A remarkable amount has been achieved. Often against the odds and in the face of adversity. And certainly in circumstances far less benign than those faced by New Labour.
It has thrived through sector after sector demanding special treatment. Each claims a skills shortage and requires many more visas to be issued to foreign workers to come here.
The system is all but designed to subsidise low wages, disincentivise productivity, and give retirees no stake in the UK maintaining a thriving, dynamic economy.
The expansion of Universal Support is hugely welcome, as is news of a Chance to Work Guarantee. The Chancellor’s decision to restrict access to higher rate disability benefits, however, is harder to defend.
The Chancellor explains the thinking behind proposed changes in Universal Credit which would restrict access to people who refuse to actively seek work.
I want to propose an organising principle for policymaking: as far as possible, the organisations and institutions responsible for providing support to people should not be responsible for sanctioning them.
The last of three articles this week as our project continues over the summer and autumn.
The twenty-fourth article in a new series on ConHome about how government might be made smaller, taxpayers better off and and society stronger – through strong families, better schools and good jobs.
The fifteenth article in a new series on ConHome about how government might be made smaller, taxpayers better off and and society stronger – through strong families, better schools and good jobs.
And this is the fundamental problem: it allows us to dodge a broader long-term industrial strategy, precisely because the short-term labour fix is so easy.
Ministers have protected some of the most vulnerable people in society, during some of the most challenging times the country has faced. They should now adapt the Social Metric Commission’s measure of poverty as a national statistic.
Universal Support was always meant to sit alongside Universal Credit, specifically focused on helping written-off groups. But it was cut by an impecunious Treasury.
Jeremy Hunt presents to Parliament the Government’s plan centred on his so-called Four Es: Enterprise, Education, Employment and Everywhere.
Such a policy, already successfully delivered in Manchester, could transform thousands of lives by helping those who are willing, but not yet able, back into work.
This move would be perfectly targeted on the people who, by definition, need most income support, and gets to them far more cheaply than a universal tax break would.