It came as a surprise to learn last week not that 1.5 million of the 2.7 million new jobs ’created’ under Labour were taken by immigrants, but that there is actually a minister for welfare reform, says The Business. “Step forward the largely useless Caroline Flint”. If ever a welfare system was in need of urgent reform, it is Britain’s. Yet rather than do anything about the 5.36 million indigenous adults of working age living on benefits (only a fifth of whom are too ill or disabled to work), the Government prefers to import workers at the rate of 1,500 a day. This is disastrous. Brown’s ‘let them eat tax credits’ approach to poverty will lead to more social breakdown and “ensure the perpetuation of a hereditary underclass” bereft of the “attitudes, values, knowledge, socialisation and networks” necessary to thrive.
If a “roadmap” is needed, look no further than the reforms pioneered in Wisconsin in 1987. The state began by spending “plenty of money” assessing every welfare dependent. It then replaced the “complicit” state welfare bureaucracy with private providers paid by results. To encourage claimants into work, those who took jobs continued to be paid benefits (then gradually withdrawn). Those who refused work had their benefits stopped. By 2007, welfare rolls had halved.
Cameron committed to Wisconsin-style reform at last month’s Tory conference, but it won‘t be easy, says Fraser Nelson in The Spectator. The project worked there because it “answered a clear public demand”. In Britain, tolerance for welfare spending is greater and the stigma of benefits “smaller.” There are signs the tide is turning. Mass immigration means no one can argue there are too few jobs and there is “mounting” public anger at claimants’ perceived comforts. But make no mistake, Cameron is undertaking his “boldest mission yet” with this one.