𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Andy Burnham asked us to do a lot of imagining in his speech on Monday. Imagine cheaper energy, he said. Imagine homes people can afford. Imagine a Britain that works for ordinary people. It sounds nice in a speech. But there’s a problem. Imagining something doesn’t just make it happen. You cannot simply imagine a stronger military. You must pay for one.

That is why the Government’s Defence Investment Plan matters. Britain is still not spending what it needs to keep itself safe. The former Defence Secretary, John Healey, said Britain’s armed forces needed an extra £28 billion. This week, Keir Starmer announced £15 billion. That is more than the £13.5 billion Healey resigned over, but it is barely half of what military leaders have said is needed.

Since then, we’ve even seen that £15 billion so-called commitment unravel. Most of it depends on Government departments – like transport – making cuts. Some of it depends on the Ministry of Defence itself making savings. And £4.7 billion is not even earmarked.

This is a problem Andy Burnham will inherit when he becomes Prime Minister. As yet, he has no answer to it.

The answer should be Welfare.

The British state now spends more on working-age welfare than on any other government department. Unless we bring that bill under control, we will never find the money to properly rearm.

The public already understand this. They know the benefits bill has become unsustainable, and they see the moral case for welfare reform: that getting people off benefits and into work is a good thing for the individual as much as it is for the public finances.

Keir Starmer tried to reduce the welfare bill last summer, but Labour MPs rebelled. He capitulated and ended up spending more money. Since then, all Labour has done on welfare is increase payouts like scrapping the two-child cap and water down assessments.

The current Welfare Secretary tries to claim that state-subsidised jobs and work experience schemes count as welfare reform. They do not. Spending more of taxpayers’ money is not the same thing as reducing long-term welfare dependency.

Andy Burnham looks set to take the same approach.

He says he wants to bring “Manchesterism” to the whole country. Yet Greater Manchester has long had higher unemployment than the national average. Almost one in four working-age adults in the city are economically inactive – well above the UK average. That is no model for getting Britain back to work.

Burnham says he takes Alan Milburn’s review of youth unemployment seriously. So he should also take seriously one of its most important conclusions, the Government has made it too expensive for businesses to hire young people. Yes, skills matter. Education matters. Employment support matters. But without businesses creating jobs, hundreds of thousand of young people are stuck.

That was a glaring omission from Burnham speech. He spoke about no end of government what businesses really want is government to get behind them – or get out of the way.

If welfare spending is to come down, more people have to move into work. That means making it cheaper and easier to employ them, not creating more taxpayer-funded schemes. It also requires fixing the incentives. Making sure benefits never pay more than work.

Burnham also called for a more collaborative politics in his speech.

In that spirit, he should borrow some Conservative ideas.

We have set out £23 billion of welfare savings. This includes a fundamental reform of the sickness benefits system, stopping benefits for mild mental health and neurodiversity claims, stopping benefits to foreign nationals, tightening the household benefit cap and restoring face-to-face assessments. We will make sure work always pays better than benefits.

This will not be easy. Welfare reform never is. But rebuilding Britain’s armed forces is too important. The money must be found.

The uncomfortable truth is that there is no route to spending what our defence requires unless we first get control of what we spend on welfare. Britain cannot afford to keep choosing the easier option.