A report that should influence welfare reform for years to come

Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice has released a very important report today, and one which should influence the welfare debate for years to come.  At around 350 pages, it’s a weighty enough tome, but I’d recommend that CoffeeHousers give it a flick through.

Its subject is how to fix a benefits system which incentivises worklessness.  At the moment, unemployed people are eligible for so many benefits – there are 51 in total – that they can accumulate an income which rivals, or sometimes even exceeds, the wage they’d get by taking a job.  And even if they could get more money in work, the current benefits system still acts as a disincentive.  With so many claims, conditions and complexities, plenty of unemployed people simply don’t know what they stand to gain or lose from hopping into the labour market.  They approach their benefit portfolios like a house of cards: if you pull one card out, then you could bring everything else collapsing down with it.