Kemi Badenoch's fierce critique of the chancellor during PMQs highlighted the burgeoning issue of rising sickness and disability benefits claimants, which had doubled in one year. The Labour government's welfare reform bill attempted to curb spending, set to save approximately £5 billion annually. Badenoch, a previous cabinet member, deemed the bill insufficiently radical, raising questions of hypocrisy. The inability of the UK political landscape to form necessary coalitions contrasts sharply with other European democratic assemblies, exacerbating the stagnation in effective governance.
The issue at stake, the runaway cost of sickness and disability benefits, was always clear. The number of new disability benefit claimants between July 2021 and July 2022 doubled.
A welfare reform bill, introduced by the new Labour government, was an emergency stopgap, curbing some payments and saving about 5bn a year.
Badenoch declared that the bill did not go far enough and should have been more radical. To the casual observer this bordered on hypocrisy, since she had sat in the cabinet that ran this system.
Most of Europe's democratic assemblies, such as Germany's Bundestag or France's National Assembly, see legislative compromise as the outcome of shifting coalitions. Britain is hopeless at forming such coalitions.
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