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.

DUNCAN SMITH VOWS TO SUPPORT FAMILIES

“Children from broken homes are nine times more likely to become young offenders than those brought up in stable families, a senior Government minister has warned”,. Work and Pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith blamed the previous Labour government for undermining and not reinforcing the importance of families. This has resulted in higher crime rates, deeper poverty and poorer life chances for children, within this article he also goes as far as to suggest that the abandoning of policies that support marriage has cost the country up to £100 billion. Within his speech at the annual conference of relationship counselling he states that evidence showed that lone parent families are more likely to live in poverty than two parent families. During his speech he states that supporting families was high on the coalitions agenda and that stable families were crucial to children's life chances and the social fabric of the nation”. As well as this he emphasises the importance of marriage in building a strong society, particularly if children are to be given the best chance in life and again criticises the last government, "Sadly the last Government seemed determined to undermine marriage” . The Globalisation: Centre for Social Justice estimates that family breakdowns costs the economy between £20bn and £24bn, while the Relationships Foundation claims it is closer to £40bn, however Mr Duncan Smith said it could be as high as £100 billion in his opinion. The costs to society as a whole through social breakdown, addiction, crime, lost productivity and tax revenues are very difficult to quantify - but research suggests they could be up to £100 billion. Smith attempts to show how family life affects all of us from what happens on our streets, in our communities and in our economy. What you learn early on has a great deal to say about the person you will eventually become later in life. "We would be foolish to ignore the weight of evidence that shows just how influential family can be to life outcomes. He told his representatives at the conference in Daventry, Northamptonshire, that Britain has among the highest divorce and teenage pregnancy rates in Europe, but claimed “throwing money at the problem will not solve it.

Analysis: 'Sinful' slip that reveals the faith underpinning all IDS does

"That’s a sin" was stated by Iain Duncan Smith, however what is actually meant by this statement is not quite clear as he talks about the fact that one in five households in the UK have been without work during a time of economic boom and that around 70 percent of the jobs that have been created have gone to foreigners because of the 4.5million that are unemployed are not able or incapable of taking those that are available. He does not clearly state that is it the fact that foreigners are taking the jobs or is it the 4.5 million or the benefit recipients themselves, which one he intended wasn’t very clear. This could have two possible meanings, the first of which using the word "sin" in the context of this issue is "fanning the flames", within the last week there has been many references to people that are shy to work and people that are "scroungers" and follows the remark of George Osbourne about the lifestyle choices of people. To say that it is a sin fits perfectly into “this narrative of blame and judgment, and for many critics of the coalition government, Duncan Smith will not be given the benefit of the doubt for his choice of words. It will help reverse Cameron's work in detoxifying the Tory brand, reviving the stereotype of the nasty party, now with an added sinister religious edge. It was a very unnecessary own goal". However the second point is that in the longer term, Iain Duncan Smith is a Catholic and many of his associates are advisors are also Christians, including Philippa Stroud, his fellow founder of The Centre for Social Justice. Duncan Smith suggests that those organizations that do most of the beneficial work are arguably religious organizations.

However when it comes to his policies he has attempted to keep his faith private and taken precaution and care to explain his policies and within his interview on the Today programme conveyed this as he almost managed to keep his religious faith out of it – "which cannot be easy for him, because he has expanded at length in an interview with religious media on his beliefs that many of the problems of poverty have a spiritual base. Instead, he used terms such as "rational choice" to apply to benefit recipients living on welfare and the "contract" that the state has with them". However towards the end of the interview the reporter states how But the reporter describes how just when the interview was about to end, it slipped out - the theological framework that underpins everything Duncan Smith does as a politician.