Reasonable

It always sounds completely reasonable.  The government wants to "reform" welfare in some way, and the aim is fine.  But when they try to put it into practice it becomes spiteful, inefficient and unreasonable.  

Take the aim of getting people off sickness benefits.  We all know that a problem stems from the fact that sickness benefit has always been higher than unemployment benefit.  We all know that there are many people claiming these benefits who could work.  So what do you do?  Well, this government employs a private company, Atos, to assess whether claimants are genuinely unable to work, and pays it £3.1bn.  Both the company and the government deny that there are any targets, although it's hard to see how there could not be.  For a summary of just how wrong this can go, see the Independent's article.  But when you want to do another exercise in reassessing disability allowances, you hire the same company.  What could possibly go wrong?

Or take the fact that large numbers of young people are not in education, employment or training.  It's entirely reasonable that they should be given something useful to do.  It might be reasonable to look back at what Gordon Brown did as Chancellor in the early days of the last government.  "New Deal" started as a scheme to help NEETs.  Some might see it as sensible to create jobs.  But this government has decided to make young people do 3 months unpaid work or lose their benefits.  Again, this could be seen as reasonable.  Another article in the Independent describes the scheme, which sounds familiar to anyone who remembers New Deal.  But this scheme will put people into placements with "charities and social enterprises".  It assumes that there are enough of such organisations ready to take them (there aren't).  And it will certainly be organised by a private company, for profit.

The payment by results model seemed a great idea to a government obsessed with profit.  Take off all the restraints and inspections, tell companies they can do what they like, and they will pull out all the stops.  Well, no.  An interesting piece on the Guardian's website by Su Maddock claims that innovation in the Work programme can only come through local commissioning, not through prime contractors and financial incentives.  Again, anybody who remembers New Deal, before David Blunkett privatised it, will recognise this model.  (For those who don't remember, the Jobcentre Plus regional offices held the budgets and contracted with a variety of organisations, including very local ones.)  

This government continues to confuse the reasonable with the ideological.

Competing on compulsion

The leaders' debate tonight saw Cameron and Brown competing on how tough they are going to be on the unemployed. Brown said people will be forced to work. Cameron repeated what he has said many times about cutting off benefits for people who refuse a job. He also said that 3 years without benefit would be the penalty. Neither said where these compulsory jobs would come from. Clegg didn't compete with them. He said that people should have the incentive to work, and that raising the tax threshold would provide that incentive. Take your pick.

Gordon Brown and the unemployed

"But they shouldn’t be doing that, there is no life on the dole anymore for people, if you’re unemployed you’ve got to go back to work. At six months…" That's a quote from Gordon Brown's run-in with an elderly lady today. And, of course, it's gone unremarked. He didn't finish the sentence, but clearly the intention, if a Labour government is returned, is to copy the Tories' idea of Workfare - compulsory "training" or work-for-your-benefits, or even a cut-off point for benefits. There's nothing to distinguish Labour and the Conservatives, then, and whoever gets in we're going to see an increase in the resentment that so many unemployed people feel at being stigmatised. I see a growing number of posts and blogs on the internet from JSA claimants venting their anger. That is going to get worse.

There's a relevant article on CFE News saying that "Charity claims NEETs view employability courses with contempt".

"Barnardo’s Scotland director Martin Crewe claimed that young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs) view courses designed to improve their job prospects with contempt. Mr Crewe stated that that was not what they wanted, and said: "What they want are real jobs and programmes that will get them employed - not a short-term placement which will leave them more or less back where they started. Sitting around in classrooms for long periods working on their CVs is not going to provide a major boost to the employability prospects of the young people we work with. They know it from day one and regard such schemes with contempt." He went on to say that the Barnardo's Works programme had got 80% of its young participants into sustained employment.