As Libby Brooks said in last weeks Guardian (1/6/09): “It is hard to decide what to object to most in the draft welfare reform bill. Perhaps it should be the clause allowing for the abolition of the fundamental state safety net of income support, or the privatisation of back-to-work services that will benefit only shareholders. Maybe it's the requirement that single parents with children as young as three should be available for "work-related activity" or face sanctions, with the adequacy of childcare provision to be judged by a jobcentre adviser. Others might choose the piloting of "work for your benefits" schemes, which will undercut the minimum wage, offering as little as £1.73 an hour to claimants who have been unemployed for more than two years.”
Brooks is right that this is an appalling attack on what remains of the benefits system at precisely a time when there are less and less jobs to bully claimants into. One might have thought that the Labour Party would still have some residual pride in its creation of the welfare state. However its attacks on legal aid and welfare benefits betray New Labour as a very different kind of animal to the traditional Labour Party of the 20th Century. Now that the architect of the draft Bill, James Purnell, has left the Department of Work and Pensions under such unhappy circumstances, we might have hoped that his successor Yvette Cooper might find more useful things to do with her time. No such luck – there is really no difference between Blairites and Brownites in their shared desire to destroy (or reform as they tend to call it) key elements of the welfare state.