Following the Spring Statement (Wednesday 26th March), Ed Davies, Policy Director at the Centre for Social Justice said:
The government is in danger in getting caught in a spider’s web of its own making. The knee-jerk panicky measures we are seeing in welfare – to prop up our flatlining economy – just before record tax rises hit – don’t feel like a plan. I feel sorry for Liz Kendall, as her efforts to get people off benefits and back into work are about to become much harder as employers reel from the impending rise in National Insurance.
The chancellor was right to say that repairing the welfare system requires “hard yards” and “long-term decisions” but by tinkering with it in the hunt for short-term cash she is not helping those on benefits or the taxpayers funding them.
Britain is sick, and being sick pays, but there is hope without simply cheeseparing payments to some of the poorest people in society. We have set out 16 steps for government to deliver the short-term cash it needs, some £13 billion by the end of this Parliament, while commencing a programme of welfare reform that will ensure more people are in work and benefitting from work.
The CSJ’s recommendations include:
- Extending conditionality throughout the benefits system, in combination with an “into work guarantee”
- Ban GPs from issuing fit notes for more than 28 days for less severe mental ill-health
- Department of Health and Social Care to use its new direct responsibilities to establish a national definition of mental health
- Separate physical ill-health and mental ill-health Personal Independence Payments (PIP)
- Devolve the £6 billion employment support and adult education budget from Whitehall to the regions.
