Tories Pledge 'Tough Love' Benefit Rules for Under-25s Ahead of Party Conference

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Official UK Cabinet portrait of Kemi Badenoch, 2022.
Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative Party, has branded the new under-25s welfare plan 'tough love'. (Official Cabinet Office portrait, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons)

The Conservatives have announced sweeping new work requirements for unemployed young people, saying under-25s who are fit to work should be barred from claiming benefits straight out of school. The plan, announced on Thursday ahead of the party's conference in Birmingham this weekend, would replace Universal Credit for the age group with a compulsory six-month "Get to Work" scheme.

Key facts

  • The policy would apply to 18 to 24-year-olds who are fit to work and have not worked continuously for at least six months, for a minimum of 16 hours a week.
  • Instead of standard Universal Credit, they would join a six-month "Get to Work" scheme and receive a "Get to Work Allowance" paid at the same rate.
  • Payments would be conditional on daily attendance at a job centre, work experience placements, or work-readiness courses.
  • Each participant would be assigned an individual "get-to-work manager" and expected to attend job-search workshops and interview preparation sessions.
  • Anyone still unemployed after six months would see their benefit replaced with a subsistence payment worth 70 per cent of Universal Credit.
  • The Conservatives say almost one million young people aged 16 to 24 are not in education, employment or training.

What the plan would involve

Under the scheme, work requirements and support would kick in as soon as a young person made a benefit claim. The "Get to Work Allowance" would start at the same rate as Universal Credit, but the money would only arrive if the claimant took part in the programme. The activities are deliberately intensive: daily attendance at a job centre, work experience or work-readiness courses, group classes designed to improve the communication skills that employers say younger applicants often lack, plus job-search and application workshops.

The programme could end early if a participant secured a job. For those still out of work after six months, the allowance would be replaced by a subsistence payment set at 70 per cent of Universal Credit. The party has also said those payments could not be spent on alcohol or gambling, and that young people judged not to be doing enough to find work could be required to carry out community activities such as litter picking.

Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, set out the reasoning in an interview with the Spectator ahead of the announcement. "It's unfair to the people who get up and go to work, having others earn more than them for not working," she said. "Even families on benefits know that the system is out of control. But no one wants to be the one to get off the treadmill first. We need to force that. Government has to do that."

Who would be exempt

The rules would not apply to everyone in the age group. Young people with health issues or caring responsibilities would be exempt, as would those who had already worked continuously for six months, and those who are estranged from their families would retain access to a safety net. The party says it would also look more closely at whether parents' earnings and savings should be factored into welfare payments for their children.

Badenoch insisted the target was not the genuinely vulnerable. "We're not going after the vulnerable," she said. "It is the people who can work who aren't working that are the target." She added that after six months without a job, those who were not taking the scheme seriously "will lose money". She also raised concerns about so-called "sickfluencers" who advise people online on claiming benefits for low-level conditions such as ADHD and anxiety, saying: "There are a lot of people who do not have a mental disability but claim to have one using low-level conditions... These are conditions you can work with, and so you should be working."

The numbers behind it

The Conservatives point to official figures showing that 981,000 people aged between 16 and 24 were not in education, employment or training in the second quarter of 2026. That is up from about 800,000 in early 2019 and crossed the one-million mark in the first quarter of this year.

The announcement forms part of a wider Conservative pitch on welfare. The party has promised to cut £23 billion from the benefits bill, wants the system to become more contributory so that people who have worked and paid taxes for longer get greater support, and is considering lowering the overall cap on welfare spending first introduced by George Osborne. The conference slogan for the policy will be "Putting the Fair Back into Welfare".

Helen Whately, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said the country was heading in the wrong direction. "Too many young people are leaving school and signing straight onto benefits – this is a waste of their potential and a disaster for our economy," she told the Telegraph. "The UK Neet rate is worse than Greece's. Labour have killed 300,000 jobs with their jobs tax and employment red tape and young people have paid the price. Our Get to Work scheme will break this toxic cycle. If you don't take part, you won't get welfare. Sometimes, you have to show some tough love."

Labour's response

The government has framed its own youth jobs policy in strikingly different language. Chancellor John Healey told the Labour conference: "The best thing we can offer a young person is not a benefit payment – it's a first job with training and a wage." Labour has announced that every mayor in England will have access to a Local Apprenticeships Service from March 2027, and the Department for Work and Pensions said every small and medium-sized business hiring a young apprentice would get £2,000 from the government under a new scheme backed by the Federation of Small Businesses.

The backdrop to the argument is a benefits bill that keeps growing. The Office for Budget Responsibility is expected to forecast welfare spending of £333 billion this year, rising to £407 billion by the end of the decade. Reform UK has separately proposed £50 billion in welfare reductions, drawing sharp criticism from Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The issue is likely to stay near the top of the agenda: Alan Milburn, the former cabinet minister commissioned by Sir Keir Starmer to review youth unemployment, will make his recommendations later this year and has already told the BBC that work experience should be mandatory for pupils aged 14 to 16.

What happens next

The proposals will be put before the Conservative conference in Birmingham this weekend, where the leadership will try to turn welfare reform into a dividing line with the government. The Times reported that the measures are partly aimed at putting pressure on Andy Burnham to spell out plans to cut spending and tackle the growing number of young people on disability benefits.

Anti-poverty charities are already pushing back. The Trussell charity warned that people on Universal Credit could not afford basic essentials, which harmed their ability to find and keep work. "When you're struggling to pay for food and keep a roof over your head – the threat of losing financial support makes it harder, not easier, to find and keep a job," a spokeswoman said. Whether voters see the scheme as tough love or an attack on the young is now a question for the conference hall, and then for the country.

Related articles

Sources

  • Parliament News, "Tories pledge 'tough love' work rules for under-25s on benefits" (1 Oct 2026) — https://parliamentnews.co.uk/tories-pledge-tough-love-work-rules-for-under-25s-on-benefits/
  • The Times, "Kemi Badenoch to bar benefits straight out of school" (1 Oct 2026) — https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/kemi-badenoch-benefits-neets-tory-conference-8bz9gd8fn
  • The Guardian politics live (via europesays.com mirror, 1 Oct 2026) — Badenoch Spectator interview quotations — https://www.europesays.com/britain/135267/
  • BBC, "Unemployed young people to face 'tough love' under Tory policies to tackle Neets" (1 Oct 2026, via Rother Radio) — https://www.rotherradio.co.uk/unemployed-young-people-to-face-tough-love-under-tory-policies-to-tackle-neets/

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