Keir Starmer 'cannot negotiate a good deal with Macron', Whately tells GB News

We're joined now by the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Helen Waitley MP

Ms Waitley, welcome to GB News Breakfast. Great to see you there

You're attacking the government here for allowing people to be on £25,000 a year from benefits

but didn't this all happen on your watch? You had 14 years to get the benefits right

You completely failed, didn't you? Well, in our time in government, if you look between the period from 2010 to the pandemic, we got the benefits bill right down

We halved unemployment. We got more people into work. And we did that groundbreaking reform led by Ian Duncan Smith, Universal Credit, which is all about making sure work would always pay

What we have seen, I think you're referring to, is the rise in sickness benefits that's happened through the pandemic and up to the general election, in fact, continue to go up under the Labour government

and we had reforms planned to fix that problem. Labour councillors said they had their own plans

but actually what we've seen in Parliament over the last week or two with all their U-turns, they're in chaos

They can't achieve welfare savings. And later today, Kemi Badenok is going to be making a speech

about what they need to do to make those savings that we so badly need. Talking of chaos, I mean, it's quite chaotic in the Conservative Party at the moment

I mean, you've had another defection, Sir Jake Berry announcing he's going to reform

only reform can give us back pride in our own country Conservatives are messing up here aren they Well I wish Jake well but clearly I disagree with his choice The Conservatives are the

only party which are talking about the fact that we need to live within our means, and

part of that is that we need to bring down the welfare bill. Labour has just voted for

more spending. Reform is also actually calling for more spending on welfare. They've called

for lifting that two-child benefit cap. So they would inevitably be a party that would end up taxing more

or destroying the country's economy. So actually the Conservatives of the party, which are saying

it may be difficult things to say, but we need as a country to live within our means. Helen Wainley, we're hearing later from the Labour government

on its plan to tackle the migration crisis. You had Rwanda planned. They've got a one-in-one-out deal

But we've been in a channel this afternoon, this morning, forgive me, already with Nigel Farage watching

filming a boat laden with 70 people being escorted across a channel

by the French Navy. I mean, as you're saying, we're seeing thousands of people come here under Labour

We indeed, as you said, we had a plan involving the deterrent, which the government immediately scrapped

and people who had been saying in the channel that was going to be something that was going to make it less attractive

to come to the UK, well, now they're coming. And I have no confidence whatsoever in Keir Stummer's ability

to negotiate a good deal with Macron on this. Every time we see Keir Starmer negotiate

he tends to lose One of the reasons the Conservatives were voted out is because you messed up on migration What gives you the right to criticise when you had 14 years and as Christopher said earlier on you did nothing

The situation became worse under your watch. So we recognise, of course, that we've made mistakes and we've talked about that

And particularly, we were frustrated at how long it was taking for us to put in place our deterrent policy to tackle people coming across the channel

But we are now in opposition. We're under new leadership. And our job as opposition party is indeed to hold the government to account, to point out their mistakes and to come up with, as we are working on, alternatives

For me, particularly in welfare, setting out here are the ways that the government could and should save money

and that is crucial because the country so badly needs it. Talking of saving money, the announcement that Chem is making today

limiting benefits, face-to-face assessments, which I think most people would agree with, getting people back into work

are these costed? How much is it going to cost us? Well, overall, the announcement we are making today

would be about bringing the welfare bill down. There are some really substantial areas of potential savings

One, as you say, is we are saying that you should bring back face-to-face assessments. there's been this huge growth in telephone assessments

Another area where we know that there will be savings is by stopping people receiving

sick benefits for these common mental health problems or wellbeing issues like anxiety or mild depression ADHD that been a huge area of growth Centre for Social Justice has done some work on this which says that you could save up to billion from tackling that

And in fact, you could use some of that money to spend on better support for people

So overall, the things we are suggesting are about savings. And this is crucial, because just this week we heard from the OBR

the OBR has looked at what Labour's been doing with welfare and how it's unable to make savings on the welfare bill

and has said, and I quote, that the UK is in a very vulnerable position

highly likely that we see taxes as a result going up in the autumn and the Chancellor taking us into a doom loop of higher taxes

higher unemployment and higher taxes again. That's a disaster. I say the Conservatives are the only party that are pointing out

that we cannot do this. Reform wants to spend more on welfare. Labour wants to spend more on welfare

We're the ones saying, no, we've got to get it under control. Helen, just finally, do you think that some of these mental health issues

are being over-diagnosed? There's been a big increase since the COVID pandemic

in these disabilities, ADHD and the like. Are they being over-prescripted, you think, in the system

and therefore people receiving benefits when maybe they shouldn't? I mean, that's something that we are hearing from psychiatrists

and even the mental health community and GPs themselves. Actually, one of the shocking things that's happening

is people are sometimes receiving benefits of these kind of conditions without even getting a diagnosis

They haven't necessarily got a diagnosis. They're not necessarily getting any actual help or treatment

So that's one of the problems with the system that we have at the moment that so badly needs to be fixed

Helen Whatley, thank you very much for joining us this morning