Over the last few days the coalition has been keen to sell universal credit as the answer to all the labour market’s problems. After the deepest recession in decades, they are confident that tough sanctions and a simpler system are the answer to the UK’s labour market challenges.
We don’t think this claim stacks up. With five unemployed people chasing every vacancy, and short-term claimant unemployment on the rise, it is clear that there are simply not enough jobs for people to do. The government needs to focus on creating jobs, not punishing those that can’t find them.
Nicola Smith, senior policy officer, TUC
Iain Duncan Smith’s plans to simplify the benefits system and ensure that work pays are certainly welcome – at the moment too many people are trapped on benefits in an overly complex system in which the financial benefits to moving into work simply aren’t transparent. But the universal credit is a few years off – and in the meantime the more immediate cuts to tax credits set out in the spending review will harm – not improve – people’s incentives to move into work. Other aspects of his welfare reforms will harm the most vulnerable – while populist, it is not enough to wield a stick to get people into work: the work programme will need to tackle other barriers such as lack of skills and unaffordable childcare. Moreover, the coalition’s cuts will put jobs at risk: PwC recently estimated the loss of a million jobs by 2014-15, pushing up welfare bills. Welfare reform alone won’t work: we need a credible strategy for economic recovery but also for boosting wages in the low-skill economy. At the moment getting a job is not a guaranteed route of poverty – 3.4 million adults in work live in poverty.
Sonia Sodha, head of the public finance programme, Demos
I welcome any reforms that make the welfare system simpler and easier to understand. This has been the ‘Holy Grail’ of welfare reform, and ‘making work pay’ for people currently on benefits is an objective every political party shares.
However, while Iain Duncan Smith’s statement that ‘there will be no losers’ is reassuring, it does seem to contradict the changes already announced to housing benefit.
With all these changes the devil is in the detail, and its implementation. I have worries that any over-simplification of the benefits system will not properly take into account people’s complex individual circumstances.
Anne Begg MP, chair of the Commons work and pensions committee
If Iain Duncan Smith’s universal credit really works to remove cliff edges, simplify the benefits system and incentivise people to move into and progress in work, we should welcome it. So it’s unfortunate that it’s been coupled with bloodcurdling and unjustified rhetoric about people being forced to work for their benefit, and it’s not clear that either the necessary support or the suitable jobs for those facing the highest barriers to employment will be there. So far, the ConDem government’s announcements have all gone in the opposite direction: removing help with childcare costs, increasing marginal deduction rates, over complicating the benefits system by devolving council tax benefit to hundreds of local authorities, all of whom will run their own inidividual schemes, and housing benefit changes that will force people to move to areas where there are likely to be fewer jobs. We can applaud the government’s ambition for a dynamic benefits system, but a guaranteed and adequate safety net, both in and out of work, is the first requirement to support worksearch, reduce child poverty, and ensure protection of the poorest. We didn’t get that from the secretary of state this afternoon.
Kate Green, MP for Stretford and Urmston
Any drive to make the benefits system less complicated and reward those that are in work has to be welcomed. However, there is still too much focus from the government on the workshy rather than the workless; if there is no work for people to go to, the universal credit will make little difference to levels of poverty in this country.
I am also concerned that the universal credit will be paid to the household rather than to the mother, as we all know that the best way to alleviate child poverty is by giving money directly to the mother – something Labour did well through child tax credits and the child benefit
Margaret Curran MP, member of the Commons work and pensions committee
When Iain Duncan Smith visited the Glasgow Easterhouse estate in 2002 he said it had a profound effect on him. Clearly it hasn’t because there is nothing compassionate about this conservatism. Of course it’s right that people move from welfare to work, but there are several problems with the proposals. Firstly, without jobs these changes will achieve nothing and unemployment is likely to dramatically increase over the next year.
Secondly, he has either not thought through the consequences of his proposals or simply doesn’t care. This policy is about effectively forcing people into degrading jobs. It is a myth that benefit payments are generous, they are usually barely enough to live on, and the prospect of people losing three or six months or even three years of welfare payments because they do not want to work at the lowest common denominator is outrageous. Besides, if the unemployed lose benefits this will have knock on effects on their children who do not deserve to suffer from their parents’ actions. This, too, is morally reprehensible.
Iain Duncan Smith describes failing to work as a ‘sin’. Punishing and degrading the poor is abhorrent.
Ben Fox, political adviser to the socialist vice-chairman of the economic and monetary affairs committee in the European parliament, and chairman of GMB Brussels
All the above are interesting points, especially those of Ben. There is absolutely no benefit to being on benefits, even for those who have adjusted to the ‘benefit dependence lifestyle’ and it is a message that Labour needs to make very loud and very clear. IDS proposals for the so-called work shy rings alarm bells in many ways, especially “the forcing of people into degrading jobs” as Ben correctly sums up the proposals because it not only affects the individuals receiving the benefit and their families etc. it also affects the employer, their work colleagues and in turn their families as well. I am sure we have all been there beside someone who simply has no motivation to do the job they are being paid to do, had to carry them and do your own role and in turn gone home frankly livid about it. That said something does need to be done about those who may not so much be choosing to live trapped on benefits but who can work but for one reason or another choose not to. Choosing not to work because “I get more money on benefits” simply can not be accepted and not just because its ‘the populist view’ but because of the costs and the damages it causes. Prolonged unemployment leads to the lack of ability to become employable. I’d prefer a complete renaming of the system which removes benefit from it and the introduction of skills, knowledge and experience based placements into public / community or charity sector that enables continued work experience and its associated practice. Put simply those who can work but who choose not to have to work to receive their benefit payment but in areas which they are able and more importantly willing to. The arguments against this for example a ‘community worker’ replacing normal staff just isn’t an argument because if done correctly long term usage could be drafted in to the employers contract. The system also providing along with all the employment skills learned the opportunities to find employment within the shift. Unfortunately my proposal do include the bloodcurdling rhetoric about people being forced to work for their benefit which Kate is so against but it is justified if the individual (s) concerned have refused every opportunity made available to them and has the support mechanism of dependants being looked after. The suggestion doesn’t exactly put an end to the benefit bill but it creates employability which will help.
I think the left is collectively losing the plot over these reforms. The main reason there is a lot of complexity in the benefit system is that there is a lot of complexity in people’s lives. Adopting a one-size fits all system sounds good until you think about it a bit and realise it’s nonsense. For example the needs of single parents with different age children may be very different from those of parents in a long term stable relationship. The ages of the children matter. The geography matters, the number of jobs locally, the cost of housing, the cost and availability of transport. Yet again we’ve allowed the government to set the agenda by failing to be in any way savvy about what’s going on. This whole debate is simply framed in a way we cannot win. As for the workshy scroungers, whoever they are, we have no idea how many there are. Nor does the government. We do know that some of them are actually, for want of a better phrase, families in need of and receipt of a large number of interventions from different public bodies. We don’t know how many cannot find any work. We don’t know how many are educated but can’t find work to in any way match their skills. We don’t know how many of them are formal or informal carers and therefore restricted in the hours we work. All of which will cause chaos in making this utterly dumb policy which we’ve broadly welcomed because we for some reason haven’t realised the central flaw. I despair of the party at the moment.
David I am afraid your missing the entire point of what it hopes to achieve. IDS is wrong in how he thinks he can do it but it has to be done with individual circumstances taken into account. You seem to be saying that everyone should just adopt to a life on benefits and just rot. That is a phrase I despair at.
plot?