It is one of the oddities of politics that a Labour government can sometimes get away with announcing policies which, had they come from the mouth of a Conservative minister, would have provoked howls of anger.
So it is with welfare reform. Whenever Mrs Thatcher’s government proposed to make benefit claimants actually do something for their handouts rather than languish in bedsits in Hastings and Margate, as was the common practice in the 1980s, the resulting rage and charges of heartlessness smothered serious reform — with dreadful consequences. In pockets of the country unemployment has become hereditary, and the idea of working for a living an entirely alien concept.
The publication of the government’s white paper on welfare reform on Wednesday, then, ought to be an ideal opportunity to tackle once and for all the culture of welfare dependency. Aside from a few objections from Labour’s backbenches the proposals have been welcomed as a concerted attempt to solve a serious problem: so they are. It is only common sense that claimants of unemployment benefits should have to prove that they are looking for work, and should have their payments suspended if they do not meet this minimal requirement. Indeed, it now seems bizarre that any other view should ever have prevailed. James Purnell, the enterprising Work and Pensions Secretary, deserves credit for his robust approach: he is right to link the wasting of taxpayers’ money with the wasting of talent. It is good to see that at least one member of Gordon Brown’s Cabinet is still taking seriously the task of public-service and welfare reform.
That said, we have doubts about whether the white paper is enough in itself. Already, questions have been raised as to the meaningfulness of the new demands which will be placed upon benefit-claimants: it has been suggested, for example, that unemployed parents might be able to satisfy the Department for Work and Pensions that they were embarked on a ‘progression to work’ merely by showing they had looked up ‘babysitting services’ in the Yellow Pages.
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