Helen Whately grilled by Camilla Tominey on 'ballooning' benefits bill under the Tories: 'How on EARTH did you allow it?!'

Camilla pressed Whateley: "How on earth did you allow it as the Conservative Government to get this high this quickly? We're talking about £86billion in a decade, that is unprecedented. The benefits bill back in 1985 was £12billion?"

Whately responded: "In the period between 2010 and the pandemic, we brought the welfare bill down. We did a particularly good job at getting people back into work, introducing Universal Credit, which was a big reform and hard to do.

"It was controversial in Parliament, but we did it because it was the right thing to do to make sure that work paid what we then saw. More recently, coming through the pandemic was this rise in people claiming sickness benefits and the sickness benefit system not working for the world that we live in."

Accusing Labour of "abandoning" reforms to the welfare system, Whately added: "We had reforms in progress in the run up to the last election, which the Labour Government has abandoned.

"We did work that reduced the stigma of mental health, but what we have seen is this huge rise in people coming forward with claims to do with mental health. The shift from face-to-face to more telephone assessments, these are things that need to change to fix the system."

Highlighting the Conservative plans to save £12billion on the welfare bill, Whately explained: "We made a commitment in our manifesto that, were we in Government, we would be bringing the welfare bill down by £12billion.

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"I'm at the moment doing the hard work that you should do in opposition, which is work out if we get into Government in the after next general election, what are the things that we would propose then to be able to bring down the welfare bill.

"If it goes up, as it looks like it's going to, [it will be] nearly £100billion under this Government."

The Shadow Secretary detailed how £9billion of the proposed savings would come from restricting benefits for mild health conditions.

She said: "There's some work that the Centre for Social Justice published last week, and I was been talking about this, which is where, because we see that the fastest area of growth in claims for sickness benefits is to do with common mental disorders.

"The Centre for Social Justice reckons you could save up to £9billion by doing that and actually then you could use some of those savings to invest in some treatment to support that people with some of those conditions may need to be in work."

The Shadow Secretary revealed that the Conservatives had offered conditional support to Labour on welfare reforms.

She said: "What we said to Keir Starmer, when he was really struggling last week, and it was clear that he was going to be facing a defeat in the Commons next week, is that we would actually support welfare savings from Labour if they did three things."

Whately emphasised that welfare savings would be used to prevent tax increases, contrasting Conservative plans with Labour's expected approach.

She stated that the Conservatives would "commit to use those savings to be able to avoid putting up taxes in the autumn, which looks at the moment highly likely as what they're going to do."

The Shadow Secretary indicated she was undertaking detailed policy work in opposition, saying: "I'm at the moment doing the hard work that you should do in opposition, which is work out if we get into Government in the after next general election, what are the things that we would propose then to be able to bring down the welfare bill."