Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

A shocking – but not surprising – dependency culture

This time it’s Caroline Flint who has been wheeled out to get tough on welfare claimants. But this sentence in her interview in The Guardian jumped out at me.

“She admitted she was surprised by figures showing that more than half of those of working age living in social housing are without paid work – twice the national average.”

Surprised? She shouldn’t be – this appalling fact lead Chapter Five of the DWP’s misnamed report “Ready for Work”. It was the single most appalling graph in (pdf, p46) Prof John Hills’ report on social housing (which the DWP helped to produce), which shows how much worse the situation has become since 1981. The key to being a happy Labour MP is not to look too closely at the party’s claims at achieving social justice.

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