Rachel Reeves has criticised her deputy – Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones – for “clumsy” comments in which he compared slashing disability benefits to taking away a child’s pocket money.
The Chancellor told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: “No, he was clumsy in his analogy, and he’s apologised for that.”
She added: “Of course it’s not pocket money.”
Darren Jones made the ‘pocket money’ analogy BBC Politics Live earlier in the week, in a defence of the government’s long-trailed plans to trim the benefits bill.
Jones said: “Take, for example, if I said to my kids: I’m going to cut your pocket money by £10 per week, but you have to go and get a Saturday job’.”
“The impact assessment on that basis would say that my kids were down £10, irrespective of how much money they get from their Saturday job.”
The critique of Jones’ comments is an about-turn for the Chancellor, who as recently as Wednesday night defended his stance – and even repeated some of his comments.
Reeves told LBC: “If you have a 16-year-old and say ‘I won’t give you so much pocket money, I want you to go out to work’, and the OBR comes and does an impact assessment and says you’re going to be worse off, you will be worse off if you don’t get a Saturday job, but if they do, they will be better off.
“There are a lot of people who have a disability who are desperate to work.”
Rachel Reeves made significant cuts to the UK’s welfare bill in Wednesday’s Spring Statement, after the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) found that the government’s initial round of savings would not recoup the £5bn that the government had expected.
The Chancellor froze the additional Universal Credit (UC) payment made to those least able to work until 2030, and announced that the UC health element would be “cut by 50 per cent and then frozen for new claimants.”
Reeves told the Commons: “The Labour Party is the party of work. We believe that if you can work, you should work and if you can’t, you should be properly supported.”
The government’s package of welfare cuts is projected to save £3.4bn, while the overall bill for welfare spending is expected to touch £70bn by the end of this decade.
Jones himself has had to walk down from these comments already, apologising as part of an appearance on the ITV Peston politics programme: “I am sorry about it, it was tactless and it wasn’t well considered.”
“What I was trying to explain in simple terms was what the impact assessment considers and what it doesn’t consider,” he added.
A Liberal Democrat spokesperson slammed the comments as “incredibly insulting” to disability benefits recipients.
