Labour is the party that puts more people onto benefits. Its economic policy is destroying jobs, forcing more people to rely on the state. Its migration policy is letting in more low pay and no pay foreigners, keeping pay down and reducing job opportunities for UK citizens. Its education policy is leaving too many young people unemployed when they leave school and College.
Controlling this is meant to be a government priority. First turn off the supply of visas for people wanting low paid jobs or wishing to come in as dependents. 1.3 million foreigners are on Universal Credit, so let us stop new arrivals who would qualify.
Second, ask more of those on UC to seek work. Over 4 million do not have to look for a job, a big escalation in numbers over the last seventeen months. Why? Of course the severely disabled and ill should not have to, but many now with no work requirement could and should be looking for work. As 39% of all on PIP have a mental health condition, not a physical disability, many of these would find some work helped with their condition.
Third, intensify actions to get the 940,000 young people not in education, training or employment into work.
Fourth, smash the gangs to stop so many illegals relying on hotels or housing and benefits provided by the state.
Many of us are gappy to pay tax to help the disabled or those temporarily out of work. Ee are not happy to pay for a growing multitude of benefit recipients not looking for work , especially when recently arrived from abroad.
November 23, 2025
Indeed yet another evil facet of Reeves and this government’s doom loop agendas. Ever more on benefits living off the backs of fewer and fewer productive workers. Even these few productive workers endlessly hobbled & distracted from productive work by endless red tape and huge over taxation and regulation.
November 23, 2025
I think smash the gangs has been totally discredited. Our people have gone to France and destroyed several boats abs engines. They have found proof that the whole scam is being perpetrated by governments and charities. Every year the tories were in office immigration increased culminating in the Boris Wave of which 83% are on benefits. And they were legal.
500 per day signing up for UC. Recently Bangladeshi family as reported in Parliament by Lee Anderson getting £59k in benefits.
By accident or design the welfare bill will bankrupt us. The great reset. Build back better. Agenda 30. UN.
November 23, 2025
Correct. They are deliberately “levelling down” the west by importing millions of 3rd world welfare claimants.
Those who are brought here legally or illegally and obtain a source of income (which will in most cases be made up through a combination of a low earned income plus welfare top-ups) will send regular remittances to their extended family “back home” ….. draining money from the British economy and transferring it to the 3rd world.
The UN supports this process …. it is a facet of their Agenda 2030 policies.
The Eastern Europeans were doing the same thing when Blair opened up the borders to them.
The British economy is being literally bled dry …. and the British Establishment is doing it deliberately. As Gus o’Donnell said, they consider it their job to improve the welfare of the world ….. and make British taxpayers pay for it.
November 23, 2025
I came across a speech by Peter Sutherland, the ‘father of globalism’ of the Fabian Society. The following is a quote from 2006.
” From 2026, we must use migration to turn the English people into a minority. This will allow us to undermine the identity of the native English and important a new majority that will end the very idea of England. This is critical for globalism to take hold of England.”
I consider this to be evil!
November 25, 2025
Irish with a grudge.
November 23, 2025
LL, Agree it does come down to whether we balance numbers. We are at the point soon when workers can no longer/will no longer pay enough extra tax to cover higher welfare bills. Sir John Redwood’s “Welfare isn’t fair” Youtube video spells it out.
November 23, 2025
Sorry, Jacob Rees-Mogg, not John Redwood. Two people who both talk sense – they are a dying breed.
November 23, 2025
Alas Jacob though usually v. sound and entertaining he does go rather bonkers when his Catholic religion rather takes over from his rational brain. He also is still a believer in the climate alarmism religion (another just a touch on the brakes person like Kemi, Sunak, Coutino…). Rather too little understanding of physics, energy, CO2, climate, battery mining, the sun or engineering I assume!
Reply Stop misleading over Conservative MP views. Jacob, the Leader of the Opposition and the Shadow NZ Secretary are strong critics of current net zero policies, calling for drilling for our own oil and gas, for no next round of expensive renewables locking us into dear electricity, and calling for an end to the vehicles and heat pumps policies.
November 23, 2025
I have heard J Rees-Mogg very recently say he is still a believer in net zero but just wants what is essentially just a touch on the brakes. The May net zero lunacy was just nodded through without even a vote – so bonkers were nearly all the Tory MPs. With Miliband’s moronic Climate Change Act only a tiny few (including yourself JR) who very sensible did not vote. It was not even properly costed.
Tell the touch on the brakes, sit on the fence tories to get real or me. I am just reporting what they say. Yes CO2 will warm very slightly, yes mankind does affect the climate as does millions of other things. But CO2 and a little warmer are both good things on balance. There really is no climate emergency and a war on plant, tree, crop food and the gas of life is truly moronic and suicidal. Especially as EVs, renewables, walking, cycling, public transport… do not even save any sig. CO2 anyway.
Reply JRM is very critical of NZ policies
November 23, 2025
Coutinho was the energy secretary in the previous Conservative government and during her tenure in 2023, she said “nothing will distract us from achieving net zero or driving forward renewables”.
But Coutinho told Political Thinking she had been on a “journey” since then.
“I thought this was a good thing and we needed to be careful about how we were doing it,” Coutinho said.
“But the more I got under the bonnet, the more I realised, actually, what we’re doing is counterproductive.”
Well Coutino is almost getting there I suppose. It is a vastly exaggerated scam as Trump says. Clare (Maths & Philosophy Oxon.) and Kemi the computer “engineer” are surely bright enough to realise it is a vastly exaggerated scam! So why not say so!
Reply They have both set out the heed for a complete change to a cheap energy policy. Stop living in the past.
November 23, 2025
PeteB
I think we have passed that point already, by a long way.
We now have many people deliberately avoiding work because they choose to live on Benefits because work simply does not pay enough, their excuse.
The truth is Benefits are far too large in many cases, and easy to get it would seem if you know how to play the rules.
November 23, 2025
Well it does not pay enough after tax, NI, works clothing, commuting costs, council tax… why bother working for 40+ hours to be perhaps £20 better off for the week. A sum you can easily save by more efficient shopping, home brewing, ditching you BBC tax, cooking more efficiently, collecting wood, selling items on ebay, a bit of bartering with friend and neighbours, DIY… and that is without any illegal black market activity.
November 23, 2025
We are seeing more and more claimants of UC it being obvious low pay workers look at immigrants and illegals and know they are better off….why work and pay taxes?
November 23, 2025
Another article where obvious problems are identified and solutions/remedies are offered.
However, we all know this government is not going to pursue any of the solutions.
Maybe an article about what happens then might make a change?
November 23, 2025
@Lifelogic – I feel the need to correct you, or at least in my opinion – “Reeves and this government” They wouldn’t be able to create this destruction without support of the majority in Parliament. I would go as far as suggesting close on 600 of the 650 MPs in the HoC are comfortable with the direction being taken. The UK Parliament is dominated by Socialist, desperate to keep on building on a beholden electorate
This shower are Parliaments chosen Government, we the electorate, the ones empowering and paying had to take what we were given. Just 18,976 people voted for Reeves, while just 18,884 voted for TwoTierKier. The UK electorate is 46,114,643 with just 9,708,716 voting for Labour candidates. As often quoted that just is at it best just 21% of the electorate.
LL, I know you know the figures but always worth repeating to show the perspective.
Reply The Conservative and Reform MPs have all been very critical and have urged public spending reductions, opposing tax rises in the last budget and the ones to come.
November 24, 2025
@Reply – that surely has to be countered by ‘why didn’t they’. As we are told repeatedly told the Government of the day can effect changes of the previous team. The Conservatives had the opportunity and blew it, they own the 14 years of growth in taxes and borrowing bringing us a 70 year high. So being ‘critical’ ? when the proven actions say differently. Hence they lost the election, they disenfranchised the Conservative voter. So the Conservative voter stayed at home – they didn’t vote Labour! They have also lost the next election because they didn’t refresh the team with new blood but instead chose continuation and continuity with those that had the responsibility of the election failure.
As for Reform who knows, they are acting like the Liberal Democrats – say what they believe the electorate wants to hear, but there is no common message, different for each audiance
November 23, 2025
I think the Labour Party is captured by Islam.
November 23, 2025
or Lenin and Mao Zedong.
November 23, 2025
Hilary Benn on Any Questions on Friday went into an absurd defence of the net harm Covid “vaccines”. No one corrected him.
He said “we have not mentioned the huge success of the COVID vaccines. scientists did an extraordinary job…. One of the lessons we need to learn, given how much vaccine denial there is out there, in the World now. It is important we tell the truth about Vaccines. Vaccines save lives and so many people are trying to rubbish them for reasons frankly I do not understand.”
Let me try to explain Hilary here is the truth. Some vaccines save lives and some do far more harm than good. The statistics in countries that have released proper data on COVID Vaccines suggest, very strongly, that the various Covid vaccines did far more harm than good. They often did not even stop people catching Covid.
He talked about “the” vaccine” there were actually several Hilary and there were even huge batch variations differences in Injuries caused. In the UK Mr Benn your vile government are even fighting not to release the statistics broken down by vaccine status. Why would they do this if they had been safe and effective Hilary?
Some vaccines save lives but some “vaccines” are not safe and not even effective and often do more harms than good. Hopefully this is simple enough even for a PPE graduate like yourself to grasp. Look at the stats for Japan, South Korea and other places that have been honest with the vaccine harms data unlike the UK. It will all come out in the end.
November 23, 2025
I could call my cat a dog …. doesn’t make it one.
The Covid mRNA jabs are not traditional vaccines. They are an experimental, manipulated gene therapy. The WHO simply changed the definition of a vaccine in order to avoid the far more stringent processes they’d have needed to legalise them and also to “reassure” the public with “a noble lie.”
Imagine Johnson standing at the podium proclaiming “our marvellous Scientists have developed a manipulated gene therapy at record speed, which we want you all to take.”
November 23, 2025
Indeed. The Covid report praises the vaccines hugely “the UK’s vaccination programme was a remarkable achievement” but clearly in a hugely damaging net harm way “a negative achievement” unless killing and injuring people even young people and people who had already had covid was the aim. So did the inquiry not look at the damning statistics available from several countries (alas data is hidden in the UK)? – so we can draw our own conclusions as to what UK date shows). Or perhaps lawyers are just just incapable of understanding stats. or are they just lying? Could they not have to engaged a competent statistician to look at these damning stats.?
Boris in the Mail yesterday is hugely critical of the inquiry report but in totally the wrong way. Boris and the Inquiry are both deluded but in different ways. But on “vaccines” and lockdowns in rather the same way.
Basically Boris and Sunak pissed £500 billion away on net harm “vaccines” and net harm lockdowns. Vaccines even coerced into people with zero need of vaccines. The health, the young and people who had already had Covid! This pushed by the MHRA who were funded to a huge degree by Big Pharma! Well done Boris and Sunak.
Plus they and May pissed even more away on Net Zero and a mad energy policy!
November 23, 2025
Or a man called a woman… but then many Labour loons really do believe in a type of magical gender transubstantiation! So perhaps a tom cat can become a queen cat! But a dog is pushing it a bit far perhaps!
November 23, 2025
“mRNA jabs are not traditional vaccines“ indeed the dose cannot even be reliably controlled as people react very differently producing different doses. Many react with for example heart diseases, arrhythmias, blood clots, allergies and even cancer.
Of course the government, ONS and NHS could very easily release anonymised health data by vaccine numbers, types and status in the UK to prove or disprove this. Strange then they prefer to refuse to do this and use tribunals to disguise the reality. Now why might they want to do this I wonder?
November 23, 2025
Kenya’s High Court has suspended Bill Gates’ immunity from prosecution, targeting the Gates Foundation’s alleged exploitation of Africans.
Distrust in WHO vaccines grows, with claims of fertility damage echoing a 2014 tetanus scandal involving hCG-laced shots. Across Africa, from Nigeria to Ethiopia, outrage over infertility and corporate control fuels a continent-wide demand for accountability.
November 23, 2025
Third, intensify actions to get the 940,000 young people not in education, training or employment into work.As well as the lead swingers who have not done a day’s work in there life’s
Bring back some sort of national service and give them a choice Forces or Civi street work refuse no more handouts. Stop being soft with the work dodgers
November 23, 2025
Many in training are costing a lot (using loans that will rarely be repaid) and often training in little of any real value. Circa 75% of UK degrees for example. Let them work and train on the job with night school or day release!
November 23, 2025
What would the army do with the typical 20 something residents of Brighton that came out of s shared house, no doubt paid for by HB, tattooed head to foot and then sniffing the flowers in gardens as they went towards the Pride jamboree? I presume they were not going to work in the nearby refuse depot.
November 23, 2025
Stred
They would be overwhelmed, because we do not have enough trained people for so many recruits.
Sad fact of life is we could not even defend our own Country any more, as our armed forces have been hollowed out for decades.
November 23, 2025
4 million people on universal credit with no requirement to seek work! Politics of the madhouse.
I have also read there are circa 2 million unemployed. Is that additional to the 4 million?
Either way, until all those fit enough to work, are working. There is zero justification for immigration.
November 23, 2025
+1
November 23, 2025
Labour exhibits signs of MRSA: Morality Reverse Syndrome Atrophy.
It starts by claiming to do eventually whatever is best with patience and then does the complete opposite, worsening with its destructive effects. Eventually it wastes away.
November 23, 2025
No ! They are doing what the UN, WEF, EU and large corporations tell them. All better to asset strip the country.
November 23, 2025
We need a Government that will display the middle finger.
November 23, 2025
Smash the gangs is a piece of political rhetoric without foundation. The aim should be to eliminate the pull factors.
Reintroduce the idea that illegal arrival is a criminal offence that results in automatic incarceration, here or offshore, if return to country of origen is not an option on humanitarian grounds.
Take the French government to the International Court for the offence of facilitating human trafficking.
With the pull factor removed, who would pay to come illegally.
November 23, 2025
Illegal arrival is no longer illegal once the individual claims asylum, which they invariably do.
Many think safe routes are not the answer because they would just encourage more, but that isn’t true. If the French allowed us to open an office in Calais for individuals to claim asylum, they would remain in France unless approved. If they crossed without permission their asylum claim would then be refused because they didn’t go through the approved route, so keep them in detention until they can be returned to their home country. Instead of wandering around in the UK as they do currently, they would carry on wandering around in France until approved which would take ages if ever, so less people coming here not more.
Furthermore, ensure that any asylum claim has to be supported by a sponsor who would undertake responsibility to meet all the claimants costs so as not to burden the taxpayer. The state could approve anyone where they feel it’s in the interest of the UK to do so (eg take a nuclear weapons expert out of circulation).
Reply Conservatives legislated to stop people who come illegally from claiming asylum. Labour repealed this obvious measure instead of implementing it.
November 23, 2025
Although I am with you on taking the French government to court, our government seems complisent in this matter.
November 23, 2025
Yesterday, the DT reported:
“Pakistanis are exploiting holiday, work and student visa loopholes to get to Britain and lodge asylum claims in record numbers …. Nearly 10,000 Pakistanis entered the country with temporary visitor, work or student visas before then switching last year to claim asylum in an attempt to secure permanent residency in the UK, according to government data.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/22/pakistanis-holiday-visa-loophole-lodge-record-asylum-claims/
Pakistan is not at war. It is a member of the Commonwealth; it (claims to be) a democracy. Next door is India, with a large Muslim minority and a safe destination. There is no justification for Pakistani citizens to be claiming asylum in the UK.
Home Secretary Mahmood loudly proclaimed her plans to deprive visas from countries which refuse to take back their criminal migrants, including failed asylum seekers. She is trialling it with Angola, Namibia and the DR Congo …. who supplied about 10 individuals between them last year!
I wonder why she isn’t trialling it with Pakistan …. who supplied 10,000 last year (and the other hundreds of thousands already here). Etc ed
November 23, 2025
Donna
The simple solution is to stop and refuse ALL asylum Claims until our system is properly fixed with new rules and proper enforcement.
November 23, 2025
Donna
Depends on what they are claiming. Could be religious persecution, for example. That is what the acid attacker of the mother and child claimed, and got a priest to support his claim.
November 23, 2025
What religious persecution? If they are from the tiny Christian minority in Pakistan, they’ll be safe in India which doesn’t persecute Christians.
Perhaps the UK and Charles Windsor, as Head of the Commonwealth, could do something meaningful to try and stop Pakistan from persecuting Christians ….. like stopping all Aid and kicking them out of the Commonwealth, for instance?
November 23, 2025
India does persecute Christians.
November 23, 2025
“The Benefit bill is soaring” Yes, and it will continue to be the case in its present model.
Yes support the proven needy who cannot work for real medical and physical reasons, but only after face-face interviews in their own home.
The present system encourages snowflakes who PREFER not to work, or work for limited hours.
I also think Housing Benefit needs a complete re-think, as many of the younger generation could live with their parents, why are we subsidising their choice to leave a family home when others are paying for that choice.
We need to get some responsibility and work ethic back into peoples lives, otherwise people who are working at the moment will see no point in doing so.
November 23, 2025
We’ll have to start to assume as a default that young people live in the family home after age 18. I may have left home at 18 to go to university and I lived away from the family home thereafter. But that was 55 years ago. As they say, the past is a foreign country.
Some reasons why the 2nd. half of the 20th.C was so prosperous compared to the 21st.C have been set out at length by bloggers such as Dr Tim Morgan/Surplus Energy Economics and Dr Chris Martenson/Peak Prosperity. I see no real possibility of changing this. The kind of future which it implies is more consistent with a conservative political philosophy than with any other.
November 23, 2025
It’s Parliament’s job to control government spending by limiting supply. No one else can do it.
Supply used to be voted only after grievances had been addressed, and as a further brake on government rapacity taxes were difficult and troublesome to collect. Now MPs have no wish to limit spending, even if the whips let them, and collecting taxes is easy and automatic.
The cause: political parties’ monopoly of Parliament. The result: pointless Parliaments and defenceless taxpayers. The remedy: Parliamentary voting by secret ballot.
November 23, 2025
It’s not ‘smash the gangs’ that needs to happen, as these gangs don’t exist. What you need to smash are the charities and NGOs that are facilitating this invasion. You must take us for fools if you expect us to believe that dirt-poor Africans can afford to pay smuggling gangs thousands of pounds to travel halfway across the world. Just look at the many drone videos showing charities handing out life jackets to these illegal migrants and ask why they aren’t being arrested. To make matters worse, the British taxpayer is supporting these open-border charities.
Politicians like Starmer are either stupid or complicit.
November 23, 2025
The dinghies are being sent back to France on an unregistered article. Why aren’t they being destroyed. There’s plenty of evidence on YouTube.
November 23, 2025
They’re complicit. It is UN POLICY.
November 23, 2025
Clearly both stupid & complicit and surely evil with it, with his two tier justice lunacy and his political prisoners!
November 23, 2025
The gangs do exist. They organise transport right across Europe. Their operation is a well oiled machine, way beyond the wit of anyone in government. Do you think Patrick Christys would be taken in by a distraction when he identified the criminal operators in these gangs?
November 23, 2025
It’s no good complaining more people aren’t finding jobs, when the government has embarked on a course of beating up employers. Anyone with a successful one man business should be warned against employing anyone when another burden from the government is just round the corner. School leavers with no employment history are especially to be avoided. Moreover, why should anyone risk their savings on a new venture when they don’t know what’s round the corner by way of more tax and legislation to make their business plan fail?
November 23, 2025
DA
Been that way for years, but it has got worse recently I would agree
November 23, 2025
“Labour is the party that puts more people onto benefits.”
Thereby defiling its very name. Is it time that the “party of work” accepted that it would be more accurately described as the Skiving Party or the Scrounging Party, echoing where its core voter base now comes from?
November 23, 2025
Good morning.
Not just economic policy, but political policy as well. They intend to increase the state dependent base and thereby their voter base.
All those rich people, or someone with enough to take from, must be made to pay.
“From each according to their ability. To each according to their needs”
November 23, 2025
“Fourth, smash the gangs to stop so many illegals relying on hotels or housing and benefits provided by the state.”
Unidentified, illegal migrants should be held in secure tented encampments not put up in hotels or HMOs, given £70/week pocket money, mobile ‘phones, free transport, entertainment and legal fees and the freedom to roam our streets. Socialism depends upon making and keeping people poor and we are now seeing the inevitable result of electing socialist Parliaments since 1997 who have given away their authority to make decisions to the fifth column Civil Service, 444 quangos and in particular, the activist judiciary. If we do have another GE and it is won by a non-socialist party who wishes to halt this sabotaging of the UK then they are going to need to put together a comprehensive plan of how they will bring back control to Parliament in order to obtain the mandate necessary to make the wholesale changes necessary.
November 23, 2025
These flawed political choices are destroying our country. We have far too many people on benefits, milking a broken and over generous system. No one entering our country illegally should receive benefits – ever. Government is allowing too many people with low or no skills into our country legally. They are a net burden on the state, a burden we cannot afford. Where will all these people live? We also have ‘an explosion’ of people, many seriously overweight, using vehicle disability passes. Our fine medieval town is now festooned with vehicles parking and displaying disability passes! This huge increase has happened in the last five years and it’s unacceptable. European towns don’t have this level of disability or indeed large areas for disability parking. Mental health conditions are also being used to avoid work. This cannot be acceptable. It’s clear some people including NEETS are gaming an easily exploited system. Our over generous benefit system harms those genuine cases where people and their families need State assistance and this applies to those with genuine disabilities. Extending the two child benefit CAP will place an intolerable burden on an already broken benefits system. What a mess.
November 23, 2025
The headline unemployment rate is 5% but if you add in all those on benefits who aren’t required to look for work the rate is 15%. This is not sustainable.
November 23, 2025
@Roy Grainger – that’s the idea, the plan. Add in the 6 million that work for the State and Labour, Parliament is focused on electioneering – a Socialist Parliament is the only plan
November 23, 2025
The level of mass legal and illegal immigration we have had inflicted on us in recent decades is deliberate Globalist policy. There is no point demanding the Government “stop the boats; smash the gangs; and dis-incentivise it etc” …. they aren’t going to. They are implementing UN Policy, which they support, to facilitate it.
You can read it here, in the UN’s Global Compact for Refugees and Migration:
“Global Compact
The Global Compact for Migration is the first-ever UN global agreement on a common approach to international migration in all its dimensions. The global compact is non-legally binding. It is grounded in values of state sovereignty, responsibility-sharing, non-discrimination, and human rights, and recognizes that a cooperative approach is needed to optimize the overall benefits of migration, while addressing its risks and challenges for individuals and communities in countries of origin, transit and destination.”
https://refugeesmigrants.un.org/migration-compact
As I’ve said repeatedly, we are being forced to “take our fair share” and all the time people vote for the Westminster Uni-Party, it will continue.
November 23, 2025
“and you tell me,
over and over and over again, my fiend,
you don’t believe were on the eve of destruction”
HT to Barry Mc Guire.
November 23, 2025
Just what the Ukrainians are thinking as ego-Trump wants that ‘I stopped the war’ ( but agreed Putin could pilage and destroy what is now defended). Similar to what he allowed the Israelis to do to Gaza pretending they were after Hamas.
November 23, 2025
Are you sure it is ‘fiend’?
November 23, 2025
sometimes friends seem more like fiends. Case in point – Labour party activists.
November 23, 2025
We’ve seen this throughout history, its called buying votes
November 23, 2025
‘Labour is the party that puts more people onto benefits. Its economic policy is destroying jobs,’ Most commentators here recognise the ‘Plan’ if to survive you need the State for your existence, you become a beholden muppet and a Labour voter. Parliament supports this plan.
We have not seen a Parliament this century that will seek normality, it is full of those that are engaged in full-on electioneering at every stage. Knowing they will keep their job if they can keep bribing the voter with their own money.
It is often voiced that the taxpayer shouldn’t be funding election campaigns, guess what the UK Parliament does. Oblivious to purpose
November 23, 2025
There’s too much discrimination in the workplace, employers don’t want to manage employees with mental health issues.
November 23, 2025
All good suggestions, Sir John, as usual, but no one in this Government will listen. Here is another area where money is spent with no concern about the taxpayers who are paying for it.
An example of welfare spending out of control. Roughly 50 years ago, there were 35,000 of the small, one-person invalid carriages. Then the Motability scheme was set up, and last time I checked, there are about 1.2 million cars on it today. In the past, only people with genuine disabilities were allowed a car. Today, far too many people who are not genuinely disabled get a car for mental health, stress, ADHD, and other problems, like bad backs. No one objects to genuinely disabled people having a proper car for their mobility, and one they can take their families out in. Who, in government, audits the scheme? Who checks that cars are going only to people with genuine disabilities? Who says that is it? We have run out of money! Does anyone really believe that there are 1.2 million people with such bad health problems that they are entitled to a Motability car? Some research into the scheme might yield some real savings.
Reply It has been researched and proposals made. It is run by a charity that benefits greatly from VAT free buying of new cars and from taking the Mobility part of state benefits and using that money to service the tax free costs or providing vehicles. The government could in future restrict access to the Mobility component to those with serious physical disabilities and or could limit the tax relief to a more limited range of better value vehicles.
November 24, 2025
It has been reported that 20% of all new cars purchased are done so through the Motability scheme.
I think that says enough that the scheme has grown out of all proportion to real need and to obscene levels.
November 23, 2025
DEAR Sir JOHN,
November 24, 2025
‘… a mental health condition …’: easily faked.
November 24, 2025
To address an increasing welfare bill, all aspects of welfare spending should be looked at.
55% of current welfare spending is on those of retirement age. Where are the ideas in this article on that (which represents the majority of the spending).
58% of welfare spending on those of working age goes to topping up the incomes of those who are in work, primarily to subsidise low pay and help with high housing costs.
Under the Conservatives, the Universal Credit taper rate was 63% (it’s now 55%), even higher than the £100k income trap that sees the likes of GPs going part time because it’s not worth working full time. Where are the proposals to deal with such disincentives to work at all parts of the income scale?
Reply The state pension is not a welfare benefit. I apply the same rules over HB and UC for pensioners as for people of working age. I have proposed raising the retirement age to jeep the NI fund/ pension payments in balance.
November 24, 2025
No consideration of welfare spending should exclude the effect of policies such as the triple lock.
Long term, the triple lock is unsustainable. The IFS calculate that, by the 2070s, it is likely to cost somewhere in the region of an extra £44 billion at today’s prices. That’s very significant when compared to the impact of many of the tax change ideas that have been floating around.