Politicking on the backs of the poorest

2trueblue

Haven't we heard it all before? All talk, filling up the air with hot air, which must be bad for the atmosphere!

Too little, too late. it has long been accepted that the longer a habit is held on to, the harder it is to break. The whole welfare thing needs revisiting with logic and practial follow through. This has been promised before.

Bring back the 10% tax rate, remove the lowest paid form the tax system, help those who try to get back to work. One of the biggest problems lies in people returning to work with insufficient funds to cover the voids. This puts them further into debt and then the cycle deepens.....

Labour do not know how to simplify the system. This is essential to get us out of recession.

Peter From Maidstone

If we did not have 3 million or so foreign 'jobseekers' here in the UK then there would be more chance of British ones being able to find a job, and of British benefit junkies being encouraged/forced to find a job. While there is unlimited cheap foreign labour this will not happen.

There are plenty of jobs, but they are filled by visitors to our country.

Dorothy Wilson

This is a totally daft idea. I have considerable experience of working with people in career development situations. It is an extremely complex area. Without wishing to blow my own trumpet, people who work in Job Centres simply do not have the qualifications/training/experise/skills to help those wanting career progression. In fact, from what I hear many of them do not evendo very well at helping people into jobs.

Frank P

"Labour is currently suggesting lots of well-meant reforms."

Oh really? Says who? Policy Exchange Economics Unit? What charity funds it? Why? Lawrence Kay - who he?

Another Guardian wonk letting us know what's happening in the 'enemy camp'? Can't he find his way to the New Statesmen? Or won't they print his codswallop?

SUSAN HILL

But why are they filled by visitors to our country ? Because most long term British unemployed do not want to take them, do not want to work for low pay at boring/menial jobs. How many employers will tell you the same ? If they do take the jobs, a couple of days of boring and hard work sees them quit and go back on benefits. The visitors will take the jobs and do them.

James

Lets be honest this government pays out so much cash in benefits and child tax credits that living of the state is a lifestyle not a temporary situation that someone finds themselves in. If you have no children, married or a couple and earn just above the threshold to get tax credits then you are in trouble... such people are the REAL POOR in this society.

Anne Wotana Kaye

I had a job in a Jobcentre Plus. It was only for a very short period, but I saw enough to realise what was going on. Basically, one had to assist foreigners to obtain National Insurance numbers and any other documentation required to start them off in their lives here. One was supposed to help them in every way. UK job seekers, however, were expected to check out things for themselves on the rather slow, inefficient computers. That in a nutshell was what Jobcentre Plus did for native jobseekers. Hours were spent phoning prospective employers on behalf of the foreigners, the UK candidates had to manage for themselves.

Elliott Burton

As a graduate who until very recently couldnt find work, I can tell you from personal experience that the idea that these 'welfare advisers' will advise on career progession is a sheer joke. Lets get one thing straight...they advise you on how to claim the maximise amount of benefit more than they do on getting back to work...when it comes to professional people they dont have a clue how to find you work. They are the most inefficient institution I have ever had the misfortune to experience...I have turned up on time for an appointment and stood their for half an hour looking at 'welfare advisers' sat their doing fuk all but chat to each other. These politicans need to spend a day in a Jobcentre to realise the true extent of the incompetence of the majority of people who work their and that their, possibly well intentioned , reforms will never be realised.(I will say that their are undoubtedly a small few who work at jobcentres who do genuinely work hard to try to get you a job but they are the tiny minority)

Koakona

Bring in the cheaper labor, bring the market price down. It effects the POOREST worker not the residuals.

Labour is now about the residuals, as a country we are all now or soon to be the working poor!

JohnAnt

Pardon my cynicism, but on reading Knight's suggestion I immediately assumed this was a a negotiation ploy for 'more money' - i.e. with a final backstop position that the Treasury should not actually cut funding in the forthcoming PBR.
Either that or the Be(K)nighted minister has convinced himself that the army of benefits wallahs really needs a surge.
Whereas it actually needs a severe pruning.

AngloWelshDragon

Presumably this is a lame attempt to destigmatise Job Centres? It won't work because professionals will continue to sort this themselves out or use agencies and professional recruiters. Job Centres will remain sink holes which the weary, genuine unemployed visit more in hope than expectation and the benefit scroungers continue to avoid like the plague, turning up only when their continued receipt of benefit is threatened.

As usual labour trumpet trivialities while smartly side steping the real problems the nation faces.

Marcher Baron

If we stopped importing workers and made it more profitable to work than to remain on benefits it would be a start. Labour has lost the plot - if it ever had one other than changing the face of Britain to suit its own ends, that is.

Carefix

A couple of ideas to help those out of work for a long time get back into the workplace..

1) Stop negative discrimination against disabled workers and introduce positive discrimination in favour of them. For example: If the DWP did not discriminate against the disabled it would employ six times as many disabled people as it currently does. Why not have JCP offices staffed by disabled people? Who (apart from the DWP) would mind that?

2) Instead of Lord Freud's proposed give-away of £50,000 to Provider companies for each disabled person they get back into work (even though most will be going back anyway) why not do the following:

A) Make sickness benefit (and an employees right to return) last for two years. To (over) compensate the employer for the additional cost pay a £100 per week subsidy for a replacement individual over the same period the employee is absent for up to two years. The replacement individual can be chosen from the "difficult to place" cadres of disabled, over fifties and long term unemployed. Instead of subsidising parasite Provider companies we subsidise productive businesses, preserve the job of the replaced individual, and give one of the unfortunate cadres a temporary (possibly going permanent) job, recent work experience and save his benefit costs. He also gets his life back.

JM