𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Labour has abandoned welfare reform because the Prime Minister is too weak to fight this urgent battle, according to a former minister on a mission to liberate Britons from Benefits Street. Helen Whately, a 49-year-old mother of three at the heart of Kemi Badenoch’s efforts to win the trust of the country, was appalled this month when Sir Keir Starmer set out the Government’s plans for its next chapter in power.

She says the “gaping hole” in the King’s Speech was the absence of any proposed change in the law to reform benefits. The PM was humiliated last year when backbenchers forced him to u-turn on planned changes to disability benefits. With welfare spending on course to pass £400billion in 2030-31, Ms Whatley believes the country’s future is jeopardised if this bill spirals higher.

Britain faces a crisis of Labour’s own making, she argues, accusing the Government of having “killed a 100,000 jobs since they came into office” and of breaking a manifesto pledge when it hiked up employers’ National Insurance. She is convinced the Prime Minister’s fragility is to blame for the absence of legislation to overhaul the benefits system.

“We know Keir Starmer is too weak,” she says. “Labour backbenchers don’t want welfare reform, and, really, this was a King’s speech to save Keir Starmer’s skin, not to do what the country needs.”

Warning that national security is under threat, she says: “I find it extraordinary that we have a Government that is prioritising spending more money on benefits over spending more money on defence. It is the wrong priority.”

Nothing less than the future of Britain is at stake, she argues, saying she does not “want my constituents or anyone in this country or, indeed, my children to have to have a future which looks as bleak as it does under the current Government”.

She has no hope that Andy Burnham will embrace the challenge of bringing down the welfare bill if he wins the becomes Prime Minister.

“I see no prospect of Andy Burnham or any of the leadership contenders being serious welfare reformers, she says. “They’re not talking about welfare reform, because it’s not popular with Labour backbenchers.”

She insists it is possible to make a “compassionate case” for welfare reform so the system is a “safety net, not a lifestyle choice”.

If the country fails to grasp the challenge and put the public finances on a sound footing, she warns, there is the “risk that the safety net itself might become affordable”.

“I do not want that to happen,” she says. “That’s why you have to be responsible with the public finances, so you can afford to look after those who are seriously disabled, seriously ill, seriously unable to work.”

She wants the nation to “stop giving benefits to foreigners”

“We cannot afford this and Britain should not be a cash machine for the world,” she says. “If you’re here [and] from another country, you should be working and contributing.”

The long-term future of the welfare system depends on taxpayers being willing to support it.

“People are so angry at feeling that they are being taken for a ride,” she says.

A key question she gets asked is: “Why should I bother working? Why am I paying out for Benefits Street?”

A top concern is the future of young people who do not have a job and are not studying.

“We have a very serious situation where we have nearly one million young people not in education, employment, or training,” she says. “In fact, 700,000 graduates are on out-of-work benefits… “It is terrible for young people at that stage of life not to be in work.”

She expects addressing the challenge will be a key task for a future Tory Government.

“It’s something that is going to need a lot of hard work after the next election, because I don’t believe this Government will fix it,” she says.

Labour’s hikes in National Insurance have made it harder for young people to get a job in the hospitality industry, she adds. As a former pub waitress, she prizes the lifelong interpersonal skills that are picked up in this environment, and when she is going through CVs she looks out for this type of work experience.

“It’s one reason why we have announced that we will get rid of business rates for small shops, small hospitality venues, pubs, and cafes, because we know that those businesses really need help so they can get by and so they can employ people,” she says.

As a child of two doctors, the future of the health service is a subject close to her heart.

“On Christmas Day, I used to go round the wards with my father, who was a surgeon,” she says, adding: “I remember the camaraderie, the morale; the people were doing it because they really cared.”

Childhood Sunday lunchtime conversations would end up focused on “all the things that were wrong with the NHS”.

While Ms Whately “thought very hard about doing medicine” and took the necessary A-Levels, she decided she wanted to “fix the NHS instead of being a doctor”.

This ambition sent her to Oxford to read philosophy, politics and economics, and then she jumped into the private sector to gain an understanding of how business works. After spells at PricewaterhouseCoopers and AOL Time Warner she joined the elite consultancy firm McKinsey, where she worked on healthcare assignments.

This convinced her the “big decisions are made by politicians” and after standing against now-Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey in 2010 she won a seat in Parliament in 2015.

She found herself in the toughest job of her life as a minister at the department for health and social care as Covid erupted.

She remembers: “The hardest time of it was at the beginning… There was no plan for social care. Officially, local authorities were meant to have plans. I asked to see the local authority plans – they were almost blank sheets of paper.”

The challenge was simple – to “try and stop people dying of Covid”.

“That was that was the job and it was worth giving it all hours and doing anything we could.”

She admits that she and here husband were “not very good parents” at this time, with her children spending much time “not really home-schooling”.

Today, one child is doing A-Levels, another is taking GCSEs, and the third is “just being a teenager”.

“At the moment my weekends are are spent doing biology or economics revision with one or the other,” she says.

She feels “blessed” to have a “lovely constituency” – Faversham and Mid Kent, home of Leeds Castle. Getting into the countryside with the dog is a favourite activity, and occasionally she can be spotted on horseback, which she considers “a very good way of clearing my head”.

Hard work and ambition propelled Ms Whately through her career. And one of her priority projects today is ensuring the Conservative party wins a majority at the next election. That is a daunting challenge for a party which is narrowly ahead of Labour and the Greens at time of writing but eight points behind Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Does she have any hope that the Tories can overtake his party by this time next year?

“Yes, absolutely,” she states. “I mean, that’s what I’m here for and why I’m working so hard.”

She is confident Mrs Badenoch’s straight-talking approach to public life is what the nation needs.

“People are sick of politicians avoiding being straight with them,” she says.

The Tory leader “comes to the job with conviction, with a clear sense of what she stands for,” she enthuses. “She really thinks things through. And she’s a thoroughly decent person and a real team player. And all of those characteristics are what you need in a party leader and ultimately in a Prime Minister, and I think she would be brilliant.”

The Tories still have a mountain to climb before Mrs Badenoch can reach Number 10, but Ms Whately is not afraid of hard work.