Globalisation:Centre for Social Justice: Activities

In the News

Welfare Reforms

“My welfare reforms are Beveridge for today, with a hint of Tebbit”, this is how Iain Duncan Smith described his welfare reform acts in an interview with Andrew Porter and Mary Riddell of The Daily Telegraph. Duncan Smith declares that he has finally got there, he has finally come up with an answer in order to sort the current welfare system that has spawned out of control. Within the article the authors suggest that he is “basically ripping up the benefits system and starting again” and believe that it will have little lasting effect within society. However Smith does not see it this way he hopes that people will recognise the changes as simply being a cultural shift. Smith suggests that these changes that are to be introduced are the biggest changes since the Bevridge Report and the introduction of the welfare state. As it was through this report that there was the identification of the five giants, these being want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness, the reporters make the suggestion that it is in actual fact idleness that most privately concerns him. Duncan Smith and the coalition party have decided to replace the benefit system with one, the universal credit and that there will be a shift away from the generosity of the Labour party to a government that comes down hard on those who refuse to work.