James Purnell has again repaid my faith in him. What he is proposing is a much needed expansion in the part-privatisation of the benefits industry. As I say in tomorrow’s magazine, the task is not so much welfare reform as regime change. The DWP boasts that it spends more money than the economic output of Portugal. With 5.1m on benefits, it also has more people than the entire poulation of Ireland, Norway or Lithuania. Yet Purnell, following the tried-and-tested procedures in Australia and America, will invite bids from the private sector for welfare-to-work contracts, by which the private companies would be paid by results.
Remember, a huge chunk of those on benefits are using it to supplement income made in Britain’s booming black market. If these new providers are simply less gullible than the government, i.e. if they demand to see the supposedly workless at times of the day that could not fit with black market work, then welfare rolls will drop dramatically.
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