Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, has announced that it’s high time that those who have become addicted to Welfare Benefits kick their habits.
In a prelude to the new Welfare Reform Bill that is set to be launched later today, he went on to explain the rationale that it was no longer acceptable for ‘millions’ of indigenous British people to spend a lifetime on benefits while foreign workers filled the job vacancies.
The Welfare Reform Bill has been hailed as the biggest reform in the system for 60 years and its function is to make it more difficult for the estimated 300,000 people a year to drift away from work and onto benefits – the ‘sickness culture’ as David Cameron has called it.
Another function is to remove the multitude of benefits and credits which those in the know mercilessly exploit which, at the same time, has the effect of discouraging others who are busy out there conscientiously looking for work.
David Cameron says that the notion of the Public feeling ‘shame’ at claiming benefits that they weren’t morally entitled to has gone, and there was a real need to eradicate any possibility that someone could be financially better off by sitting at home instead of working. The loophole which encourages couples to pretend that they are living apart will also be closed under the new measures.
Since people will always be better off by working there can, the government argues, be no justification for wilfully remaining unemployed. Therefore those who decline job offers may find that their benefits are cancelled for a period of up to 3 years. Not only that, fraudulent claim-makers will receive stiffer fines and prison sentences.
There is no doubt that Western Europe is facing a severe problem with immigrant workers from former Eastern Bloc countries rolling up their sleeves to take on what, to them, are highly-paid jobs.
Duncan Smith told BBC Breakfast: “What will happen is British people will genuinely be able to get British jobs because they will be incentivised to take those jobs, we will expect them to take those jobs but work will pay better than benefits.”
He went on to promise that a million of the lower-paid British workers will be £25 a week better off when they get back in work.
Although undoubtedly long overdue, the new Bill is announced in the same week as the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development stated that job losses are set to increase and The Office for National Statistics declared a record number of unemployed – particularly among young workers who have known nothing other than a life on benefits.
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