The former boss of Tesco has said out-of-work young people should be made to do military training in exchange for benefits.
Amid a deepening row over Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ welfare cuts, the supermarket’s ex-chairman John Allan said welfare payments should be “conditional on military training for people who are not working”.
Mr Allan said there is “no reason to believe” those not in education, employment, or training “are any less prepared to work, provided they're given the training and given the opportunities”.
But he said they may need “not just a bit of encouragement, but a bit of coercion to actually get started”.
Asked what he meant by coercion, he told Times Radio: “You could make some benefit payments conditional, particularly in that age group on people really seeking work.
“You could find work for people to do municipal work. I think getting people into the habit of getting out of bed in the morning, going and doing some useful work is very habit-forming once people have done it for a while.
"We could reintroduce military training for people who are not working. That would be a way of actually helping us with, you know, stepping up our defence capability as well, which is another important issue."
Mr Allan’s calls come as Britain is desperately trying to shore up its armed forces, with independent reports repeatedly warning of the way it has been hollowed out in recent decades.
Sir Keir Starmer has announced plans to hike Britain’s defence spending from 2.3 per cent of GDP to 2.5 per cent, a £13.4bn annual boost by 2027. He has also vowed to increase it further to 3 per cent of GDP by 2034.
Last year, defence secretary John Healey warned Britain is not ready to fend off an invasion due to the state of the armed forces. He said his inheritance in taking over the department was “far worse with far deeper problems than we expected”. The government has since ploughed £1.3bn into army recruitment to bolster the depleted armed forces.
It comes as an estimated million disabled people will lose their benefits as Labour took an axe to the UK’s ballooning welfare bill.
Ministers have repeatedly cited the “moral” argument for cutting benefits, arguing it is unacceptable that there are 2.8 million people not in work due to ill-health and one in eight young people not in education, training or employment.
Mr Allan said “urgent, accelerated training programmes” were needed to get those not in work, education or training back into the workforce.
