‘Drug addiction, alcoholism, criminal records, language difficulties, a lack of skills, depression…’ Anyone working alongside Britain’s long-term unemployed can recite a grim litany of social ills.
‘Drug addiction, alcoholism, criminal records, language difficulties, a lack of skills, depression…’ Anyone working alongside Britain’s long-term unemployed can recite a grim litany of social ills. But when I speak to a welfare adviser in Tower Hamlets – one of London’s poorest boroughs – he emphasises a single factor, above all others, to explain the area’s endemic worklessness: ‘the benefits trap’ – the idea that you can be better off on benefits than in work.
Most of the claimants he encounters have fallen headlong into this trap, thanks to years spent receiving dozens of different benefits, and months spent aimlessly in job centres. The result is that long-term recipients of benefits have no motivation to apply for jobs.
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