The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week.

The party is promising to cut the cost of welfare to the tune of £12bn by the end of the next parliament through measures aimed at helping people back into work.

The plan includes a £700m investment in NHS mental health treatment to ensure 500,000 more people can access talking therapies by 2030.

It also includes previously announced measures, such as removing benefits for people not taking jobs after 12 months.

The number of working age people who are economically inactive has soared to record highs following the pandemic.

The trend is thought to be driven mainly by those who have taken early retirement and people with long-term health conditions waiting for treatment on the NHS.

But the Conservative Party has said the 40% increase of people out of work – from two million to 2.8 million since COVID – is unsustainable.

It claims the cost of providing benefits for working age people with health conditions could rise as high as £90bn by the end of the next parliament.

A recent study found people in their 20s are more likely to be off work with ill health than employees twice their age, with poor mental health driving the increase.

The access to talking therapies is a 50% increase on the already planned expansion of 384,000 announced at the 2023 Autumn Statement.

As well this, the Tories say they will reform the disability benefits system and target it at those most in need, tightening the criteria for work capability assessments.

The plans also include passing on the responsibility for issuing sick notes from GPs to specialist work and health professionals.

The Conservatives also promise to toughen benefit sanction rules, speed up the rollout of universal credit, and clamp down on benefit fraudsters.

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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “Reforming welfare is a moral mission. Work is a source of dignity, purpose and hope and I want everyone to be able to overcome whatever barriers they might face to living independent, fulfilling lives.

“That’s why we have announced a significant increase in mental health provision, as well as changes to ensure those who can work, do work.”

The government put back to work welfare reforms at the heart of its autumn statement in November – with charities criticising them at the time for “demonising disabled people”.

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Mr Sunak has since doubled down on the pledge, recently calling for an end to “sick note culture” and saying he wants to shift the focus to “what people can do with the right support in place, rather than what they can’t do”.

The latest announcement comes after a difficult week that saw the prime minister embroiled in a row about his early exit from an international D-Day commemoration event.

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Labour, which is focusing Sunday’s campaign on prison overcrowding, criticised the “reheated pledges” from the Tories.

A spokesperson for Sir Keir Starmer’s party said: “This is the latest desperate announcement from Rishi Sunak, who has once again plucked numbers out of thin air in an attempt to disguise the fact that he has caused a spiralling benefits bill.

“These reheated pledges, old policies and vague promises will not get Britain healthy or benefits under control, and do nothing to solve the fact that £10bn of taxpayers’ money was lost to benefit fraud just last year.”

Labour has pledged to deliver 14,000 new prison places to tackle the overcrowding crisis if it gets into government.

The party has announced plans to unblock the planning system in order to expand the prison estate and ease capacity.

Prisoners have been let out of jail early in recent months as part of emergency measures to tackle a chronic shortage of spaces.

Overcrowding has also resulted in offenders being held in police cells and officers being asked to consider making fewer arrests.

Labour said the prison estate is “bursting at the seams” due to inaction and mismanagement by the Conservatives.

The Tories previously promised to deliver 20,000 new prison places by the mid 2020s but only 6,000 have been created so far.

Labour said it will deliver the remaining 14,000 if it gets into government.

Shadow justice secretary Shabana Mahmood said: “The crisis in our prisons is a powder keg waiting to explode. Worse still, we never had to get to this point.

“The dangerous overcrowding of our prisons was foreseeable and avoidable, but this government has not had the will or courage to act.”

She added: “We will build the prison places they promised but never delivered and we will drive down reoffending.”

It is understood the new spaces will be created by a mix of expanding the size of current prisons and building new ones.

Labour plans to designate prisons as sites of national importance, placing the power to approve a planning decision in ministers’ hands, in order to speed up the process.

In 2019, then prime minister Boris Johnson pledged to create an additional 10,000 prison spaces by 2025. This was on top of the 10,000 places his predecessor Theresa May had promised to build in 2016.

The commitment was reaffirmed in the 2021 Spending Review, which said the government would spend £3.8m to provide 20,000 prison places by the mid 2020s.

But the project has been bogged down by planning constraints with reports suggesting the extra spaces will not be delivered until 2030.

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Labour is also proposing to bring together prison governors and local employers to create employment councils to drive down reoffending, link offenders to training and jobs, and reduce the burden on capacity in the long term.

In a further law and order offering, the party wants to set up 80 new specialist rape courts across and England and Wales to fast-track cases as part of plans to tackle violence against women and girls that will be included in Labour’s manifesto this week.

It will also comprise a pledge to introduce specialist rape units in every police force, where staff trained to deal with domestic abuse will work with victims, Sky News understands.

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A Conservative Party spokesperson insisted the Tories have “overseen the largest expansion to the prison estate since the Victorian era”.

They added: “The last Labour government let 80,000 criminals out early and failed to build the prisons they promised.

“Labour under Keir Starmer has continued to vote against more resources for our police and tougher sentences.”

While the Tories have also made pledges on law and order, they will be focusing their campaign on Sunday on welfare reforms, with plans to get people back to work to cut the costs of benefits.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats are vowing to tackle ambulance delays as they turn their attention to health and care, ahead of the party’s manifesto launch next week.