A welfare system that works

Still don't have that much time but this caught my eye from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation blog on yesterday's

'There's no doubt that simplifying and streamlining the benefits system could make things better for people living in poverty. For a start, a simpler system could help make sure people actually get the benefits they are entitled to, particularly if the introduction of Universal Credit was linked to a public information campaign. Full take up of benefits could reduce child poverty by 25% and poverty among childless adults by 15%.

But that won't reduce the welfare bill. To do that, you have to realise the government's ambition of making work pay.

As it stands, the plans for Universal Credit create a mixed picture: work incentives improve for single people and for couples where one partner doesn’t work, but the incentives for couples to have both people in work decline. And incentives to progress in work – key to reducing poverty – are also mixed: they improve for low earners, but decrease for higher earners and low earners in couples where both people work.

Confusing right? The actual impact of the welfare reform programme on the numbers of people moving into work and out of poverty is hard to predict, not least because the incentives structured into our benefits system are only part of the picture.

'Making work pay' doesn't just require a reworking of the benefits system. It requires work to be available, preferably in areas where unemployed people already live. Our work on communities in recession identified 5% of communities that fell in the top 10% of JSA claims between 1993-2008, through times of recession and growth. David Cameron today said today that the welfare system should 'drive growth', but in many parts of the UK we need growth to give people on benefits a job to go to.

And in order for work to lift people out of poverty, as opposed to just taking them off benefits, you need jobs that are secure and reasonably paid, or at the very least jobs with a real prospect of pay progression. The Work Programme will help with some of this: providing more targeted support as well as incentivising providers to get people into jobs they can keep. But it doesn’t address the need for people to progress and earn more over time, or the need to help people get ‘mini jobs’: the jobs that parents, carers or people with health problems can actually do. Meanwhile, we still have a huge gap in the provision of affordable, good quality childcare, despite a 50% growth in full time daycare places between 2003-2009.'

Also worth reading is Nick Clegg's pathetic attempt to win more votes for the Lib Dems in May's elections.Any source