Kemi Badenoch has branded Britain’s soaring benefits bill “economic suicide” while pledging to “draw a line” on which health issues the state treats as disabilities. The Conservative Party leader suggested that some people were “gaming” benefits rules to receive money.

Speaking at Glazier Hall in central London on Tuesday, Mrs Badenoch blasted a welfare culture so bloated that more than six million working-age adults are claiming benefits instead of being employed. She added: “This is completely crazy … We’re funding it by taxing businesses, taxing jobs, taxing wealth creators, the people in our country who get out of bed and make things happen. We’re making life harder for them. This is economic suicide.”

Mrs Badenoch claimed the system was not designed to handle “the age of diagno

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