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Currently, around 4.27 million have no requirement to look for work, a figure Pat McFadden said needs to be reduced

Britain's benefits system has a critical "design flaw", Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden has warned.

Mr McFadden claimed that Universal Credit, which is handed to 8.4 million people in the UK, is too "black and white" and called for change in the system.

He said: "There’s a design flaw in the universal credit system, which too readily separates people into fit for work and unfit for work, and when they are unfit for work, leaves them without any support or any conditions.

"I think that distinction is too black and white in the system as it stands. It’s something that I think they need to change."

Currently, around 4.27 million have no requirement to look for work, a figure Mr McFadden said needs to be reduced.

He added that the "culture of being signed off and written off" must be significantly reduced in Britain.

Welfare spending is estimated to rise from £350billion this financial year to £407billion by 2030-31, the Forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility have predicted.

Speaking on Labour's new Jobs Guarantee scheme, Mr McFadden told GB News the scheme will offer a "policy of hope" for unemployed youths.

New figures published by the Office for National Statistics this morning revealed an estimated 981,000 16 to 24-year-olds in the UK were classed as NEET (not in education, employment or training) between April and June.

The figures are down 30,000 on the previous quarter, when the total topped one million for the first time since 2013.

Detailing the scheme, Mr McFadden told GB News that it will help ease the "stickiness" of the benefits system.

He explained: "It's a scheme where, when young people have been out of work for 18 months or more, we will step in and pay their wages for six months, 25 hours a week at national minimum wage rates.

"And the reason we do that is because of what I call the stickiness in the benefits system, when people have been out of work for a long time, it's very, very hard for them to get back into work.

"It is an economic policy and a Labour market policy, but it's also a policy based on hope, and we need to offer more help to young people because frankly, for many years now, we've had too many of them out of work."

Responding to claims employers might not hire young people, he said: "I put that precise question to the managers at Boots yesterday, I said, 'what chances are that of retention for these young people after the six months is over?', and they told me that the chances of retention are very high."

The Work and Pensions Secretary added: "Because people grow in confidence, they get used to the pride and purpose that comes with having a job, and they get used to having to set the alarm clock and get up in the morning after six months, compared to two or three years on the dole. They've changed in a positive way as people, so the chances of retention are much higher."

The comments come shortly after Reform UK proposed an overhaul of the UK welfare system to cut spending by more than £50billion a year by 2030.

Nigel Farage's party vows that only British citizens would generally be entitled to most welfare benefits, with limited exceptions for armed forces service and contributory state pensions for those who have paid in.

This covers Universal Credit, housing benefit, pension credit, jobseeker's allowance, child benefit, free childcare, and disability payments.