BIRMINGHAM, England — One of Kemi Badenoch’s most senior frontbench colleagues has branded Andy Burnham’s conference speech last week as “absolutely mad.”
Speaking to POLITICO, Helen Whately, the shadow work and pensions secretary, argued that a “very different view of the country” will become clear at the Conservative Party conference this week.
“I see Andy Burnham saying, look, if we just hope hard enough, everything will be fine, and let’s achieve growth by taxing more and spending more, and more public ownership and more regulation,” she said. “To me, as a Conservative, that is absolutely mad. That is how you make our economy worse, and that is how you make people poorer.”
Her fierce attack on Burnham’s speech reveals a more combative approach from Badenoch and her shadow cabinet as the conference in Birmingham gets underway. Whately accused the prime minister of having the “wrong political philosophy and understanding of the economy.”
She left little wriggle room when she defended the party’s approach to the triple lock, a state pension increase guarantee introduced by the Tories — and now being tweaked by Burnham to fund a social care overhaul.
Over the weekend, Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith said the Conservatives would commit to the triple lock “for this parliament” — without making an express pledge to keep it in the party’s next manifesto.
But the shadow work and pensions struck a more defiant tone. “Kemi is absolutely dead clear about it,” Whately insisted in her POLITICO interview. “The triple lock is Conservative policy. The answer to the problems that our country faces isn’t to go after pensioners. The answer is to get people working, and the core to my brief is to make savings from the welfare bill where we’ve got seven million people of working age on out-of-work benefits. Let’s get some of those seven million people into work.”
Childcare drive
Whately also defended the Conservative Party’s pledge to offer free childcare to parents earning over £100,000. The current “cliff edge” means parents in England lose out on tens of thousands of pounds of childcare support when they reach this income.
The former Conservative MP Miriam Cates has questioned whether the policy might harm support for parents who want to stay at home rather than get back into the workplace as soon as possible, and risks treating them as “economic units.”
But Whately said: “I’ve had those arguments sometimes with colleagues, Miriam included, about whether we should be doing the kind of policies that some other countries do. I think Hungary was the obvious example of more paying people to essentially have children. Those are things are incredibly expensive. We’re not going down that route.”
“What we have to do is we have to make sure that our tax system supports growth, supports the economy,” she added.
Whately vowed that the Conservatives would meanwhile clamp down on access to working-age benefits. “The way that we are assessing people for access to sickness benefits is very flawed,” she said. “A huge amount of assessments are done over the phone, just with forms, people not being seen in person… it means that those who really are sick are now having to sort of compete with all the benefits of those who have seen on the internet how they can most effectively make sure they maximize their claim.”
Pressed on whether the party’s opponents could seize on policies curbing access to social security — as has happened to the Trump administration in the U.S. as it clamped down on programs like food assistance — Whately said: “This is specifically about people who could and should be working. It isn’t a policy about people who have disabilities and who are on the Universal Credit health component.”
Whately was also pressed on her former friendship with Robert Jenrick, a one-time Conservative leadership contender who has defected to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
The Tory conference center this year boasts a spoof Bayeux Tapestry on prominent display — which includes several images of Jenrick, the former shadow justice secretary. Whately and Jenrick were close colleagues until his switch to Reform earlier this year.
“I’m not feeling like we’re missing him right now,” Whately said. “I considered Rob a friend, and now he’s not a friend in my life … because of the way he behaved, and because he lied to people and deceived people.”
Hear the full the interview on the Politics at Sam and Anne’s podcast.
