The benefits system in the UK does definitely need massive reform. I work in social housing and encounter entire families that are lifelong benefit abusers. Families where the grandparents don't work, the parents have never worked and now the children don't work. Often they live in homes that I, on a respectable combined income of over 75k would never be able to afford.
The bottom line is that the system isn't working when you have entire families living relatively comfortable lives without having to work. The current benefits system simply cannot maintain itself when you have people taking, taking, taking without paying anything in themselves. I know that there are many people that don't abuse the system but people shouldn't have the ability to abuse it in the first place. Its created an entire section of society that feel entitled to free benefits and who can blame them when they've been able to do it for so long.
Pulling the rug underneath them isn't going to make things better.
It's all about education. That's the only way to break this generational cycle.
We have to, to a certain degree, "write off" the current generation and concentrate on the kids.
But that's not going to work if the kids have parents who can't afford to live somewhere half decent, not having to be moved around every 6 months and can't afford to feed them etc etc.
Generational benefits "lifestyle" is a problem, no doubt, a problem that Labour never really managed to do anything about.
But it's a problem for the people caught up in it, more than anything else. It's a "wasted" lifetime that should be filled with opportunities.
But it's hardly a problem for the UK debt.... it's fucking peanuts at the end of the day.