Millions are scamming and stealing from Britain. Finally, we have a party with the guts to say it

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Reform's Robert Jenrick is right, only a fool can't see the welfare bill has become a moral and economic catastrophe, writes the GB News columnist

“Britain is now the Welfare State for the World,” said Reform’s Robert Jenrick in a barnstorming speech where he claimed the welfare bill is now a full-blown national crisis.

“Britain is broken,” he said. “Our welfare system is a moral and economic catastrophe and only Reform can fix it.”

The Treasury Spokesman’s speech, which was to spell out how Reform will slash the Benefits bill by £50million, was tough and unequivocal. Jenrick talked passionately about the unfairness of British taxpayers having to work to pay for those people who refuse to.

“And it has to stop,” he said. “We’re saying that people who are capable of working and refuse to – will get nothing in benefits.”

He also said foreigners who come here won’t get benefits either.

“It’s just not fair that hard-working British taxpayers are paying billions in benefits every year for people who aren’t British.”

And, I for one, salute Jenrick’s courage in pushing for this change. How long have we waited for a political party to call out the cheating and the scamming we all know is happening? How long have we waited for a politician to have the guts to say - Yes, there ARE genuinely sick and disabled people out there - and we’ll look after them - but there are also armies of scammers who are taking Britain's hard-working people for mugs.

Because there are. For years we’ve seen successive Governments running scared of welfare reform because they’re terrified of losing votes. They’re terrified to lay bare the unpalatable truth - that millions are scamming and stealing from the State because they just don’t want to work.

We all know about families that are taking the State and the Government for mugs. They’re the ones with one, maybe two Motability cars in the drive, they have two holidays a year, regular nights out and takeaways, yet they haven’t done a day’s work in years.

These people can afford to do stuff that people with full-time jobs can’t. And that’s not fair.

They’re the kind who expect everything for nothing and get uppity if it’s not forthcoming. Then they start screaming about their “rights” which they’ve never done a damn thing to earn, and the rest of us just look on helpless and appalled and think “How the Hell was this ever allowed to happen?”

Well, the people who’ve been letting it happen (and facilitating it) is this Labour Government which sees everyone on benefits as a deserving victim and won’t be persuaded any differently.

Which is why Jenrick is right to point out we now have 6.6M people claiming out-of-work benefits and disability and incapacity claims have doubled to four million in less than a decade. Worse, we now have 25 per cent of the country claiming they’re too sick to work, which anyone with half a brain knows is tosh.

Are people really twice as sick as they were a few years ago? Of course they’re not, but they ARE twice as wily, and twice as determined to take advantage of a system that makes it spectacularly easy for them NOT to work.

But you’ll never hear a Labour politician say any of this. In fact, this Government wants to keep millions dependent on benefits in order to “buy” their vote. Who wouldn’t vote for a party that allows them to sit on their backsides all day while raking in enough to lead a comfortable life?

But the result of that stupidity is that it creates a whole generation that will forever live pointless, useless existences contributing nothing to the society in which they live, yet expecting to be given everything they need for free.

And so far, Reform is the only party calling that out and saying it will stop it.

Which is why Jenrick has said no foreign nationals will get benefits because it isn’t fair that they’re subsidised by hard-working British taxpayers. And the fact that one in five people on Universal Credit are foreign nationals makes change all the more urgent.

He also says Reform will force long-term, fit-to-work benefits claimants to get out and work in the community and those who refuse – will get no money.

He’s promised a radical overhaul of sickness and disability benefits with those severely disabled being taken care of (which is what any humane society should do), and the rest being vigorously assessed to root out the cheats and get them back to work.

Reform also says it will cut the benefits for those with minor mental health conditions – about bloody time – because he says: “Paying them not to work is neglect not compassion.”

Of course, the usual Leftie carpers have gone apoplectic screaming: “None of this will work.” “It can’t be done.”

But what really terrifies them is that it CAN actually be done by a party that has the guts and the will to do it, a party that will be quite happy to tell the EU to stick its old Withdrawal Agreement where the sun don’t shine.

But the fact is, whatever your political colours, only a fool can’t see that the Welfare Bill has to be stripped down and started again. Otherwise Britain is on a one-way ticket to the scrap heap. And then there’ll be no benefits for anyone.

If welfare isn’t tackled, the bill will rocket to £407billion by 2030, and who the Hell’s going to pay for that?

Our national debt is already over THREE trillion - that’s the FOURTH largest in the world behind the bigger economies like US, China and Japan.

As Jenrick says, the current system is the epitome of “suicidal empathy”. And he’s right. And this Government has facilitated that.

But then so did the Tories. For years we’ve had gutless politicians desperate to push the lie that every person on benefits is a deserving case, that every person claiming disability is properly disabled when we know that’s not true.

And think about this - for every £1 we spend on Defence, we spend £8 on welfare. What the Hell kind of a country does that make us?

I’ll tell you – it makes us the kind that cares more about supporting the feckless and the workshy than it does about our national fighting machine and those people prepared to fight and die for their country!