How will the changes affect poor?

Jun 1 2010 by Kevin Rowan , The Journal

AN inevitable post-recession problem for any government is the significant costs of unemployment.

Aside from the billions that have been invested in supporting the UK’s financial services and in stimulating new economic growth and lost tax-take, the public purse is clearly feeling the strain from the additional expenditure on unemployment and other ‘out of work’ benefits.

No surprise, then, when one of the early policy developments from the new coalition government turns out to be a Welfare Reform Bill. The language of the Bill is very similar to that of the previous regime; aiming to simplify the benefits system and aspiring to ‘make work pay’.

These are ambitions that are hard to oppose; whether you work in the benefits system or are one of its ‘clients’, it can seem over-complex with a confetti of different allowances, of varying value, applying at different times and in different circumstances and who would ever suggest that one of the advantages of working for a living is that it should offer you just that.

While it would be right to give the current government time to demonstrate its characteristics those who remember the last Tory government will have experienced a shudder at the mention of welfare reform.

Memories of previous action in this area are of punitive measures, attacking the most vulnerable in our society. Talk of all incapacity benefit claimants being reassessed to understand their fitness to work along with the introduction of additional criteria that all claimants will need to demonstrate an attempt to work to qualify for benefits will do nothing to assuage those fears.

It is the case that people with disabilities are the least likely group in society to be employed (and are often underemployed where they are in work), but this is more often than not due to direct and indirect discrimination by employers rather than an unwillingness to work.

Within these measures was the incredibly disappointing announcement that the Future Jobs Fund will be discontinued. The FJF was a really valuable route into work for young people in the region, with employers needing to demonstrate not just that they were offering a socially useful occupation, but also that they were going to provide training and development that would offer valuable development of the individual young person’s employability.

The TUC firmly believes that work should pay, should lift people out of poverty.

:: Kevin Rowan is regional secretary of Northern TUC