poverty and welfare reforms

"Poverty plus a pound is simply not an ambitious enough goal.” so said Nick Clegg recently. The welfare system needs to ensure that the ability to exit poverty exists, recipients of benefits can live a healthy life and that work pays. So many of our social ills can be overcome if reform is handled correctly. There are currently five million folks on benefits with a third of these on them for the last decade.

Iain Duncan Smith's Centre for Social Justice, of which Good People is a member of, has thought hard about programmes to elevate people out of poverty. A major new theme is to reward those who work. IDS says he doesn't "think it's fair that tax payers who get up early in the morning and come home late at night should keep shelling out on this broken system”.

Tony Blair wished he could deliver it and James Purnell's welfare reforms were only prototypes of those being introduced now. There is currently a political consensus that welfare needs to be reformed. Notice how quiet the Labour benches are on the issue?