The so-called welfare reforms could potentially offer a better future for thousands currently abandoned to poverty on benefits, though it all depends how Purnell’s conditionality is exercised. But the real problem is that these measures are being introduced at the wrong time, in the wrong way, and without adequate support facilities to make them work properly. And the punitive language of both Purnell and Cameron isn’t helping.

It’s a curious time to choose to try to put a million people on benefit back to work when all the economic forecasts are now predicting that in the next year to 18 months a million workers will be forced out of their jobs by recession on to benefit. It’s true that there are now 2.6 million on incapacity benefit who were parked there in the 1980s by the Tories in order to reduce the unemployment figures and then simply forgotten about. Compared to 0.8 million on incapacity benefit in 1983, that does suggest there are large numbers who with support and sustained help could be assisted back into work. But with unemployment headed towards 3 million, this is the worst possible time to try, and certainly nobody should be forced off benefit unless there are real practical jobs actually available locally which they can genuinely undertake.
It’s also the wrong way to set about this ‘reform’ by bringing in private sector staff who are incentivised by bounties to get people back into work. Their whole approach will be to go for the quick rewards rather than the patient and sustained support which many who have been long out of work now need.
Third, to require all lone parents with children over 7 to look for work is seriously misguided. There are 2.1 million lone parents on benefit, and nowhere near enough childcare places across the country to provide the child support necessary if their mothers have to work. Even more importantly, many of those mothers ought not to work because their children’s need for them at home is greater than the State’s need for them at work. This may not be true in all cases, but these are very sensitive judgements and should err towards protecting the child as the highest priority.
All this might be less unpalatable if these new tougher measures weren’t being introduced at the very time that the bankers, the villains of the piece, weren’t still getting their bonuses this year (still £13bn in 2008) while key executives are also leaving their jobs with eye-watering golden goodbyes, often in exess of £1,000,000 – a rather far cry from job seeker’s allowance of £60.50 a week.

Bookmark to: