What to make of James Purnell’s reforms? When I heard Neal Lawson from Compass on the radio this morning debating IDS, I thought that Purnell will be delighted: is this the toughest opposition he can get? The Campaign Group of socialist Labour MPs would always oppose him. In a way, it’s precisely what he wants. But what he may not be so please dabout is this statement just released from a group called America Works. It’s intended as a compliment, but there can be nothing more likely to get Labour backbenchers wound up:
“This green paper, based on Freud’s recommendations, demonstrates that the British government has finally come to accept the dramatic Clinton-style reforms that need to be made in order to achieve sustainable employment for individuals caught in the vicious cycles of worklessness. Privatising welfare-to-work provision in the US has had dramatic affects, allowing providers such as America Works enter a liberalised market and to drastically reduce the numbers of people on long-term welfare dependency.”
Remember, Labour’s left don’t care much about dependency. I was a panellist at a Fabian Society seminar (playing the pantomime villain) once, when a Fabian member said he didn’t mind people using the welfare state any more than he minded them using any other public service. Welfare dependency is not bad in itself to a large chunk of the Labour Party . What is bad in itself is private providers, especially with names like America Works, “entering” a “liberalised” market. When Philip Hammond was doing DWP for pensions (with a deplorable lack of imagination), the Tories were – to their shame – talking with the Labour left to join forces opposing John Hutton in parliament over his limited welfare reform. This watered down Hutton’s plans. “Then, it could only have been Freud B minus” one minister told me. “Now, we’re seeing all of Freud, and then some”.
Grayling’s wise decision to back Purnell is mainly practical: if he is to take over the DWP he wants as much of this underway as possible, as he’ll have far more to show after a first term. Many of Purnell’s plans are due to start 2010 or 2011 – ie, under a Tory government. We’re in the Perestroika phase of welfare reform now (and the DWP’s budget is about as much now as the old Soviet Union’s was when Gorbachev took over). This is the defrosting, the glasnost, of the old system. As Gorbachev found out, this can be the most dangerous phase because you never know what will come to life during the thaw.
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