Andy Burnham suggests stricter benefit conditions to cut welfare bill

The Prime Minister said ‘we’ve got to get really serious’ about slashing the ballooning costs.

Andy Burnham has signalled he could make it harder to claim benefits, saying the UK must “get really serious” about curbing the welfare bill.

The Prime Minister indicated ministers could tighten the conditions attached to receiving support, while insisting more should be provided to help people into work.

In his first major broadcast interview since entering Downing Street, Mr Burnham also promised to bring “substantial change” to the social care system “as quickly as I can”, although he declined to give a timeline.

Social care and welfare are two thorny issues Mr Burnham has inherited.

He faces the same problems with welfare that his predecessor Sir Keir Starmer tried to grasp: a growing number of people out of work claiming sickness benefits, and a Labour Party that has resisted attempts to overhaul the system for fear of the impact on people with disabilities.

The number of people in England and Wales claiming the main disability benefit, the personal independence payment (Pip), has passed four million for the first time – roughly doubling since 2019, with spending on Pip forecast to rise to more than £41 billion by the end of the decade.

Asked whether there were people claiming benefits who did not need them, the Prime Minister told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg he would not “go straight to blaming those people”.

“What I would say is that there are people in the benefits system, young people in their 20s, who have been I would say quite seriously let down because the support wasn’t there for them when it should have been there.”

Pressed on whether he could remove or reduce benefits for current claimants, Mr Burnham said: “It’s about changing the nature of the support and making some of the support conditional upon people taking opportunities that are presented in front of them.

“So you might increase the conditions required to receive benefits.

“I think it’s a good thing that the Government has given guarantees of opportunities for young people. And I think we need to continue down that approach and where mental health support is needed, for instance, it’s provided in work to support people in an opportunity.”

He added “we’ve got to get really serious as a country” at bringing the welfare bill down.

Mr Burnham kept Pat McFadden on as Work and Pensions Secretary, who may stage a fresh attempt at slashing the welfare bill after a backbench MP rebellion last year forced Sir Keir’s government into a partial U-turn over a £5 billion package of cuts.

While ministers are awaiting the final recommendations from two government-backed reports into youth unemployment and disability benefits, both have already identified significant shortcomings in the welfare system and called for action.

A Government spokesperson said: “The Timms review interim report is clear Pip, as designed in 2013, is no longer fit for purpose, and the final recommendations due this autumn will lay the foundation for reform.”

Mr Burnham also said in the interview: “I will go as quickly as I can on the reform of social care.”

He warned that, without change, “we will never get the NHS back to good waiting time standards” and that the health service “will collapse under the weight of trying to care for people who’ve really not needed to end up in the NHS system”.

Unlike NHS care, social care is not free at the point of use and high costs sometimes mean people are forced to sell their homes to pay for what they need.

People with savings worth more than £23,250 are not entitled to help with the cost of care from their local council.

Mr Burnham said: “Whatever political capital I have, I will put in to fixing broken social care and I would not want to leave office without having brought in the substantial change.”

But pressed on whether the overhaul would come before the next election, he said: “I can’t put a timeline on it right here, right now.”

Reform of the social care system is unfinished business for Mr Burnham, who set out plans for change while he was health secretary in Gordon Brown’s administration.

His 2010 plans to overhaul social care for the elderly with the creation of a national care service for England were scuppered by the Conservatives, who claimed Labour would levy a “death tax” to pay for it.

The Prime Minister is expected to make interventions on social care, youth unemployment and devolution in the coming days.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch challenged Mr Burnham to rule out tax rises or increased borrowing to pay for social care reform.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, she said her party was willing to work with the Government but only if two “core principles” were met.

She wrote: “First, any solution to the issues around social care must also be fair to those who have made provisions and saved up over the course of their lives.

“Second, the money must be found by reducing current spending. You must rule out any tax rises, or increased borrowing that will ultimately fall on the next generation to pay for.”

Elsewhere in his interview, Mr Burnham said his dog Axel would “have to stay up north” rather than moving into No 10 because “he wouldn’t get on with Larry” the Downing Street cat.