The Telegraph, November 17, Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP
The Government’s Autumn Statement contained a welcome commitment to further welfare reform to get more people back to work following the pandemic.
The debate has centred lazily on why we should not uprate benefits in line with inflation. This argument failed to take into consideration the fact that benefits had over the last year already fallen below the rate of inflation by some 3.5 per cent. Failing to uprate them this time would have been very damaging for many families.
Building on my welfare reforms during the Coalition years would save both money and lives. When I brought in Universal Credit (UC) alongside other reforms, long-term unemployment fell by half. Even better, the percentage of children living in workless households fell from one in six to below one in ten, meaning that 700,000 more children were able to grow up with the simple but life-changing advantage of seeing their parents go out to work.
Astonishingly, even after all the turbulence of the pandemic, there remain a million fewer workless households today than there were before my reforms. Work also remains the single best route out of poverty.
New analysis from the Centre for Social Justice estimates that there has been a 23 per cent increase in the number of working-age benefits claimants since Spring 2020. This has increased costs by some £13 billion.
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