Keir Starmer's welfare bill torn apart amid plans to 'water down' benefits checks: 'How is this sustainable?!'

Officials are warning the assessment system is at risk of complete collapse, with a surge in new PIP claimants contributing to mounting delays.

A record 3.9 million people are now claiming PIP, at a current cost of £26billion a year, which is expected to rise to £41billion by the end of the decade.

Discussing the Labour Government's handling of the welfare system, Mr MacKenzie highlighted many applications which "aren't genuine" are often successful thanks to the absence of face-to-face appointments.

Mr MacKenzie told GB News: "One of the aspects of life is that life can be depressing, you can have a lot of anxiety in every single hour of almost every day. Nothing is going your way, right? It may be a small thing, it may be a major thing.

"So the next issue is this: when you fill in that form, you don't see anybody face-to-face. Nobody's looking at you thinking, 'I tell you what, you're lying your head off there'."

He added: "And with PIP payments, you can be making yourself £80 a week, £4,000 a year tax free, and once that money gets locked in, that's it. So then there's a problem about trying to find work that can balance against the money."

The former Sun Editor argued that being on benefits is proving more beneficial for Britons than being in actual work.

He explained: "Our minimum weekly payments, monthly payments and welfare is running side by side. If you had to work 40 hours a week and it took you an hour each way to travel, plus the cost of your train fare or your bus fare, why on earth would you want to go to work?

"So there is a challenge within people for the first time in my life where actually welfare seems to pay better than work pay. So it is very much in everybody's interest to either exaggerate or make up something to get benefits."

Mr MacKenzie questioned how the current Labour welfare operation could continue and remain "sustainable".

He asked: "If we carry on like that, so we have less and less money to give to more and more people who are not working, how is that possibly sustainable? Who on earth can say that that is a future for our nation? Nobody."

GB News host Dawn Neesom also highlighted Labour plans for claimants aged 25 and over to receive PIP payments for "four years after one initial assessment", which is then "not renewed for another six years".

Dawn told Mr MacKenzie: "So potentially, people can be claiming these benefits for 10 years, many of them without even a face-to-face interview?"

He responded: "Correct, and I'll be honest with you, you would be mad if you suddenly turned around and said, 'I tell you what, I'm going to contact the Department of Work and Pensions and I'm going to tell them that actually, I'm feeling perfectly all right now'.

"Nobody is going to call them up and tell them, 'please take away that £4,000 tax free every year for the next 10 years'. Nobody, nobody is going to do that, so we are facing these issues."

Defending the Government's handling of the system, Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden told GB News that there are "a lot of changes" coming in the system to make it more sustainable.

He said: "There's a lot of change going on in the system to try to get these numbers back up after what I inherited from the Conservative Party.

"I'm having to do it against a backdrop of inheriting a lot of contracts from the previous Government which allow health assessors to work from home."