Following the minister's statement I have a couple of questions

"I am happy to be able to confirm that we are going ahead with that proposal. Indeed, we are going further: we will require people who have been long-term unemployed to work for their benefits on a full-time basis, to make sure that people have both the right incentive and the right support to get back into work.

We want to support people back into work, to make sure they reduce their family poverty and achieve the benefits for their communities that that can bring."

Will this be paid at or above minimum wage?
Will this work entitle the person to WTC?

There is a neat response to this at the link below:

http://www.labournet.net/other/0809/workfare1.html

Another useful response to this - by LAG in July 2009 - at www.lag.org.uk/files/93111/FileName/ContentsJuly2009.pdf

Will this be paid at or above minimum wage? No, paid at benefits rate, thereby effectively breaching their own NMW regulations.
Will this work entitle the person to WTC? No, presumably because it won't be counted as "work" for WTC purposes.

Even DWP research has confirmed that workfare works least effectively for those people with the biggest barriers to work, which is the cohort that will have failed to move off JSA and into work largely speaking.

links to the minister's 'announcement' and the research that paul refers to are available from today's rightsnet new story ...

... Long-term unemployed to be required to work for benefit on a full-time basis

If they are working full time, how are they supposed to look for a real job?

Here's an interesting commentary on Workfare from the Canadian perspective - on link below. Old report, but seems like we only use recycled policies in this country anyway.

www.nupge.ca/publications/Workfare%20complete.pdf

Lets see if they really commit to providing accesible child care and resoursing it adequately.

Scandinavian model pah!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7759905.stm

and this...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/dec/02/queens-speech-welfare

it's very difficult to believe that the tories hate the poor more than this government does. : (

i don't think mr. purnell understands the term and concept of 'social security'... i'm beginning to think the government believes that what it says should happen, actually happens...

i wonder how much it cost to save the £300,000? i wonder how much of it was kosher - i don't expect i'm the only one seeing evidence of genuine claimants being deprived of their benefit entitlement following interventions, for the purpose of achieving benefit savings/performance targets...?

....seems our Professor Gregg comes from the same school of thought that gave us that nice merchant banker, Mr Freud: they clearly share a similar compasionate and caring approach towards the needs of the people ....

As a matter of interest, does anyone happen to know what our Mr Gregg is a Professor of ?

====================================================
Unemployed people should do a 9 to 5 day looking for work or undertake community service style duties such as digging gardens under moves to tackle the hardcore of joblessness, the author of a Government-commissioned report said. Professor Paul Gregg said there should be a completely new approach towards people such as parents of young children and those on incapacity benefit. Virtually everyone on benefits should be required to take steps towards finding a job and should face having their benefits stopped for up to four weeks if they repeatedly refuse to co-operate with attempts to find them work, it was suggested.

Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell said he "strongly welcomed" the report, adding: "The direction of travel is the right way."

A welfare reform bill will be included in the Queen's Speech on Wednesday, and the report is part of the Government's drive to get more people into work and cut down the numbers on benefit. Mr Purnell said: "The approach that virtually everyone should be doing something in return for benefits is the right one.

Professor Gregg, of Bristol University, recommended that sanctions should be quicker, clear and more effective, with a simple system of fixed penalties and an escalating series of sanctions for repeat offenders.
The report recommends a swift escalation of sanctions for jobseekers who fail to turn up to meetings and interviews.

Economics.

Like Wilde's cynics, knows the price of everything and the value of nothing

The problem is that Gregg's report doesn't seem to say that long-term jsa claimants should "do a 9 to 5 day looking for work or undertake community service style duties such as digging gardens under moves to tackle the hardcore of joblessness"

I still haven't had a chance to read through the whole report yet, but I certainly haven't seen anything as extreme as this. Gregg does recommend exploration and some pilots of Intermediate Labour Market programmes, but is also very clear that these have various problems that need to be factored in, as well as recommending extra financial payments for those people who would be required to participate in the programmes.

It is, in my opinion, important not to lose some of his recommendations in the hyperbole that has been generated here - for example, Gregg recommends that no work-related activity should be mandatory at the outset of the Progression to Work group, which is a deviation from government intentions, he recommends that the first breach of conditionality should not be met with a financial sanction at all but an explanation of what is required, again something very different from current regimes.

These are the issues that need to be highlighted and pushed so that Government and DWP don't pick and choose what bits of his report they decide to implement in the longer term.

Gregg is actually very critical of what he calls "pure workfare" programmes which have a deterrent effect but do nothing at all to increase employability.

And I have just checked him out. He is a member of the London Child Poverty Commission and has a long publications list on welfare and social issues, including things about working mothers and income in cities, so he is not exactly in the same boat as David Freud.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5299038.ece

Labour have lost the plot.

here it is -
Growing support for tougher benefit rules
• Public attitudes hardened by economic downturn
• Government study shows backing for welfare plans

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/dec/08/benefit-laws-credit-crunch
article by allegra stratton.

"The economic downturn has hardened people's attitudes to those claiming benefits, according to polling conducted by the Department for Work and Pensions.

The government says research to be published today by the independent polling group GfK shows that support for the government's welfare reforms "deepened" as financial conditions deteriorated. It findings will bolster its attempt to push through even tougher welfare reforms than those currently being implemented, despite criticism from Labour backbenchers and anti-poverty campaigners who argue that the linking of benefits to finding work - conditionality - is unfair at a time of dwindling job vacancies..."

the article reports on focus groups and polling...support in the 90 per cents for single mothers of one year old children to face conditionality (totally agreed) and "employees who are unwell" should have a 'back to work# programme medical in order to claim benefits...

i got stuck on the headline for quite a while...
watch out for the last two or three paragraphs...

I saw that yesterday and so I went and had a look around DWP website and could find nothing. So I had a search around the GfK website and still nothing. So 2 days before a very controversial White Paper is expected, we have an unsourced survey that apparently shows that no-one disagrees with the overall approach - a bit too convenient if you ask me.

Also, buried away at the back of yesterday's Grauniad was this, which one might have expected to be printed adjacently instead, given the similarity of subject matter:

Britain's experts on hardship warned Gordon Brown that rising unemployment from Britain's first recession in 20 years is putting the government's work-based anti-poverty agenda at risk.

In an analysis of the past decade, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said progress had already faltered in the past five years and the country was in a "fragile position" as the labour market weakened.

The study found that the Labour government had been far more successful in its first five years in office after 1997 than it had been since. Until 2002, 30 of the 56 poverty indicators - including housing, education, health and crime - chosen by the charity showed improvement and only a few worsened. Since then, only 14 of the indicators have improved and 15 have worsened.

Recession threatens to derail Labour\'s anti-poverty drive

plus expect more benefit restrictions in the forthcoming Borders, Immigration and Citizenship Bill

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7771104.stm

you're right paul - i couldn't find it either. let's see whether the white paper lives up to the levels of spin...

happy reading .. white paper @

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/welfarereform/raisingexpectations

summary in rightsnet news later .....