Help Purnell

It is one of the oddities of politics that a Labour government can sometimes get away with announcing policies which, had they come from the mouth of a Conservative minister, would have provoked howls of anger.

So it is with welfare reform. Whenever Mrs Thatcher’s government proposed to make benefit claimants actually do something for their handouts rather than languish in bedsits in Hastings and Margate, as was the common practice in the 1980s, the resulting rage and charges of heartlessness smothered serious reform — with dreadful consequences. In pockets of the country unemployment has become hereditary, and the idea of working for a living an entirely alien concept.

The publication of the government’s white paper on welfare reform on Wednesday, then, ought to be an ideal opportunity to tackle once and for all the culture of welfare dependency. Aside from a few objections from Labour’s backbenches the proposals have been welcomed as a concerted attempt to solve a serious problem: so they are.