In the absence of law and order, human life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” according to Thomas Hobbes. We would then live in the ‘state of nature’ with unlimited freedoms and unlimited chaos. To avoid this, civil society has subjected some of its rights to a sovereign, through what Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau call a ‘social contract’. The idea of subjecting part of our freedoms in return for security and welfare has been developed in late 17th and early 18th century and has served as a basis for creation of current political ideology.
Centuries passed and political systems evolved. There is no constant state of chaos and war of all against all. Neither is there a social contract that guarantees equality and fairness among the governed. What we ended up with, is a constitutional monarchy with broken state of welfare that evolved throughout the years. It all started with “Social Insurance and Allied Services” Report by Sir Willaim Beveridge which sparked the social revolution. This document, published in 1942, gave birth to the welfare state and, what came to be a massive benefits bill.
Unfortunately, what came to being as a social contract between the governed and the sovereign in a form of an insurance policy against accidents and those less well-off, has transformed into a full-time benefit system that created a state of welfare dependency. There are several implications of this transformation which we can observe now.
Back in the days when the welfare state was created, to work was a privilege and to be unemployed was an embarrassment. Nowadays working for the National Minimum Wage is considered shameful. For years there has been a complexity and generosity in what benefits are being paid out to people and this is the fundamental failure of the system that created the ‘benefit trap’ – living on benefits pays more then being in full-time employment. Such system also produced certain psychological and social blockades that demonstrate themselves in long-term unemployment. What follows is a pattern in which the longer people are out of work, the less willing they are to start employment.
Average family with two kids, living in social housing, receives £1.600 p. month in benefits. In 2009–10, about £188 billion was spent on social security benefits in GB. This represents 28.1 per cent of total government expenditure (13.74 per cent of GDP) and by far the largest single function of government spending. Approximately 30 million people in the UK – about half the total population – receive income from at least one social security benefit.1 In 2010, the government spent 158 million pounds only on the Christmas Bonus.
There are over 2,5 million people claiming incapacity benefits in UK, 75% of which are said to have been claiming it without appropriate reasons. Over 20 million pounds a year is spent on housing benefit, mostly paid to private landlords in the most expensive areas to accommodate beneficiaries.
In the public eye, there is a growing concern about paying the government bill for the welfare state, with 92% of the population wanting a major reform of the welfare system. The growing problem with the system seems to be lack of distinction between those who can’t work and those who don’t want to work. Taking that into account, how do we break the cycle of dependency?
Do we follow the Clinton welfare reform and “work-first” model in US, where work obligation was strictly connected to benefit entitlement, or do we invest more capital in creating Education and Learning Centers to help people without forcing them into employment? Judging by his performance at the Liaison Committee, David Cameron seems to favor the former. There is no quick fix and forcing people into employment is no magic bullet either, as proved by the US. Whether it will play out as the ‘atrocity of welfare reform’ and another burst of public dissatisfaction is yet to be seen. For now, let us hope for more sensible approach by political elites.
* Peter Lesniak is Research Assistant to Lib Dem peer, Lord Roberts of Llandudno.
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67 Comments
Excellent short article. We have to choose, in a hurry, between a ‘total free enterprise’ model which will leave UK citizens picking over rubbish heaps, a la Calcutta or Sao Paulo, or a more socialistic model which has to be based upon what we can afford, not what we would like to be able to afford. Crucial to this, of course, is a hard-nosed analysis of what is an appropriate taxation take from different groups of earners/owners, and whether these taxes do or do not inhibit ‘growth’.
Nowadays working for the National Minimum Wage is considered shameful. </i?
I think you need to provide a reference for this rather astonishing assertion.
You also need to address regional discrepancies in jobs, for example many parts of the north of England and Scotland have never recovered from the loss of industrial jobs in the 1980s. Labour increased public sector jobs in these regions which did help considerable but unfortunately the private sector has preferred to invest in the rich south than in these regions.
It is all very well to talk about incentives for people to come off benefits but if there aren't jobs there are no incentives, if you cut benefits you punish those who are in no position to do anything about their situation. With unemployment climbing it is disingenuous, at best, to promote the idea that the unemployed are feckless and unwilling to work in order to support a policy of cutting state support.
What the author misses out is that one of the reasons unemployment is so high is because there are not enough jobs to go round. You can’t blame the unemployed for that! And of course if unemployment goes up the costs of benefits will also, which is why cutting too much too quickly is counter productive in reducing the budget deficit.
The only acceptable way to reduce the cost of benefits is to create jobs. Any alternative method means cutting benefits, considering that;
A lot of the unemployed are desperate to get work.
The quality of life for people who are unemployed is very low as it is.
That if you cut benefits you risk making people destitute. What do you think they should then do? Starve in the streets or turn to crime?
That a lot of employers do not want to employ people who have been unemployed for a long time. That is also an important part of the vicious circle that people get trapped in.
“Public opinion” may be hostile towards the unemployed but for those who are they better be careful that they are not next.
We are legally obliged to eliminate child poverty by 2020.
Dangerous nonsense. Take for example:
“There are over 2,5 million people claiming incapacity benefits in UK, 75% of which are said to have been claiming it without appropriate reasons. ”
That ‘said’ can be expanded to ‘said by ATOS, the private company paid to keep people off benefits’. The same company that told my wife – who was born totally blind but now has a small amount of vision – that she had ‘no difficulty seeing’.
@Geoffrey Payne:
” if unemployment goes up the costs of benefits will also, which is why cutting too much too quickly is counter productive in reducing the budget deficit.”
This is the great ‘imponderable’ of the age. If one country within Europe tries to boost growth in its internal economy while still not exporting enough to cover the (possibly increasing) price of imports then, unless there are major currency exchange rate changes, something has to give. It would seem to me that governments of various European countries have said, repeatedly to their public, to the bankers and to their fellow European governments: “Just give us one more chance and, this time, honestly, we will grow and export our way out of this problem.” Trouble is, they nearly always fail. And the deficit keeps on growing. So, without some kind of ‘magic’, the ‘growth’ solution seems as bad as the ‘crash’ solution: the only difference is a matter of timescale of severe impact. As long as you can ‘con’ enough financiers with the pretend growth route, you put off the day of reckoning and lumber your kids with the problem. And that is before you start to factor-in the tiger economies biting great big chunks out of the export sales markets for goods we traditionally sold and pushing up raw material prices at the same time due to increased production/consumption.
Of course, when it comes to ideas for the ‘magic’, proposals such as tax cuts (always for the wealthy!) create the same problems. The government is told, authoritatively, that it has to believe that these measures will produce net growth of receipts in the medium term. If they introduce them, in the meantime they reduce the receipts in the short term and create social friction at the same time. You pays your money and they makes their choice. 🙁
The old undeserving poor meme. It’s really strange, isn’t it, how it’s always in recessions and depressions that everyone turns out to be feckless and lazy. If only it was in the middle of a book, hmm? I expect it only needs a bit more austerity and that good old magic jobs tree will sprout like a beanstalk.
So create some jobs. I suggest Building lots of houses, fixing the roads, enlarging surestart centres, installing insulation in older properties, … we could use the money from quantitative easing, rather than letting the bankers trouser it.
I am on the LD site, aren’t I? this article would go down well on conservative home.
*boom* not book
I think the most disturbing thing about this article, an attribute for which there is quite a lot of competition, is that it’s written by someone claiming to be a “Research Assistant”. It makes the casual and constant resort to lazy assertion instead of argument and cited facts all the more concerning.
@g:
“With unemployment climbing it is disingenuous, at best, to promote the idea that the unemployed are feckless and unwilling to work in order to support a policy of cutting state support.”
It is indeed invidious to make such claims about all unemployed people. But who, exactly, is doing that right now? It is equally ludicrous to pretend that we do not have (despite the role of ATOS whose quality control is sometimes so bad that one wonders whether the government wants it to be that bad) hundreds of thousands of able-bodied people in the UK who are just culturally-indoctrinated in the inevitability of unemployment, whether genuine (which is pretty hard going for most) or ‘enhanced’ by the black economy.
There is no citation for the statistic that 92% of the population want “major reform” of the welfare system much less what the “major reform”they favour is which makes it a very lazy claim. Yet he then vaults on in his next sentence to the most judgemental distinction between those that won’t and can’t work.
Very illiberal and entirely transparent rhetorical device.
The accusation that 75% of Incapacity Benefit recipients are making fraudulent and thus criminal claims ( read what he actually says) without any citation other than “it is said” makes the whole article a joke. The obvious jibe would be that this should be on Conservative Home except of course I really don’t believe Conservative Home would publish something so sloppy.
The claim that Housing Benefit costs “20 Million” pounds a year is an unfortunate typo in an article claiming welfare spening is out of control ! But look at that sentence again. The casual assertion that “most” of the total goes on accomodation in “the most expensive areas”. Evidence ? and what on earth does “most expensive areas” mean ? expensive compared to what ? Then there is the startling revelation that housing benefit is used to “accomodate beneficaries”. Well I rather hope so.
And is the Christmas bonus ( a tenner at Christmas for some of the poorest in society) really the right target given it’s not been ungraded for inflation for donkeys years and is an example of a benefit slowly being abolished in all but name ?
I can’t take this article seriously when you use stats regarding incapacity benefit like: “75% of which are said to have been claiming it without appropriate reasons.” Which is a wholly wrong stat that has been debunked by Full Fact: http://fullfact.org/blog/incapacity_benefits_welfare_ESA_fit_for_work_DWP-2853 As well as by Channel4 Fact Check.
If you’re going to write an article about benefits, get the facts wrong, and claim most of people claiming sickness benefits are “faking” which is NOT the case, then there’s no point in taking this seriously.
Until we return to a policy of full employment (which goes against our current Neoliberal system) and unless we actually FORCE more companies to hire sick/disabled/long-term unemployed people and make appropriate adjustments, nothing will change. We’re staring down the abyss right now of a possible collapse of the Euro, and if that happens it’ll make the 2008 crash look like a party. If the Euro crashes, unemployment will shoot up even higher in the UK.
And I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer some people being “dependent” on welfare than starving, going homeless and rioting because there’s no jobs and they cannot feed their children.
“So create some jobs. I suggest Building lots of houses, fixing the roads, enlarging surestart centres, installing insulation in older properties,”
And how many of those jobs do you think would actually be taken up by those currently unemployed. I’ll bet 90% of the positions would be filled by our European colleagues who are prepared to work.
With all due respect, the figures in this article about incapacity benefit are complete and utter bullsh*t which have been comprehensively debunked by organisations such as FactCheck and the Office for National Statistics.
Next time I suggest the author of this article doesn’t just copy and paste facts from Daily Mail headlines.
To anyone who’s interested in a factual look at the situation RE disability benefits then this report by the Citizen’s Advice Bureau is a good (and concise) guide:
http://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/not_working
*copy and paste his “facts”
“about £188 billion was spent on social security benefits in GB”
Of course, the majority of that is state pensions. (And an appreciable part of the rest will be housing and other benefits for pensioners too.) Are they part of this work-shy, fake-disability welfare-dependent mass? If not (and if you’re proud of the government’s attempts to save pensioners from the impact of the cuts), it’s just dishonest to include their benefits in your total.
But then — you seem to think that welfare was invented in 1942. A few years before that, there was a chap called Lloyd George, for a start…
“A few years before that, there was a chap called Lloyd George, for a start…”
And before that I seem to also recall people like Asquith and Joe Chamberlain and Gladstone and co…
“In 2010, the government spent 158 million pounds only on the Christmas Bonus.”
And in 2011 the government found £250 million to spend on weekly bin collections.
Think more about the “undeserving rich” in each new generation, who inherit their wealth, often tax free, rather than getting at the “undeserving poor”. In a capitalist democratic country there should be inheritance of capital for all – Universal Inheritance – as well as democratic votes for all – Universal Suffrage. There needs to be a Wealth Welfare State as well as an Income Welfare State. The former, incidentally, would reduce to some extent the cost of the latter.
Brilliant points, both @George Potter & @Malcolm Todd.
The vast majority of welfare spending is indeed pensions. The vast majority of welfare fraud is also in pensions, not disability benefits. But, of course, we never hear about “scrounging” or “feckless” pensioners. It’s always the sick, the disabled and those unfortunate enough to be unemployed.
Yes, there is fraud in the benefit system with regard to disability, but it is a small proportion (less than 0.5%) and the DWP wastes more money every year through error than it does through disability fraud.
But, of course, it’s those who found themselves too sick or disabled to work who the Tories, Labour (and, sadly, some LibDem MPs) continually point their fingers at.
Have I stumbled onto conservativehome? This sort of rhetoric will go down a lot better with the other half the coalition.
@g I have certainly heard people treating the idea of working at minimum wage levels with scorn (during my time as a claimant, located on a “dead-end” estate with some families having “no tradition” of working, and seeing a fifteen-mile bus ride as an impossible barrier to work).
John Humphrys’ recent diatribe was less scientific than some of the treatments I’ve seen, but there was an interview with a straightforward woman who said the minimum wage simply couldn’t support her family. She may have ignored tax credits and other factors, but this is certainly a part of the “not worth working” position.
It wasn’t just Labour who moved jobs out of London. It was a specific policy of the Thatcher government to open government offices up north as a crude compensation for the loss of industrial employment.
Now, does anybody believe the universal benefit will do the job?
Strong stuff. Not sure I agree with all of it but we definitely need to do something about the unwillingness or inability of so many young people to work. Why is that that so many unskilled jobs in sandwich bars and restaurants are filled with young people from Eastern Europe? This is why the argument that ‘there are no jobs’ is far too simplistic – there are jobs, unfortunately they are being filled by foreigners.
@Andrew Hickey “said by ATOS, the private company paid to keep people off benefits’.”
ATOS may not be very competent but they are absolutely not paid by the Government to get people off benefit.
@Geoffrey Payne “We are legally obliged to eliminate child poverty by 2020.”
Good news here – as the economy gets worse the child poverty figures improve due to the ludicrous definition the labour Government lumbered us with which defines child poverty by a relative not absolute measure.
Citizen’s Income now!
http://www.candocango.com/government-acting-like-dodgy-insurance-firm-over-esa-time-limit-says-thomas/
Now we have LibDem peers accusing the government of acting inappropriately. For those who aren’t paying attention to the whole welfare debacle, the reforms that aren’t yet law are already being implemented by the DWP. Baroness Thomas says: “By starting the clock well before Parliament has made its decision on the bill, the government seem to be acting like a private insurance company that changes the rules of someone’s policy after they have made the claim.”
The government is also flat-out *refusing* to stop the time-limiting of ESA that LibDems voted down at conference this year.
The most vulnerable are *not* being protected as we promised. Several people refused benefit have committed suicide already and as the reforms continue to kick in, trust me, it will get much much worse.
A man such as Cameron, worth millions, who claimed DLA for his disabled son, and then pushes reforms that will hurt those in society like his sadly deceased son is most definitely not an honourable man.
“Let me tell you this: sick and disabled people have NOTHING to fear from a Conservative government.” – David Cameron in the 1st election debate of 2010.
Even that’s not quite right. My (ex-)employer is expanding as rapidly as they can, and finding it hard to fill jobs (software engineering). There is no shortage of applicants, but when we give them even a basic skills test, they fail miserably. Over 3/4 of the people applying are, when tested, completely incompetent and unable to do the job. It’s actually easier to find the investment money to pay for the jobs than it is to find the people to fill them.
What’s happening is a skills mismatch between the jobs available and the workforce. The need for employees who are essentially unskilled is going down. The way to get those people employed is to come up with real training (and I don’t mean classes where they teach you how to write a better CV, because the problem with these people is not the quality of their CV).
@ Andrew Suffield
“Over 3/4 of the people applying are, when tested, completely incompetent and unable to do the job.”
I have never heard any employer say anything good about applicants supplied by the state education system. Why should they? If you denigrate applicants’ abilities you avoid having to pay them what they are really worth. Employers have been rubbishing potential employees since the 19th Century. It’s all in the 19the Century official reports.
@ Geoffrey Payne
You are quite right Geoffrey, there aren’t any jobs. But never mind there will be plenty to go round once the Lib Dems’ legislation empowering employers to sack 26 million workers on a whim without the right to a claim for unfair dismissal becomes law.
Interesting summary, but you have missed, or omitted, the major factor – the labour market itself.
In so doing, you are falling into a trap set by Thatcher (and her succesors) since the 1980s: you are assuming that unemployment is the fault (deliberate or otherwise) of the unemployed. This distracts attention from the real cause of UK unemployment: the desire for a “non-inflationary unemployment rate” – as revealed by the chairman of the CBI in the early 90s. The basic theory behind this is that, if there is full employment, a worker’s labour becomes a sought-after commodity, which gives the worker additional power in wage negotiations. If however, there is sufficient unemployment that workers can be readily replaced, then anyone greedy enough to ask for a living wage can be disposed of. In this way, an unemployment rate of 3-5% keeps wages, and thus inflation, down.
An essential part of this technique is the approbation and stigma of unemployment, emphasised by Thatcher, and raised to almost an hysterical pitch by the current government sock puppets. For the victims of this technique to be the victims of bad luck, or of hard times, does not make the associated poverty and deprivation undesirable enough, so any discussion of unemployment, or of “tackling” it, is carried forward of the basis that there is a job available for anyone who wants one. It is a mark of the current desperation that, in the midst of a major recession, with vast sectors of the job market contracting or disappearing, the cries become ever stronger that the unemployed are all “too lazy to work”, that the disabled are all perfectly healthy, and that anyone forced to claim benefit is at best a scrounger, and most likely a fraudster.
Given that the Labour Party has abandonded labour for a mixture of stalinism and thatcherism, I had some hope that Liberals might support their traditional concerns, but apparently not – like everyone else, they are eager to blame the victims opf this policy for the abuses heaped on them.
I had hoped for better, but am no longer naive enough to expect it.
@Dane Clousten
“Think more about the “undeserving rich” in each new generation, who inherit their wealth, often tax free, rather than getting at the “undeserving poor”.”
Why the ‘either or’? They both exist. They are both a problem. anyone who only addresses one or other appears to be somewhat disjointed and partisan.
There is no shortage of applicants, but when we give them even a basic skills test, they fail miserably. Over 3/4 of the people applying are, when tested, completely incompetent and unable to do the job. It’s actually easier to find the investment money to pay for the jobs than it is to find the people to fill them.
Once upon a time, there used to be these things called trainees. If a company needed staff, and they couldn’t find someone who knew how to do the job, they took on someone who didn’t know how to do it, and taught them.
I must be getting on a bit, because, in my younger days, I was a trainee once or twice myself. Nowadays, employers aren’t interested in anyone without a full, clean, driving licence, and at least 5 years experience. The laziness seems to be on the part of employers – they expect someone else to do the hard work developing a skilled workforce, so that they can have maximum productivity for minimum outlay.
The term “human resources” has a lot to answer for, in my book – instead of members of one’s team, it promotes an attitude of raw materials, or of impersonal pieces of equipment. Company loyalty used to be a two way street – I guess it costs too much now.
@MacK the software engineering problem is a real one (I work in the industry myself). There’s essentially no training in this subject at all pre-university, and so only those (predominantly rather nerdy males) who teach themselves while at school ever go into the subject. And then most university courses appear to cover a rather cut-down, simplified version of the subject, such that it’s possible to come out of a three-year degree at a good university but still be totally unsuitable for many jobs (if all you know is Java on Windows, for example, it would take extensive retraining to be reasonable at C++ on GNU/Linux).
Programming is something that could be taught starting at primary school level, yet isn’t taught at all in most schools. Andrew is talking about a real problem. Unlike the original poster.
There’s 2 good reasons the majority of the jobs created during the boom years went to overseas workers:
Education and work ethics.
the behind basic (read/write, and even that’s apparently not so good) education in the UK is lacking (except at the very top end); there’s need to be far more vocational training of all levels (from plumbers to engineers), and it need be much more valued, as it is in Europe. Leaving school at 18 with an NVQ will get you jobs, leaving school at 18 with some bad A-Levels won’t. A degree isn’t for everyone (not if it’s to be of any value to an employer).
“The proportion of the UK workforce having vocational qualifications at Level 2 and above (24 per cent) [..]. In France, 42 per cent and in Germany 58 per cent of the workforce hold vocational qualifications at Level 2 and above.” (From a very interesting report: https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/RR548.pdf)
The work ethic part is not just a problem with the long-term unemployed families or young people but amongst a much larger part of the population. I temp, so I see different places of work, both public and private, and it’s amazing how just doing your job normally gets you praises from employers.. which says a lot about what they’re used to! Many of my friends, like me, are foreign-born medium/long-term UK residents (from North America, Oz and Europe) and they all witnessed the same thing.
Comment in the Sunday Times from Keith Abel one of the founders of Abel and Cole.
“We took on 28 people last year in our warehouse in Andover and not one of them was English” says they find ‘little interest from locals in manual jobs that pay £7.25 an hour’.
“we’re just not getting any local applicants”
“Programming is something that could be taught starting at primary school level, yet isn’t taught at all in most schools.”
– Which would be fine, if the purpose of primary school was to provide employees for one industry. (An important one, I don’t doubt; but not what most kids are going to end up in.) Schools should be teaching essential skills and techniques, that can be used in a wide variety of jobs.
Why aren’t these companies that struggle to find people already able to fill their vacancies training people themselves? (That’s not meant to be snarky by the way. It’s a genuine question.)
@Andrew Hickey
“such that it’s possible to come out of a three-year degree at a good university but still be totally unsuitable for many jobs (if all you know is Java on Windows, for example, it would take extensive retraining to be reasonable at C++ on GNU/Linux).”
The problem there is that there is no consensus on what a good computer science course is. I know senior programmers and employers in the industry who avoid computer science graduates for just that reason. They prefer science and engineering graduates who have retrained or even training them up in house.
Secondary schools should be allowed to scrap ICT (another dubious qualification) and teach computer skills within core subjects like Maths, English, and Science. The top sets for maths definitely need some experience of programming and discrete mathematics during secondary school. People can leave school with A-levels in Maths without experiencing these things.
Back on topic: There’s no reason why we can’t link benefits to obligation and put investment in education. The obligation could be work, education or a combination of the two. People who are out of work for 12 months may have work a few days a week and spend the others doing a course in college. Their JSA would be dependent on regular attendance and effort. They’d end up having experience of working again and a new qualification.
@ Andrew Hickey.
Very well, as you are an industry insider I have to accept that you may be having difficulty recruiting people with the right skills base at an advanced level. However, Andrew Suffield was claiming that applicants could not pass a basic skills test, which of course is what employers are always claiming despite all of the advances we have witnessed at GCSE and “A” Level. Indeed, has any one ever heard an employer praising the quality of the State Education that young people receive? From the way the CBI and the Institute of Directors talk you’d assume that all of our 16 to 18 year olds were illiterate and innumerate. I have taught in primary schools and I can honestly say I have only come across one teacher in them who taught rudimentary programming. I would suggest that It is a knowledge field unavailable to most primary teachers. An opportunity there for some young people with the appropriate programming skills to be employed as mentors within primary schools you might think but hardly likely with this government in power.
@Charles.
“Their JSA would be dependent on regular attendance and effort.”
That was what partly informed the provision of the EMA . It motivated young people to attend education courses and attain social responsibility. The threat of its removal from individuals was a strong motivating factor and provided a sanction. It should have been extended to mature adults and provided them with a realistic wage on which they could have expected to exist whilst training without enormous hardhip, not like the paltry JSA. The EMA was an excellent idea so, naturally it was axed by the Liberal Democrats and the Tories.
@ Peter Lesniak
“In the public eye, there is a growing concern about paying the government bill for the welfare state, with 92% of the population wanting a major reform of the welfare system.”
Now I wonder why that is? Couldn’t be anything to do with the Lib Dem/Tory government’s concerted campaign to scapegoat those on benefits could it? i.e., “You know how you feel when you are going to work and your neighbours haven’t opened thgeir curtains”. In other words, the usual strategy of divide and rule by those whose interest is to destroy the welfare state. I suggest you go and spend a year living and working on those impoverished estates in London or Manchester and see how high on the hog a few quid a week enables you to live. It might open your eyes lad.
@MacK – back in the real world any thought s on why people won’t apply for jobs at £7.25 an hour?
Simon McGrath, do you have any evidence that people refusing to apply for £7.25/h jobs is a significant problem?
Complete rubbish, in this case. That company is desperate to hire competent people and I doubt it has a single employee below the national average salary. While it’s not the best-paying employer in the area (which is frankly because it’s 20 minutes from the City), it’s also not shy about handing out way-above-inflation pay increases to retain staff.
We give them a couple of programming problems – of the form “here’s a problem, sketch out how you would solve it and don’t worry about the details” – and most of them fail embarrassingly, in a way that makes it clear they have never really done this.
For unskilled work, like retail stock management, that can work – a few weeks of training is sufficient. But for skilled industries like software development, it takes around 3-5 years to train people up to a basic level, where they are a net asset to the company. It’s unaffordable and untimely.
As for people who have the basics down but need more supervision? That’s what internships are for. That company takes on all the interns it can, has them doing real work, pays them well, and then offers them full-time employment. Most software companies do the same, because it’s one of the best ways to recruit. It doesn’t come close to being enough.
There’s a hundred other companies just like it in the area (Old Street “silicon roundabout”), all with the same problem. All of them have plenty of money which they’re eager to spend on salaries. Most of them are sitting on it because they can’t find people, while being frustrated with the amount of time they burn on interviewing unsuitable applicants.
Heck, they’d hire people from either background if they were good at it. Shifting platforms and languages is relatively easy, and a lot of the current developers were picked up that way. Problem is that mostly all they’re getting for applicants is people who don’t really know anything.
@G “Simon McGrath, do you have any evidence that people refusing to apply for £7.25/h jobs is a significant problem?”
I think the question of why people won’t apply in Andover for jobs at Abel and Cole at £7.25 an hour is a good one. Don’t you?
An interesting debate where people have stuck to discussing the principles behind Peter’s original post. Those who have only nit-picked over dates and percentages are missing the point.
Peter’s argument is, clearly, that welfare is supposed to be a safety net and a last resort. He’s saying that with limited exceptions – “what about-ers” please note – nobody able-bodied should ever be better off on benefits than taking a job.
That it’s wrong that we have third- or fourth-generation welfare families where nobody has any aspiration to get work. The fact that jobs might not exist for them is not the issue, it’s conceptually distinct from the disinclination to work. He’s rightly pointed out that there are *some* people (doesn’t matter how many) who see it as a life choice.
Ignoring the statistics, and thinking about LD aims, I’d have thought that “none shall be enslaved by poverty” means taking a good hard look at the possibility that he might be right in certain respects.
If any family on benefits has a car, a home and holidays that they could not afford if they were employed at a level commensurate with their skills, that is a pretty good indicator that they have gone beyond “safety net”.
Nobody’s talking about a return to the workhouse, for goodness sake, just looking at the “top earners” on benefits… yes, the Daily Mail fodder. How anybody gets by on the minimum JSA I can’t imagine. Maybe a more stringent cap on maximum benefits would free up cash to help those struggling on the lowest levels.
Can I have my vote back please?
I really wish I’d read the comment pieces on this website before the general election rather than naively believing the solidly left-wing material my local MP campaigned upon.
The data used for this piece comes from the Institute for Fiscal Studies report from last year (available here: http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn13.pdf ) as well as the ipsos MORI research commissioned by the BBC (see The Future State of Welfare, John Humphrys), not some third-party agency as suggested.
I also resent the fact that there are no jobs out there. Walk into any Jobcentre Plus and you’ll see computers flooded with offers. It’s more often the case that people don’t want to work for NMW that puts them off than difficulty in finding the job itself.
@ Andrew Hickey: “There are over 2,5 million people claiming incapacity benefits in UK, 75% of which are said to have been claiming it without appropriate reasons. ” – this was said by the doctors and nurses themselves.
@MacK: “campaign to scapegoat those on benefits”? No such thing. And I was working on NMV for many years living in the poorest areas of London – yes, I know how it feels like. It doesn’t change the fact that there are a lot of people out there who resent doing just that.
@Ann Keelan: precisely.
There is no quick fix but it helps to develop some insight and empathy, both appear to be sadly lacking in your post.
I would suggest that rather than trying to apply 18th century political philosophy to contemporary social and economic needs, as well as making sweeping generalisations about “dependency” without a jot of data to back up your assertions – you instead get out of the House of Lords and into the real world to look at the problems for yourself. Ie go and talk to JobCentres, Citizens Advice Bureaux, work training providers, disability support charities etc (ie those on the frontline of these issues) – better still speak to people who’ve been unemployed for years and talk to them about their experiences.
@ Ann Keelan
If any family on benefits has a car, a home and holidays that they could not afford if they were employed at a level commensurate with their skills, that is a pretty good indicator that they have gone beyond “safety net”.
Or it clould be that employers are perceived to be offering skinflint and unrealistic wages. (Many are)
Simon McGrath
Posted 14th November 2011 at 6:09 am | Permalink
@MacK – back in the real world any thought s on why people won’t apply for jobs at £7.25 an hour?
The perception people obtain from the media is that employers are offering skinflint wages. How many bankers or or other successful people would agree to work for the minimum wage? The perception of most people is that when it comes to remuneration we are certainly not all in it together.
@Andrew Suffield
It’s not “rubbish” as you put it to suggest that employers have a vested interest in driving labour costs down.
“and most of them fail embarrassingly, in a way that makes it clear they have never really done this.”
As for the example you cite, in your own industry, it has been proven over the years that many children improve their scores on intelligence tests after intensive coaching. Very few people when presented with completely unfamiliar problem-solving tasks are able to respond with solutions effectively and immediately. A long period of trial and error is required before overarching strategies are developed. Perhaps the company you refer to should organise a week long workshop for applicants in which they are given feedback on their strategies for solving the programming problems put to them and are provided with some overarching strategies. They could then be assessed again using other basic programming problems. Those with aptitude would then be clearly revealed. It at least might indicate which applicants had potential. Sounds like the classic mistaken assumption of expecting a perfect performance without any input.
Tony Dawson
The undeserving rich – those who are rich by inheritance – are undeserving of that wealth. Those who are poor while not working are no more undeserving than those who are rich by inheritance while not working.
Capital ownership in our country is too unequal. The only point at which it is possible to do anything about it is at the point of transfer from each generation to the next.
With an Asset Welfare State, the cost of the Income Welfare State will be reduced.
Andrew Duffield,
Better to have Citizen’s Inheritance – unearned wealth for all financed by taxation on unearned wealth of the undeserving rich in each new generation – than a Citizen’s Income..
Citizen’s Income is unearned income for all, which can never be enough to live on, and is unnecessary for the better off.
“Squeedle”
“A man such as Cameron, worth millions” – LARGELY INHERITED – also dishonourably went along with the lie that for Preferential Voting there would have to be voting machines in every constituency at a cost of £250,000,000.
Liberal Democrats
Think outside the box of Dynastic Capitalism, with all its tax-free inheritance of most lifetime capital gifts and exemptions for agricultural, business and shareholding assets for the wealthy. Conservative Dynastic Capitalism is a hangover from Feudalism.
Think instead about Liberal Popular and Democratic Capitalism with UK Universal Inheritance for all UK-born UK citizens. Give some hope for the future to all young adults, with £10,000 at 25 (introduced at £2,000 in first year up to £10,000 in the fifth year and hopefully more thereafter) to help with tuition fees, starting a business, deposits for home ownership or whatever, so that fewer will need to rely upon the Income Welfare State.
Finance it by reforming Inheritance Tax into a 10 per cent flat tax on all bequeathing and giving deductible from a progressive tax, starting at 10 per cent, on cumulative lifetime receipt of unearned wealth, including the £10,000. Average wealth of every adult and child in the UK is about £100,000.
Oh no! I forgot. Your beloved EU would not allow you to discriminate against EU-born UK citizens at 25! Perhaps the Conservatives will pick up UK Universal Inheritance. Or maybe UKIP will, once they get rid of their ridiculous policy of abolishing Inheritance Tax and putting nothing in its place. The EU-sceptic Liberal Party has had it as party policy since 2005.
Sandraf
There are British people who are overseas workers. People who have left
the UK in search of better prospects. In fact a lot of talented people have gone abroad
much to the detriment of British industry
@MacK “Or it clould be that employers are perceived to be offering skinflint and unrealistic wages. (Many are)”
I agree some are, but in an otherwise free employment market where we have both a minimum wage and benefits, any employer taking the proverbial should find it hard to fill vacancies. The better candidates will work elsewhere.
The priorities as I see it are (not in any order):
1. Hunt out and shut down the sweatshop employers that undoubtedly still exist especially in the rag trade and agriculture – exploiting the unskilled and vulnerable, often people with poor English or literacy.
2. Ensure that employers do not circumvent minimum wage by manipulating break times, on call, wash-up time etc.
3. Make every hour of paid work be financially worthwhile for the worker. Nobody should be worse off after taking into account the costs of travel, childcare etc.
4. Fix a workable formula for minimum wage being a multiplier of X times JSA.
5. Don’t underestimate the non-financial value of working, to the individual and to society. Someone could be on exactly the same net income from work as they were from benefits, but be “better off” in a dozen intangible ways.
That list “squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease” included idleness with good reason. We have to invest in training and jobs or we doom many of the unskilled to a very narrow existence in more ways than just financial.
Andrew Suffield states: “My (ex-)employer is expanding as rapidly as they can, and finding it hard to fill jobs (software engineering). There is no shortage of applicants, but when we give them even a basic skills test, they fail miserably. Over 3/4 of the people applying are, when tested, completely incompetent and unable to do the job.”
So if I’m following his argument correctly he’s saying that lots of unskilled people are applying for jobs they aren’t
qualified to take up, which suggests to me that they are desperate and prepared to have a shot at anything to earn a living. Good for them. As others have suggested, train your own at your own expense.
As for the author’s kite flying article may I politely suggest he has a look at evidence freely available on the Left Foot Forward blog? Here’s a small sample from a current article, go read it yourself:
“Iain Duncan Smith says in the Mail “At the moment, hundreds of millions of pounds are paid out in disability benefits to people who have simply filled out a form.”
In fact – “42 per cent of awards were also based on a report from a general practitioner; 36 per cent on another source of evidence such as information from a hospital report, a social worker or allied health professional or from assessment for employment support allowance. In other words, there’s a lot of evidence from ‘face-to-face assessment’ in play, it’s just that most of it doesn’t involve DWP officials.
As for the 16 per cent of claims which were based only on a form, these were presumably cases where a DWP decision-maker had judged that no further evidence was necessary.”
“This looks awfully like a case of desperate, amateurish spinning in the face of figures which refuse to tell the story government wants people to hear.”
Well, who’d have thought it?
@MacK
“The perception people obtain from the media is that employers are offering skinflint wages. How many bankers or or other successful people would agree to work for the minimum wage? The perception of most people is that when it comes to remuneration we are certainly not all in it together. ”
Not many I suppose. What is your point – that emplpyer should boost their profits by paying less?
At least paying succesful people good wages means that the state can tax them in order to pay benefits for the disadvantaged.
@Ann Keelan
An interesting debate where people have stuck to discussing the principles behind Peter’s original post. Those who have only nit-picked over dates and percentages are missing the point.
Principles are unimportant if the dates and percentages aren’t compatible with the argument made. You cannot will a different reality into existence to make your ideology fit, you have to work within the confines of the one you’ve got.
@Simon McGrath
I think the question of why people won’t apply in Andover for jobs at Abel and Cole at £7.25 an hour is a good one. Don’t you?
Can you link to a credible source for unemployment rates vs job opportunities in Andover?
Yes, we call that “being trained as a software engineer”. It takes about 3-5 years. The test is for whether or not they have already done it, not whether they might be able to do it in the future. Although there’s not much “trial and error” involved.
We do not have jobs for people who are unskilled. Hospitals do not have surgical jobs for people who are not doctors or nurses. The current situation is a large pool of unemployed, unskilled people and a large pool of empty jobs for skilled people. Why is this so difficult for you to understand?
We need more people to be taught the relevant skills, urgently.
Sort of, but first they need to learn skills. Everybody in the software industry wants them to do it, because we’ve all got the same hiring nightmare. There is a problem here and it’s not with the employers.
You are describing an entrance exam for a university. After this comes training, and after that you can pass a job interview. The purpose of the skills test is to determine whether you have already learned the relevant skills, not whether you would make a good undergraduate.
Peter Lesniak writes: “Approximately 30 million people in the UK – about half the total population – receive income from at least one social security benefit.”
Are we supposed to be shocked and outraged by this statistic? I assume it includes the state pension and child benefit, both accessed by large sections of the population. At times, the article seems to be hinting at the standard Mail/Tory right line that people claiming benefits are scroungers and, if they were paid less, they would find jobs. Just where those jobs are to come from is not clear, since the private sector is cutting back and the austerity programme is cutting a swathe through the public sector.
Do we follow the Clinton welfare reform and “work-first” model in US, where work obligation was strictly connected to benefit entitlement, or do we invest more capital in creating Education and Learning Centers to help people without forcing them into employment?
We don’t have any capital to invest. And we are not going to, for the remotely foreseeable future. Its the US model, or the status quo. And we can’t afford the status quo either. That does not leave many options.
“Can you link to a credible source for unemployment rates vs job opportunities in Andover?”
1028 unemployed (Claimant Count)
1058 vacancies at the Job Centre
Figures for NW Hants constituency (mainly Andover) – House of Commons Library.
@Andrew Sufffield
Haven’t you answered your own question? A halfway decent developer can earn £700 a day working for a bank. A company located 20 minutes from the City is always going to struggle to attract good technical staff especially if there are “a hundred” other companies in the same area trying to expand. In any case a lot of those companies are social media startups and frankly good developers have better options than working for a company that will most likely fold in a year or two. I’ve worked in IT for 15 years and in my experience there is no lack of good developers if you know where to find them and how best to recruit them. If you don’t then you’ve got a problem but that is down to a lack of business acumen and says nothing about wider issues around welfare, skills and education.
Hywel,
I am sure you have reported the source correctly, but I don’t find the (second) figure credible.
Job Centres advertise only a small minority of vacancies, generally the stuff that people don’t want to do, like sweeping the streets, collecting the rubbish and working in care homes. Jobcentreplus has a website (jobcentreplus.gsi.gov.uk), which lists all current vacancies notified to it. I am as sure as sure can be that there are nowhere near 1,058 of these in Andover and the villages that surround it. I would be surprised if there are more than 20.
About a third of the vacancies in Andover (as elsewhere) are likely to be flogging stuff over the phone, or otherwise dealing with customers, for which most jobseekers have no aptitude (to their relief, I’m sure). You will find these on online job boards (“ambitious”, “motivated” and “bubbly personality” are code for sales, btw). Most jobs are not advertised, by employer or agency, candidates being headhunted or drawn from agencies’ registration bases.
We now have mass unemployment in this country, and it is going to get much, much worse. When Nick Clegg said that the Tory deficit reduction strategy would jeopardise growth and was “irrational” , he wan’t being prophetic, he was stating the bleeding obvious.
@Hwyel are those jobs matched for the unemployed with respect to skill set, family commitments, location, etc?
@g “Principles are unimportant if the dates and percentages aren’t compatible with the argument made.”
Peter’s arguments were entirely compatible with the figures, whatever slant you put on the data. He’s raised an issue of principle about whether our welfare system has evolved in directions that weren’t intended and aren’t desirable for the individual or for society.
Do you have a view on that, “g”, or are you more interested in data analysis techniques than the value of work and the morality of elective dependency?
@Hywel – thanks for the stats on unemplpyment in Andover.
fascoinating that so far noone has actually addressed the issue raised as to why there are 1028 unenployed people in Andover and yet they won’t apply for unskilled work paid above the minimum wage at Abel and Cole.
In fact it seems odd that they continue to recieve benefits if they won’t apply for this work.
@Andrew Suffield.
“The purpose of the skills test is to determine whether you have already learned the relevant skills, not whether you would make a good undergraduate.”
If industry skills are so specific capitalists should be prepared to pay for them to be developed. It’s called “employers putting their hands in their pockets and being prepared to train their own workforce instead of expecting the state to do it for them for free”. Why’s that so hard for you to understand?
Simon McGrath
“In fact it seems odd that they continue to recieve benefits if they won’t apply for this work.”
Capitalism and its celebrity culture divides people into hugely rich winners and er … losers. I suggest that a minority of losers prefer to be time rich and money poor. It gives them autonomy and when you have autonomy you don’t feel so much like a loser. Besides which there are some jobs that people wouldn’t do for fifty pounds an hour.
@ Simon McGrath
“In fact it seems odd that they continue to recieve benefits if they won’t apply for this work.”
That’s because we live in a relatively free society which gives people some degree of choice. We do not live in the equivalent of a labour camp with provision for the forcible deployment of labour which apparently lots of Liberal Democrats are in favour of.
“MacK”
“Capitalism and its celebrity culture divides people into hugely rich winners and er ..losers.” That is true within each generation. But why should the next generation start off so unequally.
The Preamble to the Liberal Party Constitution – abandoned by the Liberal Democrats under the influence of the EU-fanatic elitist Social Democrats from the right wing of the Labour Party – calls for Liberty, PROPERTY and Security for All.
Vastly unequal inherited wealth, with some inheriting billions and others inheriting nothing, does not give people equal choice. It is time for liberals to tackle the redistribution of the inheritance of wealth to give Universal Inheritance for all young adults in each new generation.
Your proposal is that when a company wants to hire somebody, they should locate a suitable unskilled person, pay for them to attend university for 3 years, and then watch that person go and work for a different employer.
Don’t be deliberately stupid.
@Ann Keelan
Peter’s arguments were entirely compatible with the figures, whatever slant you put on the data. He’s raised an issue of principle about whether our welfare system has evolved in directions that weren’t intended and aren’t desirable for the individual or for society.
Do you have a view on that, “g”, or are you more interested in data analysis techniques than the value of work and the morality of elective dependency?
Well there’s quite a few assertions made in the OP, including the one I asked my first question about. But on the whole I have an interest in both data analysis and discussion on work and morality, I don’t choose between them but the latter discussions tend to be damaging if you ignore the former. Take for instance, since housing benefit has been mentioned, the theoretical argument that cutting HB would reduce rents in London – the facts show the opposite has happened, something that was predicted…
Mack “@ Simon McGrath
“In fact it seems odd that they continue to recieve benefits if they won’t apply for this work.”
That’s because we live in a relatively free society which gives people some degree of choice. We do not live in the equivalent of a labour camp with provision for the forcible deployment of labour which apparently lots of Liberal Democrats are in favour of.”
I have no desire at all to force anyone into a job. But nor do i see why I should pay taxes to keep someone in idelness if they don’t wish to work.
@ Andrew Suffield
“Your proposal is that when a company wants to hire somebody, they should locate a suitable unskilled person, pay for them to attend university for 3 years, and then watch that person go and work for a different employer.
Don’t be deliberately stupid”.
What nonsense. Now you are putting words in my mouth. My point was that employers should not expect applicants to come to them fully formed. But on your logic no employer would ever hire anybody at all for fear of competitors poaching them. Haven’t you heard of contracts and indentures, by the way? It has to be said though, that many public sector organisations have seconded people through university and benefitted greatly from it. I believe that the police used to put promising recruits through university.
@Simon McGrath
“I have no desire at all to force anyone into a job. But nor do i see why I should pay taxes to keep someone in idelness if they don’t wish to work.”
Many things are done with the taxes I pay that I strongly object to, but I accept them because I know that it is the price of living in a democracy. Besides, although it’s not the lifestyle I would want, if people prefer to be idle and yet live on a pittance, I won’t begrudge them that pittance like a Daily Mail reader.