Cut benefits by all means, but what happens when there are no jobs?

As Starmer and his colleagues wax lyrical about heightened defence, boosting economic growth and cracking down on welfare, we are not being told how and where jobs will be created, writes Chris Blackhurst

Here is a thing. My hometown, Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria – now prefixed with the title “Royal”, thanks to its devotion to constructing nuclear submarines for our defence – is booming. The submarine yard is adding to its workforce, going up to 17,500 to meet demand in this newly militarised era. This week, the prime minister paid a visit, touring the high-tech facilities and talking about how the increased spending was a plank in the government’s “faster and further” growth agenda.

Yet if you go to Barrow’s high street or parks you will find people wandering around, often in shell suits. They appear to be of working age but they are not working. It may be that they’re going in later or they have a day off. The chances are though, they are unemployed and, given that Barrow has one of the highest disability benefit rates in the country, they’re claiming incapacity.

It may be that they are incapable of employment or they could do some form of work. If it’s the latter, they fall into the category of person Sir Keir Starmer is targeting in his accompanying drive to cut the welfare budget. That’s fine in principle and we’ve heard a lot about his determination and that of the minister, Liz Kendall, to push folks away from benefits, to examine whether they really are disabled and should cease depending on the state and hold down a job.

There is, though, a gaping hole in this get-tough policy: it assumes there are suitable jobs available.

Look at Barrow, as Starmer certainly thought he did. The truth of the place is that apart from the submarines-contractor BAE Systems, there is no other significant employer. There is the hospital and the local authority and some retailers, and that is about your lot. In Barrow, crudely, you either work on the submarines or you don’t work.

Where once there was a huge iron and steelworks plus other substantial factories, now there are none. The submarine yard was itself caught up in that inexorable decline – its workforce fell to below 3,000 at one stage in the early Noughties as orders dried up. While it’s now flat out and will be for the foreseeable future, those new workers must also be highly skilled. Apprenticeship and training schemes are up and running but many of those additional posts will go to qualified outsiders. There is an entire generation that has missed out.

Meanwhile, Barrow is blighted by poor housing stock – 42 per cent of the homes pre-date 1914 – and widespread health issues – its death and infection rate was among the highest in England during the pandemic. Poverty Truth Network reports that one in five inhabitants live in poverty. Four town centre wards are especially bad. In one, Barrow Central, 36.5 per cent of the children are being raised poor. Not surprisingly, mental illness and stress-related conditions are common and disability claims are high.

Still, Starmer and Kendall maintain that at least some of these benefit recipients will head into work. But where, exactly?

Barrow is just one example across the post-industrial North and Midlands and pockets of the South and South East. It’s fortunate in that there are some jobs but the reality is they are nowhere near enough and they are not appropriate for those currently claiming disability benefit.

In the midst of Starmer and his colleagues waxing lyrical about heightened defence boosting economic growth – something we are still waiting to experience, with latest official figures that tell a different story – and cracking down on welfare, we are not being told how and where these jobs will be created. We’re receiving one half of the equation, there is another half that is unexplained and left dangling.

Investment in education and skills will help, but only so far. This, too, let us not forget, is against a backdrop of advancing tech and AI which promises to eat up employment.

Some years ago, a then Tory minister said in a moment of candour that the biggest social problem this country faced was mass re-employment in the post-industrial areas. That has not changed. If anything, with the shift towards technology-based work, it has worsened. Nor is the decline confined to the former manufacturing heartlands – jobs in rural districts are also scarce.

Shops, pubs and restaurants that might have been expected to provide employment in the past are closing. More than 13,000 high street stores shuttered for good last year, with more expected in 2025, thanks in no small part to the cost hikes introduced in this administration’s first Budget. Next week, we are readied for more public sector reductions, again another previous possible source of work.

This government excels in making sweeping positive statements, in issuing exciting plans and promising jam tomorrow. Hopefully, some will reach fruition. Defence, renewables, tech, bio-sciences... they all entice. But unless Starmer borrows from a Tory ex-employment secretary, it’s hard to see how they will balance the welfare fallout. Norman Tebbit told the 1981 party conference about his own father who “grew up in the Thirties with an unemployed father … He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept going till he found it.” Possibly there could be some disability recipients who can ride a bike. Really, though, where is the majority going to slip so easily into employment?

There is no doubt it is depressing but it is also real, and that is where Starmer, Kendall et al are failing. They are selling only half the story; the other half remains unsold, on the shelf.