Comment: Work Programme failure exposes Thatcherite IDS
By Michael McCann
Hans Christian Anderson's "The Emperor's New Clothes" tells how two weavers promise an emperor a new suit of clothes that is invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent.
The story goes that the emperor's weavers were rumbled when the king parades before his subjects in his new clothes and a child cries out: "But he isn't wearing anything at all!"
The government's Work Programme is today's equivalent of that 1837 fairy tale and Iain Duncan Smith is the new Hans Christian Anderson. IDS promised a new approach to unemployment through the Work Programme and he wasn't slow to tell the whole country how successful it would be.
Ministers described it as a revolution in welfare but just like the emperor's new set of clothes the Work Programme doesn't exist.
And we, the British people, have been treated with contempt by our government. In a bid to hide their nasty side by trying to pretend that they care about those out of work, they fabricated an industrial-sized sophistry on us all. It's a salutary reminder that if something looks too good to be true, it invariably is.
And while Labour questioned how and where the jobs would come from, the government ducked, dived and dodged our requests for information to be released. And now we know why, because the sad, sad truth is that the same number of people who 'found' work under the Work programme would still have found that work even if the Work Programme had not existed.
This government, which had the brass neck to criticise the Labour government's New Deal which saw (just!) 50% of participants into work, have created a scheme which has delivered a result worse than doing nothing. Even Hans Christian Anderson would struggle to make that up!
Over the term of this parliament welfare spending will rise by £20 billion more than anticipated.
That's the pounds, shillings and pence price of failure but the number excludes the massive human price beneath. My ever burgeoning parliamentary email account has been overwhelmed by constituents asking me where the jobs are, young people looking for work – and, yes, people asking me if there is any point in a Work Programme which has no work!
In my East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow constituency 1310 people were referred to the Work Programme and just 30 found work. But this isn't just about the false dawn heralded by Iain Duncan Smith. It's not just about a feigned conversion except this time the road was in Easterhouse in Glasgow, not Damascus. This is about a comprehensive failure of government policy.
Unfortunately, those who will pay the bill for this failure are the two groups in society that the government falsely claims it wants to protect and help – those already unemployed and those working on low wages. The common denominator is that most of them are likely to be young people.
To pay the extra benefits bill the government will hit those in work, by slashing tax credits. These are the people who want to do, using the government's parlance, the right thing. They are the people who recognise that something for something is always the best way. The failure of this policy also condemns people to the dole queue.
Across the UK people are desperate to work and have a job and they have been cruelly deceived into believing that the Work Programme would deliver. This discredited programme has failed everyone and yet it is still being touted as a good thing by ministers.
When Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 general election she stood on the steps of No 10 and quoted from St Francis of Assisi: "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope."
Two years later, two million extra people found themselves unemployed.
Today, Iain Duncan Smith has taken over Thatcher's role as the purveyor of false hope.
Tragically, thanks to him, young people up and down the country who dreamed of a bright future will now be facing discord, error, doubt and despair.
Michael McCann is MP for for East Kilbride, Strathaven & Lesmahagow and PPS to the shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne.
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