For the first time in history, in 2025-26, the UK’s total welfare bill exceeded the total revenue from income tax. This is shocking and completely unsustainable. We’ve got to get people who are able to work off benefits and into employment so they’re paying into the pot to share the responsibility of funding our public services. We’ve got to get Britain working.

It is astonishing that the government is now spending more on people not working, those receiving universal credit, housing benefit, child benefits, incapacity benefit or state pensions than it collects from those in work. New figures from the Office of Budget Responsibility at the close of the 2025-26 tax year show that the Treasury raised £331billion from income tax but this was surpassed by the ballooning welfare bill of £333billion. The OBR projects that, without intervention, welfare costs will continue to rise, on course to reach £407 billion by 2031. This cannot continue.

Worklessness is like a disease. It leads to poorer life expectancy, poorer quality of life and is a drain on those who do go out to work to pay their fair share. Of course, there are people who are genuinely down on their luck or have valid reasons why they can’t work and it’s right that we should support them. But there are many people who are perversely better off financially out of work. This is a disgrace. The benefits system is there to support people in need, not to be a way of life.

Labour, Plaid Cymru and the Greens will tell you that the best way to help people in poverty is to give them more handouts but this is exactly what has led to this position where the welfare bill is greater than income tax revenue. This approach leads to a country driven by high tax, high dependency and forces businesses to close, therefore reducing the number of taxpayers even further.

The best way to reduce poverty is to give people the economic security of paid employment. It’s better for their mental and physical health and means they’re paying into the pot. In this Senedd election, only one party is focussed relentlessly on growing the economy and getting people back into work and that’s Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives. Please don’t risk the chaos that a protest vote would deliver with Reform, Plaid Cymru or the Greens. Let’s get Britain working.