Too many young people are finding the prospect of going out to work a problem, a Cabinet minister has claimed.
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall said she wanted to change the thinking among some of the younger generation where “doing a day’s work is in itself seen as stressful”.
The Government is attempting to get more people off benefits and into work to improve people’s long-term prospects and cut billions of pounds off the welfare bill.
In an interview with ITV News, Kendall said there were people who should not be on benefits who were “taking the mickey”.
A survey by the Department for Work and Pensions has found that 49 per cent of people on benefits say they cannot work.
Kendall said she believed “more of those people could work”.
Next month, Labour is due to announce its plan to cut the welfare bill by reducing the number of people claiming benefits.
Kendall said she visited a supermarket in her constituency recently where a charity was helping young people to get off benefits and into work.
She added that there were “young people with genuine mental health problems who the supermarket thought was doing great stuff to help them get work and stay in work”.
But there were also managers saying “there were some young people who felt just turning up on time or working the day that they needed to, not always taking breaks – they had to understand that that was the world of work, that was just the nature of life and that isn’t stress or pressure”, Kendall said.
“So I think there’s no easy headline about it’s all one or all the other. And as ever, life is more complex.”
“I think there is genuinely a problem with many young people, particularly the Covid generation. But we can’t have a situation where doing a day’s work is in itself seen as stressful.”
Besides planning a welfare overhaul, the Government is reforming jobcentres and targeting the long-term routine treatment NHS waiting lists to encourage more people back into the workplace.
Kendall said the Government would help those who were on benefits but able to get a job, and take action over those who could work but did not.
She said: “There are people who shouldn’t be on benefits who are taking the mickey, and that is not good enough – we have to end that.”
She also denied she was being “bullied” by the Treasury as the Chancellor seeks to slash the benefits bill, telling the broadcaster: “Rachel Reeves has never done that, we’re good friends.”