The Tories are radical again

Cameron means business on welfare: the Tories are the radicals again

Fraser Nelson

31 October 2007

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David Cameron is about to take up the issue that Margaret Thatcher didn’t dare touch and that defeated Tony Blair at the height of his powers: welfare reform. Fraser Nelson explains how the Conservative leader intends to bring the American welfare revolution to this country, challenge Labour on its home turf and make poverty history in Britain.

Thompson cut benefit rates, but used the saved money to introduce new benefit schemes. Those taking work placements had their childcare and commuting costs subsidised. New demands kept being introduced. Parents, for example, would lose benefit if their child played truant — a scheme designed to stop the welfare habit being passed down the generations. There is ample scope for such demands in Britain, where one in five children lives in a household with no earned income.

The effects of Wisconsin's tough love were extraordinary. Wisconsin’s welfare rolls had fallen by 82 per cent by 2001, by which time the state had become used by the Clinton presidency as a template for America and the country as a whole had reduced its welfare recipients from 14 million to less than five million. The type of fall which ministers say is impossible for Britain had been enacted in a few years. When welfare stopped offering something for nothing, it lost its appeal. People chose work instead. Poverty rates among black children fell to the lowest since records began. Like Britain, America had declared work to be the best form of welfare. But unlike Britain, they legislated for it.

But how much of this could be imported to Britain? It is the culture, more than the size, that’s the issue. The Wisconsin project worked because it answered a clear public demand. In the past half-century, Britain’s tolerance for huge welfare spending has been greater, the stigma of accepting benefits much smaller and overall public perception of the problem generally dimmer. The Brown government’s ‘let them eat tax credits’ approach is only now beginning to come undone. Welfare reform has worked best around the world where the old system was perceived to be in crisis. Britain, alas, has lacked this sense of urgency.

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Julio Juncal

November 8th, 2007 8:33pm Report this comment

Mr Nelson says: "This is no accident. It was the American Left which grasped that traditional welfare was actually locking people into poverty, and decided to fight it not by raising incomes through benefits but by cutting welfare rolls." Can you substantiate that statement? The American Left, as we know it, fought tooth and nail against welfare reform under a Republican-dominated Congress and a Democratic President.

Richard Prior

January 8th, 2008 6:53pm Report this comment

David Cameron should go out himself and do some real work for 5 Pounds per hour. Mr Cameron lives far away from reality on cloud Nr.17 Nobody should vote for this stupid and arrogant person

E. Meller

January 8th, 2008 7:04pm Report this comment

So jobseekers should now accept any "suitable" job, OK, but what is a suitable job, you cant put out an IT engineer to clean the streets,or a musician to become an IT enineer. But that is exactly what will happen if private companys get paid to bring people back to work. Mr Cameron wants to rob the jobseekers and give the money to private companys instead. One wonders if Mr. Cameron will have shares in these companys. And regarding "suitable" jobs, I think a suitable job for Mr Cameron would be to clean public toilets.

Jake

June 1st, 2009 8:10pm Report this comment

So if someone is ill will they be forced to work? Many in America have to work whilst still receiving chemo or on dialysis etc. We already have the lowest levels of welfare in Europe and Labour have launched a sustained attack on the system. If Cameron is going to go further God help anyone who loses their job or becomes ill.
Finally if you deny people benefits what do you think will happen? They will resort to crime - or starve. Most wont want to do that so crime it is. Our estates will become a seething mass of drug abuse and crime on a scale like those huge social housing projects in America.
To make people work for their benefits is a disgrace - they should at least get minimum wage if doing a job. This will stop me voting Tory I am afraid.

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