Getting people employed is vital, but in a recession current welfare-to-work targets are impossible – and compulsion is crazy.
Welfare reform, a centrepiece of tomorrow’s Queen’s speech, is under attack. Devised in a boom, it looks perilous in a bust. A battery of charities for children, the disabled and the poor have joined the unions and centre-left pressure group Compass in formidable opposition. Meanwhile, companies and voluntary organisations bidding for welfare-to-work contracts are also protesting. Targets that were eyewatering in the good times are downright impossible now. Head in the sand, the Department for Work and Pensions denies there’s a problem.
http://www.meassociation.org.uk/content/view/714/70/