DWP boss warns 'radical' changes are on way in massive crackdown

DWP boss warns 'radical' changes are on way in massive crackdown

by · Birmingham Live

The Department for Work and Pensions has warned millions of benefits claimants that "radical" changes are coming. In a bid to cut down on fraud and error, DWP boss Liz Kendall said overspend was “unavoidable” due to “the inheritance from the last government.”

Writing to MPs, Ms Kendall said: “The likely scale of the eventual breach has been known since March 2023. No action was taken by the previous administration to avoid it. Whilst this Government has already shown that it will not shy away from difficult decisions, this breach could only have been addressed through implementing immediate and severe cuts to welfare spending. This would not have been the right course of action.”

Responding to Ms Kendall’s statement in parliament, shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately said: “Through the 2010s, in government, we broadly kept to that cap; it was part of the discipline we applied to the welfare system to make it fair for the taxpayer and to put into practice the strongly held Conservative principle that if you can work, you should work.

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“But in the years during and since the pandemic—I will not shy away from telling the truth—things changed. While the number of jobs kept going up, the number of people economically inactive also started to go up, and with that, the welfare bill, and that is a big problem.

“We as a country have a moral and financial imperative to turn this around and in government we were working flat out to tackle it.” Anela Anwar, chief executive of anti-poverty charity Z2K, who co-ordinated the letter, said: “It is deeply disappointing to learn that this government wants to revive the previous government’s discredited and dangerous plans to remove vital financial support for seriously ill and disabled people.

“The government should abandon these cruel and poorly thought-out plans. And when it comes to consulting on hugely important changes to the benefits system, this government must not repeat the mistakes of the previous one. We need to a see a genuine consultation that gives disabled people a proper chance to respond to plans which could see them plunged into deep poverty.”