Sure, cut benefits but ina job-free zone, what’s next?

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.

- CHRIS BLACKHURST

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.