Government attitudes
Wrong question
Whenever any government addresses the unemployment issue, they invariably do so by asking themselves
How can we cut the cost of keeping these people on benefits?
They should be asking
How can we get these people back to work?
You'll see that the question they should be asking is positive, implying that unemployed people should be helped. The question they actually ask is negative and does much to explain government attitudes towards unemployed people. Of course, if they find an answer to the positive question, the negative question will automatically be answered, but genuine help for unemployed people costs money and does not, of itself, guarantee success. The negative question can be answered by cutting benefits, downgrading people's benefits (for example, by switching them from employment and support allowance or incapacity benefit to jobseeker's allowance) or forcing people off benefits, none of which solve the underlying problem. Scrapping New Deal would substantially cut the cost of keeping people on benefits, but while I would approve, the government doesn't like that idea.
A good example of the difference in the question asked is the proposal that alcoholics could see benefits cut. It's the sort of thing that sounds great superficially, but if you really think about it, may not be workable in practice. As the government already plans to cut benefits to drug addicts, you might think that they would evaluate the success or otherwise of that policy before doing the same to alcoholics. Obviously, both problems are serious and need addressing, but is cutting benefits the right answer? I don't know.
Negative stereotypes
At the very root of many of the problems that I and other unemployed people face is the attitude of people - employers, agencies, the government, the News media and the general public - towards unemployed people. The government is keen to brand such people as no good. Whenever there is an announcement about a new policy or a change in policy relating to unemployed people, the emphasis is always on the punishment to be meted out for non-compliance rather than the actual policy itself, which comes across as a side issue. Apart from anything else, this reinforces the general belief that unemployed people are beneath contempt. Perhaps the politicians are trying to win votes among those who have jobs, but employers hear these messages too.
John Hutton's speech
There was a particularly infamous speech by John Hutton, who was responsible for such matters at the time, in December 20006. I remember the way the speech was reported, though the actual wording of the speech doesn't quite confirm this. (Sadly, I can no longer find the speech on the internet so I've linked to a report of it instead, but I read it while it was there.) There may have been some News media distortion, something that even I've been a victim of. John Hutton allegedly put unemployed people in four categories, which I describe in detail in my page on Stereotypes, which can be crudely summarised as the lazy, the feckless, the lunatics and the stupid. As I explain in that page, there's a fifth category, the snobs, but these are a subset of the lazy. Even if there was some News media distortion, there are a lot of politicians, as well as employers and the public, who would agree with those categories as the BBC debate Should benefits be linked to community service? clearly illustrated.
Successors no better
Note that John Hutton later moved to another job within the government but his successors, first Peter Hain then James Purnell, clearly agree with him. Working for James Purnell was the employment minister Tony McNulty, whose greatest claim to fame lies in his scandalous expense claims, though it seems that Jacqui Smith's expense claims far exceed his. Now it seems that a lot of politicians of all parties have been on the fiddle. They say they did it within the rules, but they collectively created the rules.
After James Purnell flounced out of the cabinet, Yvette Cooper took his place, but it was more of the same. Iain Duncan Smith took over the job in the new government. While he has some ideas that differ from his predecessors, they still seem very negative.
The impact of these attitudes
Because the government really believes in the Stereotypes associated with unemployed people, their policies severely damage the prospects of the vast majority of unemployed people, such as myself, who really want to work for their living. Policies such as New Deal punish people for being unemployed but get in the way of genuine efforts to look for work.
Of course, I could accept New Deal being a punishment, if I were able to avoid it by going on training courses or whatever. It would be fair enough to say that the lazy people who aren't interested in re-training should go on these schemes. My problem is that my plans to re-train have been thwarted by New Deal, although as I point out elsewhere in this blog, things have now reached the stage where re-training isn't likely to make any difference to my job prospects.
Somehow, I can't imagine any government, whether Conservative or Labour, operating New Deal as a punishment for the lazy. The charities might not be keen to co-operate in such a system and there would probably be other consequences too, so perhaps that's why they feel it necessary to punish all unemployed people. But they also punish themselves, by forcing a lot of people to do things that won't help their job prospects, simultaneously hampering those same people's efforts to prepare themselves for work via re-training that would help them.
Future policy
In December 2008, the government announced its future policy, saying benefit claimants must do more. With mounting government debts caused by the recession, some schemes had to be scrapped. I wish that Flexible New Deal, the successor to New Deal were among them, but not so.
Casual work
This is not a subject that I know anything about, except the broad outline, but one person in the BBC debate Should benefits be linked to community service? said
The problem is the government's instance that casual workers are employed rather than self-employed. With 20% tax, 11% national insurance and 12% employer's national insurance, they are over-taxed when they have work and have to claim benefit when they haven't (thousands of pounds in tax is owed to people on benefit). It would save money to allow casual workers to be self-employed and settle up at the end of the year for what they have really earned. They would not need benefit and would not get demoralised and used to living on it.
If true, this needs looking into, but I don't think it's the main problem.
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