Yesterday I proposed a big saving on prisons by deporting many more foreign criminals. Today I propose welfare reforms.
The priority task should be to greatly reduce the flow people onto benefits.
Illegal migrants should never qualify for regular benefits. If they have to stay for a bit before leaving the state needs to find a cost effective way without allowing them to establish benefit entitlements.
People seeking entry on work visas should not qualify for benefits. They should be self sufficient on the pay they are receiving and should return home when the contract ends. We need to prevent low pay migrant jobs which get in the way of better pay for others.
The government needs to review eligibility to come in as a dependent to make sure they do not go straight onto benefits.
The government needs to improve support for those seeking work. It needs to cut taxes to make it more worthwhile to work. It needs to ensure those on benefits who can work are actively seeking work and not turning down jobs they are offered.
It should not allow a sicknote for life to be granted to younger people with mental health problems, unless their condition is acute and likely to be incurable..
June 28, 2025
Even IF Rachel from Complaints was inclined to implement your proposals she will never get the support to do it from Two-Tier and the Cabinet, let alone his revolting back bench MPs.
There will be no significant cuts to the welfare bill under this Government because the Parliamentary Labour Party is stuffed with economically illiterate ideological Socialists, whose mission is to redistribute wealth from those they consider undeserving of it, to those they believe do deserve it.
We are going the way of Cuba; in a few years we’ll even have the jalopy cars if the Net Zero insanity continues.
June 28, 2025
@Donna
What an outstanding post. Except you got the party wrong. It’s Farage, Tice and their Reform limited company that propose these extreme Corbynista socialist policies. In ten years time Net Zero is going to turn us into an energy-exporting powerhouse – unless the British public are stupid enough to vote for them at the next election.
June 28, 2025
As I write, the UK is indeed exporting power, only the spot price is negative so National Grid are exporting at a loss.
Someone needs to educate National Grid in economics – the way to run a business is buy low, sell high, not the other way round.
June 28, 2025
SG :
Figure 9 (Net interconnector import against export in 2030) on P23 of NESO’s ‘Clean Power 2030 Annex 4 : Cost and Benefit Analysis’ quite clearly shows that all imports are at positive prices and exports are all at negative prices.
June 28, 2025
Indeed and educate the Ed Miliband PPE and Emma Pinchback (classics) in Physics, energy, energy economics and electrical engineering
Sakara “In ten years time Net Zero is going to turn us into an energy-exporting powerhouse” where on earth do you get this drivel from? The only thing we will be exporting is jobs and industries. Energy costs in the US about 1/3 to 1/4 of ours. Drill baby drill, frack baby frack and do more R&D into fusion, better batteries and better nuclear for the medium to long term.
June 28, 2025
Sportscar maker Lotus is considering ending production at its home in the UK in favour of setting up a new plant in the US, the BBC understands. Such a move would put 1,300 jobs at risk at its headquarters in Hethel, Norfolk!
June 28, 2025
Sakara Gold,
Please provide me with one hard scientific fact that shows CO2 is a problem. Not a weather event because if you bother to research them, you will find they have been happening for hundreds of years.
July 7, 2025
Oh dear Sakara are you expecting some changes to the laws of physics then? Please go and study some physics.and the realities of energy and electrical engineering. The only huge breakthrough I expect is nuclear fusion to become an economic this reality making so called “renewables” all largely redundant.
June 28, 2025
We will not have jalopy cars. It will be either cycling, WFH or public transport. One only has to go back some 50 – 75 and look at life in the former USSR and China to see our (rather ironic) future.
June 28, 2025
Mark B :
Correct, because diesel, petrol and gas will be banned.
June 28, 2025
Indeed Donna. Nobody in politics ever asks why the number (& proportion) of people on benefits has risen for decades. Consider that and you find the solution. If people CAN get benefits then they WILL.
As an example, I don’t qualify for benefits but can pay savings into an ISA – which I will do to the maximum I can to avoid tax.
June 28, 2025
Indeed same with food banks, social housing, the boat migrants and the NHS? If you give something valuable away for nothing you will get a long queue. This as the length of the queue is the only real deterrent as no price mechanism. So to match supply and demand delays and queuing become the new mechanism.
June 28, 2025
THE NHS sees patients as an “inconvenience” and has “built mechanisms to keep them away”, its new boss has said.
Sir Jim Mackey said the health service was too often “deaf” to criticism, “wasted a lot of money” and deployed far too many “fossilised” ways of working that had not changed since the foundation of the NHS in 1948.
From the Telegraph today. Stating the blindingly obvious?
Of course patients are a pain to the NHS or GPs and they have your taxes already so patients (who do not pay) are a liability to be deterred or pushed from pillar to post whenever possible! He is an accountant who has worked for the NHS for 34 years it seems. But tell us something we do not know already! What has he done in 34 year to change this?
June 28, 2025
There have been no significant welfare cuts under any government and what nonsense re Cuba. Too much red mist.
June 28, 2025
Well said Donna. Now they proposed curs have been binned it will be back to more tax rises, more mass immigration to give the impression of growth. Per capita will decline and we’ll all be worse off.
The sooner this government implodes the better. The AG says international law is paramount but is facing a challenge from the Chagosians because it’s their land
As with everything this miserable shower do, it’s very selective in its decisions.
There is no way Rachel from complaints can stop the welfare bill exploding ans frankly I don’t think she wants to.
The Bond vigilantes will have to do the heavy lifting.
June 28, 2025
‘Bond Vigilantes’… more like sensible investors, with alternatives for investing their money, saying ‘we’re not lending HMG any more money because we don’t think you are ABLE to pay us back.’ I’m thinking we’ll see credit downgrades from Moody’s at al, the moment Ms Reeves sits down after her next budget speech.
June 28, 2025
Oh dear Lord Hermer must think you are disgusting for stating the clear fact that Two Tier Kier, Lord Hermer this government, the police, local authorities, the blob, the justice system, some judges, the prisons… clearly run a two tier justice system. It is even written into the law with so call “hate crimes”. If you assault someone for having a certain religion you get a stiffer sentence than if they were atheist or just because you did not like the way they looked at you!
https://www.cps.gov.uk/crime-info/hate-crime. with 78% getting uplifted sentences. The sentencing board wanted two tier sentencing guidelines too.
The man is not elected so perhaps he thinks calling 90% or so of the electorate disgusting for saying (what is the very clear truth) does not matter. Not so good for elected politicians.
I cannot see this Labour government cutting spending until forced to by lenders or the IMF or similar! Every policy they have is anti growth. Some suggestions:- ditch VAT on school fees and even encourage more to go to save the state money, ditch the abolition of non dom status so more stay and pay taxes here, deter the boat people and cut low skilled immigration, force most people on benefits to turn up and do something for their benefits many would disappear, ditch net zero, ditch all diversity officers, undo almost everything Blair amd Brown did!
June 28, 2025
Also ditch the Chagos and the benefit payments to Mauritius. Hermer claims his politics are strongly “progressive”
“Progressive” generally refers to a left-leaning political philosophy that advocates for social reform and advancements through ever more invariable misdirected government action. Progressives typically believe that society can and should be improved through policies that address issues like economic inequality, corporate power, and social injustices.
In other words he want to make everyone poorer and the state ever larger in the usual insane Labour way. We had quire enough of this lunacy from Cameron, May, Boris & Sunak thanks!
June 28, 2025
It seems Lord Hermer’s favourite subjects were english, history and drama, and he aspired to become a theatre director and writer at the time. He later studied politics and modern history at the University of Manchester. Whilst at the University of Manchester, Hermer was chair of the students’ union and a national executive member of the National Union of Students. In his youth, he was a volunteer for the magazine Searchlight; which later described him as an “active and dedicated” anti-fascist.
Should the state be subsidising (with soft loans’ degrees in “Politics” or other grievance studies things like PPE, Politics, lefty economics degrees … the people (usually socialist dopes) who read them seems to have done vast harm over very many years.
June 28, 2025
I think you are right. It seems, according to Faisal Islam of the BBC, that about a quarter of the working age population does not have a job. Yet the Starmer/Reeves duo think that increasing taxes on jobs, on profits and on investors will promote growth and employment. They, and the rest of the Labour party, do not have a clue. All they can think of is to hand out freebies at other people’s expense. I am not qualified or know enough about the benefits process to make detailed suggestions. But it is clear that the system is broken and unaffordable and that Labour does not know how to fix it.
June 28, 2025
All labour policies are anti-growth and also anti-tax receipts net – higher tax rates and more NI, the employee rights bill, ever more red tape, net zero, Chagos, VAT on school fees, open door to low skilled immigrants, no deterrent policing, abolition of non dom status, reversing Brexit by the back door, very high benefits to augment the feckless, ever more government, rigged markets in energy, education, housing, banking, transports, heating systems, cars…. blocking the roads, more building regs… the one exemption is relaxed planning but no sign of that yet!
June 28, 2025
Sadly and unfortunately you will probably be right.
Work, saving, and investing for the future is now well and truly dead, why bother when you can choose to live on the State.
The next Government will need to make ever more savings to balance the future books, and at the same time will need to make significant tax cuts to get back people to a simple work ethic.
It is getting close to decide if it is better to rent or buy now given that IHT limits have been frozen for so long.
Anyone in London or other parts of the South with a 3 bedroomed house, will loose part of its value on death, so why struggle to pay a mortgage for the Government to benefit at the end of it all.
The spend now, live now, leave nothing behind syndrome, is getting ever closer.
June 28, 2025
Donna :
There was never intended to be any cuts to Civil Service spending let alone welfare cuts. It was all a pre-planned charade to make the voters think the Labour MPs are on their side when really the Civil Service simply wanted an excuse for further tax rises and further national debt and ruin. Never mind welfare cuts it is Net Zero which needs to be cancelled, a communist Trojan Horse designed to sabotage our energy, economy and finally our democracy.
June 28, 2025
Much to be said for Jalopy cars I find, far more fun and far cheaper! Less CO2 than most EVs too as no need to manufacture them!
June 28, 2025
Good morning.
With respect, Sir John you are suggesting that Labour punish their ‘client base.’
Only the Tories would be so stupid !
June 28, 2025
“Would be” is future tense and implies they’ll get another chance to do what they spent 14 years doing in the past.
Surely the word “were” is more appropriate?
June 28, 2025
Good point. But do you think they have learnt from the last 14 years ?
June 29, 2025
Some appear to have learned the lesson, or are making a reasonable stab at demonstrating it.
Unfortunately, none of them can be trusted and they are shackled with the LibCONs.
June 28, 2025
The sloppy system that exists has been allowed to worsen over the years into its presently extremely crazy situation.
June 28, 2025
It’s been estimated that over the last 15 years or so about 1.5 million illegal immigrants have managed to get in here in the back of lorries, transport containers etc.
Once here, the criminal networks bringing them in organise NI numbers, NHS numbers, well forged home office documentation (“Indefinite Leave to Remain”), passports, driving licences etc. Immigrant GP’s working for the criminals then sign them off long-term sick so they can get extra benefits, housing, council tax relief, PIP payments etc
If we had an effective police service that could take down the criminal networks making millions out of this trade, Reeves could probably take 2% off income tax.
June 28, 2025
If we’d had an effective CONSERVATIVE Government which protected the Nation and enforced border controls they wouldn’t have got here in the first place.
June 28, 2025
To the tens of thousands promised Cameron etc. for 14 years and they took it up to about 1 million PA. Now they say they made some “mistakes” not “mistakes” a deliberate policy by Cameron, May, Boris, Sunak and now Two Tier.
June 28, 2025
The fight back has at last begun. The penny has dropped especially in Ireland which is not burdened with the psycho-ops attack about ‘colonialism’.
Could get nasty.
June 28, 2025
SG
Whilst I agree with your comment about the illegal immigrant alternative economy, surely government computer systems should be able to spot a fake ID, National Insurance numbers, etc etc.
Surely we are not still in the Day of the Jackle moment of 50 years ago, where people can fake a dead persons identity are we ?
I really do wonder what safeguards there are on the various Governments systems, that they seem to be able to be outwitted by simple fraud and fake identities.
June 28, 2025
There is so much fraud that government departments are overwhelmed. Organised crime has obtained thousands of valid National Insurance numbers because HMRC are so lax in issuing them. The illegals use these to get jobs, and the criminal gangs rake in the in-work benefits and NI credits.
June 28, 2025
The black market economy not only pays virtually no taxes it suppresses wages in many parts of the legal economy and even closes much of it down as it often can not compete legally. This reducing taxes from the legal sector. Doom loop economics!
June 28, 2025
I just looked up the figures on welfare. AI gives different figures on how this is broken down depending on how you ask, so it’s confusing. Welfare comprises 24% of all government spending. The percentages below don’t add up, but I assume they at least indicate the relative proportions of each type of spending:
41-55% (?) of the budget goes to pensioners.
5% to the unemployed.
28% to the low-paid employed (Universal Credit)
11% housing benefit (3/4 of this to working people)
13% disability benefits
3% child benefit
6% on miscellaneous
I’m surprised unemployment benefit wasn’t more. I’ve had to adjust my thinking! The figures suggest our structural problems of a low-pay and low-save society are much to blame. Perhaps lower taxes, higher wages at the bottom end, and incentives for personal pensions would do more good than concentrating on the annoying feckless fraudsters?
Reply Best to take the state pension out of the figures. It is an earned entitlement, not welfare
June 28, 2025
Indeed but the unemployed will also get housing benefits, child benefits, disability benefits and some of the employed with do rather few hours of work.
To reply:- indeed state pensions have been earned and paid for and the date we get them is later and later too. True the government squandered and lrgely wasted the money they took. Life expectancy recently has declined due to the large Covid Vaccine harms and Covid itself so will they reverse this? I suspect not. State pension less council tax, energy bills, water, tv licence tax… does not give you v. much. So let’s hope you have no rent, services charges or mortgage left!
June 28, 2025
The disability benefit is particularly pernicious. Anyone on it will find they depend on the disability for their income. Even if the body could heal, the mind won’t let it out of necessity. The condition becomes psycho-somatic and perpetual.
June 28, 2025
Reply to reply
I think you will find everyone on benefits regards it as an entitlement when it comes to the benefit they receive,
June 28, 2025
There is a thing called ‘pension benefit’ and then there is the earned ‘pension’.
The Pension is not a benefit. Do you think a pension from the private sector that you paid into is a ‘benefit’?
June 28, 2025
I suppose those who paid NI contributions are eligible for something. But then, given those same contributors also by and large voted for borrow and waste governments, that spent all their contributions on the feckless of the day rather than investing in things of value, perhaps their entitlement is in some doubt.
If my private pension company squandered all my contributions, I might well find myself with little or nothing. I just hope safeguards are in place so there isn’t a repeat of the Equitable Life scandal.
June 28, 2025
@Lynn Atkinson – in 2016 the Conservatives Changed the pension status to ‘a benefit’ when the brought in the so-called new pension.
But you are right in thinking if you pay in to qualify then how can that be a ‘benefit. If National Insurance was as it was first sold to us you would also be correct – it is now just tax.
However if you don’t pay NI, don’t contribute you effectively get the same pay out with different wording. Its the corruption of our Legislators they no longer do what they infer
June 28, 2025
The government publishes data under “How public spending was calculated in your tax summary” which was updated 20 December 2024 and offers a different breakdown to your AI results – State pensions are just above debt interest payments and half of welfare.
Welfare ‘Social Protection’ excluding state pensions 236.3 21.6%
Health Health 221.0 20.2%
State Pensions 124.6 11.4%
National Debt Interest 121.1 11.1%
Education Education 111.5 10.2%
Defence Defence 56.8 5.2%
Public Order & Safety Public Order & Safety 47.7 4.4%
Transport 46.2 4.2%
Business & Industry Economic Affairs 45.6 4.2%
Government Administration 22.8 2.1%
Housing and utilities (e.g. street lights) 19.9 1.8%
Environment – Environment protection 15.3 1.4%
Culture (e.g. sports, libraries, museums) Recreation, Culture & Religion 13.0 1.2%
Overseas Aid 7.2 0.7%
Outstanding payments to the EU [footnote 2] 6.5 0.6%
July 1, 2025
Other than pension credit, which is an unearned welfare benefit. We are going to have much more pension credit because older people are arriving without entitlement, they won’t get no money from our generous state, they’ll get housed and pension credit.
June 28, 2025
To implement any of your ideas Sir JR, we would need a sensible British people first government. We have a far-left, two-tier, u-turning, clueless, rabble.
Not that the previous shower were much better.
June 28, 2025
When was the last “sensible British people first government”? Even Thatcher buried us further into the dire EU, gave us the dire John Major and his evil ERM fiasco, closed many grammar schools, left rigged markets in education, housing, banking, transport… increased red tape and failed to cut taxes or the state back sufficiently. She even fell for climate alarmism. But clearly far better than all the rest from Wilson onwards to two Tier inclusive. Truss showed some sense but was removed by the blob after a few days. She got the blame for a vast debt and QE build up by Sunak and Boris! Blamed quite wrongly by Labour, the BoE and the Sunak Con-Socialists alike.
June 28, 2025
And before that you need to define what constitutes a British person.
In my view is those who are from England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales – or any multiple of those 4 tribes.
June 29, 2025
This could be crystalized as “having both parents proved to be directly descended from persons recorded in the 1841 census.”
July 1, 2025
Well, that could get difficult plenty of people don’t know who their father is, going back generations.
June 28, 2025
Companies that employ overseas workers fruit picking comes to mind should be required to carry health insurance so if they have accident or taken ill they are not a cost to NHS. Attendance allowance needs to be reviewed. There are load of savings. But they will all get bogged down in government. Totally unrelated why when we have companies struggling with energy costs why are changes not coming till 2027.
June 28, 2025
Do not worry the Eco loon ED Miliband’s Net Zero department sent a health and safety inspector on a lavish 10,000-mile round trip – to check the hotels were up to scratch for his COP beano. I am sure the deluded hypocrite & PPE graduate will sort it all out for us!
June 28, 2025
Indeed why not go one stage further, every entry into the Uk needs to produce a health insurance policy document, or alternatively sign a disclaimer with regards to health treatment.
June 28, 2025
There are machines that pick fruit.
June 28, 2025
Lynn
Indeed there are, and they are becoming more plentiful, sophisticated, and wide ranging as the years pass by.
From our rented holiday Villa in France where we go most years, we overlook thousands of grape vines, all machine picked now.
Does not even pay to send out pickers to collect the few grapes that may have been missed, so they do not bother any more.
Only the very expensive wines and champagne tend to be hand picked now.
Amazing what farm machinery can do now, if you can afford the investment, but then many farmers in the Uk must be thinking why bother,. if most of the investment will go in future tax raids, IHT, etc.
Stayed in a UK holiday cottage this year, elderly farmer has now given up on Farming for a living as they can earn just as much simply renting out a few buildings each year, rather than work the land for all the hours in the day, so he just rents out the fields simply for livestock grazing/feed to others.
July 1, 2025
The vineyards should make it part of the vacation experience, and you can pick your own grapes (with a low purchase cost), and excess grapes can be traded in for a glass or bottle of wine.
June 28, 2025
Indeed but often they cost more than pickers do in practice, plus they need more skilled people to programme and repair them and are less flexible. The capital investment in automation then only being used for the short picking seasons. Whereas the pickers can do other jobs the rest of the year.
June 29, 2025
Machinery moves from Farm to farm, whilst I agree yes there is a growing season, different varieties of the same crop can be harvested at different times for more efficient use of machinery.
Like all things efficiency depends upon scale and best usage of equipment.
June 29, 2025
As usual you are behind the times – agricultural robotics are under continual development with (semi)autonomous multi-role adaptable robotics a key path supporting planting, fertilizing, spraying, weeding, and harvesting.
There is an open-source design available for several years for a “farmbot” that will look after your raised bed of veggies.
June 28, 2025
@Rodney Needs – strange, that if a UK Citizen visits another Country they know they need health insurance. But the UK doesn’t require in reciprocation it just gives away from a dying pot
June 28, 2025
Agreed, “People seeking entry on work visas should not qualify for benefits” but they do now then?Disgraceful. How long has this been going on? I blame Clement Attlee.
June 28, 2025
Eligibility depends on immigration status. Some visas, like those with “no recourse to public funds,” restrict access to benefits.
June 28, 2025
In theory, but Narrow Shoulders of this blig states that his wife and child, under that restriction, successfully claimed benefits.
The system is broken. It does not matter what the documents say, only what actually happens because the world is NOT like the overwhelmingly law-abiding British.
June 30, 2025
I can confirm that we managed to access child benefit for 9 years. 6 months of which George Osborne did not thieve from me.
My wife did benefit from the pension credit all that time, 5 years of which she had no recourse to public funds. Thereafter she was the holder of a British passport
June 28, 2025
The awful truth is that many people on disability benefits (including mostly those who are not so disabled they cannot work) or with children are getting so much in benefits it is not worth their while going out to work, let alone their benefits far exceeding what many pensioners get. The benefits cap needs to be lowered to take it below what pensioners get and what many pensioners have to live on. That not merely saves money and makes economic sense but is also just.
June 28, 2025
Sir John, you may have failed t see the now huge problem within the benefits system and who controls who gets what within that system.
The benefits system is now almost entirely populated and controlled by the very immigrant communities that see it their duty to hand fellow immigrants all they can to them. The system has become so compromised there are now agents offering advice on how to get as much as is possible to get out of the benefits pot.
We are being systematically impoverished by outside takers that have never paid anything into the benefits pot now emptying it and will continue to do that while there is money available.
Only a strong government with an equally strong leader can stop this state robbery because robbery is what it is.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man or possibly woman. We will see.
June 28, 2025
Well then, no need for complicated systems to determine eligibility. Simply, if you were not born in this country, no benefits until 5 years of proven payments into the system.
June 28, 2025
“The benefits system is now almost entirely populated and controlled by the very immigrant communities that see it their duty to hand fellow immigrants all they can to them. ”
So are the immigration and asylum systems.
June 28, 2025
so it would seem !
June 28, 2025
+1 so it would seem !
June 28, 2025
+1
June 28, 2025
The link between prisons and welfare is inseparable.As prisoners become older they need high level Nursing and medical care, physiotherapy and daily care.
June 28, 2025
and the family left behind outside are very likely to have become full benefit claimants.
June 28, 2025
Once again the problems noted here, and the solutions, revolve around too many uneducated people coming into this country with no hope that they can pay their way, or their taxes, or contribute effectively to the economy.
HMG know this but persist with allowing so many illegals into the country for their own reasons, so we know HMG is not being honest about ‘stopping the boats’.
This is a decaying society, morally, economically and certainly in health, which doesn’t reflect well on government policies and intentions. Our food and water contain chemicals so our health is non-optimum. HMG inspires despair rather against the future with their wasteful and often spiteful ways – is it any wonder there are so many sick and so many that cannot cope mentally.
The answer can only be to first get rid of a government that is doing all the wrong things, followed by:
– stop all immigration;
– revamp taxation, reduce it and make day to day living cheap;
– stop punishing people for having ability and success, or because they are old;
– privatise the civil service and the NHS;
– encourage investment from abroad.
If we carry on as we are now what will be left of this country when we reach the date when Net-0 is fully realised?
June 28, 2025
What will there be when we reach Net Zero? Well there won’t be any net, so it will be just, Zero…..
June 28, 2025
Great wisdom.
If only you could have been at the heart of the party in power for over a decade to implement it all
June 28, 2025
Why does UK accepts a higher proportion of asylum seekers than other EU countries
An overdose of naivety with Home Office staff willing to accept well rehearsed reasons for seeking asylum
It borders on farce
June 28, 2025
I suspect the individual background of many Home Office personnel, as well as those working in the Human Rights scam, has a great deal to do with it.
June 28, 2025
EASY…..do a deal with Beavis. There will be thousands of empty tents left at Glasto soon.
Put a soup kitchen inside the wire fencing, Toilets already there. There were no baths where they walked from their country. Broadcast that NO benefits will be available and your turn to get sent back is coming soon.
June 28, 2025
Their security is far better than the south coast. The immigrants can sit inside the enclosure looking at the “No borders” banners with little prospect of escape.
June 28, 2025
Off Topic.
Hundreds of bodies responsible for overseeing and running parts of the NHS in England will be scrapped, the government has said. The organisations to be abolished include Healthwatch England, which advocates on behalf of patients, and the National Guardian’s Office, which supports whistleblowers. Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the current system was too complex and the NHS needed “more doers and fewer checkers”.
The changes are being made as part of Labour’s 10-year health strategy set to be published next week.
In total 201 organisations will be scrapped, including bodies set up by the last Conservative government to develop health plans for their local areas.
The organisations to be abolished include: Healthwatch England, set up in 2012 to speak out on behalf of NHS and social care patients, and to advise ministers when services were not up to scratch.
The National Guardian’s Office, created in 2015 to encourage the NHS to support whistleblowers and train a network of 1,200 peer support ‘guardians’.
The Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB), which has recently carried out investigations into a range of subjects including the design of portable oxygen systems and the impact of ambulance delays.
The decision comes after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced in March that NHS England, the administrative body responsible for the day-to-day management of the health service, would be axed and the system brought under closer government control.
Ministers said there were more than 150 bodies responsible for regulating or assessing healthcare services in England, and they risked overwhelming staff with “uncoordinated” guidance.
“Over the past decade and a half, an overly complex system of healthcare regulation and oversight has been left to spiral out of control,” said Mr Streeting.
Sounds great but I’ll bet the 10 year plan doesn’t start until at least 2030!
June 28, 2025
@Mickey Taking – all plans are for after the next election, then things will be reviewed.
June 28, 2025
All your proposals are simple commonsense and should be uncontroversial. So why doesn’t the government implement these or similar? Because it favours non-British cultures and wants to replace British culture with something else, anything else. This is the only possible explanation that fits all of its measures since taking office.
June 28, 2025
Stop giving benefits and NI credits to people who don’t even live in this country. We are building up a future liability to pay the State Pension to these people who have never contributed anything to this country. Other countries don’t do this, why are we doing it?
Also, we are creating a two-tier benefit system where UK residents will be means-tested for child benefit and winter fuel allowance, but those living and paying their taxes abroad won’t be. Yet again, we are second-class citizens.
June 28, 2025
I would outsource the DWP fraud department to the private sector and introduce AI to identify the blatant fraud being carried out. I would tighten up border force controls so we know who we have living in this country.
June 28, 2025
Welfare spending is a bottomless pit, and no Labour Government will curb it. At some future date, we will have a Government that has no choice but to severely restrict benefits, because we will run out of money.
The ignorance of the Labour rebels is frightening. Obviously, they think the UK can carry on running up debt with no consequences.
As to what can be cut, any half-competent business person could easily cut £100 billion off government spending.
Five years ago, government spending was approximately £890 billion per year; today, it is around £ 1,300 billion per year. One hundred billion is about 8% of the spending. A serious Chancellor and PM could find that with no problem, but they won’t even look.
June 28, 2025
The team in power now were dealt a poor hand by the previous incumbents. Socialist ideology appears to be based on keep taking and spending other people’s money for your own personal esteem and ideological dreams.
The ‘bad hand’ is the 70 years high on tax and borrowing racked up by those lurking in the shadows, wanting power more continuity of their failure, while denying their collective responsibility for the situation we now are faced with.
So, for Reeves to ramp up more Socialist spending for the purpose of ideology, she became the ‘straw’ that broke the camel’s back. There was no room for any manoeuvres.
June 28, 2025
1. Cut any and all welfare payments/benefits to immigrant (illegal and non illegal)
If required provide a secure tented location and provide food …..no goodies whatsoever
If they’re refugees fleeing for their life, they’d welcome a save secure area … i.e the hebrides army camp
June 28, 2025
@glen cullen – it could be reasoned that if the compulsory National Insurance we have to pay was just that an insurance full back, then those in receipt would be just those that paid in. Instead NI has become a deceit created be successive governments it is just a re-wording of income tax. The way forward would be to make it what it is inferred it should be and let it do what the Insurance Industry does invest to secure its future.
Unfortunately the years and years of slight of hand is difficult to undo.
Some in authority mumble about a sovereign wealth fund, they look at the Norwegian model, its fund holds assets worth $1.8 trillion, it is world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, it owns 1.5% of all listed stocks globally.
The UK’s debts are on their own some $3.7 trillion, because UK Governments don’t like investing they prefer spending other peoples futures. – Kicking the can down the road is the phrase.
June 28, 2025
When you enter a Country by illegal means you are by default a criminal.
If a UK citizen enters a foreign country, say a country that is sending us their criminals who pays? Who gives them money? Who provides cost free legal defence? It is time for perspective, the good old reciprocal fairness treatment of people. All those entering the UK should be treated as a UK citizen would be on entering their home county would be. People escaping France, the EU, are not escaping oppression and fear of death.
The expectation of tearing up and abusing the human rights the payee needs to be rebalanced in favour of those that pay
June 28, 2025
The philosophy around asylum needs to change. Rather than something that someone claims it should be something the authorities grant for sensible reasons.
Just because you ran away from an austere regime in your own country doesn’t mean you have the right to reside anywhere you please.
If you are a nuclear weapons expert in a pariah country, and have escaped, it’s in this country’s interest to grant you asylum and take you out of circulation.
June 28, 2025
@Dave Andrews – on balance the UK is extremely good at granting people asylum when they are fleeing from oppression.
What we have is an industry those we call people traffickers, the UK legal profession that are seeing a pot of gold and going for it. All funded by a taxpayer that is running out of resources to pay. It is hard to rationalise that we see those escaping France and the EU as fleeing oppression, the UN’s own mandate is for the first safe country should be the one to help. Is the UK the first safe Country?
In practice we have people chasing an freeloading economic future, in doing so they become the ones that steal places from those genuinely escaping opression
June 28, 2025
Just watching Miriam Cates on GB News. She is worried about the proportion of retirees versus (younger) tax payers – especially in relation to the NHS. It seems to me this is linked to the issue of increasing levels of welfare payment…
Let’s first put this in context. Income Tax is about 30% of total UK taxation, with the top 1% paying 28% and the top 10% paying 60% of total Income Tax ! (of course 35% pay no income tax at all). This Government is also busy encouraging that 1% to move elsewhere, which I would suggest is a more immediate threat to Income Tax receipts than an ageing population.
Secondly, being retired doesn’t mean you don’t pay Income tax, most especially with tax thresholds frozen (and probably about to be extended for another 2-3 years come the Autumn). Every pensioner is also still be subject to VAT and probably Fuel Duty, Council Tax (increasingly to support Social Care), maybe Stamp Duty and of course, eventually Death Duties (assuming home ownership in the SE).
So I question this whole idea of an ‘ageing population’ not contributing enough, it seems as misplaced to me as the ‘rich’ aren’t paying their fair share – which of course they do (unless you drive them away)
Having just paid £620 (Luxury Car Tax) VED on my 3 year old ICE car for the pleasure of driving some 3000 miles per year (on far from ‘Luxury’ pot-holed roads) I think we could start by looking very seriously at where we spend our Welfare – and I think Motability would be an excellent place to begin, followed closely by Face to Face interviews for anyone with less than a well documented severe (physical) disability.
June 28, 2025
Over 50% of the public pay in less tax in total than they get back in direct benefits, housing subsidies or housing benefits, schools for their children, child benefits, free medical care. This leaving zero for defence, police, roads, public transport, social services, justice, prisons, university subsidies, pensions from them…
June 28, 2025
Contentious? why does anyone get Motability when they are retired, ie not working?
I know of a person who used a normal battery scooter, even did shopping with it. In recent years it has been replaced with a new car.
June 28, 2025
MT
The Motability scheme is busted and not fit for purpose, as I understand it you do not even have to have a driving licence to get a Subsidised car any more, as long as you have a dedicated driver (possible family member) your good to go, and so are they !
Cheap motoring for some eh.
June 29, 2025
It should also not be assumed that retirees are not contributing to society; many are by working in charity shops; volunteering, and therefore keeping many services going; looking after grandchildren so their parents can work etc.
June 28, 2025
It is reasonable to require any temporary immigrants to pay health insurance and indeed some visas do require a payment to the NHS, but there is no audit to show that payment is made or that the arrangement isn’t loss making. For those who give birth while being a temporary visitor there should be an extra payment as insurance against pregnancy complications and for the newborn. Premiums may need to be set against assessed risk from a medical examination. Perhaps a privatised scheme might ensure better record keeping and economics. We should consider whether birth to a temporary immigrant should grant citizenship, or whether they should register as citizens of the mother’s country.
June 28, 2025
“People seeking entry on work visas should not qualify for benefits.”
According to the government website:
Skilled Worker Visa – No Recourse to Public Funds
Graduate Visa – No Recourse to Public Funds
Health and Care Worker Visa – No Recourse to Public Funds
Overseas Domestic Worker Visa – No Recourse to Public Funds
Tier 2 Minister of Religion Visa – No Recourse to Public Funds
International Sportsperson Visa – No Recourse to Public Funds
Scale-Up Worker Visa – No Recourse to Public Funds
Temporary Work Visa – No Recourse to Public Funds
Youth Mobility Scheme Visa – No Recourse to Public Funds
Global Business Mobility Visa – No Recourse to Public Funds
Innovator Founder Visa – No Recourse to Public Funds
Start up Visa – No Recourse to Public Funds
Global Talent Visa – No Recourse to Public Funds
High Potential Individual Visa – No Recourse to Public Funds
Representative of an Overseas Business Visa – No Recourse to Public Funds
Perhaps you could tell us which people seeking entry on work visas currently do have access to benefits.
Reply People on such visas can apply for help to avoid “destitution”. They can change category legally or illegally. Asylum seekers can claim housing and an allowance.All can use the free NHS
June 30, 2025
Asylum seekers are not seeking entry on work visas.
Access to the NHS requires paying the NHS surcharge (£1,035 per year in addition to the cost of the visa) in additional to all other tax contributions.
Destitution claims are primarily for those on family-related visas, not work-related ones.
The reality is that people seeking entry on work visas do not have access to benefits. One would hope that a former long-term MP would be better informed.
Reply Once someone has got here they have a number of legal and illegal routes into benefits and free public services.
June 29, 2025
I would also suggest that all benefits were classified as taxable earnings not just pensions.