Ministers say it’s their ‘moral duty’ to encourage sick and disabled people to work. But is this ‘morality’ driven by genuine compassion or cost-cutting?
Work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, and the prime minister, Keir Starmer, visit Siemens Traincare centre in Crawley.
Jordan Pettitt/PA images
Labour has vowed to end divisive discourse demonising out-of-work people as ‘scroungers’ - but how does this fit with its tough warnings about people who don’t ‘engage’?
The pandemic has made work more precarious and wages stagnate, while the cost of living has soared.
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The extreme levels of poverty endured by economically inactive people (as highlighted in the government’s own data) are a direct result of deliberate political choices to continually erode benefits.
Keir Starmer talks to children in Scunthorpe.
Alamy/PA/Stefan Rousseau
Labour strategists seem determined to cast Starmer as the sensible ‘adult in the room’, but in order to win lost areas he needs to be much more radical than that.