Healey insists he will bring welfare bill down despite delaying decisions

Downing Street has rowed back on John Healey’s promise to bring the ballooning welfare bill down by the next general election, insisting the government will not set an “arbitrary target or timetable”.

On Thursday, the chancellor vowed there would be a “reduction in the benefits bill” before Britain next goes to the polls, insisting the government would “do that in a Labour way” – despite making no mention of changes to benefits in the Budget.

But asked about his remarks later in the day, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “We’ve never set an arbitrary target or timetable on that.

“But, as I say, both the prime minister and the chancellor have been crystal clear that the welfare bill needs to come down, and that we need to do that in a progressive and sustainable way and not through crude cuts which push people into hardship and puts pressure on the system elsewhere.”

Pressed whether Mr Healey and Andy Burnham remained aligned on how and when to reduce the benefits bill, the spokesperson said: “The chancellor is completely in line with what the PM has said over the last few months that the welfare bill needs to come down and, as I say, we are not setting an arbitrary target or timetable on that.”

The chancellor’s Budget has faced criticism for not dealing with the spiralling cost of welfare, including from Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who said the country is “drowning in an out-of-control welfare system”.

Meanwhile, the influential Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank warned the Budget had delayed tough decisions.

It came as the budget watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), predicted that the total cost of health-related benefits would exceed £100bn by the end of the decade, with three quarters of the payments forecast to be paid to working-age adults.

But asked whether there would be a reduction in the benefits bill before the next general election, Mr Healey told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “There will be a reduction in the benefits bill, we’ll do that in a Labour way and we’ll do that because it is simply not good for Britain or progressive to have a bigger and bigger benefits bill.”

Mr Healey also told GB News that ministers have already brought in a range of measures to cut the cost.

He told the broadcaster: “This was a broken system. And two years ago we started putting back in place face-to-face assessments. We’ve changed terms of universal credit, so people don’t have to brand themselves as too sick to work.

“So, those are changes we’re making now. But in the long run, as I’ve argued, and the prime minister has said, too, we have to bring the cost of benefits down.

“We will, but we have to do that, especially for our young people, in a way that gives them a chance to make something of themselves. And when we’ve got a million youngsters that aren’t working and aren’t in education or training, that’s a moral duty to do this, and we will.”

He added that “crude cuts” to the welfare system would be a bad idea when “people are feeling the cost-of-living pressures”.

Delivering his Budget on Wednesday, Mr Healey delayed major changes to welfare until 2027, arguing the government would wait for the outcome of Alan Milburn’s review into the youth unemployment crisis, which is due to be published next month.

The OBR forecast that the total cost of health-related benefits, which includes sickness benefits and personal independence payments (Pip), will reach £105bn by the 2028-29 financial year.