Ex-No11 special adviser James Price writes for GB News about Britain's welfare crisis

A new report by a Labour benefits minister has concluded what everyone can see – great chunks of the welfare state are not working.

What is supposed to be support for those who otherwise would not be able to live a decent life, or who need help from their fellow Brits in order to maintain a dignified standard of living, has been obviously abused for too long.

Over four million Britons now claim Personal Independence Payments (PIP), and the overall bill just for this benefit alone is set to hit £41billion a year by 2030.

More ludicrously, though unsurprisingly, Labour’s review doesn’t bother to suggest any ways this can be made better, or spending reduced at all.

This comes after Keir Starmer, at the height of his powers, failed to even make a modest £5billion saving to the welfare budget last year, proving the beginning of the end of his authority.

One ridiculous, innumerate Labour backbencher remarked bemusedly: “It’s only a few billion quid, why are the markets concerned?”

That’s Labour’s approach to economics summed up in a sentence.

Shockingly, over a third of those, so over 1,300,000 people in this country, claim Pip for ‘mental health’.

I know that some of these will be genuine cases, requiring serious professional psychiatric support.

But for the majority of these cases, paying benefits for people to moulder at home, rather than spurring them to get a job and make something of their lives, will exacerbate issues like depression. We are paying people to condemn them to sad, hollow lives.

The Conservatives have come up with some sensible solutions to this issue, including a return to face-to-face assessments and ending the handout of payments to those claiming anxiety, low mood and ADHD.

These are the fastest-growing areas, especially amongst the young, and have spiked since the Covid lockdowns, more proof of how damaging they were to our nation (especially the second and third).

Many more people were taught that they didn’t need to work and that there was apparently a magic money tree to pay people to stay at home.

Few politicians have had the guts to explain how broke we now are as a nation, in no small part to those furlough payments.

Jeremy Hunt is one of the few to tackle the issue of welfare spending head-on.

If we could just roll it back to the pre-Covid numbers, he argues, we could provide tax cuts and properly equip our armed forces.

But worse, in a way, is what the scandals around PIP say about the nation’s soul.

We are bringing up millions to stay at home and complain and feel victimised, rather than believe that with enough hard work and decency they can transcend their lot in life.

And the killer line, of course, is that the more who do that, the more money and resources there will be for us to help those amongst us who are genuinely needful and deserving of our support.