Editorial: ​Labour is at last talking of tackling Britain's vast welfare dependency

​Young people will lose their benefits if they refuse to take up work and training opportunities, a minister in Sir Keir Starmer’s new government has said.

​Liz Kendall said that claimants have a “responsibility” to engage with skills or employment programmes and will face sanctions if they decline to do so as part of reforms to be set out next week.

This is all welcome, albeit too little and too late.

The Labour government is saying that it will stick to a commitment under the former Tory administration to reduce the welfare bill by £3 billion over five years.

Ms Kendall declined to reveal how specifically Labour will cut costs, saying only that the government will introduce its own reforms.

The Work and Pensions Secretary told Sky News: “If people repeatedly refuse to take up the training or work responsibilities, there will be sanctions on their benefits.”

This is important, albeit hypocritical, because Sir Keir was critical of Conservative plans to cut welfare, for example in a pre-election TV debate with the then prime minister, Rishi Sunak.

But such reforms are happening far, far too late.

As the rows over winter fuel payments and farm inheritance tax are showing, governments are finding it hard either to cut expenditure, or to raise it.

These problems go back much more than a decade. Far too many people were on the old disability payment system, DLA. Northern Ireland had the highest percentage of the workforce on it.

Since covid, the number of people out of work, and supposedly unable to work, has grown. It is not only ruinously costly, it means we need ever more immigrants to fill key jobs.

This is yet another topic which Stormont MLAs are either too weak, or perhaps just too uninformed, to tackle at a local level. Now that Labour is in office, it realises it can no longer be ducked at a national one.