Rod Liddle: UK Correspondent on the high inactivity number in the UK, with 9.41 million people out of work

Millions of Brits are out of work and not looking for more. 

Official figures show that inactivity is sitting at 9.41 million, or 22.2% of the working age population, which is up 350,000 from 2023. 

UK Correspondent Rod Liddle told Mike Hosking that while some of those people are students and people taking early retirement, there’s still a residue of 4-5 million people who either haven’t gone back to work or haven’t started. 

He said that he suspects several things are to blame for this: an influx of foreign-born workers, mental illness and ill health, and a lack of incentive and benefits to being in the workforce. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
UK bound rod Little Morning, Make Good, Bill and tune make.
Now we've talked about this before. Explain to me what
it is. Nine million plus. So you've got sixty six
ish million people in the Great United Kingdom of whom
nine million plus are not only without warning, but they're
not even looking for work.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yeah, nine point five million, it's just gone up. So, yes,
this is remarkable. This is people aged between eighteen and
sixty five. Some of that number is taken up with
perfectly legitimate stuff like students going to university, and some

(00:40):
of it is taken up by people taking early retirement.
But there's still a residue of four to five million
people who simply haven't gone back to work or haven't
started work. And the figures from the Office for National
Statistics are pretty chilly. That you know, this is something

(01:00):
which dates back to the furlough times of the COVID pandemic,
that we simply haven't got back into the idea that
we ought to go out to work. Now, my suspicion
is a couple of things that are blamed for this.
We continue to import foreign labor and an even greater
rate than we did when we were in the European Union.

(01:22):
And so one of the figures which stands out today
is that there are a million fewer British people working today,
British born people working today than there were there five
years ago, and a million more foreign born workers working today.
So that does two things. One thing, it tells you

(01:43):
who's doing the work in the country. It also tells
you that wages are being kept artificially low through the
consequence of hiring foreign labor. And this is a huge problem, Mike,
because while undoubtedly some people are bone idle I'm sure,
and others, a lot of them cite illness I mental
illness has reasons for not working. One of the main

(02:06):
reasons people don't go out to work is that there
is scant incentive for them to go out to work
given the level of benefits that we have and the
low ranges that we have.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
So what is a labor government of the political disposition
to do something about it? Either by you know, creating
a greater gap between welfare and a job, or do
they increase the test for people who aren't in work
and go round saying, make you've been unemployed for nine months, now,
what are you doing about it?

Speaker 2 (02:31):
They don't seem to be doing anything about it at
the moment. Rachel Reeves, a Chancellor of the Exchequer, has
said if you're able to work, you should go out
to work. But that's all she's done. She has put
nothing in place to actually ensure that this comes about. Now.
You know, there are many ways to do it. One
of them would be to cut down immigration substantially. Another
would be to clamp down on benefits, not to have

(02:55):
them rise in line with inflation as has been the case.
And you know, a third monk be to have a
word with the doctors and say, are you absolutely certain
that these people you're signing off sick or sick? But
none of those have been mentioned because of course, this
plays very badly with the labor left, that we shouldn't

(03:16):
be persecuting people who can't work, because the labor left
believes that all of them can't work for very good reasons,
not that they're swinging the lead.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Funny story earlier on Triva. He's a like called Triva.
He was one of the people who got jailed in Southport.
He was not at work. We found out in court
before he was sentenced to jail. He was not at
work due to his lower back difficulties and the pain
of not being able to work, But he did manage
to get down to the local hotel to throw a
couple of ciphers through the window. Are there a lot

(03:47):
of those sort of people?

Speaker 2 (03:48):
There's a lot of that going around, an awful lot
of that going around, and you know, the left and
to a degree, the government will tell you that that
that's not the major problem. That's not the major problem.
The people who who people want to go to work,
it's just that they're so ill that they can't do it.
That is not believed by the majority of working people

(04:12):
in this country. And also, and it greats terribly, particularly
with people who used to be labor voters, when they
come back after doing the hard day's work for a
low wage and see the people next door with all
the accoutrements that they have, you know, a nice pot car,
great computer devices and so on, doing nothing all day.

(04:34):
It really really great. So of course it's damaging to
the economy. But yeah, there'll be quite a few like Trevor.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Around related matters. This woman who got fifteen months for
saying that we need to burn a mosque down. Is
this what you've been referring to in the last couple
of weeks, and these are I mean, would you normally
get fifteen months for saying you want to burn a
moss down?

Speaker 2 (04:53):
No? And I think this is a bit of a problem.
It's not a nice thing to say. She said we
should burn a mosque down and leave the adult side.
She said it on a social media post and isn't
renowned apparently, according to the court, for saying things like this.
She said it as the court accepted, in a fit
of anger. It seems to me that, you know, if

(05:16):
you're trying to dampen down the rancor and anger on
both sides in this horrible bunch of riots, if we're
trying to impose a little bit of quiescence, then handing
out fifteen month sentences to a grandmother simply for saying
something injudicious on a social media website, it's just going

(05:40):
to inflame more people, I suspect. I think it's a
mistaken policy, she cried as she was led away to
the court. I guess she'll only serve four or five months,
but nonetheless to incarcerated, especially as we kind of have
no prison places left. It seems to me, it seems
to me a degree of overreach, if I can put

(06:00):
it like that.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
All right, mate, you go well, have a good weekend
and we'll see you next Tuesday. Rod Little Just on
related matters quickly before we leave that part of the world.
There's a photo journalist called Joel Goodman who took a
whole bunch of photos of the rioters. The police have
been in contact with him and said, look, can you
give us some of the photos so we can work
out who these people are? He says no, so that's
probably going to go to court. The government have weighed
in again with a thing that government's always weigh in with.

(06:23):
They're considering a review of online safety and the Online
Safety Act tougher on disinformation, hate speech, and incitement to violence.
We'll see where that goes, if anywhere. For more from
the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to news talks. It'd
be from six am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.