Vindication for IDS! Claims for out-of-work benefits hit 35-year low
OUT- of- work benefits claims have fallen to their lowest level in 35 years.
Just a tenth of working age people now receive unemployment benefit, income support or disability support.
The drop in claims – back to a rate not seen since 1980 – provides fresh evidence that Iain Duncan Smith’s controversial welfare reforms are working.
If disability benefits are excluded, the figures compiled by independent thinktank the Resolution Foundation show out-of-work welfare handouts are at their lowest level since at least the 1970s.
The report said reliance on the three major benefits peaked in 1993 with 17 per cent of the working age population in receipt of them.
But there has been a downward trend since the mid-1990s with the rate now standing at 10 per cent.
Mr Duncan Smith’s introduction of universal credit and a £500-aweek benefit cap have been heavily criticised by the Left and the poverty lobby which claim families have been impoverished.
But the measures have proved effective in nudging people back to work. Just 2.1 per cent of people are now recorded as claiming unemployment benefits, the lowest figure since records began in 1979. The number of people claiming jobseekers’ allowance has fallen dramatically in recent months to 763,800 – the fewest since 1975.
Employment Minister Priti Patel said: ‘We’ve hit a significant milestone … with employment at an alltime high and more women in work than ever before.
‘Our welfare reforms are transforming the lives of some of the poorest families in our communities and giving people the skills and opportunities to get on in life. It’s about having the dignity of a job, the pride of a regular wage and the peace of mind that comes from supporting your family.’
However, the report attributed much of the UK’s success to generous in-work benefits such as tax credits and warned that these could be cut as part of the £12billion savings sought in the Budget.
The Resolution Foundation’s Paul Gregg, a professor of economic and social policy at the University of Bath, said: ‘The UK has made great strides in improving its employment record in recent decades, particularly among families with children.’
Adam Corlett, from the thinktank, said: ‘Successive governments have managed to reduce out-of-work benefit reliance in the UK – a remarkable feat that has been almost completely overlooked in the ongoing debate about welfare, which sometimes feels like it’s stuck in a time-warp.
He added: ‘Successive reforms appear to have helped many more people into work, but the welfare system now needs to do much more to bear down on in-work poverty and help people progress in work.’
The report examined differences between employment in the UK and the US. It found that the perception that the US jobs market outperforms Britain was ‘wide of the mark’ after 20 years of change.
Latest figures show the UK employment rate is at a record high of 73.5 per cent, with the Government pledging full employment by 2020.
AFTER five years of hysterical claims from the poverty lobby, cheered on by the shroud-waving BBC, that his welfare revolution would i nflict unbearable misery on the poor, Iain Duncan Smith was thoroughly vindicated yesterday.
Official figures showed that Britain’s damaging culture of welfare reliance has been utterly transformed, with just 2.1 per cent of the working-age population now on unemployment benefits – the lowest since records began in 1979.
It’s a truly phenomenal achievement for the Work and Pensions Secretary. Despite a constant stream of invective from the Left, he refused to be deflected from his crusade to make work pay and break the cycle of dependency which produced thousands of families where no one had worked for generations.
Instead of being condemned to a life of spirit- crushing idleness, many of these families know for the first time the dignity and aspiration that come with labour and what it’s like to earn their own money rather than being spoon-fed by the nanny state. The Prime Minister must now ensure IDS has room to finish the job of reform and be allowed to decide for himself where future welfare cuts should fall.