In the next 24 hours and then over the following fortnight, the government will talk a lot about a broken welfare system that is failing the people who use it, the economy, and taxpayers.
Taking a tough call on fixing it goes against the instincts of much of the Labour Party and has already sparked an internal backlash that could rise to ministerial level, as well as protests.
The government is making two key related judgments. The first is that the country cannot afford to sustain recent ballooning increases in the health-related benefit bill and caseload, in particular for mental illness.
At the same time, it will argue that a job is the best medicine.
The government is also assuming that a health-related benefits system that was built up to deal with industrial injuries cannot apply to the post-pandemic service economy workforce.
The net result is likely to be significant changes to Personal Independence Payments, aiming to reduce eligibility for the highest levels of payments, especially among those of working age with mental illness.
In addition, there will be a levelling of the generosity of the health component of Universal Credit. This will save billions of pounds, and about a billion of that will be reinvested in trying to help get those capable of part-time work some help for a partial return.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is rolling in real-time data. “Cluster analysis maps” reveal to ministers exactly who is claiming out of work benefits and where they are.
The data is being cut by sector, postcode, age, and type of illness. Every pattern is being analyzed.
The idea was that the data would firstly offer the government insight into how it could make billions of pounds of cuts to a rapidly growing bill in order to help the Chancellor meet her self-imposed government borrowing rules.
Secondly, it was meant to point to more fundamental reforms to welfare, also designed to temper the same ballooning rise in the costs of dealing with ill health among the working population.
The data has thrown up answers.
That poor mental health is driving the rise in claimants is clear. To a lesser extent, so too is the role that raising the state pension age has played, with many thousands who would previously have been retired now claiming health-related benefits.
But it has also thrown up a major question too: does cutting welfare to incentivise …
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