what we're doing is bold and it's difficult. So on the one hand, people say that you're going too far. And then on the other, people say you're not going far enough. that probably means we're getting it just about right. Kemi Badenot, thank you very much for joining us on The Daily Tea. Thank you. We'll be back tomorrow at 5pm with Lord Michael Gray to talk about celebrity and the crisis in the entertainments industry.

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