Labour loses its way on benefits reform – Politics Weekly UK
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That's $50 off with code LISTEN at BlueNile.com. Keir Starmer has taken a break from international diplomacy and has been making the case for sweeping changes to sickness and disability benefits. And, to be more specific, cut. We inherited a system which is broken. It is indefensible economically and morally. And we must and we will reform it.

There's huge fear about what's going to happen and rising anger and bafflement on Starmer's own side. I can't look my constituents in the eye. I can't look my mum in the eye and support this. So, a few obvious questions. Why is the government doing this? What's it going to mean for millions of lives? And where will this issue go next? I'm John Harris and you're listening to Politics Week in the UK for The Guardian.

After months of speculation, it is looking more and more likely that the tough economic choices we've heard about so much from the Chancellor and the Prime Minister could come at the expense of some of the most vulnerable people in the form of cuts to benefits. Keir Starmer says that the current system of welfare, we used to call it social security before we adopted that word from the USA, is, and this is a quote, the worst of all worlds. But with deep cuts to disability payments on the table, there is growing concern and anger

not least inside the Labour Party, about what the government's reforms are going to look like and who they might harm. Tom Pollard is the head of social policy at the New Economics Foundation. He's been on the podcast before and he joins me now. Hello, Tom. Hi. Right, I'm going to tell you something you know already. We're expecting the Department for Work and Pensions to publish its plans tomorrow.

to reform the benefit system before Rachel Reeves' spring statement. And there's reportedly going to be significant changes of various kinds. But let's talk about one change in particular, first of all. The Personal Independence Payment, or PIP,

it looks like, is going to be frozen and cut back in various ways. It's going to be made harder for people who meet the criteria to receive. And there is speculation of the kind that you know straight away is about a rock-solid certainty that payments, for some people, will be frozen so they don't rise in line with inflation. Can you just tell me a bit about

those changes, let's take it as read that they're going to happen, what that will mean for the reality of lots of people's lives? Yeah, so there's two aspects to what they're talking about doing with personal independence payment. One, as you say, is freezing it. So by law, personal independence payment has to go up in line with inflation each year, whereas other benefits, it's at the discretion of government. So they'd have to change the law, but essentially they're talking about next year not increasing PIP in line with inflation.

And that would lead to the average PIP award not going up by about £120 a year, which it would have done otherwise. The biggest saving they're targeting is talking about achieving a £5 billion saving by the end of the parliament, an annual £5 billion saving, by tightening the criteria under which people get or don't get PIPs.

personal independence payments. That would mean making it tougher in the assessment for people to score the points necessary to be given an award. Okay, but what does that mean for people's lives? I mean, that would mean hundreds of thousands fewer people by the end of the parliament who would have got support from personal independence payment. And that support can really vary from around £30 a week

to around kind of £180 a week, depending on kind of the severity of someone's needs and how much that impacts on their day-to-day life. But, you know, significant number of people, like I say, in the hundreds of thousands would miss out on that support as a result.

A very, very large share of disabled people already live in poverty, don't they? Yeah, so we know that households where at least one member of that household is disabled are much more likely to be in poverty. We know that even though people on benefits with disabilities and health conditions tend to get a higher rate of support than people without disabilities and health conditions, they still face...

as high levels of destitution in terms of needing to use food banks, struggling to pay bills, having to choose between heating and eating. So, you know, there are higher costs associated with being disabled. And also, if you're out of work for a longer period of time, it's harder for you to cover those costs through the income you receive from benefits. Yeah. I mean, one of the things about disability and how sort of indifferent people

and misunderstanding governments tend to be, and you can make this argument as well about the wider population, really. Participating in wider society is difficult for a lot of disabled people, and this, it seems to me, will make it even harder. So all of those questions about isolation, lack of contact, the idea that you're not really a full accredited member of society will worsen because of this cut.

I think that's right. You know, what I'd argue is that things like the increase in claims for personal independence payment, you know, we should be clear that we are talking about significant increases. You know, the projection is that we'd move from about three and a half million people currently receiving personal independence payment up to around six million people by the end of the parliament. So it is quite alarming rises in the caseload. But

But what we haven't seen is an increase in the approval rate assessment. So the people who are getting the benefit are getting it on the same terms that people who were applying for it previously. So the Office for Budget Responsibility say what's changed is more people applying for that support rather than people applying for it with lower level needs.

And what to me that represents is that people who either already had health conditions or have developed health conditions, who previously might have been able to make ends meet by other means on other forms of benefits or through work or through savings, just aren't able to do that now.

And so they're having to reach out for this additional support. Most people I meet with mental health problems, for example, are often quite reluctant to claim personal independence payment. It's another kind of long assessment process to go through. They find that stressful, sometimes quite demeaning. So people only tend to turn to this support when they really need it. I don't know that you can answer this briefly. I mean, we could talk about this probably for four hours. But in terms of that rise, you said, or projected rise, from what, three and a half million to six million or thereabouts in the course of the parliament? Yeah.

What's driving that? So it's difficult to pin down exactly what's driving it, but we know, I mean, there's new data out today from the Institute for Fiscal Studies saying there has been a very real increase in mental health problems over the last four to five years. And that shouldn't come as a surprise if we think about what's happened in that period. We had a global pandemic, we had a huge cost of living crisis. And particularly among young people, you're seeing people

emerging from that situation and probably feeling quite kind of pessimistic and almost hopeless about their future, struggling to find jobs that give them the prospect of owning their own home and having that security. And mental health problems in particular are

kind of fundamentally mediated by people's social and economic circumstances. We know that if you're living in poverty or you're struggling financially, you're more likely to develop mental health problems. But also once you have mental health problems, it's harder to navigate those kind of social and economic circumstances. Okay.

Is there something here about chronic sickness in the sense that it blurs into physical disability as well? Because you and I both know that this country has a very deep-seated public health problem, which goes back decades, and it's worsening. So is that part of the picture too, probably among older people? Yeah, but even among younger people, I mean, there's a real complexity to the health problems you see. When you look at people claiming both personal independence payment and kind of universal credit because of health and disability...

Often people have two, three, four conditions they're reporting. And if the support is not there in jobs, from public services, from the NHS, then where you'll see those kind of problems pop up probably is in the benefits system when people are really struggling. Okay. You mentioned universal credit a moment ago. The basic rate of universal credit could be increased for people who are in work or searching for work.

supposedly to incentivise employment, but it looks like the rate's going to be cut for people who are judged unfit to work. That looks to me, I'm not going to mince my words today, like simple cruelty. I mean, surely if you're judged unfit for work, that speaks for itself. What's the sort of moral or, I don't know what the word, financial rationale for cutting benefit for people who have already been judged unfit to work?

Yeah, there's been a really strong focus on the gap between what you get if you get this additional component of universal credit because of your health or disability and what you get on the basic rate. So the basic rate is about £90 a week. If you also get the health component, it basically doubles the amount you get. And there's been lots of focus on the idea that that's what's driving people to kind of claim the higher rate is it's such a big gap. Why wouldn't you?

And that's led to lots of aspersions being cast about whether people are really unwell or just kind of playing the system. I think that's a bit of a sideshow. I think that there probably is an issue with that gap being so big, but you could close that gap by raising the basic rate of universal credit, which is absolutely inadequate. I mean, let's be clear about that.

that, that rate should be higher. And so those people under these plans, because the government's presenting it as a cost neutral plan, they'll increase the basic rate, but they'll lop off more than that from the health component. So people who have received that additional component will end up worse off. Okay, let me ask you a blunt question. Does that look unfair to you? It looks unfair to me. It looks absolutely unfair and completely wrongheaded. Just because the gap is big between the basic rate and the higher rate, it doesn't mean people on that higher rate are living a life of luxury. Rates of

things like needing to use food banks are just as high in households where someone gets that additional rate as they are in households where someone doesn't

because it costs more to be disabled and it costs more to be long-term unemployed. I have read projections suggesting that, you know, 700,000 disabled or long-term sick people could be pushed into poverty on the back of these measures. In terms of very, very awful, miserable social outcomes, this could be really bad, couldn't it? Yeah, I mean, the package of cuts and changes that have been floated looks absolutely huge and probably beyond the scale of

of what we've seen, you know, even over the kind of the last 15 years in terms of a one-off sweeping package, it's hard to know exactly what the kind of cuts are gonna mean at an individual level, because for example, that cut to the higher rate of universal credit, they haven't specified what that would look like,

But even to close that £400 gap by £100 would mean that people in that category are missing out on about £75 a month. And that's everyone in that category, regardless of how ill or disabled they are. So that could be people who have terminal conditions, for example, losing out on hundreds of pounds a year. There's 1.7 million people in that group. So you're talking about a huge impact. Yeah, yeah.

That's the sort of thing that creates horrible toxic headlines for a government, isn't it? And deservedly so. So in other words, they might have overreached themselves here, even on their own terms. Do you know what I mean? There'll be parts of the public perhaps that they thought would be supportive of these measures that aren't going to like it when you get into the realm of cutting benefits of people who are terminally ill. Yeah. And it may be that, you know, when we see the final plans, there are some mitigations around what they fear would be the worst impact. But the reality is, you know,

people who are in that higher category are there for a reason. They have been assessed by the DWP. It's not an easy assessment process to go through, but those people have been assessed as unable to even engage with kind of back-to-work support. And so that is a group of people who have quite severe health conditions and disabilities. What's this all about, do you think, in terms of the political logic? I mean, clearly there is an imperative here which comes from the Treasury to cut spending. We both know that, particularly in the context of the fact that the government wants to raise defence spending.

I wonder whether there's a large element as well of playing to the electoral gallery. I mean, this is the song that governments successively have been singing since the new Labour years, making the benefit system much more conditional, punitive as well, because there is this idea that a certain sort of voter demands it. You know, you're doing this for the edification of swing voters who know nothing about the

benefit system, but have got this idea that people on disability and sickness benefits are swinging the lead. Is there a more charitable, generous reading of this as far as the government's concerned, do you think? I mean, as you say, there's a problem here. What's interesting is if you look at the plans that the Department for Work and Pensions put out before Christmas in terms of how they're going to improve employment support,

There was actually lots of really positive stuff in there. They were talking about- You said that yourself. You quite liked some of that, didn't you? Yeah, and I think, if I'm frank, that a lot of it was partly shaped by some of the work that the New Economics Foundation did last year around the impact of a kind of highly conditional system. So they talked about-

trying to move from a focus on just kind of compliance with rules to one where you were genuinely trying to engage with people, trying to put conditionality in the background rather than it always being at the forefront of those interactions. So there was lots of stuff to welcome there, including devolving a lot of employment support to a local level. My sense is that

Treasury and Office for Budget Responsibility has kind of said, well, we don't really buy that those changes are going to lead to substantial savings anytime soon. And we need savings now. And the way you achieve those savings is through much more kind of crude cuts to rates and changing eligibility criteria. We both know we've got a crisis in public health. We've got a mental health crisis in this country that disproportionately affects young people.

That sits under all of these questions about how many people are working and so on.

It's conceivable, though, isn't it, that a government could begin to do something about that stuff? This is why it's so disappointing in that some of the stuff that was set out before Christmas was so much more positive. And we have seen plans around improving access to the NHS, investing in public services, but all of that stuff takes a long time to filter through into addressing these deep-seated issues. And some of it is about thinking more broadly as a society about...

what that generation of people is facing. The other thing to say is that, I guess when we see these stark figures around rising mental health,

as someone who still works occasionally in mental health services, my first instinct is, well, let's talk to people and understand why. I think an instinct that says, well, let's assume the majority of this is overplayed is never going to get you to the answers you need. You need to sit down and listen to people and understand where they're coming from. That's the only way you kind of get to the type of solutions that will actually address these problems. But in any other part of the public services, if you took that approach...

the results would be disastrous. Imagine going to see the doctor and their working assumption being that you were making it all up and over-egging it. It's ridiculous. Well, and we've talked about this at the Economics Foundation in terms of, if you think about other public services taking the same approach that the job centre often takes. So, you know, if you went to see a mental health clinician and they say, well...

I'll give you the support, but if you turn up late for the appointment, I'll stop giving you your medication. It'll be wild. Other services like mental health services have gone through this real evolution where they recognize that the best way to achieve results with people who are struggling with kind of complex circumstances is to build trust and rapport. Yeah.

You have to build a trusting relationship. It's the only way you make change happen. And if you resort to coercion, not only is it unethical, but actually it's ineffective and it should be an absolute last resort. Whereas historically, DWP has kind of just defaulted to coercion as like the standard option. Yeah, looks like it's the first resort again. Thank you so much for talking to us, Tom. Thank you. Let's pause here for a minute. After a break, we'll be discussing whether cuts to benefits could cause a rebellion in the Labour Party.

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Welcome back. The government's finalised plans on so-called welfare reform haven't been published yet, but they're already causing a lot of upset, to put it mildly, among Labour MPs. One of them, Nadia Whittome, said she couldn't look her constituents or her mum in the eye and support these changes. Keir Starmer tried to win over MPs at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party on Monday. Now we hear all 404 Labour MPs have been invited in shifts to the Parliament.

to Downing Street for roundtable discussions about the plans. Guardian columnist Gabby Hinsliff joins me now. Hello, Gabby. Hello, John. Gabby, there have been reports that when the rubber hits the road and this comes to the Commons, up to 80 MPs could rebel over these changes. And it does seem like number 10 is worried. I mean, they're reaching out like it's going out of style. Do you think there could be a rebellion of that scale or similar? 80 might be a bit on the high side. And I think one of the reasons that number 10 is having MPs in now is because they think...

There's a lot of people who are unhappy but don't want to vote against the government if they don't have to and might be talked around. But that said, I really wouldn't underestimate how unhappy a lot of people are. The key thing is that it's not just the usual suspects, so to speak. I mean, it won't be enormously surprising to Number 10 to find itself on the opposite side of an argument over welfare reform with Nadia Wittome. It's not going to be a big surprise that Diane Abbott is against it.

But I think what's different this time is firstly, privately, not publicly. I mean, I've spoken to MPs who on the centre-right of the party, people you wouldn't normally expect to be upset about this sort of thing, who are just worried about the way it's being handled apart from anything else. And what's different this time is you've got new MPs standing up and saying publicly that they have an issue with this. And I think that's something you saw for the first time recently when the overseas aid budget was cut.

That was the first time we saw kind of new MPs standing up in the Commons and arguing against it publicly. It's one of those things, the first revolt is always the scariest one. When you've done it once, you kind of think, oh, well, that wasn't the end of the world, you know, I can get away with doing it again. So when new MPs start rebelling, you know that they're really up against it. And in this case, I think it's the fear, starting to be less afraid of the whips who have come down very, very hard on this new intake and a bit more scared of their constituents, actually, and of a blowback against this isn't why I voted Labour, this isn't what we sent you to Westminster for.

That's interesting, isn't it? In the sense that there must be some people, and there are, we both know, in the Labour Party, who think this plays well with a large number of voters who think there are people playing the benefit system. And they're not wrong. I mean, it does play well with some people. No, no, but of course, but you're picking up actually that the effects of this in many cases might be the reverse and it will annoy and outrage large numbers of voters. I mean, it really depends where your constituency is. You know, if you are in a rebel seat and you've got reform in second place, you are not...

often that unhappy with the message that says we're cracking down on welfare, you know, abuse or whatever. If you're an MP in a big city, then you are potentially in a different position. You're worried about that set of voters that's already either gone from Labour to the Greens or is thinking about it being, you know, really, really repelled by this kind of stuff.

Let's talk about what's actually being proposed and the sort of the politics and the morals of it, to be honest. I think the headline elements of these proposals. So we both know there are other things besides cutting benefits and freezing PIP and so on. But let's talk about those in particular because they're what's getting all the attention. I think that stuff is horrible. I think politically it's depressing because.

because it's yet another chapter in a decades-long story of governments framing everything about benefits and social security in terms of cuts and so-called conditionality, which just means do this or I'm taking your benefits away, and the idea of people taking money from the state who don't deserve it. The talk of tough choices, I think, therefore...

It's pathetic, really, because this politically probably isn't a tough choice at all in that sense. It would be tough to try and raise the money for an increase in defence spending from elsewhere if you got into talking about wealth taxation and so on. That is tough. That breaks out of the political paradigm of the last 15 or 20 years. This doesn't. Oh, my God. I think it's an incredibly tough choice for a Labour government to make. If you think about the process this is going to be met with. But does that mean it's the right choice? And that's different. And I think it's...

telling that it comes across to you. And I think it comes across to almost anyone who's focused on this argument, that it comes across as being about that same old language of, oh, people are scrounging, people are skiving, people are cheating, crack down on it, take money away, cut benefits. There's too much, we can't afford it. I don't think that's

where these reforms started from. So you initially had a sort of radiatively benign plan which started from a position of how do you get from a place where job centres are basically there to punish you for not complying to a place where job centres are there to actually help you. And suddenly we veered off that into a territory that's got to make £6 billion worth of savings and you can have a bit back of those savings to plough in to help, but the sort of front-loaded savings become the whole story and everything else has found out.

Sure. I meant it's not a tough choice in the sense that you'll be sort of cheered on to a lesser or greater extent by the right-wing press, obviously, which likes a bit of cracking down on benefit scroungers and so on. And also just the fact it goes with the grain of the way that governments have tended to approach questions about so-called welfare.

for a very, very long time. But clearly, there must be people in government who are worried in the sense that when you're picking a fight with, never mind Labour MPs, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Citizens Advice, Mencap, the RNIB, Mind, the Trussell Trust, CENT, the National Autistics Society and Parkinson's UK, they're all urging the government to think again. Surely to God, even Keir Starmer and Rachel Rees, somewhere in their souls would say, well, hold on a minute. I don't think this is a comfortable place for government.

to be. And I think in some ways, I mean, because all the focus for the last few weeks has totally understandably been on Ukraine, US foreign policy, trying to avert World War III, the domestic side of things has got a bit neglected. I think it's fair to say. And number 10 is kind of turning its attention quite late to this. But the two are related. I mean, you can't

say on the foreign side, everything's changed. Europe is kind of at risk. We have to turn away from the US. We have to rearm ourselves. We have to pay for our own defense. We're in a dangerous world. We need 3% of GDP and more on defense. You can't say that.

and then not expect it to have repercussions for domestic spending. Because at the moment, you're in a position where the foreign policy side of government is saying, everything's changed, the world has turned on its head. And the Treasury is saying, well, we're just going to carry on doing what we were doing before. And it just means that everybody's budget will have to take a cut. We're at the point where...

There isn't easy stuff to cut. And they're so anxious about not breaking the tax promises that they made in the manifesto that they are in danger of breaking all the other promises they made. The fundamental promise of a Labour government is we'll make public services better. We'll make this a better, you and your family will be better off, more secure, happier, healthier. All of that stuff is at risk.

If you stick too hard to a tax promise that, you know, essentially is out of date, you know, belongs to a previous era. You can either break your tax promises or break your spending promises. You know, choose your fighter at this point. As some people see it in sort of taking this direction, the government is now doing quite sinister things that quite rightly, I think a lot of people find very scary. The Guardian columnist Francis Ryan recently wrote a piece about

that mentioned a PR video for something called the Keep Britain Working Review, which I think is kind of part of the rollout of these changes. And that video refers to disabilities as work-limiting conditions. And she says that's a rebranding of distress, where, say, Parkinson's is not a painful illness that affects human beings, but an obstacle that prevents arms from stacking shelves for shareholders. So, you

You know, it's not just a question of the government sort of being caught on the hop and needing to cut spending here. As part of that move, there's quite deep things going on here potentially about the way the state thinks about disability and illness. Potentially. Potentially.

I have to say, I mean, I totally understand where France is coming from on that. I don't think that's the intention. And I don't think, you know, if you're thinking about incapacity benefits, by which I mean not PIP, which is a payment to cover the sort of costs of being disabled and just living your life. I'm thinking about where we think some of the sharp end will come and cuts will come, which is the sort of

bit that's paid to people who are judged to have a limited capacity for work, the bit that's added on to universal credit, which we're expecting to come down so that universal credit can come up. Of course, you're thinking there about the relationship between work and how your illness limits your ability to work. But I think there's a deeper point you're getting at here, which is

any change to benefits arouses a lot of anxiety, fear, you know, instability, insecurity, panic about what's coming and just general memories of how this has happened in the past. Governments always start by saying, oh, we don't want to punish you. We want to help everyone back into work. And then it ends up with a load of money disappearing. You know, that is the sort of

that is the sort of folk memory of what benefit cuts means and that's what people are always on the alert for I think there was a sort of missed opportunity quite a long time ago to connect up some of the things government is doing and say look at the same time we're putting money into improving the NHS and cutting waiting lists so people who at the moment can't work because they're waiting for a knee op or because they can't get an appointment to see a mental health professional or for whatever reason you'll

be fitter to work. At the same time, we've got this new workers' rights bill. We're pushing really hard on flexibility at work and that should give opportunities to people who can't maybe do the job that they used to be able to do or can't do a face-to-face job, can't do an office job. You can work from home and connect that up.

with the welfare so it looks like this is a more benevolent operation that has people you know people at heart and what people want and what people's expectations for their lives are and their hopes are and their you know what they want to get on in life and instead it's become these sort of weird things going on unlinked things going on in separate silos and the benefits agenda being presented as we're just going to come in and take your money away i totally agree and and

And therefore the images that pop into my head, and this has happened to me, it's probably happened to you in the course of reporting. I've met people who haven't got any food in the fridge. Yeah. Who lie in a sleeping bag all day because it takes less calories than going out anywhere because their benefits have been stopped, you know.

They're the things that I don't want to see return. I don't think anybody does. But as soon as I see people saying this is going to push 700,000 disabled people into poverty, right, they're inevitably the images that come into my mind. And that's what the government's sort of playing with. Do you think there are people in the cabinet in significant numbers who are very, very uncomfortable with this? There must be. I mean, I think this is a cabinet with lived experience. You know, Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting, Bridget Philipson have all done

talked about growing up on benefits, growing up in poverty. Keir Starmer himself, you know, has he never, tires of telling us, you know, his mother was a nurse who was stopped from working by a crippling, very painful progressive disease.

which meant she had to stop work. I mean, even surprising people that Yvette Cooper had ME when she was young. People know what it's like to be off sick and unable to work. But I think also against that, the whole of cabinet knows that if welfare spending continues on the path it's on, then essentially government becomes a massive health and social care and welfare...

welfare endeavor with a few other minimal functions tacked onto the side of it. Nothing left for everybody else's budget. Defense is going to expand to take a much bigger share of the cake and everyone thinks that's necessary. So where do you go from here? If the Treasury insists on sort of painting itself into a corner on tax and spending-

How else do you do it? It's almost a sense of people waiting for that logjam to be broken. There is a big serious conversation that has to happen inside government because welfare is only the start of it essentially. You remember we've got a spending review coming up this spring in which all sorts of departments are now being asked to make frankly impossible sounding savings or find money that isn't there. It's going to come to everyone in turn.

And at some point you have to say, is this really the path that we want to be on? Or do we have to bite the bullet on tax and wrap it up, almost use this crisis, terrible thing to say, but use this crisis and say, let's introduce, call it a defense levy, call it a Patriot tax, call it, wrap it in a Union Jack and say, this is about supporting European security and standing firm against Russia and doing what we have to be to be resilient as a country.

But get yourself out of that prison into which Labour puts itself in the run-up to the election with lots of people saying you shouldn't be doing this. You can't make the sums add up. You can't do what you say you're going to do on the money that you've given yourself to do it. So this is a make or break moment on the domestic side as much as the visit to the

are we going to have to go wars? It's a real inflection point. It's a time to do things differently. Yeah, yeah. But I'm glad you made that point because it's very easy to overlook the fact that there is a central tension now and it's going to get worse as the year progresses about tax, right? And,

And that's not going to go away. Let me ask you a question about some political calculations that may be at work here. I wrote the other week about how you could fold this in, this sort of move, into those very sort of sharp, punitive, GB News-friendly sort of messages about immigration that the government's coming out with at the moment, because we know it's spooked by the idea of reform taking its votes in its old heartlands. Do you think there's some of that at work here, that they're sort of echoing those sort of tragedies

of traditionally right-wing noises about the benefit system as part of a kind of quest to pull those voters away from Nigel Farage? It does. Probably welfare reform is generally more popular with right-of-centre voters. It's also generally more popular with low-income voters, to be honest. I mean, that's the brutal truth. It tends to be the less you've got yourself, the more you feel...

resentful of other people who you think rightly or wrongly are having an easier deal or why am I working all the hours God sends for on a minimum wage job and somebody down the road who I think could be working isn't. It's not just reform voters. It's some traditional Labour working class voters who want to hear this stuff. It is popular with some people. But I think

Against that, as we said earlier, it's very, very unpopular with other voters. And in the middle somewhere is what you think is actually right. Never mind what you think is actually popular. And I think it's kind of balancing all of those things in an incredibly awful, bleak fiscal environment that government is now struggling with. The other interesting thing here is that it's one of those occasions when younger people

on our politics, and they don't intrude very often, which is one of the things that is wrong about British politics, but they sort of intrude or are talked about in the midst of an issue like this in the worst possible way. And they're getting painted as this sort of malingering, work-shy load of people whose so-called mental health problems are overstated. That's not my point of view. I don't think that's true. But there is a danger here, isn't there, that that's what they will hear? Absolutely. And I think you can either see that as...

whoa, something has gone very wrong with this generation. We've let them down. We've failed them. You know, why is it? Could it be that massively long waits for child and adolescent mental health services have led to an increase in children's mental health problems? Yes, I guess so. You know, and what haven't we done for them? What could we do? Did we do enough to help them catch up after the pandemic? All of that happened to a very formative time in their development. If they're this anxious,

how do we help them that's one approach which it would be nice to hear a bit more about and a bit less about you know they're all snowflakes who can't get to work the other thing I think that's worth looking at if you look at the figures yes there's a big jump in that age group and it's surprising and worrying there's also a big jump in the 55 to 64 age group and there it's mostly not mental health problems it's you know it's musculoskeletal problems it's

obesity catching up with you and your knees giving out and your joints getting your back pain and all the rest of it and it's also a function of the fact i think that retirement age has risen so if you think about it you know once upon a time women retired at 60 if they got ill at 62 they were retired that was not a problem with their sort of working age benefits whereas now you know you're still meant to be in work then do you think the government might change course

I think that is all bound up with the question of how the Treasury responds to this wider crisis. Because there's bits you could tinker with at the edges and there's bits you could say, you know, can you buy off some people? Can you buy off a few rebels? Yeah, you know. But you can't make any big...

substantial changes to what's on offer without it costing substantial amounts of money. And on that one, all roads lead back to the Treasury and in some ways, I think, to the relationship between Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer, which is close. We're not talking brown Blair at each other's throats. Keir has probably, I would say, delegated economic policy to the Treasury. He's not trying to constantly interfere with it, constantly trying to set its direction. He kind of defers to her judgment. Is he always going to do that?

Okay, we will be back talking about this, I'm sure, in the very near future. Thank you for joining us, Gabby. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, please make sure you subscribe to Politics Weekly UK wherever you get your podcasts. And if you can, leave us a review, preferably a nice one. And please keep sending us your questions and opinions by emailing politicsweeklyuk at theguardian.com or by leaving a comment wherever you're listening. Pippa and Kieran will be back on Monday with all the latest about the Ukraine ceasefire deal.

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