Don’t believe the right, Britain doesn’t have 9m shirkers – they just want better work | Will Hutton
A wild west labour market and millions of people on NHS waiting lists are responsible for the ballooning benefits bill, not idleness
One in five working-age adults – about 8 million people – live in poverty. Two million of them report that they go without food at least once a month. And yet still the cruel, baleful cry goes up that our welfare system is over-generous. Address this longstanding sore once and for all and, according to the prime minister last weekend (supported by rightwing media commentary), honest-to-God workers would stop paying for millions of work-shy claimants and be rewarded with richly deserved tax cuts.
The numbers seem alluring. If you trust the surveys, nearly 3 million people aged between 16 and 24, and more than 6 million aged 24 to 64, are economically inactive – and the numbers are rising. In total, 9.25 million “idle” adults are drawing £88bn of universal credit a year, nearly half of whom complain they suffer from health problems.