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Labour and Tory plans to make the jobless work for their benefits reveal a great deal about the differences between the parties
WHICHEVER party wins the election on May 1st, many unemployed people will have to come to terms with "workfare". An idea imported from America, workfare forces anyone unemployed for a specific length of time to accept a job subsidised by the state, or lose benefits. In a remarkable break with Britain's post-1945 welfare policy, both Labour and the Conservatives plan to introduce workfare, although there are revealing differences between the schemes of the two parties.
Persistent long-term unemployment is the main blot on the Tories' labour-market record. In the early 198os, it emerged that over im people had been jobless for a year or more. When total unemployment fell sharply later in the decade, long-term unemployment declined more slowly. The same has happened in the 1990s (see chart on next page). People without work for over a year are much less likely to find another job than the short-term unemployed. There are many reasons for this. Employers generally regard the long-term jobless as more of a risk. The jobless themselves become demotivated. Once hooked on benefits, it is hard for the long-term jobless to get off them because they rarely find work which pays enough to offset the loss of benefits.
The problem of welfare scroungers is a favourite Tory theme. But Tory welfare policy has not, until recently, taken seriously the possibility that...