Burnham vows to ‘get serious’ about slashing welfare bill
Andy Burnham has vowed that he will “get serious” about slashing the welfare bill, as the Prime Minister hunts savings to boost defence spending.
“We’ve got to get really serious as a country [about] getting the welfare bill down,” Burnham told the BBC in his first full interview since becoming Prime Minister last week.
He said he is “absolutely committed” to meeting Nato defence spending targets, and suggested that he plans to slash welfare spending to fund this commitment.
“I’m absolutely committed to what we’ve promised our NATO partners, and that is my commitment. Now we’ve got to work out the way of doing that, but I do not want to see Britain regarded as somebody, a country that people can’t trust anymore – I don’t think anyone wants us to be in that position.”
Sir Keir Starmer was thrown into a row over defence spending in his last few weeks in Downing Street, after John Healey resigned as defence secretary.
Healey hit out at Starmer’s Defence Investment Plan (DIP), which he said: “Falls well short of what is required for defence and the country at this dangerous time”.
Burnham’s appointment of Healey as Chancellor has been widely viewed as a signal that he will prioritise increasing defence spending to three per cent of GDP by 2030, in line with Nato targets. While the Prime Minister refused to reiterate the three per cent figure, he said that he will deliver “what we’ve promised to our Nato partners”.
“I appointed my new Chancellor very aware of what he had said about the critical importance of defence spending and the position that he had taken about that,” he said.
Burnham said his “first challenge” is to ensure that the DIP is “fully funded,” after Starmer left a £4.7bn hole in the investment plan, which he claimed could be filled using fiscal headroom.
Welfare to be ‘conditional’
The Prime Minister said his reforms to the welfare system will be “about changing the nature of the support and making some of the support conditional upon people taking opportunities that are presented in front of them.”
Burnham said the sell-off of social housing during the 1980s was in part to blame for the UK’s soaring benefits bill, pointing towards his pledge to oversee the “biggest council house building programme since the post-war period”.
“One of the things I would point to is the sell-off of social and council homes in the 1980s onwards that has left us chasing rents in the private rented sector through the benefit system.”
“[This] means we’ve got a very high housing benefit bill in this country. And the building of new council and social homes over time will help get that benefit bill down in a fair and sustainable way,” he added.