Failed Messiah's flawed utopia

With the Conservatives possibly six months away from election victory their ex-leader, Iain Duncan Smith has just produced a blueprint for extensive welfare reform. Ruth Patrick considers this report’s overarching message as a possible model for policy

Predictably this report sets out to help people off welfare and into work and its central premise is that work is good for individuals, good for society – good for pretty much anything and everything, it seems.

Currently, it is argued, work does not offer ample financial rewards for those moving off benefits and into work as a result of high marginal tax rates and the sudden withdrawal of benefits. To address this, the report suggests introducing a single benefit withdrawal rate of 55 per cent to ensure that those making the leap from benefits to work do experience a real improvement in their income. This costly proposal is married to a process of benefit simplification. Duncan Smith’s report criticises the plethora of some 51 welfare benefits and proposes replacing all these with just two benefits – a universal life credit and a universal work credit.

Unfortunately, the benefit simplification suggested would mean the end of universal entitlement to many benefits. The disabled community would be particularly affected as Disability Living Allowance and similar non-means-tested benefits would become dependent on income levels.

Even more worryingly, the whole tone of the report elevates work as the key to a happy life for individuals and a functioning society for all. Work becomes an almost transformative activity capable of providing meaning to those who have been feckless and lazy whilst squandering their lives on benefits. As the working population grows, Duncan Smith suggests we will see crime rate fall and health improve as happy workers populate the land.

Forgive the cynicism, but what of the type of work that people are doing, and all those for whom work is not an option or a sensible life choice? Working long hours for low pay in a monotonous low-skilled job may not deliver the results Duncan Smith promises. Further, this celebration of work neglects other forms of contribution such as volunteering, care work and parenting. It also runs the risk of stigmatising all those who do not work. On the BBC’s Today, Duncan Smith blithely stated: “the absence of work destroys too many of us.” He ignores the damage that a narrow work-first approach may also reap.

Duncan Smith has remoulded himself from failed Conservative leader to welfare state reformer and potential saviour of a supposedly broken Britain. It is vital that we keep a close eye on him as he may well be a key influence in a future Conservative government. This report suggest that we need to be a critical force challenging much of Duncan Smith’s rhetoric, proposals and implicit assumptions.