Labour bashing Chris Grayling reveals that 1.4 million Britons have NEVER had a job

By Tim Montgomerie

Last Friday Paul Goodman wrote about Conservative HQ's "summer of scrutiny into Labour's legacy" that never was. He accused CCHQ of "disarming unilaterally".

One man who cannot be accused of disarming is welfare minister, Chris Grayling. Throughout the summer he has been exposing Labour's failure on jobs and benefits.

In today's Sun he publishes the extraordinary fact that 1.4 million Britons have never worked. That's one-in-thirty. 800,000 of these are aged over 25. Mr Grayling told The Sun:

"This is a shocking waste of human talent. It cannot be right to leave so many people to spend their whole life on benefits without challenging and pushing them to do something better."

In the middle of August Chris Grayling revealed that "nearly 900,000 Brits have spent TEN YEARS on the sick." The annual cost to the taxpayer equalling £4.2 billion a year.

At the beginning of the month in another Sun story he unveiled the fact that 100,000 young people live on sick pay.

The window for blaming Labour for the Coalition's inheritance is closing. As Paul Goodman wrote, CCHQ's sleepiness over the summer was inexcusable. Ministers should have been publishing Domesday-style analyses of the challenges left behind by outgoing ministers. Unfortunately the government does not have enough ministers with Chris Grayling's instincts.