Welfare Reform Green Paper contents leaked

by Daniel on 18 Jul, 2008

Not by me, I hasten to add! BBC News is carrying the story here, and is highlighting the supposed wholesale lifting of Conservative policies. Proposals include:

  • Paying welfare to work providers using the savings made in benefit payments (i.e. relaxing the DEL / AME rules that have prevented this, as predicted by Freud and virtually everyone else at the recent W2W conference)
  • A 'work for dole' scheme of some kind for longer term claimants. This is left deliberately non-specific at this point. Given that the 4-week mandatory work experience for young people is presumably being delivered through flexible New Deal, which applies the same requirement to all age groups, this is a non-story unless something like the Australian model of long-term work placements comes in
  • Reassessing all existing IB claimants, presumably moving up to a third back onto JSA. No timeline is provided, so again this doesn't alter previous information that such a move would happen in the longer term

There's a certain amusement value in Conservatives claiming ownership on policies that were in any case taken from Australia and parts of the US. The interesting story on Conservative policies is around the commitments made by James Clappison at the W2W conference, which were if anything more oriented towards social justice and support for people with special needs than the DWP's current contracting approach. I'll be looking into that more in a future article.

In the meantime, the actual Green Paper is published on Monday. I'll put up a summary and some discussion around it as part of the next newsletter, which will probably be sent out on Tuesday.

»
by ahomage on 18 Jul, 2008

Still digesting it. Full Green Paper link at skynews website.

http://www1.sky.com/news/Welfare%20Green%20Paper%20July%202008.pdf

Some fascinating possibilities...

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Still digesting it. Full Green Paper link at skynews website.


http://www1.sky.com/news/Welfare%20Green%20Paper%20July%202008.pdf


Some fascinating possibilities...


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by Daniel on 18 Jul, 2008

Thanks, ahomage! I'll take a look at it over the weekend...

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by Daniel on 21 Jul, 2008

Update - the official PR push has happened, with the accompanying BBC News story linking to interviews with Frank Field and James Purnell, and to the usual crazy Have-your-Say discussion.

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