Andy Burnham is set to attach new work-related conditions to Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) payments, it has been claimed. Lord Blunkett has said the new Labour Party government Prime Minister has what it takes to wrestle down the ballooning DWP bill.
Pat McFadden Reappointed as DWP Minister
Pat McFadden, whom Mr Burnham has reappointed as his DWP minister and head of the welfare department in his Cabinet reshuffle, says the Milburn Report could recommend attaching new work-related conditions to their payments.
But Tom Pollard, head of policy at the mental health charity Mind, said it can be “counterproductive”. The former DWP advisor urged Mr Burnham and his Cabinet not to believe the myth that cash “traps people” in the system.
Criticism from Mental Health Charity
This myth is “removed from the reality of people’s lives”, Tom added. “The assumption that lowering benefits naturally increases people’s incentive to work, or that you can exchange benefits for support, and therefore people will move back to work, feels a little bit like a calculation on a bit of paper in Whitehall, rather than something that’s really embedded in the reality of people’s lives,” he said.
Tom was speaking to the I paper after Alan Milburn, the leader of the review into why so many young people are economically inactive, said the UK risked opening up a “generational fault line” between young and old.
Milburn Report Highlights Systemic Failures
Milburn described the welfare state as “exacerbating inactivity”, while arguing that new work programmes alone would fail to tackle far deeper-rooted problems. “This is not a failure of young people. It is a failure of a system stuck in the past. Whether it is education or health or welfare, that system fails to enable their participation in the labour market,” he will say.
Instead, all too often it ends up putting young people on a path to a life not in jobs but on benefits. This should be the priority for the government.
Government Response
A DWP spokesperson said: “Tackling youth joblessness is a priority for this Government, and Alan Milburn’s work is central to that mission. We’re already delivering the biggest youth employment reforms in a generation, backed by £2.5bn to create 500,000 opportunities for young people to earn and learn.”
