Two right-leaning columns urge welfare overhaul citing CSJ report on UK jobs and benefits

Right · 1A City A.M. column by Christian May says Britain faces a "moment of reckoning" on welfare spending, which he describes as a major fault line in Westminster. 1 Right · 1The column says the Tories are pledging to cut the benefits bill, while Andy Burnham vows there will be "no crude cuts". 1 Right · 1It notes that the Timms Review of Personal Independence Payments is due to publish full findings, after an interim report in July found parts of the system "not fit for purpose". 1

Right · 1It also reports that the Milburn Review on youth unemployment found a "shameful" imbalance, with the state spending 25 times more on benefits for young people than on helping them into work. 1 Right · 1May points to wider interest in the issue, including a Times Welfare Inquiry led by Fraser Nelson and a Wall Street Journal report on the Motability scheme, which he says accounts for around 1 in 7 new UK car registrations. 1 Right · 2Both columns cite the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ): it found that just one in five additional payroll jobs created in Britain since 2014 went to British nationals. 1 2

Right · 1City A.M. gives the figures as 734,000 of 3.7m new jobs between 2014 and 2025, with non-EU nationals accounting for 2.5m of the increase, while out-of-work benefit claimants rose by 2.3m. 1 Right · 1GB News columnist Jonathan Gullis, a former Conservative MP, says the Prime Minister has delayed the conclusion of Alan Milburn's review of nearly one million young people not in work or training until after the Budget. 2 Right · 1Gullis cites the CSJ's Welfare 2030 inquiry, which he says identified 3,369 neighbourhoods in England and Wales where more than half of working-age adults claim out-of-work benefits. 2

Right · 1He also says 1.85 million foreign nationals received benefits or the state pension in 2025, 1.4 million of them working-age benefits, a figure he acknowledges includes people who work and pensioners who paid taxes. 2 Right · 1Gullis argues politicians found it easier to import labour than to get British people into work, blames Labour's "Jobs Tax" for raising the cost of hiring young people, and says the fit-note system became a pathway onto sickness benefits. 2 Right · 1He describes Reform's Shadow Chancellor Robert Jenrick as promising to remove benefit entitlements for foreign nationals, require able-bodied long-term claimants to do community work, and place more responsibility on employers to help sick workers return. 2

Right · 2May quotes Iain Duncan Smith describing a form of "human quantitative easing", and Gullis concludes it is time to end dependence on both welfare and immigration as economic crutches. 2 1