The eye-catching proposals in the green paper are that single parents will be expected to move into work after their youngest child reaches the age of 7 and that all job seekers will, after 12 months of being on benefit, be expected to carry out socially useful work in return for continued benefits http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,2129311,00.html
Availability for socially useful work used to be a requirement for claiming benefit. The last reference I’ve found to actually mobilising the unemployed for work was the winter of 1946/47 when unemployed men were used to clear snow.
But, transferring single parents onto job seekers allowance, after the youngest child reaches the age of 7, is a new proposal. It is more stringent than the recent Freud report proposed and more than the Conservatives in their recent policy review were arguing.
I was surprised when this government paper hasn’t generated much interest. I guess journalists think that after the predictable protest, the government will back down. I disagree, I think this will happen. I recognise I could be wrong, ( I am the person who stood up in a Labour party meeting in 1979 and said the election of Margaret Thatcher didn’t matter, as she wouldn’t last 6 months) but I don’t think the government are going to back down on this one. The reaction of the single parent pressure groups was entirely predictable. The hostile reaction of the left of the Labour party will also be entirely predictable. Yet, the government have brought this forward, why? I think there are two reasons: it will play well in marginal constituencies and it provides cover for further expanding welfare expenditure.
This kind of initiative plays well with the lower middle classes who make up a crucial component of the population of most marginal parliamentary seats. These often previous Tory voters have recently been looking once again at the Tories in a favourable light. Suggesting single parents should be looking for work when their youngest child is 7 outflanks the Tories on their right and in a way that really hurts. Labour is apparently getting tough with single parent benefit scroungers while flaky Dave wants to hug a hoody, this drives them nuts. This same social group are also going to be dangerously exercised by the housing building program that Brown has already announced. These ‘natural born conservatives’ don’t want a mixed tenure housing development in their own backyard but their sons and daughters can’t leave home because of house prices. Buckling under these contradictory pressures the Tories find themselves with a policy of both supporting increases to the housing supply while opposing building in every area. This weakness will be remorselessly attacked by the Labour party, hoping to attract the votes of the young people, whose highest priority is housing, while confusing the parents who would be glad to see the back of their adult children but don‘t want urban sprawl.
Secondly, shifting single parents into the workforce makes the case for more welfare spending: how so? It looks to me like the Bill Clinton strategy; no not the lying on oath, I mean the strategy he adopted to force the Republicans to support increased spending on child care centres for the poor. He argued that if single parents were to end their lifetime dependence on welfare then there first had to be affordable care for their children, if they were to go out to work. In return for a major increase in child care spending Bill Clinton ended the entitlement to long term welfare benefits for single parents in the USA.
Liberal critics of this strategy predicted that children would be dying on the streets of the big cities of the USA when the winter came, as the then homeless single parent families would be without shelter. In the event, a few poor people did die but no more than usual. There have also been some real success stories, people who when forced into the labour market have flourished. The links between the Democrats and the UK’s Labour party are strong with a constant exchange of people between organisations. I think this Green Paper has been developed after a detailed review of the American political and practical experience.
As I have gone on about in the past, this government needs to spend more money if it is to put in place the measures and organisations that are needed to get close to key targets such as ending child poverty by 2020. The question is how to get more tax money out of the middle classes; I think the answer is to play to their prejudices. So, although this has had a slow start I think it will become an important feature of the government’s legislative programme; or maybe its time for another 1979 moment for me.
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2 comments:
I like this idea. Being unemployed is depressing and difficult to get out of, so while you need support, it's important that people still expect you to one day be able to look after yourself and family. As long as unemployed single parents continue to get money, then I think it's good to shift it to a job seekers allowance once their kids are over a certain age. I also like the idea of including a community work element in it. It gives people confidence and experience when they try and find paid work, and I think it would raise self-esteem knowing that you're doing something useful. Obviously, all of this would only be a good thing if there is cheap, high quality childcare support too.
Keep up the good work.
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