Welfare

The truth about Labour’s benefits plan

Myths about “scroungers”, overdiagnosis and easy solutions are twisting the debate beyond recognition.

Keir Starmer’s great gamble

Can the Prime Minister keep Labour’s fragile coalition together?

PMQs review: Badenoch arrives unprepared, again

The leader of the opposition was outperformed by the Liberal Democrats’ Ed Davey.

Ending the welfare trap

Labour must not only make benefits less attractive, but make work more so.

Labour has learned that austerity is hard to avoid

As long as economic growth remains anaemic, pressure on spending will endure.

Punitive welfare reforms won’t help sick Britain

Repairing the NHS and social care is the best way to get the long-term ill into work.

Oliver Anthony does not have the answers

Right-wing protest songs only benefit the wealthy and powerful.

An “essentials guarantee” can end the need for food banks

Around 11.3 million people in the UK face hunger due to lack of money.

The triumph of cash

How universal basic income was adapted for the neoliberal era.

Why the trope of the benefit “scrounger” has returned

Welfare minister Tom Pursglove quotes Taken to try to sound tough on welfare “fraudsters”.

Disability benefit delays are causing cancer patients’ health to worsen

People are waiting an average of 14 weeks to find out if they will get welfare payments, Macmillan research reveals.

Disabled people shouldn’t be subject to “cruel” benefit sanctions, say charities

Jeremy Hunt wants his Budget to help “remove the barriers to work” for long-term sick and disabled people.

Universal Credit falls short of covering the bare essentials. That needs to change

Britain’s social safety net should guarantee food and warmth at the very least – but many are shocked to learn…

Job centres are the front line for mental health services

We need to prevent people from becoming patients in the first place.

In my great-great-grandfather’s poetry, I glimpse the Britain I report on today

George Lattimer, a trade unionist in Victorian London writing about fair pay and the workhouse, would still have plenty of…

Posh but poor? The return of the squeezed middle

From new food-bank users to cash-strapped professionals, middle earners are being hit hard by the rising cost of living.

Brits support universal basic income by 20-point margin

Exclusive: A majority of voters in the UK support a guaranteed monthly income from the state in every region, in…

“IT problems” don’t stop Rishi Sunak raising benefits, says Universal Credit creator

The Chancellor’s claim that he can only increase welfare payments once a year is rebutted by tech expert Deven Ghelani.

30 September 1983: Much was wrong with welfare socialism from the beginning.

There’s an easy way to help with energy bills, but the government won’t use it

Ministers are resorting to the nonsensical council tax system because they are ideologically allergic to raising Universal Credit.