Going places on welfare

kinglear

Pithy point about Brown - as I continmually say he has now and never has had any principles or desire to better his fellow man.

GeoffH

98 pages of buzz words. Pointless.

Angry of SE1

Sorry OT but still interested in your take on The Smith Institute.

Do you have one?

Fraser Nelson

Angry of SE1, Guido has done this so much better than me (and I'm right behind him) that I figured I would leave the field to him. On the Smith Institute - as with so much else - he rules.

Lance Grundy

Fraser, the real reason that W2 and other similar American 'workfare' programmes have been so successful is because in the United States benefits are now time-limited. A person can only claim benefit for a limited period in their working lifetime - typically between three and five years depending on the state. After you have accrued your benefit entitlement [be that in one long spell or a series of shorter spells] that is it - nothing ever again.

That kind of 'tough love' is, it seems, politically impossible here in the UK. To cherry pick only those aspects of the US welfare reform packages that are acceptable to the British social democratic left and yet expect them to yield the same results as those enacted in the US seems ridiculous. Merely contracting out the delivery of welfare services to the private sector will not achieve anything like the welfare roll reductions experienced in Wisconsin. Those refusing to participate will still be eligible for hardship payments, so a life on [admittedly reduced] welfare is still viable.

Since they came to power in 1997 the Labour Party’s policy on welfare has been to throw ever increasing sums of money at the work-shy to try and bribe them to take a job. Action Teams for Jobs, Job Grants, In-Work Benefits, Tax Credits, Working Neighbourhoods Pilots, Adviser Discretion Funds, Housing Benefit Run-on, Council Tax Benefit Run-on, Mortgage Interest Run-on, Return to Work Credit, New Deal for this, New Deal for that… I could go on. I honestly thought that by now they had tested to destruction the ‘all carrot - no stick’ approach to welfare reform but here we go again. It is just that under these proposals the bribe goes to the welfare service provider rather than the claimant.

Trumpeter Lanfried

Interesting comment about Brown.

At No.11 he was driven by a determination to thwart Blair at every turn. Now he is driven by a determination to thwart Cameron at every turn.

The question he first asks when he wakes up in the morning is: 'How can I destroy my enemies?' It colours every minute of his waking day.

This way lies madness.

Commondog

I take it that the photo is of James Purnell. Is he on the blue or the red side? And why is he pouting at the media throng?

Jennie

Bribing the workless into work is ineffectual when most difficult-to-fill vacancies are McJobs but many of the long-term unemployed are skilled but aged 50+ - and therefore not appealing on grounds of age to employers looking to fill better-quality jobs.

Christopher Chantrill

Here's the clincher on time-limited benefits. In the US after welfare reform women got off welfare early so they could "bank" their remaining eligibility.

Er, hold on. Who ever heard of a helpless victim "banking" eligibility?

Lord Elvis of Paisley

I remember going on Kilroy in the 90s regarding work for benefits and the way my protests regarding being made to earn your benefits were dismissed that I suspect this is nothing more than lip service regarding the problem of the feckless and the lazy(not by RKS btw). Unless one of the main political parties has the political will to use the silver bullet, it's nothing more than a blank.

I applaud the rhetoric, but until it sees the light of day in real terms this is just another case of political posturing and I'm surprised you are treating it so reverentially.

Labour has a habit of talking the talk, but they don't walk the walk...much like Cameron.

TGF UKIP

Fraser, over 24 hours have elapsed and from the Political Editor of the Spectator not a peep on Nick Clegg's re-positioning of the LibDems as a spending and tax cutting Party.

On one level a pretty amazing omission but then given your own and the fanzine's relationship with Cameron and Osborne, perhaps not.

David

TGF UKIP, maybe if the Lib Dems didn't cry wolf with their policies so often, people might actually care when they have something to say.

Fergus Pickering

With you and Grayling both rooting for him, I should say that Purnell's leadership bid is dead in the water. And just as well, given his unfortunate spectacles.

Hysteria

TGF - I agree - if true and heart-felt the LibDem volte face could be a game changer -

Fraser Nelson

TGF, I'm afraid I dont take Clegg seriously on this. Last time they proposed tax cuts, I spent ages looking at their plans to find they're talking about a tiny shave from gvt spending. At £70bn from a £640bn budget, the sums they talk about are negligible this time too. Nor do they mention this deficit a scorched earth ploicy will leave after the election. Plus Clegg will sooner or later realise his opportunity lies in Labour's implosion.

JONNY

Who is this 'James Purnell' character?
Never heard of him.

mike

kinglear "Pithy point about Brown - as I "continmually" say"

Just had my get me going glass of daily whisky and am continmually saying the same to any who will listen, will you be my friend ?

Paul B

What is wrong with McJobs. They are a job, and enable the employee to pay his/her own way in life can hold your their head high. They (the job) require attention customer service. They require the employee to get up in the morning and attend a place of work in a presentable fashion and then undertake a honest days work.namely they teach self discipline. I applaud the kids that in the face of all hostility & sneering have the gumption to undertake the job. Good on them, good on Macs for having a popular product and providing work and paying taxes. I despise snobbery in all its (inverted) forms.

Jennie

Paul B, my point is that the considerable army of jobless over-50's, made redundant, is loathe to take McJobs. Most of these have vocational qualifications and long experience in skilled jobs.

There are many over-50's, from bookkeepers to designers to solicitors, made redundant and forming part of the unemployment figures. They cannot find jobs in their own fields of expertise because of ageism on the part of employers.

Is it realistic to expect that these people, after a long working life in skilled occupations, will staff the checkouts at supermarkets or don baseball caps and dish out burgers and fries?

Marcus Cotswell

Makes me think that the real likelihood is not that Purnell will replace Brown but that he will be blocked by Brown (like Field before him) but (unlike Field) resign, and cross the floor.

Paul B

Jennie, I take your point, but why should the over 50 and anybody else for that of whatever working age, not take a productive and useful job if available. I am fast approaching 50 (born 1959) and if needs must I would happily work for Mac D or anybody for that matter-its beats signing on anytime.

We as a nation need to stop thinking certain jobs are below us, if there are jobs available they should be undertaken first and foremost by the indigenous population. A refusal to undertake the job, to my mind, should result in refusal/withdrawl of benefit. I have no objection to migrant workers, picking our vegatables in the ploughed fields of Lincolnshire and elsewhere, (I in fact admire their work ethic) but it is not unreasonable to expect fit working age men and women, on benefit, to undertake these roles, whilst searching for more "ego enhancing" employment

Hysteria

Fraser - a budget cut of 70 out of 640 is north of 10% - this is not trivial. How would you like your pay cut 10%?

JR

Fraser - I've emailed the letters@spectator.co.uk email with my thoughts and asked for them to be passed onto you (as there isn't a direct email address). I hope you get them. They're not a form to be published, are quite wonkish but possibly of interest to you.

In terms of the leak I'm really struggling for a motive other than politics - what's been leaked is the version sent round whitehall so rule number10 and DWP out. So who would want to either scupper the announcement or deliberately lose control of the messages around what will be a very controversial document (for Labour MPs). A bit of an odd one?

Jennie

Paul B, I take your point. But

a) Why should employers be allowed to discriminate on grounds of age alone? And then whinge about 'skills shortages'?

Also, while a 55-year-old might be fit enough to sit behind an office desk, they would not necessarily be fit enough to pick vegetables in a muddy field at the crack of dawn on a misty morning in January.

TGF UKIP

Fraser, your contempt for the Lib Dems is almost certainly no greater than mine. However, I seem to recall plaudits from you (or possibly one of the other hacks but I think you) for a speech Clegg made shortly after he became Leader in which he declared that public spending limits had been more than reached and that there was an appetite for reduction and less waste. This tax and spend announcement can therefore be viewed as the logical sequel to that speech.

And anyway, Fraser, precisely what negligible sum are your mates intending to shave from the budget of £640bn and where are their tax cuts to be directed?

kevin

So we should import the work ethic of a semi-second world society like the USA to get people into work? maybe when we have tin-shack cities beyond the urban sprawl these stick-stick-stick advocates will suddenly realise its not nice living in a 'unfair' society? I guess the mentally ill will be the first to go under with this 'tough love' approach? The reason there are people from the former soviet union working the fields of Lincolnshire is they are housed ten to a room and pay no council tax. If that's the future for the low paid in this country we have lost something more important than our work ethic; a sense of fairness.

Paul B

Whats fair about me & my wife working all hours god sends, to provide for ourselves and our children, whilst paying for others to slum around (fixing up ) on the fruits of my labour, you tell me that Kevin. You tell me whats fair. If there is a job going and you physically fit enough you should made to take it rather than signing on. That to me is entirely fair.Its because of our loss of the sense of fairness and what is right and wrong that we are in the bloody mess we are.

kevin

Paul B you may think fairness got us in this mess but a lack of fairness will get us in a far deeper hole. Do you want to be a real slave or work as a free man?

Paul B

You are the one who mentioned fairness Kevin, like my teenage chilren do when they get a decision go against them. Lesson for you, the world aint fair, never has been and never will be. But to compensate for that (as I teach my said children), you get what you work for in this in life. The trouble in this country is that there are to many getting,substanial amounts of money for money for nowt and its got to stop. ( Also There is nothing free & liberating about living off others graft, its called taking piss from where I come from) If that means those people who have been unemployed for a year I belive Purnells Green Paper advocates, (personally I would do it far sooner-say 3 months of benefit) being forced to work as a "slave" to use your deliberatly unhelpful emotive language, then so be it.

kevin

Depends very much what that graft is in my opinion. One dumb idler is worth four dozen supposedly smart people working on germ warfare at Porton Down. Maybe more if the thing should get out here?

Trevor Loughlin

Forcing the unemployed and disabled to pick up the rich mans dogshit as a punishment for employers abandonment of apprenticeships and discrimination against those already unemployed, old of disabled is not the way to give workers 21st century skills.
The Wisconsin welfare reforms are a human rights disaster. Introduce it in this nation and there will be an insurgency.