Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Freud defects to the Tories

The first serious Tory defection will be detailed in tomorrow’s News of the World. David Freud, the architect of the Purnell welfare refrom that we’ve been admiring in Coffee House, is to become a Conservative peer and shadow welfare reform minister. So someone with genuine expertise will be in the DWP driving through a desperately-needed agenda. This is a real coup not just for David Cameron but George Osborne whom, I understand, has been working on Freud for months.

Freud is a banker by training, but don’t let that put you off him. He was hired by Tony Blair to think the unthinkable on welfare reform – and his suggestions (here) were genuinely radical. The sort that Blair now wishes he’d done in 1997. But this was 2007 and Gordon Brown was having none of it, so Freud was cut adrift. The Conservatives then picked him up, and Chris Grayling adopted his plans and launched them in Jan08. Then, his ideas – adopt an Austrlian-style work-for-dole, and assess every one of the 2.6m on incapacity benefit for what work they could do – were seem to be too controversial to mention. Grayling boldly embraced them, and Freud was there at his launch. Grayling’s plans were a surprise hit with the public. Hain was sacked, then James Purnell took his place. Purnell instantly saw the benefit in the Freud proposals, and moved to close the gap – by nicking Freud back. So the Freud proposals, having been the backbone to Grayling’s plans, became a blueprint to the Green Paper on Welfare Reform – which I very much welcomed on its publication. Scroll forward a few months, and Theresa May is appointed to succeed Grayling. I was dismayed: what’s her record on reform? “Just wait till you see who we have working with her” I was told by a Tory deepthroat – only to find that her team hadn’t changed.

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