The reality behind the Government's 'radical' welfare state reforms

The reality behind the Government's 'radical' welfare state reforms

The Government has revealed what it says are radical plans for restructuring the welfare state.
EDWARD HEATHCOAT AMORY looks at the claims - and the reality.

CLAIM: Incapacity benefit will be reformed, and those who can work will be made to work.
REALITY: The Government has promised a new test, administered by expert medical advisers, to decide who deserves incapacity benefit. This will initially apply to new claimants, and then all existing claimants will be re-tested between 2009 and 2013.
If the test is as tough as it ought to be, only a million of the 2.6million current recipients will pass. The rest - 1.6million - will be forced back on to the jobs market, or at least on to the less generous ordinary benefit regime.

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But no one really believes that New Labour, which has ducked welfare reform for a decade, has the political will to do this. The test - and therefore the reforms themselves - is likely to be a fudge. And as for plans to get recipients of incapacity benefit to look for jobs, these are almost pointless, because there are virtually no sanctions against those who refuse to play ball.
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CLAIM: Lone parents will no longer be allowed to remain idle at home.
REALITY: Currently, lone parents of children under 16 don't have to look for work. They can stay at home and claim benefits.
This will change under the new rules, where those with children over the age of seven will have to look for work.
But the sanctions against those who refuse are very limited, because the Government has indicated that it won't take money away from parents, but merely encourage them visit the job centre more often.
In any case, the biggest winners in last month's Pre-Budget Report were unemployed lone parents.
As so often when Labour claims it's getting tough, life actually becomes cushier for the idle.

CLAIM: The results of these reforms won't be hampered by the recession.
REALITY: Had all these changes been implemented 11 years ago, when Labour first promised to 'think the unthinkable' on welfare reform, they would have stood a far better chance of working.
Instead of a decade of economic growth, which attracted millions of foreign workers to do the jobs the native workforce wouldn't, there would be many fewer than the current eight million people of working age who are economically inactive.
What's more, the Government would have had the money to pay the large cost of supporting, persuading and forcing them back into the jobs market.
But now, in a shrinking jobs market, any vacancies are likely to be taken by betterskilled workers made redundant elsewhere.
Why would employers bother to take on someone who hadn't had a job for years when there are so many better candidates?

CLAIM: These new changes build on previous Labour welfare reforms
REALITY: There have been no meaningful welfare reforms under Labour. Instead, the welfare system has expanded and become more expensive - an astonishing achievement at a time when unemployment has been falling.
The total annual welfare bill is now £80billion and rising, and the numbers receiving some form of handout have risen from 6million to 6.6million plus under Gordon Brown.

CLAIM: Labour will make the jobseekers' allowance regime much tougher.
REALITY: Following the introduction of the so-called Wisconsin welfare reforms in America-which contracted out management of the system to private companies and cut off benefits for those who didn't find work after two years, the number of welfare recipients has fallen by 57 per cent.
But the British scheme won't work like that. Yes, the unemployed will have to look for jobs, but the penalties for those who don't are tiny. No one, however workshy, will have their benefits cut or even significantly reduced.

CLAIM: Reform will encourage both fathers and mothers to play a full part in bringing up their children.
REALITY: Ministers simply refuse to acknowledge that family breakdown is at the heart of the failure of the welfare state. Admittedly, there is some tinkering to the system of registering births in a bid to encourage fathers to be named on the birth certificate.
But there is no attempt to reform the socalled 'couple penalty', which is the £7,000-plus a year that many couples on benefits would lose if they admitted they were living together instead of staying apart.
Nothing in this new initiative does anything to change a benefit system that actively promotes lone parenthood and undermines marriage.

source:Dailymail.co.uk

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