Benefits

A fortnight ago, The Spectator asked if Cameron was fit to fight? We wondered if he had the gumption to use the political moment created by the riots to push through the radical reforms the country needs.  So, it’s only fair to note that the government has today actually done something—as opposed to just talking about—the excesses of the human rights culture. The Department for Education has stopped the implementation of new regulations that would require teachers to log every incident in which they ‘use force’ with children. These new rules would have made teachers record every time they had pulled apart two kids in a corridor or intervened to break-up an over-enthusiastic game of football.

On Monday, we published a post on George Osborne's "jobless recovery" — the point being that 90 per cent of the recent rise in employment can be accounted for by foreign nationals. Here's a counterpunch to it from the IPPR's Matt Cavanagh, who should already be familiar to CoffeeHousers from his previous posts and articles for us on matters military. We're hoping that this will be the first of a new series of "Right to reply" posts, giving outside writers the opportunity to take on your loyal baristas in mortal combat. Here goes: One of the most frequently recycled statistics of recent years is the percentage of "new jobs going to foreigners". The first thing to say is that this is a bad way to phrase it.

Tony Blair has dropped in to write an article on the social context to the recent riots. It’s insightful, especially as a testament of his failings in government. At the close of his premiership, he says, he’d realised that the acute social problems in Britain’s inner cities were “specific” and could not be solved with “conventional policy”. So much for ‘education, education, education’, Blair’s favoured solution was a mixture of early intervention on a family by family basis to militate against the “profoundly dysfunctional” upbringings these young people endure and a draconian response to antisocial behaviour. Alas, he was forced from office for before implementing the plan.

This afternoon’s parliamentary debate touched on the sociological issues that may have inspired the recent looting. Naturally, there are plenty of competing views on the subject, but I bring your attention to Harriet Sergeant’s, which she has expressed in the latest issue of the Spectator. Sergeant has conducted extensive investigations into the teenage gangs in London, acquainting herself with gang members and their way of life. Her observations are intriguing, albeit terrifying. An extended version of her magazine article is available online and I urge you to read it. But here is a short extract: ‘The young men I interviewed had very obviously failed to make the transition to manhood and a successful adult life.

As Paul Waugh notes, James Purnell's article for the Times today (£) is striking for its attack on universal benefits. "I have never bought the argument," writes the former welfare secretary, "that universal benefits bind the middle classes in. It feels too much like taxing with one hand to give back with another." Although this is, in truth, a point that he has been making for some time. He said something similar in a speech back in April. The question, really, is how much Purnell's viewpoint will percolate down through Labour circles.

There is no rest for IDS. Yesterday he was in Madrid talking about youth unemployment and immigration and today he turns his attention to child poverty. Of all life's accidents, the accident of birth is the most decisive. It is said that a child’s prospects are determined by the age of five, and numerous other statistics and factoids lead to a similar conclusion. IDS rehearses some in a piece in today’s Guardian. IDS and Labour MP Graham Allen have conducted a report into these matters, and have concluded that early intervention in a child from a deprived or broken family is vital if the poverty gap is to be closed, and for opportunity and prosperity to be extended.

Forget Balls, today brings one of the most significant moments in the life of the coalition so far: the launch of its Work Programme. The name may be commonplace but, as Fraser suggested earlier, the policy is revolutionary. Over the next year, around one million unemployed people will be enrolled on work schemes run by private companies and charities. Those companies will then be paid between £4,000 and £13,700 for every person they return to proper, long-term work. It is, evidence suggests, an effective and cost-effective way of getting benefit claimants back into the labour market — and it reaches those claimants that the state-run JobCentres can scarcely be bothered to reach.

There’s been much debate on these pages about the political implications of higher inflation. Ironically, this morning’s news of record food prices could relieve the pressure on the Bank of England Governor. His argument for caution when it comes to a rate rise is based on the claim that UK inflation is now being driven by events beyond the MPC’s control. Today’s figures reinforce that case, showing that global commodity prices remain a key driver of the rising cost of living in Britain’s households. The same argument doesn’t really work for the Chancellor, whose remit isn’t just to keep headline inflation down, but also to help households cope with the kind of inflation we’re now seeing – whatever its cause.

He may no longer be an MP, but the spirit of James Purnell lingers on. It was, after all, the former Work and Pensions Secretary who introduced the Employment Support Allowance as a replacement for Incapacity Benefit in 2008, with the idea of encouraging people – the right people – away from sickness benefits and into the labour market. And now we have one of the strongest indications yet of just how that process is working. According to figures released by the DWP today, 887,300 of the 1,175,700 claimants who applied for ESA between October 2008 and August 2010 failed to qualify for any assistance – with 458,500 of them declared fit for work straight away, and 428,800 not completing their medical assessment. That's 75 per cent overall.

Here's a question for you: should free school meals (FSM) be given to all pupils, regardless of their parents' income? I ask because this is precisely what the Labour-led council of Southwark is proposing for its primary schools. As the Evening Standard reports, the councilmen’s thinking is that by giving "healthy" FSMs to every pupil, every day, they might help "reduce childhood obesity." Oh, and the measure will cost some £4 million a year. Even if we put aside the question of whether the local praetorians should — or even could — tackle obesity on behalf of middle-class parents, this is still needling stuff.

To disguise the radical nature of reform, one need only make it boring. And here Chris Grayling has succeeded spectacularly. Today he has announced further details on the ‘Work Programme’ and the ‘Benefit Migration’, which sound like the type of well-intentioned but doomed reforms that ministers tried over the Labour years. The welfare state has incubated the very ‘giant evils’ it was designed to eradicate. There are, scandalously, 2.6 million on incapacity benefit right now – a category which ensures they don’t count in unemployment figures. Brown didn’t care much, but Grayling is taking this head-on.