Badenoch admits Brexit damaged UK economy
In her speech this morning Kemi Badenoch admitted that Brexit damaged the economy.
In a passage aimed at Labour, she said:
Adam Smith once said, “There is a lot of ruin in a nation.”
For all that is going wrong now, and let’s be honest has gone wrong in the past, nations can absorb shocks.
The financial crisis, Brexit, Covid.
Countries with strong institutions and productive people do not collapse overnight.
Even foolish policies take time to do real, lasting damage.
A crisis is serious, but it is not fatal unless governments keep repeating the mistakes.
We made mistakes in government, but we have learned from them.
Badenoch was not an MP at the time of the 2016 referendum, but she voted to leave and as a minister in the last government she was an enthusiastic supporter of Brexit.
She has never abandoned this position. But since the general elections she has criticised the fact that the last government embarked on Brexit without having a clear plan for how it would implement it.
Key events
The Conservatives have published the full text of Kemi Badenoch’s speech on welfare. It’s here.
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Badenoch admits Brexit damaged UK economy
In her speech this morning Kemi Badenoch admitted that Brexit damaged the economy.
In a passage aimed at Labour, she said:
Adam Smith once said, “There is a lot of ruin in a nation.”
For all that is going wrong now, and let’s be honest has gone wrong in the past, nations can absorb shocks.
The financial crisis, Brexit, Covid.
Countries with strong institutions and productive people do not collapse overnight.
Even foolish policies take time to do real, lasting damage.
A crisis is serious, but it is not fatal unless governments keep repeating the mistakes.
We made mistakes in government, but we have learned from them.
Badenoch was not an MP at the time of the 2016 referendum, but she voted to leave and as a minister in the last government she was an enthusiastic supporter of Brexit.
She has never abandoned this position. But since the general elections she has criticised the fact that the last government embarked on Brexit without having a clear plan for how it would implement it.
Labour says Tories would plunge kids ‘back into misery’ after Badenoch says its poverty measure not valid
Labour is saying that the Conservatives would plunge children “back into misery” under Kemi Badenoch’s welfare plans.
Responding to her speech, a Labour spokesperson said:
The Tories’ message on welfare is: we broke it, now put us back in charge. Kemi Badenoch is delusional and is treating the public like fools.
Under the Conservatives, the benefits bill rocketed by £114bn and nearly a million kids were plunged into poverty. Now they want to pretend it didn’t happen. There is a simple choice at hand: lifting half a million children out of poverty with Labour, or plunging kids back into that misery under Tory plans.
Badenoch claims Labour using wrong measure to assess whether people are in poverty
Here is the full quote from Kemi Badenoch in her welfare speech saying Labour’s poverty measure is flawed. (See 10.20am.) She said:
Labour will claim that they raise taxes to eradicate child poverty.
We Conservatives need to take on this argument that raising taxes on working people is the best way to eradicate poverty. It is not.
Labour believe that the way to end poverty is give money to people in poverty, and give them more money until they’re not in poverty anymore. This has never worked.
The best way to get children out of poverty is for their parents to have jobs, and for these jobs to pay well.
But Conservatives also need to challenge bad metrics and wrong assumptions that create flawed policy.
Let us start with the metric of relative poverty which Labour use.
Relative poverty just tells you what proportion of households earn below 60% of median income. That’s not a measure of poverty at all.
It is a bad measure because in a booming economy, as incomes rise, more people can be classed as being in poverty even though their real income is rising.
And then during a recession like we had under the last Labour government, where GDP collapsed and unemployment went through the roof, relative poverty fell even though we were all poorer.
So it is not enough for us to challenge the policy. We have to challenge the thinking that underpins it. We need something better.
There are other ways of measuring poverty, but Badenoch did not say which one she preferred.
Tories say Lib Dems are trying to ‘turn the clock back’ with call to join customs union with EU
The Conservatives have criticised the Liberal Democrats for proposing a custom union with the EU by saying Ed Davey’s party is trying to “turn the clock back”.
In a statement on the 10-minute rule bill (see 9.58am), Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, said:
Ed Davey and the Liberal Democrats have never moved on from the Brexit referendum nearly a decade ago. And they will never stop trying to reopen the debates of the past – whatever the cost – when the rest of the country has long since moved on.
The Liberal Democrats would rather try to turn the clock back, than focus on the difficult decisions needed to tackle welfare spending so we can live within our means.
What is interesting about this statement is that it contains no attempt to defend the Boris Johnson Brexit deal, which rejected custom union membership, as good for the UK.
There was more evidence of this yesterday when Lord McFall, the Lord Speaker, published the transcript of his latest Lord Speaker’s Corner podcast interview, with Michael Gove.
Gove, who is now a Tory peer, was one of the leaders of the Vote Leave campaign, and in 2016 he and colleagues highlighted the supposed economic benefits of leaving the EU. But, when asked about the tangible benefits, he gave a reply just focusing on a constitutional point. He said:
As for the benefits that Brexit has brought, I think the fundamental benefit is that it has made this place, not just the House of Lords, but parliament itself, more important.
Because one of my frustrations was, all the time that I was a cabinet minister, I would find myself being invited to agree or disagree with government policy in particular areas. And then, when I said I disagreed, being told that it didn’t matter because this was European Union law that we couldn’t alter.
Q: Do you think there is a genuine mental health crisis in this country? Or do you think that people are just getting a diagnosis to claim benefits?
Badenoch says she thinks it is “a bit of both”.
She says there are people not in work with severe mental health issues.
But she says there are also people clearly playing the system. She says you can watch the so-called “sickfluencers” on Instagram telling people how to cheat.
And that’s the end of the Q&A.
Q: Are you worried that some of the language that you are using, about a Benefits Street budget, for example, is stigmatising?
Badenoch does not accept this. She claims to be careful about the language that she uses. But she says she wants to use language that cuts through.
Badenoch says she would like to get welfare spending back down to pre-Covid levels
Q: Is it realistic to get welfare spending back to pre-Covid levels?
Yes, says Badenoch. She says that is realistic.
Q: When you look at health benefits, are you just going to restrict mental health benefits, or is it all health benefits?
Badenoch says there are a lot of people with disabilities who can work.
She says it is not right that people should be able to get extra money for an ADHD diagnosis. She claims people who are anxious can decide not to work and to get benefits. That is not right.
But where the line gets drawn will be decided by the review, she says.
Q: Would you change the triple lock as part of your welfare review?
Badenoch says the triple lock is Conservative policy.
She say she wants to focus on welfare policies that will promote growth.
Badenoch says she wants welfare system, but not a ‘welfare state’
Q: [From Sam Coates from Sky] Does poverty in any form bother you?
Of course, says Badenoch. She says at times in her life she did not have money.
But she says that at the moment there are people out of work who are better off than people in work. That does not fix poverty at all, she says.
She says we need a welfare system. It should be a safety net. But it should not be a welfare state, she says.
Badenoch is now taking questions.
Q: Will you be consulting Iain Duncan Smith about this?
Badenoch says Duncan Smith is the father of welfare reform.
But the problems he was work and pensions secretary (he created universal credit) are different from the problems now.
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