"Radical" welfare reform or "business as usual"?
Stop press! The UK Government has outlined proposals for radical welfare reform!
The cynics among us will refrain from gasps of astonishment and cries of surprise, instead assuming that the best approach will be to keep calm and carry on – we’ve heard it all before. But before we roll our eyes and scoff at those who wait with baited breath for a third Welfare Reform Bill in as many years, it’s worth taking a minute to consider the new Secretary of State’s proposals.
Is IDS the emperor, parading his robes of reform to all – only to have some pesky little critic point out that there’s nothing there to see? Or has the Tory’s hare taken the slow and steady approach; developing a new way for welfare and social justice, whilst sitting patiently on the back benches?
There is a good deal to suggest the answer to the latter question in ‘yes’; albeit with a list of caveats.
There is no denying that significant elements of the “radical” reforms looks distinctly similar to the policy proposals of the previous administration: the move towards a single work programme; funding employment programmes through benefit savings (the AME-DEL switch); and reassessing the eligibility of long-term IB claimants. But what is new, or at least, what Labour were a bit late coming around to, is the definite focus on making work pay.
Duncan Smith has targeted “prohibitive” marginal deduction rates as the big offenders; preventing people from working by creating cliff-edges that reduce the work incentive. The combination of a single work programme, where providers are “properly” rewarded for getting people into sustainable work, and a “fairer” and simpler benefits system, which addresses work disincentives through tackling withdrawal rates, definitely deserves more than cursory glance.
Tackling complexity in our astonishingly complex benefits system is a challenge that many a Work and Pensions Minister has, once bitten - become extraordinarily shy about. Will IDS be the one to face this head on? The Labour government showed interest in a single working age benefit, only to look at the details and turn away from this gigantean challenge and opt for a “single system of benefits” instead.
In the name of positivity, let’s hope the new Secretary of State steps up to the challenge. It is in all of our interest that this Emperor makes personalised support and meaningful benefits simplification much more than just a fairytale.
Comments
I quake whenever a newly elected goverment swings through Whitehall with the policy mantra 'simplify'. It almost invarialbly indicates that the only thing 'simple' is the new incumbent's understanding of the complex situations and departments they now head. However, I await with genuine interest for the detail of how IDS intends to make returning to work more attractive for the unemployed by lessening the seemingly punative deductions faced by those who do get into work, who then find themselves only marginally better off, if not sometimes worse off: a problem I have witnessed on many occasions as an employability advisor.
It will also be interesting to see how IDC's commitiment; 'that the funding for the new Work Programme will operate on the basis of payment based on 12 month sustained job outcomes' will fair against the eighties simplification; that Market Forces were far better placed to regulate the economic, social and moral questions of the time:
Based on these forces it will be difficult to imagine any contractor willing to front the costs of training on the gamble that they would only see a return if who ever they helped into work could survive the precarious and unpredicatable economic and employment environment for twelve months +.
Of course, there is the other 'simple' solve all; The Big Society and Charities, free in both cost and any real responsibility or accountability. Remember Virginia Bottomley's 'Care in the Community'? Who paid the price or was accountable for the murderous consequences of that policy?.....
Simple, isn't it?
ANswer to my own question of 'how IDC's commitiment; 'that the funding for the new Work Programme will operate on the basis of payment based on 12 month sustained job outcomes will fair'
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/370922a6-74f6-11df-aed7-00144feabdc0.html