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Polly\’s Not Going To Like This

No, really, she isn\’t:

The Tory leader will also propose a "screening" regime to identify fraudulent claimants of invalidity benefit, cutting benefits to people who refuse to make themselves available for work and forcing lone parents to seek employment once their youngest child reaches the age of four.

In a Green Paper on welfare reform, to be launched in Brixton, south London, on Tuesday, he is also expected to say that he has not ruled out controversial plans to place time limits on some benefits.

All of this is similar to the so-called "Wisconsin" reforms. Which themselves are a part of Bill Clinton\’s change of welfare from a hand out to a hand up.

What amuses me greatly is that when, a few weeks back, Polly last railed against this I emailed her to point out that she might want to discuss all of this with Richard Layard, someone I was sure that she both knew (they were both SDP and now Labour, for example) and also respected. She did indeed know him but she refused to believe the other part of what I told her…..that Layard has been proposing such measures at least since the mid-80s (or at least, something very similar).

Now, what would be extremely amusing is if someone can find a copy of the textbook that Layard wrote in the 80s (the one he used to teach us undergrads his ideas) so that we can check off the current propsals against his ideas then. My memory isn\’t what it was, but I\’m sure there were proposals for the time limitation of benefits, for loss of them unless actively seeking work.

Anyone, for example, got access to the LSE library?

1 thought on “Polly\’s Not Going To Like This”

  1. This – page 44 – might be enough to go on with until you obtain a more definitive statement.

    Tim adds: That’s excellent. Enough there for me to make a decent argument. Ta!

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