Helen Whately

I will set out how we will achieve our £36 billion in savings, if the hon. Gentleman will just sit back and listen. All we have heard from him and his party are plans to spend more money, and he simply reiterated that just now. We do not bring the benefits bill down by spending more money. This is not just about the welfare bill. Let us talk about what is happening to our country. A total of 6.7 million people of working age are not working and are on out-of-work benefits, and 700,000 of them are under the age of 25. This is a disaster. All those young people are sitting at home whiling away the day instead of going out to work and getting on with their lives. One in four adults now identify as disabled. Claims for personal independence payment have doubled since 2019, but the country is not twice as sick. Hundreds of thousands of households claimed more than £32,000 in benefits last year, and some of them claimed more than £60,000. That is almost twice the average take-home pay of a British worker. People who are working are asking, “Why do I bother?” We cannot expect taxpayers to keep funding a welfare system that is clearly so broken and so unfair.