Jeremy Hunt

No, what I'm saying is that if you I mean, I totally agree, by the way, that we should prioritise within public spending, the public spending that supports growth.

But I would flip that argument.

I flip that argument on its head, Emily.

Every one percent GDP goes up.

The chancellor has 10 to 12 billion pounds more to spend on public services.

So the question is, how do you get GDP to grow?

And I think that having a plan that over time reduces this huge debt overhang is the smart thing to do.

Not the last 15 years, but it started to go wrong very badly in the pandemic.

The welfare rolls were actually coming down until 2019.

But in the pandemic, you had a double whammy.

Firstly, it made a lot of people ill because it was a horrible pandemic.

But secondly, you have this explosion in benefit claims linked to mental health, linked to mental health that were not necessarily to do with the pandemic.

And those two things together mean that we are adding about a thousand people every day to the role of people who are signed off not having to look for work.

And, you know, we at the moment, if you're out of work, we've got six million adults out of work.

and you collect the three main benefits that are available to you, you'll get between 31 and 46 grand.

If you work full-time on the national living wage after tax, you get 22 grand.

You can't run a modern economy with those kinds of incentives.

No.

We have different policies.

I mean, we're talking about welfare for a lot of this discussion, where reform have flip-flopped all over the place.