Make welfare work for family security and decent jobs

27.05.10

The Child Poverty Action Group has highlighted the top priorities for welfare reform ahead of a speech by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the Government’s welfare reform agenda.

The group has said the current system is underperforming in helping to move people into decent work and is failing to help end child poverty. It has highlighted the following priorities for the Secretary of State, Iain Duncan Smith:

• Work must make people better off. The current system does not guarantee people are better off and helps add to growing in-work poverty – 59 per cent of children in poverty have a parent in work. We need to tackle low pay and benefit withdrawal rates, which will help end child poverty.
• Benefit adequacy must be part of welfare reform agenda. Being out of work must not mean being in poverty. Shutting people out of the mainstream of society through economic exclusion is bad for the health and wellbeing of parents and their children and reduces their opportunities to enter work.
• Claimants must have an entitlement to high quality support into work. Millions out of work want work, but they are not entitled to high quality support and must make do with being shunted through often inappropriate activity. This stifles motivation and ambition as well as spending public money poorly.
• A Big Society approach rather than Big Brother approach. David Cameron says the Big Society works bottom-up, getting rid of bureaucracy that stops people taking control of their lives. But recent welfare reforms took more of a Big Brother approach, tightening the grip of top-down bureaucracy and sanctions instead of empowering claimants from the bottom up. Voluntary sector providers getting excellent results moving people into work need more investment, but their successes cannot continue if reforms lock them inside the sanctions bureaucracy.

Head of Policy, Rights and Advocacy, Imran Hussain, said:

“A modern welfare system must guarantee family security, help end child poverty and move people into work that leaves them better off instead of adding to the numbers facing in-work poverty. The Government has a chance to turn away from recent failures and start working with people’s ambitions and motivation. We need a genuine safety net with a bounce in it, instead of trapping people in bureaucracy, sanctions and barriers to taking control of their lives.”

Notes for editors

• Child Poverty Action Group’s manifesto, published in March 2009, can be found at: www.cpag.org.uk/manifesto
• For up-to-date background facts and stats on UK poverty, visit: www.cpag.org.uk/povertyfacts/
• CPAG is the leading charity campaigning for the abolition of child poverty in the UK and for a better deal for low-income families and children.
• CPAG is one of over 150 member organisations of the Campaign to End Child Poverty, campaigning for public and political commitment to ensure the goals of halving child poverty by 2010 and ending child poverty by 2020 are met.

For further information please contact:
Tim Nichols
CPAG Press Officer
Tel. 020 7812 5216 or 07816 909302 
tnichols@cpag.org.uk