Mr Peter Bedford

So there we have it: a Prime Minister not in control, a Work and Pensions Secretary with her hands tied behind her back, and a Chancellor now scrambling to find ways to balance the books after months of reckless spending. This shoddy attempt at welfare reform has revealed something that the nation has learned over the last year: Labour did not plan for government. We all know that the welfare bill is enormous, with more than £150 billion being spent on benefits for working-age adults. A staggering one in four claim to have some form of disability; that is simply unsustainable. The Government had a prime opportunity in their first year in office—their honeymoon period—to bring about long-term reforms, yet this half-baked Bill, which has already been hastily rewritten to appease hard-left Government Members, does not even achieve the £5 billion of savings originally intended. Worse, it leaves us with a two-tier system from a two-tier Prime Minister. We all know why the Chancellor needs these savings: she will go down as the Klarna Chancellor—spend now, pay later. After all, she has blown taxpayers’ money on 25 more pointless quangos.