Revealed: Britain’s welfare ghettos

Rabbi Lionel Blue talks about a “moral long-sightedness” of politics – the ability to see problems thousands of miles away (in Africa) or a century away (climate change) but not the poverty in one’s own doorstep, right now. And little wonder: England is very poor at measuring just how bad things are for its poorest. For example, we know from local authority data that one in four of people are on benefits in Liverpool. But that’s an amalgam of rich and poor areas. The welfare ghettos – areas where entire streets are on incapacity benefit – have been obscured. Until now.
 
The Department of Work and Pensions has been for a while producing welfare data in so-called “Lower Super Output Areas” – zones of about a thousand working-age people within wards. Only now has the Office of National Statistics also produced corresponding population data. They kindly sent me a breakdown of this in working-age population, so I can produce the key ratio: share of working-age people on benefits. It’s in my News of the World column today (not online): the first time, as far as I know, that figures have ever been produced in this detail allowing us to identify the welfare ghettos.
 
So next time Gordon Brown talks about “creating three million new job” remember this. His strategy has been to rely on immigrants (who account for 2m of those 3m new jobs – see PDF p6) while keeping at least 5 million Brits on welfare. It’s madness: and no way to run an economy. Immigration allowed Brown to grow the economy without tackling welfare reform, the toughest task in politics.
 
I’ve been quite impressed with James Purnell’s announcements, even though I suspect he’s trying to catch up with the even more impressive blueprint the tireless Chris Grayling has laid out for the Tories. But more of that later. For now, here is Labour’s shame: the longest period of uninterrupted economic growth for two centuries, as Brown loves to remind us, and the result? This:-

   Area name and code                    Within ward               % on o/w benefits