Readers debate if benefit claimants should be made to clean up high streets
Long-term benefits claimants will be made to clean up their local high street or face being stripped of their payments under new Reform UK plans. The "welfare to work" policy will see people forced to do 20 hours of work a week in the community if they are fit to.
Reform's Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick unveiled the proposal yesterday as part of a welfare overhaul aimed at saving £50 billion a year from the ballooning benefits bill. Speaking at a press conference, he warned that Reform would stop some claimants “taking everyone else for mugs”.
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He said: “They’ll work to clean up high streets and parks, to beautify neglected places, to carry out minor repairs, to staff libraries and community centres, to perform many other tasks from the list that we’ve published today.
“We’ll also embrace local charities and community groups and ask them to help us and take part. If claimants refuse to participate or fail to show up, they’ll face penalties.
“Let me speak very plainly. If people who are capable of work refuse, then they’ll get nothing. That’s fair.”
Reform has billed its plans as the biggest shake-up of the welfare state in a generation.
The party would abolish personal independence payments (Pip) and the health element of Universal Credit for working-age adults, and replace them with a new benefit that is harder to claim.
Foreign nationals - including those from the EU - would also be banned from claiming almost all types of benefits in the UK.
In response, shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride said: “Reform continue to flip flop like they did on the two-child benefit cap, and their fantasy numbers are simply not plausible.
“Meanwhile, Labour are totally failing to tackle the scale of our welfare problem.
“Only the Conservatives have a radical and credible plan to cut the welfare bill and get Britain working again.”