Weird and Wonderful - and IDS

If you're curious about Thornbridge Hall, the Derbyshire mansion home of Emma Harrison, you can see it on the latest of Nigel Slater's "Simple Cooking" programmes. Slater went there to see a farmer, Tom Clarke, who farms wild boar there. We also met Jim Harrison, Emma's husband, who brews beer. The episode is called Weird and Wonderful.

Earlier today Iain Duncan Smith was on The World at One on Radio 4. It should be here. He was talking to people in Hackney about unemployment and what the government is doing about it. Naturally, everything is pinned on the Work Programme. The payment method will ensure its success. There was the usual casual statistic - there are half a million jobs in the Jobcentres each week. We need a dynamic workforce, he said. The representative of one organisation said they had not bid for the WP contracts because it was too risky, but would continue to help people. One man, with a criminal record, said it was hopeless and, when IDS disagreed, said he couldn't even get a work trial. Once again the solution was the WP, which would provide mentors to help him all the way. Another man, with a string of qualifications, said he couldn't find work either. IDS personally guaranteed that he could get him a job. (Of course he can; but that doesn't help all the others in the same position.) The interviewer asked him if it was fair that benefits are to go up in line with inflation (a line that other BBC people are also pushing). IDS said there were no plans to change that, but it was a long way short of a guarantee.

I wonder if he will come on next year to explain why the WP isn't delivering.

Sanctions

Following on from my previous post, the item on the BBC's "World at One" didn't add much. The focus was on the need to simplify the benefits system and make it worthwhile to take a job. A chap from the Centre for Social Justice talked about increasing the amount one can earn before benefits start to be withdrawn, and getting rid of the 16 hour rule. A Labour spokesman, while agreeing with the aims, said that simplification, reducing the number of benefits to two, would inevitably mean that some people were worse off, and that is hard to deal with politically. Equally tricky is the question of sanctions. It's one thing to stop the benefits of someone who isn't willing to work, but what about his wife and children?

Iain Duncan Smith, in a recorded piece, talked about the real and perceived risks to the unemployed of taking up jobs, and the need to make it worth working. Asked about sanctions, he agreed that sanctions already exist but have not, he said, been implemented, but now will be.

This doesn't answer the question raised by Labour about the dependants of someone who is sanctioned. It ignores the fact that people do indeed lose benefits when they don't comply with, for instance, attendance on a programme.

There is a great deal still to be worked out in this legislation. On the one hand, they have to come up with a viable benefits system; on the other, they have to renegotiate the welfare-to-work contracts. It could be a while before we see any changes.