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the Johnstone's View Index
Johnstone's View 2nd
January
The cycle of deprivation
in this country is something we should all be ashamed of.
The current government blames the previous government but
everyone else sees that they have been in power for twelve
years and nothing has changed. Surely, at this time of
economic crisis, it’s time for us all to look to the future
with open minds and a new spirit of realism.
It is our moral
obligation to end the culture of long-term welfare
dependency in Britain. In a responsible society, individuals
who are capable of working accept their responsibility to
work – and the government accepts its responsibility to help
all those who can work get into work. Instead of keeping
people on benefits, we must find ways to re-target the
enormous welfare budget towards supporting families and
children. Using the savings made from a programme of welfare
reform, we could for example; end the ‘couple’ penalty in
the tax credits system lifting 300,000 children out of
poverty.
Every out-of-work benefit
claimant should be expected to work, or at least prepare for
work. Rapid assessments must be made for every recipient of
out-of-work benefits – both new and existing claimants. This
assessment process could then be used to determine how much
‘welfare-to-work’ providers are paid for placing a claimant
in work. A comprehensive programme of support must also be
provided for job seekers, including training, development,
work experience and post-employment mentoring.
We must also move to
break open the state’s near-monopoly on welfare-to-work
services. Under a future government, these services should
be provided by the voluntary or private sectors on a
payment-by-results basis, according to their success in
returning people to sustainable employment.
We must however,
guarantee that those recipients of Incapacity Benefit who
really cannot work will receive continued support and will
remain outside the return-to-work process.
People who claim
unemployment benefits for more than two years out of three
should be required to ‘work for the dole’ on community work
programmes. People who refuse to join a return-to-work
programme should lose the right to claim out-of-work
benefits until they do, and people who refuse to accept
reasonable job offers could lose the right to claim
out-of-work benefits for up to three years.
We must be prepared to
introduce much tougher rules for young people under the age
of 21 claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance. For this group, the
welfare-to-work process should start much earlier. There
should be jobs ' boot camps ' and community work programmes
for those who do not find a job. Staying at home doing
nothing destroys ambition and must become a thing of the
past.
To achieve this, all
18-21 year-olds who have claimed Jobseeker’s Allowance for
three months should then be referred to a specialist
welfare-to-work provider and after one year of claiming
Jobseeker’s Allowance the young person should be moved on to
a community work programme. The year could be a result of
one continuous claim or a total of different periods spent
on Jobseeker’s Allowance. Those making repeat claims could,
of course, be referred to a specialist provider immediately.
Other priorities for a
new government must include moves to raise the basic state
pension in line with earnings; to examine whether
grandparents should be able to access support for childcare;
and to create new mechanisms for direct payments and
individual budgets for long-term care. We must also begin to
break down the barriers between health and social care and
to provide personalised services in the community and the
home, with a much bigger role for the voluntary and social
enterprise sectors.
We should also be
exploring the possibility of a radical simplification of the
benefits system for disabled people, replacing the range of
different benefits a disabled person can receive with a
single benefit accessed through a single assessment process.
There is no reason why there should not be an annual audit,
across the public sector, of practice towards the employment
of disabled people. A commitment has already been made that
a future Conservative Government will make the employment of
disabled people a priority in recruitment policy throughout
Whitehall and in the public sector.
It is time for a change
of approach to tackling poverty. The Conservatives aspire to
meet the current Government’s target of ending child poverty
by 2020. It is an aspiration, not a pledge, because we do
not know how far from it we will be when we enter office.
With the economic trends for the next few years looking
blacker by the day, there can be no doubt that no change is
not an option. If current trends are not improved, there
will be no chance of achieving these shared goals.
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