Kemi Badenoch pledges to cut £36bn from welfare bill which has ballooned to 'more than the entire GDP of Ukraine'
The Conservatives have pledged to slash the welfare bill by moe than £36billion, with leader Kemi Badenoch claiming it has now surpassed "more than the entire GDP of Ukraine".
Cutting disability and sickness benefits, as well as reinstating the two-child benefit cap and ending benefit claims for foreign nationals without EU settled status, are three of the measures the Tories will look to trim the burgeoning bill by £36.1billion .
The new plans are expected to be unveiled as part of an event later today, where Mrs Badenoch will slam the UK's benefits bill - estimated at more than £330billion for the 2025/26 financial year - as "crushing our economy".
"The question of whether we should cut welfare goes to the heart of what sort of country we want to be," she will say.
"It exposes a fundamental difference between Labour and the Conservatives. Labour MPs think cutting welfare is always cruel.
"They believe the kindest thing you can do for someone who is struggling is to tell them it’s okay not to look after themselves. That there’s nothing wrong with a life of dependency."
The cuts are expected to include £13.7billion raised from disability and sickness benefit cuts, such as scrapping payouts for mild mental health conditions and back pain.
Ending benefit claims for foreign nationals without EU settled status is expected to cut £9.5billion from the bill, with a further £3.1billion from the reintroduction of the two child benefits policy, which was scrapped by Labour last year.
Today, Mrs Badenoch will recognise the importance of aid for those who "genuinely cannot work," adding: "But the reality is that millions of people can and do contribute – to our economy, to their families, to their communities – even when they face serious challenges.
"Double amputees run marathons. People who are housebound do wonderful creative work from home. People with autism run some of the biggest tech companies in the world.
"If you tell a young person that their ADHD means they are defective and will never amount to anything, that mindset is likely to be more destructive to their future than the condition itself.
"That is what our welfare system is currently doing. Conservatives believe in a system that looks at people through the lens of what they can do – not what they cannot."
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Hundreds more criminals freed under Labour early release scheme
Hundreds more criminals will be released in the third wave of Labour's early release scheme.
Around 650 offenders who are serving sentences of less than three years and two months will be freed.
They join the thousands of criminals who have been released from jail since the scheme began on October 1.
Criminals released in this wave include people convicted of affray, which has a maximum sentence of three years, burglary and fraud.
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