Welfare-to-Work: Phase Four, the Underclass Crackdown continues...
The Welfare Reform Bill (Feb. 2011)
The Culture of Dependency
The rationale for the Bill is simple: a large number of citizens have been on benefits for more than a decade, they have developed a dependency on benefits, they don't understand that work is good for them and need some encouragement to get back to work. So if they don't work we will take away their right to benefits.
A life on benefits will no longer be an option for somebody. That system has got to change. Iain Duncan Smith
A life of benefits has become part of our folklore and in order to buy in to the necessity of ConDem reforms, it's important that citizens support the idea of beating up work shy scroungers. However, it might be a good to also question the notion that a 'hard core' of long-term unemployed actually exists. Is IDS behaving like a conjuror, diverting public attention away from policy failure by blaming the poor for poverty.
It just might that in order to dismantle the decades old concensus of the
Welfare State you begin by exaggerating the size of the bogey man, the long term claimant. However, the figures for people unemployed for five years have been falling for the past 10 years, as you can see from the chart.
The size of the 'hard core' that concerns the ConDems so much is relatively small. So for now it might be a fair assumption that there's more going on here than meets the eye.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith also tells us:
"The publication of the Welfare Reform Bill will put work, rather than hand-outs, at the heart of the welfare system." "Nobody will be worse off ....."
Very interesting, the Institute of Fiscal Studies says that 1.7 million people will be worse off?
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said "blaming the jobless for their own unemployment in the hope that voters won't notice the real cause."
(Ed. Brendan doesn't say what the real cause is. Could it be that members are not selling enough raffle tickets. Remind me again, what is the TUC?)
Key features of the Bill:
- A single universal credit to come into force in 2013, but could take ten years to implement fully i.e.
Jobseeker's Allowance, Income Support and Housing Benefit, paid as a single lump sum although it is unclear how many benefits will be included in the new payment.
- Tax changes to enable people to keep more income
- Changes to the disability living allowance
- More details of the back-to-work programme
Where's the detail on the back-to-work programme????
- Those refusing to work facing a maximum three-year loss of benefits
What will the refuseniks do then?
- Annual benefit cap of about £26,000 per family
- Review of sickness absence levels
Progress through Parliament
The Bill's had its first reading, next reading second week in March.
After all the quasi-democratic nonsense, the Bill will go through and the post-War Labour Party Welfare System will be left in tatters. In some parts of the country centres are being set up to provide 'food aid' for the poor. The food is provided by shoppers as they exit the supermarkets, how long will it be before the poor go shopping on their own account - chanting Can't Pay? Wont Pay! as they collect their loyality points.
The Welfare Reform Bill contains a fair few assumptions which may well damn it's ambitions.
The Bill contains a key recognition that the current system of JobCentres, voluntary groups, and private providers is ineffective at finding people work and training people for work.
The new scheme of things imagines a two pronged attack on the work-shy and sturdy beggars.
In the interim period, until JobCentres are completely privatized, JobCentre staff have been told to make life very difficult for long-term claimants. In addition, long-term disability claimants are all to be assessed to gauge their suitability to work - this process is already underway.
Contracts have been handed out to 40 preferred bidders charged with finding work and training the long-term unemployed. The assumption here is that outfits like Serco, G4S and other service agents will be able to do a better job than the private agents formally charged with the job.
In terms of the Big Society, the idea is that Serco and Co. will parcel out contracts to voluntary and special agencies to deal with people that have learning difficulties and other handicaps that have prevented entry into the jobs market.
The contracts rely on payments by results, which may cost between £3 and £5 billion pounds. This payment by results scheme is a marginal improvement on the current set up, where private suppliers have taken the money and done nothing for it. However, the jury will be out for a long time before this new regime can be judged.
Afterword: Government created the 'benefits culture'.
Following advice from government officials, many were undoubtedly led to believe they were genuinely incapable of working.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the numbers of men claiming incapacity benefits rose sharply, increasing almost every single year, from 463,000 in 1981 to 1,276,000 in 1999. A significant proportion of these claims came from areas of the country which had seen a hollowing out of productive industries, and the jobs that they provided. It’s not feasible that so many people have actually fallen ill. Rather the welfare state was cynically soaking up these people, desperately attempting to offset their potential political anger at being unemployed by inviting them to view their predicament as a health-based problem instead. And of course, if you are claiming incapacity benefit (now called Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)) you wont show up in the unemployment statistics.