Can work, won’t work

After having just finished ploughing through a mountain of marking, I have had time to quickly look through the weekend’s press and review the latest poliitcs on TV. And it got me thinking, what if you had fallen asleep in 1979 and woken up nearly thirty years later to find a Labour minister on TV talking about unemployment? You might expect them to say that unemployment was unacceptable, that everyone had the right to a job since this was part of what made them human, and so on.

You might not expect them to say, however, that receipt of state support would be dependent on meeting certain conditions and that recipients had to give something for something.

This was what was reported in the Sunday Times:

‘Almost all benefit claimants will be forced either to look for a job or prepare for work if they want to continue to receive state handouts, under a shake-up of the welfare state.

Single mothers of children as young as one and people registered unfit for work will be compelled to go on training courses and work experience or risk cuts to their benefits.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, James Purnell, the work and pensions secretary, said: “Virtually everyone will be doing something in return for their benefits.”

The welfare reform white paper, to be published this week, is set to provoke anger from rebel Labour MPs and campaign groups who believe such measures are unfair in a period of rising unemployment.’

Watch Purnell here on the Andrew Marr show.

Expecting single mothers simultaneously prepare themselves for the world of work and look after young children. Who said New Labour was dead?