The Tories are today re-announcing a welfare plan so weak the Lib Dems could have authored it.
Why do they lack the courage to cut the benefits bill by even half as much as Reform’s £52 billion plan?
The Tories still refuse to adopt Reform’s policies to:
- End ALL foreign citizens accessing benefits
- Make those claiming benefits who are fit and healthy work in their community for 20 hours a week
- Eradicate the doubling in fraud and error
Can Kemi really not get her backbenchers to sign off on proper savings?
The truth is their fake “policy commissions” do not exist. Never did. They haven’t done the work.
Their welfare policy is two and a half pages long. And it shows.
Their announcement today doesn’t show any workings because their costings are badly wrong.
They seem to assume that each of the 350,000 affected claimants is currently receiving the UC standard allowance for a single over-25 adult and that, therefore, each person moved to the Subsistence Allowance saves the exchequer £1,530 (350,000 x 1,530 = £535 million).
But a large proportion of UC claimants receive smaller standard allowances, because they are under 25, in a couple, or already subject to sanctions.
Moving these people onto subsistence allowance would therefore save less than £1530. Similarly, they have not accounted for the new incentive for people to move to health benefits, which are exempt, nor for the administrative cost of this system.
The real saving would be more than £100 million lower.
It was a nice attempt, rustled up in panic after Reform laid out our detailed plans.
But only Reform have done the work to find the savings, which is why only we can raise the tax-free personal allowance to £15,000.