Writing in this week's Bromsgrove Standard (November 14th), Bradley said:
"We’re all expected to live within our means – and that should extend to the Government too.
For too long Government has been spending more than it has coming in. This is unsustainable. It’s morally wrong too. The Government is burdening future generations with more and more debt. They will pay the price for our failures to control spending and live within our means as a country.
One area of Government spending that they must urgently get a grip on is the welfare bill.
The cost of disability and sickness benefits has increased by 40% in real terms since 2013 and now stands at nearly £65 billion. It’s not stopping there. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecast that spending on disability and sickness benefits will reach a staggering £100 billion by 2030. This is clearly unsustainable. In this scenario, £1 in every £4 of income tax will be spent on health and disability benefits, equivalent to almost £1,500 per year per person across the UK and more than the entire defence budget.
And here’s another sobering stat for you from the Office for National Statistics. More than 50% of households in our country taking more in welfare than they’re paying in.
I don’t believe for a second that anyone believes this is right. I certainly don’t, which is why last week I voted to cut welfare spending by £23 billion.
The Conservative Party’s plan that I voted for would deliver £23 billion in savings by reforming non-pensioner welfare including restricting welfare to UK citizens (with exceptions to honour existing international treaties), reforming sickness and disability benefits by ending access for lower-level mental health conditions and making greater use of face-to-face assessment, reforming housing benefit, reviewing the rates and exemptions from the Household Benefit Cap, limiting the VAT subsidy for Motability, reforming job-seeking obligations and retaining the two-child benefit cap.
Labour, Reform, Liberal Democrats did not support us on this. Why? Because they’re not serious about getting Britain working again."
