The mayor of London is the most high-profile figure to weigh into the debate over electric vehicle targets
On the Today programme this morning, the Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, a prominent leftwinger, indicated she might vote against legislation to implement the Alan Milburn proposals. She said she was concerned by the idea that the cuts would apply to people already getting sickness and disability benefits, and she said it appeared to be a breach of a promise given last year that people already getting Pip (the personal independence payment) would not lose it.
She said:
I just don’t think that you get a disabled young person into work by taking away the money that helps them to get into work.
The cuts seem to land on young disabled people, and many of them are in college already or already in work. So I don’t see how you fix the first by punishing the second.
Milburn said he concluded fundamental change was needed. He said:
The whole system needs to be changed, because the system is geared to keeping people inactive when, for young people in particular, it’s all about how can you make them active, get them earning, learning, so that they can rely on a wage rather than on a benefit. So, this is not about cutting one benefit, it’s about rebuilding the system from scratch.
He said that he decided existing claimants should be covered by the changes, not just new changes.
It’s a big rewriting of the welfare system. And obviously one of the conundrums was, ‘Should this apply to only new claimants?’
I came to the conclusion that wouldn’t be right, not least because you’ve got hundreds of thousands of young people stuck in a benefit system that is trapping them in poverty, giving them no prospect of prosperity or a job.
Milburn admitted this meant the plans would not be “pain-free”.
I’m not saying that any of this will be easy or that it will be pain-free because it won’t. You know, candidly, it could mean that some people will get less financial support at the beginning of their benefit claim than under the current system.
He said he wanted the system to prioritise improving people’s life chances in the long term over easing their financial hardship in the short term.
Actually for young people there’s a different debate that we’ve got to resolve, which is whether the priority is their longer-term life chances or just their immediate shorter-term finances.
I think what the current system does, it prioritises the latter over the former. I believe that’s the wrong choice and it needs to be the other way around.
He said, alongside the cuts to benefits he is proposing (see 11.56am), he wanted to improve employment support for young people.
We need to make sure people have the opportunities to get an apprenticeship, a job, a work placement, a pre-apprenticeship, a college place.
The menu of opportunities has got to increase. They’ll have a personal adviser, they’ll be coached all the way through. The adviser will stick with them until they have found a job or an apprenticeship or college place.
He also confirmed he wants to let young people do some work before they start losing benefits.
They will get immediate access to support if that’s what they need, if that’s the thing that is holding them back from being in education or training.
He admitted that offering better employment support and mental health support would mean his plans would initially cost money. According to the Times, he did not did not deny claims the whole package could cost £6bn. But, in the long run, there would be savings, he said.
Obviously this costs money. And frankly it’s a better use of money, both from the point of view of the young person and the taxpayer, to spend that money getting them into work rather than spending that money keeping them on benefits.
This is the sort of fatuous thing about this debate. You’ve got to invest upfront in order to get savings out of the back end. Cost-free is fatuous. So we’ve got to be candid about that. It will need significant investment.
To get a return on investment will take time … the only way of cutting the benefits bill sustainably is by getting young people into work, paying their taxes and being less reliant on benefits. Unless you are prepared to put the investment upfront it will never be possible.
He said he was “confident” that Andy Burnham was full-square behind the changes that are needed.”
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