Labour is teaching benefit claimants that actions have no consequences

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Former Chief of Staff to the Chancellor of the Exchequer James Price says Andy Burnham has let the cat out the bag on Britain's ballooning benefits bill

Most of us understand the simple idea that actions have consequences. If we are lucky, we imbibe it from a young age in church. Paul says in his letter to the Galatians: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

If we are less lucky, we learn the hard way. Miss a flight, you have to buy another ticket and you’re late to your holiday. Or vote Labour, your taxes go up, your business dies, your streets get less safe.

The hope is that once you have had to reap that which you’ve sown, you learn from the experience and don’t make the same mistake. It was this important and educational principle that was put in place by the Conservatives in the Department for Work and Pensions.

Jobseekers on Universal Credit are asked to look for work, and to come to the Jobcentre when told.

If they miss their appointment, or are even late for it, their benefits can be cut. Indeed, nine in ten welfare sanctions are for exactly that. The system asks almost nothing, and those people who cannot manage almost nothing learn the hard way that their actions have consequences.

But the Welfare Party, sorry, the Labour Party, want to take away even this chance at developing some semblance of self-reliance.

The government thinks that fines after one offence are just too Draconian and mean, and people receiving others’ income in the form of welfare should be allowed multiple second chances.

Neil Couling, the DWP director general who runs Universal Credit, told MPs that "the kind of policy direction we are moving in is looking at repeated non-compliance rather than first offences getting a sanction".

He was answering John Milne, the Liberal Democrat MP for Horsham, who wanted to know whether the "milder sanctions regime" being trialled at his local Jobcentre might go national. Mr Milne thought it should, so that’s two parties who want even looser restrictions on who can claim welfare payments.

Around 2.1 million people are in the parts of Universal Credit where sanctions can apply. If Labour and the Lib Dems get their way, every one of them gets one ignored appointment on the house. This is a written guarantee that the first time you don’t bother to turn up to an appointment at the Jobcentre, you can still claim someone else’s hard-earned dosh for nothing.

Jobcentres issued 68,000 sanctions in January, the most in a single month since the figures began in 2016.

That’s 68,000 people who received an uncomfortable but necessary lesson that they are not entitled to their fellow Brits’ money for nothing.

And let’s remember the scale of welfare already doled out (pun intended): £333billion this year, rising to £407billion by the end of the decade.

Andy Burnham let the cat out of the bag last week – admitting that social security was more important than national security. He has helped sow this runaway benefits system, and he will eventually reap what he has sown.