Is Frank Field back? The Labour MP has spent much of his life talking about the poor. Judging by reports today, he might be offered a job chairing a commission on child poverty. This is good news but, as Mr Field has already said, there is not much point in him debating the finer points
Contrary to what you might think, it is actually quite hard to find someone on benefits who doesn’t want to work. When you ask a claimant whether they would like to, they will invariably say “Yes, I want a job.” At first, this seems like a strange answer: why do we have nearly 6 million
This afternoon Jim Knight MP, the minister for welfare reform, proclaimed that the Government wants to turn the Jobcentre Plus network into a careers service for everyone. He said that welfare advisers, who currently try to help get people on benefits back into work, will start to “provide opportunities for progression” for anyone in a
It is easy to lose money down the back of the sofa, less so to lose a debt. The Treasury has long tried to hide the value of the pension promises made to public sector workers. Now, though, the present administration or its successor must start to be honest about the true size of the
In anticipation of the Budget, I wrote last week that Alistair Darling would announce an extra £1.5 billion in funding for the Flexible New Deal, the Government’s welfare-to-work programme that is the equivalent of a shiny, new, environmentally friendly car. The scheme is going to use companies to help people on Jobseeker’s Allowance who have
To Albert Einstein, an insane person was someone who repeated the same course of action over and over again while expecting a different result each time. He would have found it easy to spot the trait in the British politicians who have attempted to change the benefits system over the past thirty years. As we
