A bleak assessment in today’s Times of the extent of the failure of Labour’s flagship New Deal welfare to work programme. Given that it is delivered by the universally respected Frank Field, the man charged by Tony Blair with “thinking the unthinkable” in planning the reform of the benefits system, only to be effectively sacked for doing so, it merits serious attention.
Field’s thesis is that New Deal has not only failed the taxpayer, costing £75 billion since 1997, it has also failed socially: there are now 1.1 million “neets” (those not in education, employment or training) in Britain. The employment position for young people is actually worse than when Labour took power, despite the colossal cost of the programme.
Field graphically describes the practical effects of New Deal in terms of its failure to restore the incentive to work:
There are many young people in my Birkenhead constituency anxious to work. But others have never worked and tell me that, as they are given £100 a week or more (with housing benefit) as a right, they wouldn’t take a job for less than £300. When I suggest to them that no employer will offer them that kind of money because they can barely read or write, they tell me to take it or leave it.
It is terrible that we have abandoned a generation who believe they have got a pension for life.
Terrible indeed, and a state of affairs that is wholly unsustainable in the new economic climate. But New Deal is not equipping those young people who are anxious to work with the necessary skills; training courses are ill-targeted and poorly organised:
Whether it was suitable or not, the only training was for IT work. But there were not enough workstations to go round, making a mockery of the exercise.
Sanctions against bad behaviour or not turning up were conspicuously absent. Certainly there was no incentive for trainers to take a tough line; they risked losing their fees if they sent recalcitrant new dealers back to the Jobcentre. A key change that the Government wants to make is to pay New Deal contractors by results. But with programmes failing in the boom years, it is understandable that providers are squealing at such an idea. With unemployment rising, they want more of the old New Deal that gives them their fees upfront.
Work, and the sense of self-respect it engenders, is fundamental to any healthy society. New Deal has done little to help instil a meaningful work ethic in those reluctant to take up employment or to produce an adaptable workforce equipped to deal with the challenges of the downturn. The country can’t afford that, either economically or socially.
Frank Field is right: New Deal should be torn up.
