The Giant Idleness

Universal Credit, ubiquitous conditionality and its implications for social

citizenship (Dwyer & Wright, 2014)

A means-tested benefit is a payment available to people who can demonstrate

that their income and capital are below specified limits. It is a central part of the
welfare state in the United Kingdom.

Between 2013 and 2017 Universal Credit replaces six means-tested working age
benefits. Universal Credit represents a major expansion and intensification of
personalised behavioural conditionality and indicates the ubiquity of
conditionality at the heart of twenty-first century UK social citizenship.

Introduction

Universal Credit is the flagship policy of the UK Coalition government’s welfare

reform package, billed as the most radical social security reform for 60 years. It
replaces six existing payments for working age people (Income Support, Income-
Based Jobseeker’s Allowance, Income-Related Employment Support Allowance,
Housing Benefit, Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit) with the linked aims
of simplifying the system of working age benefits; making work pay; increasing
take-up and reducing fraud and error. This article examines the changes to
welfare conditionality incorporated within Universal Credit and considers the
extent to which these challenge the rights based citizenship assumptions
established in the post-war social security system. First, we overview the new
principles of conditionality embedded in Universal Credit. Second, we relate
these developments to the existing context of British welfare provision and the
recent trend towards increased behavioural conditionality. Third, we examine
the practices of Universal Credit conditionality in detail. Finally, we conclude
that Universal Credit heralds a major extension and intensification of
conditionality that has significant implications for the rights and responsibilities
of poorer citizens.

Conditional welfare arrangements require people to behave in a certain way to

access welfare goods, such as cash benefits, housing or support services. These
behavioural conditions tend to be enforced through penalties or ‘sanctions’ that
reduce, suspend or end access to these goods.

Conditionality within Universal Credit

Universal Credit merges a number of means tested in work and out of work
benefits. Introduced as a central feature of the Welfare Reform Act, the UK
government believes Universal Credit will provide incentives to encourage more
people to enter the paid labour market, while simultaneously offering fairness to
the tax payer. It is claimed that it will simplify the benefits system by replacing
six social security benefits with a single means-tested payment for those looking
for work or already in paid employment on low wages. However, certain existing
payments for adults will remain including, contribution-based Jobseeker’s
Allowance, contributory Employment and Support Allowance, Attendance
Allowance and Carer’s Allowance.

Intensified, personalised and extended conditionality is central to how Universal

Credit will operate and indeed underpins the government’s wider welfare reform
agenda.

All Universal Credit claimants (in or out of work, disabled or non-disabled, with
or without sole/significant caring responsibilities) and their partners are
required to complete a “Claimant Commitment”. The Claimant Commitment is an
individual action plan broadly similar to a Jobseeker’s Agreement, which will
increase the work-related pressure and job seeking expectations for most
claimants. Claimants are required to set out the specific details of the work-
related actions they will take and the Claimant Commitment also includes details
of the sanctions that will be applied for non-compliance. It is expected that most
claimants will be subject to some sort of work related requirement, such as work
preparation and work focused interviews. Job search requirements are reviewed
in a range of ways, including face-to-face ‘signing on’ at Jobcentre Plus offices for
unemployed people as well as online and adviser interviews by phone. Universal
Credit claimants can also be mandated to attend the Work Programme. Before
examining the details of conditionality in practice, the next section contextualises
Universal Credit conditionality within the existing British welfare system and the
recent policy making trend to increase behavioural conditionality.

Box 1. Conditionality under universal credit

a) Full conditionality- This will be the default option for recipients

including lone parents and couples with older children. Recipients in this
group will be subject to the same requirements to actively seek work and
to be available for work as they would under Jobseeker’s Allowance. This
is the full conditionality group, if you are in this group you will be
required to look for and be available for work. You will usually be
expected to look for full-time work of 35 hours a week but this can be less
in certain circumstances, for example if you have caring responsibilities
or have physical or mental health problems.
b) Work preparation- Recipients will be in this group if they are disabled
or have a health condition which means they have limited capability for
work at the current time. They will be expected to take reasonable steps
to prepare for work. You will be placed in this group if you are assessed as
having limited capability for work. If you are placed in this group, you will
be expected to prepare for a move into work, additional work, or better
paid work. Actions to get ready for work could include attending training
courses, preparing a CV or taking part in the Work Programme.
c) Keeping in touch with the labour market- Recipients will be in this
group if they are a lone parent or lead carer in a couple with a child over
one but below age five. They will be expected to attend periodic
interviews to discuss their plans for returning to the labour market. You
will be placed in this group if you are responsible for a child aged one or
you are a foster carer for a child under 16, or 18 if the child has extra care
 needs. If you are in this group you will be required to stay in touch with
the Labour market by attending work-focused interviews. These are
regular interviews to discuss plans and opportunities for returning to
work in the future. You will not be required to apply for, or take up a job,
or engage in work preparation activity.
d) No conditionality- Recipients will be in this group if they are: disabled or
have a serious health condition which prevents them working and
preparing for work; a lone parent or lead carer in a couple with a child
younger than one; have intensive and regular caring responsibilities.
People receiving Universal Credit but earning above the relevant
threshold would also not be subject to conditionality.

The default option is what you are given if you don’t make a choice. Universal
Credit is a means-tested benefit for people of working-age who are on a low
income. It is intended to be simpler than the current system of benefits and tax
credits. It is being introduced gradually. Whether you can claim depends on
where you live and your personal circumstances. Everyone who receives
Universal Credit will be placed in a conditionality group based on their
circumstances and work capability. The group you are in will determine what is
expected of you during your claim.

Increased behavioural conditionality

Universal Credit broadly follows a deeply embedded tradition in British social

security provision, which to some extent has always been designed with
personal responsibility and behaviour in mind. The post-war social security
system was based on the principle that productive citizens would contribute to a
universal safety net, which offered comprehensive rights to financial
entitlements in times of need. However, a new form of “instrumental
behaviourism” emerged in the late 1990s, when the New Labour governments
(1997-2010) advanced welfare conditionality as a core element of their reform
agenda, based on “the principle that aspects of state support, usually financial or
practical, are dependent on citizens meeting certain conditions which are
invariably behavioural”. Today, across the UK’s mainstream political parties
there is a general unproblematic acceptance of personalised, behavioural
conditionality as a key element in a “new politics of the welfare…intent on
converting the welfare benefits system into a lever for changing behaviour”
(Rodger, 2008, 87).

Extending and intensifying personalised conditionality in practice

Universal Credit represents an extension of conditionality to new groups,

including those in work and partners of claimants, and an intensification of
work-related conditionality, including for ill or disabled people and lone parents.
This section examines these new conditionality practices in greater depth.
Extending conditionality to those in work

Universal Credit introduces, for the first time, a bolstered system of ‘personalised
conditionality-directed mandatory activity to prepare for and obtain work and
tough sanctions for non-compliance-including for claimants already in work.

Underpinning Universal Credit is a desire by the government to ensure that any

type of paid work is more financially rewarding than reliance on benefits.

One of the crucial changes that Universal Credit brings is to open up low-paid
insecure and part-time workers and their partners to behavioural conditionality
and associated sanctions/fines. This was originally designed to deter so-called
“free loaders” from claiming unemployment benefits when they were not looking
for work. Universal Credit now enables this sanction based approach to be
applied to in work claimants for the first time. However, the harsh penalties
introduced seem potentially counter-productive as a principle for delivering in-
work benefits for those who are already fulfilling their work related citizenship
obligations. This conditionality flaw may undermine the logic of Universal Credit
in practice because it re-categorises the previously respectable ‘deserving’ status
of low paid workers as ‘undeserving’. As such it serves to abolish the distinction
between being ‘in’ and ‘out’ of work-and also, in theory at least, to extend
conditionality-and its associated stigma-to everyone within its range. Under the
new system, those who have succeeded in finding a job will not be rewarded
with the legitimacy of a respectably-named tax credit to top-up low wages or a
life free from behavioural intervention. Instead, low paid workers in receipt of
Universal Credit who do not meet the ‘conditionality threshold’ will become
subject to conditionality.

It is estimated that the extension of conditionality to in work recipients of

Universal Credit will see an additional 1.2 million people brought under the
benefit sanctions regime. As noted above, the government’s intention is to make
any form of paid work more advantageous than non-employment.

Those in low paid work and in receipt of Universal Credit will have to ensure that
their weekly gross earnings exceed a ‘conditionality threshold’. This is to be set
at a level equivalent to 35 hours work per week paid at national minimum wage
rates. In work claimants who earn below this amount will be expected to agree to
meet the threshold by a combination of working more hours or increasing their
pay rate in their current job, finding another second job to supplement their
income from the first, or getting a new job with better wages to take them over
the threshold; otherwise they are potentially subject to tough work related
sanctions.

Sanctions and fines

Conditionality within Universal Credit is backed by an extensive tiered system of

very harsh benefit sanctions and a new range of civil penalty fines. Failure to
comply with the work related requirements of a Claimant Commitment can lead
to benefit payments being reduced or stopped for very lengthy periods of time.
There are four levels of sanction (lowest, low, medium and high) escalating
according to the severity of the ‘offence’. The lowest level of sanction, which may
be used, for example, for failure to attend a work focused interview, applies only
until the claimant complies. A medium level sanction can be applied, for example,
when someone is deemed not to have taken all reasonable action to get work. In
this case a first failure will result in a 28-day sanction, increasing to 91 days for
second and third failures. The highest level of sanction is applied in situations
such as failure to apply for a job and begins at 91 days for a first failure,
increasing to 182 days for a second failure and 1095 days-three years-for a third
failure. While claimants can offer ‘good cause’ as a defence, wider factors, such as
the availability of suitable jobs in local labour markets, are not taken into
account. In addition to sanctions, claimants can be fined a further £50 for
negligently making an incorrect statement, or offered a penalty of £350 as an
alternative to prosecution if benefit fraud is being pursed. The increased use of
sanctions as part of the government’s tougher benefits regime introduced in
October 2012 is clearly having a significant impact. The most recent figures
indicate that in the period October 2012 to June 2013 sanctions have been
applied to Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants 580,000 times. Additionally, in the
period December 2012-June 2013 sanctions have been used over 11,000 times
for Employment and Support Allowance claimants.

The claims process

The variety of conditionality and the severe sanctions for non-compliance and
fines for errors/fraud place a great deal of pressure on the initial processes of
setting up a claim, constructing the Claimant Commitment and assessing the
appropriate level of work related requirements. There are concerns that the
‘digital by default’ claims process may position many applicants at a
disadvantage in negotiating a process that holds very significant personal
consequences. While Universal Credit is designed to increase take-up, the online
claims process is likely to make it more difficult for a range of citizens to claim
their entitlements. For example, widespread literacy difficulties, learning
disabilities such as dyslexia, and language issues, combined with patchy online
access, present very real challenges for citizens seeking to access their
entitlements.

Conclusion

The type and scale of the conditionality changes within Universal Credit
represent a fundamental change to the principles on which the British welfare
state was founded. While social security has always been conditional on the
social contractual obligations of individual citizens, including paid employment,
Universal Credit represents a new, more constrained and qualitatively different
deal for citizens than that envisaged by the architects of the post-war welfare
state. Universal Credit encompasses new forms of conditionality that seek to
limit the entitlements of social citizenship by increasing work related
requirements for accessing collective social security benefits. The current UK
Coalition government has been clear that extending and intensifying principles
and mechanisms of conditionality are to be central elements of its ongoing
welfare reforms. In spite of the Coalition government hailing (praise something
enthusiastically) Universal Credit as an integral part of their ‘radical new
approach to welfare’, Dean (2012) notes it is, in fact, the latest in a long line of
measures that combine elements of both sanction and support to incentivise
paid work while simultaneously discouraging ‘benefit dependency’.

Conditionality has long been seen by some as an appropriate tool for tackling a
form of narrowly defined so-called ‘welfare dependency’ linked to non-
employment and reliance on out of work benefits. Its intensification and
extension within Universal Credit in order to help ‘people along a journey
toward financial independence from the state’ sees this definition of welfare
‘dependency’ expanded to now include employed low paid workers (and their
partners) who are in receipt of in work benefits and credits.

Universal Credit sees comprehensive conditionality become a founding principle

of state financial support for people of working age in twenty-first century
Britain. Building on the ‘creeping conditionality’ of welfare reforms in the 1990s
and 2000s, a new ubiquitous conditionality has been established. The scope and
significance of this new system of standardised welfare conditionality is
unprecedented in offloading the welfare responsibilities of the state and
employers onto citizens who are in receipt of in work and out of work social
security benefits. Unemployed and low paid citizens are now held to be solely
responsible, not only for a lack of paid employment, but also partial engagement
with the paid labour market and the levels of remuneration they may receive. In
a new welfare settlement for millions of British citizens, claimants and their
partners are required to abide by the personalised, work-related requirements
of new Claimant Commitments with mandatory support services. Universal
Credit extends the threat of severe benefit sanctions beyond job search and
training activities to include the terms and conditions of employment among low
paid citizens. The new requirements and stringent sanctions of Universal Credit
may not be experienced positively by recipients.

Chapter 56. Experiences of Out-of Work Benefit Receipt (Blackwell, 2016)

Overview

Unemployment policy relies on welfare conditionality (attaching behavioural

conditions to benefits receipt) in efforts to ‘activate’ individuals from ‘welfare’
into ‘work’.
The UK Conservative government (elected in 2015) has continued to extend and
intensify conditionality, with inevitable consequences for those directly affected.
More research is needed into how conditionality is experienced, but there is
evidence that it can cause serious hardship.

Unemployment and State Intervention

Social policy is centrally concerned with questions of employment and

unemployment, with who is and who is not engaged in the paid labour market
and on what basis. Unemployment matters because of the harm it can do to
individuals, as well as its wider economic and societal costs. Being unemployed
can have detrimental consequences for an individual’s self-esteem, self-
confidence, physical and mental health, and future employability. High rates of
unemployment are problematic for the economy, and also adversely affect a
government’s tax revenues and levels of benefit expenditure. As a result, much
policy energy is focused upon welfare to work, measures to support, encourage
and even compel those on out-of work benefits to make the transition into paid
employment.

Unemployment is best understood as a descriptor of those working-age adults

who want to be in paid employment, but do not currently have a job. The main
social security benefit for those experiencing unemployment is Jobseeker’s
Allowance, the eligibility conditions of which demand that individuals are
available for and actively seeking work. It should be noted that the JSA
population is not a homogenous and includes a growing number of lone parents
and disabled people. In the UK, there are two main measures of unemployment.
The claimant count measures the total number of people claiming JSA at any one
time, and in the future will also include unemployed people claiming Universal
Credit, a new benefit that will eventually replace JSA. In recent years, this figure
has been much lower than the Independent Labour Organisations’
unemployment rate, which is based on survey evidence to estimate total
numbers of people looking for and available for work. The disparity between the
two figures is because not everyone who is unemployed is eligible for or chooses
to claim out-of-work benefits.

This chapter focuses on the key social policy measures targeted at unemployed
people in the UK, and critically considers how these measures are experienced
by those directly affected. In this analysis, discussion is focused on the
experiences of JSA claimants, although it is recognised that many of the policy
reforms discussed, such as the extension of welfare conditionality, also impact on
the wider ‘economically inactive’ population.
Welfare conditionality refers to attaching work-related behavioural conditions
to benefit receipt, for example, requiring people to spend 35 hours per week
looking for work in order to be eligible to claim Universal Credit.

The Policy Approach

In recent years, policy attention has shifted away from concentrating efforts to
encourage benefit recipients to find work on unemployed people alone to a much
broader focus on the wider economically inactive population, on all those on out-
of-work benefits. Today, many disabled people and lone parents are expected to
take steps to seek work as a condition of continued benefit receipt, even where
they are awarded disability benefits or Income Support. At the same time,
eligibility for benefits has changed, meaning more and more lone parents and
disabled people have been moved onto JSA, where they must comply with work-
related conditions that encompass work search and various forms of work-
related activity, such as skills and employability training and mandatory work
experience. This shift in policy is best understood as a shift from a relatively
narrow concern with ‘unemployment’ to a broader focus on ‘worklessness’.
Throughout, political and media emphasis is placed on the supposed ‘problem’ of
‘welfare dependency’, with ‘work’ being posited solution. In this analysis, paid
employment is seen as transformative, with the scope to deliver rewards that
extend beyond financial remuneration to improvements in health, well-being
and family life. Further, paid employment is conceptualised as the primary duty
of the responsible citizen, and governments characterise their welfare-to-work
efforts as ensuring that this duty is being fulfilled.

Both the Conservative government and their predecessors across the political
spectrum argue that the role of intervention is to help people to help themselves,
giving those out of work a “hand up, not a hand out”. “The work is the best form
of welfare” statement dominates, and is used to justify a reliance on both
incentives and sanctions (such as removing essential benefit income for a month
if an appointment is missed) to promote ‘working behaviours’. At the same time,
there is also a sustained emphasis on ‘making work pay’ to ensure that those in
paid employment are financially better off than those on out-of-work benefits.

Importantly, there are two ways to make work pay. First, it is possible to
increase the rewards attached to paid employment, an approach that was
favoured by Labour. In this respect, Labour introduced some of the most socially
progressive measures of their time in office, such as the National Minimum Wage
in 1999 and relatively generous forms of in-work support via tax credits.
Second, it is possible to make work pay by reducing out-of-work benefits,
therefore widening the gap between the income received by those in and out of
work. This has been the approach favoured by the UK Coalition government,
which ahs legislated for a significant range of cuts and reductions in eligibility to
out-of-work benefits.

In seeking to remedy the ‘problem’ of ‘welfare dependency’, the favoured policy

tool remains welfare conditionality in the UK. While welfare conditionality has
long been a feature of the policy landscape, the past 35 years have seen it
increasingly employed, with sustained efforts to both extend and intensify its
application. First, it has been extended to include many disabled people and
single parents. Second, there has been a notable intensification of conditionality,
both in terms of possible sanctions for non-compliance with the regime, and the
range and nature of job search and related demands being made of claimants.
Today, jobseekers are expected to sign a personalised ‘claimant commitment’ on
starting their claim, setting out these demands in a contract. The conditions
attached to out-of work benefits include demands to engage in
 job search activities;
 welfare-to-work schemes, for example, the Work Programme;
 mandatory unpaid work placements, sometimes described as ‘Workfare”

Following reforms since 2010, unemployed claimants must now seek work
within 90 minutes travelling time of their home, and are expected to treat
looking for work as a full-time job. Failure to comply with these demands include
a range of possible sanctions, escalating for repeat ‘offences’ and of different
lengths according to their judged severity. This includes the ‘ultimate sanction’ of
three years without benefits for those who three times fail to accept a job offer,
apply for a particular job or take part in a form of compulsory work experience.
Figures show a considerable rise in the imposition of benefit sanctions under the
UK Coalition government when compared with levels of sanctions during the UK
Labour governments of 1997-2010.

Experiencing Welfare to Work

For those directly affected, conditionality is an approach that compels

individuals to behave as the government would like or risk benefit sanctions. It is
often presented as a welfare contract-responsibilities in return for support-but
ou-of-work claimants arguably have little choice but to sign up to this contract,
giving it a particularly paternalistic and authoritarian flavour. Research suggests
that welfare conditionality can have negative effects on physical and mental
health, causing increased stress and reducing emotional well-being. Where there
is a clash between an individual’s own assessment of their work readiness and
motivations and the state’s expectations that they seek work, there are particular
risks that conditionality will operate in negative ways.

International evidence on sanctions suggests that they increase exits from

benefits and may increase short-term job entry, but there are signs that their
longer-term outcomes around earnings, job quality and employment retention
are more unfavourable. Inevitably, the imposition of sanctions can cause
hardship (for the claimant and household members, including children) and
there is growing research evidence of people being unable to afford to feed
themselves, sometimes leading individuals to shoplift food as part of their
struggle to get by.

In justifying the imposition of conditions and sanction, governments frequently

emphasise the help and support available to assist people in making the welfare-
to-work transition. In 2010, the UK Coalition government introduced the Work
Programme (WP), a single programme of back-to-work support, provided by
third and private sector agencies, on a basis of payment for results in moving
people into paid employment. However, there are concerns that the WP is failing
to properly support those with the most significant barriers to employment, such
as disabled people and those with the most entrenched barriers to employment.
Work Programme participants sometimes do not find the support meaningful or
helpful. In research into experiences of welfare reform, including the Work
Programme, there were examples of people’s longer-term employment
aspirations going unsupported, perhaps as a consequence of the work-first
approach.

Work first programs aim to move participants into employment as quickly as

possible through job search and short-term education, training, or work
experience activities.

Participants described being encouraged to look for any job, rather than focusing
on those areas in which they were most interested, qualified or experienced.
‘Strivers and Shirkers’: The Consequences of a Divisive Rhetoric

The policy approach on welfare to work is justified with frequent recourse to

characterisations of static groups of “hard-working families” and “welfare
dependents”, “strivers” and “shirkers”. These dualistic divisions re-imagine and
re-create older distinctions between “deserving” and “undeserving” populations.
While politicians are active participants in the stigmatisation of “welfare”, there
is also an increasingly dominant role for the media. In recent years, we have seen
the emergence of a growing number of ‘documentaries’ that promise to show the
‘reality’ of life on benefits. Shows such as Benefits Britain are dubbed ‘poverty
porn’ given their edited and highly sensationalised depiction of what life is like
for those reliant on out-of-work benefits. Such programmes contribute to the
stigmatisation of benefit claimants, with stigma and shame a consistent feature
of the experience of claiming benefits in twenty-first-century Britain.

Today, individuals who are often already coping with the shame of struggling to
manage in poverty also have to contend with the consequences of a stigmatising
rhetoric that increasingly associates non-work with irresponsibility and failure.
This rhetoric is affecting how people see themselves in ways that could be
damaging to self-confidence, self-esteem and thus, ironically, chances of securing
paid employment.

Navigating the Benefits System

In seeking to understand the stigma that is attached to benefits reliance, it is

particularly important to highlight what some have described as the
‘institutional stigma’ around engaging with Jobcentre Plus (JCP), the Department
for Work and Pensions (DWP) and associated officials, such as welfare-to-work
providers. This institutional stigma can be defined as stigma that emerges from
the processes of claiming benefits. Given the emphasis on welfare conditionality,
relations between claimants and JCP advisers often place the adviser in a policing
and surveillance role, as they ascertain continued eligibility for support and
compliance with any work-related conditions. This can have a negative impact
on these relationships, with the possibility of conditionality having a ‘scarring
effect’ on the ways in which claimants experience their interactions with the
welfare state.

Scarring is defined as the negative long-term effect that unemployment has on

future labour.

Under conditionality, claimants describe how they feel as if they are placed
under suspicion, having to prove and demonstrate their ‘deservingness’. This can
prevent the development of a trusting and effective relationship, with claimants
often reporting feeling judged and looked down on in these interactions and
treated with an absence of respect. JCP appointments are often characterised by
long waits, a lack of privacy and a dominant security presence, all further
extending the ways in which these encounters can be generative of stigma and
shame.
In navigating the benefits system, claimants have to deal with a bureaucratic
system that has often been criticised for providing a poor service with particular
issues around the provision of clear, timely and accessible information. Problems
have been reported regarding misleading, contradictory and difficult to
understand official communication, with inevitable consequences for individuals’
understanding of their own rights. Individuals have reported finding out that
they have been sanctioned when they go to try and withdraw their benefits
money, only to find a zero balance. Poor levels of communication about
forthcoming welfare reforms cause particular anxiety and worry, and contribute
to feelings of fear and uncertainty about changes to the benefit system.

For out-of-work claimants, the work of engaging with officials can be time-
intensive, emotionally draining and undermining self-worth. There is the risk
that these relationships interfere with the potential for claimants to see such
officials as people that might provide them with meaningful support to enter
paid employment. The role of JCP can be seen as that of policing eligibility for
benefits, rather than helping people to find work.

Overall, then, relationships between out-of-work claimants and the officials of

the welfare state are frequently troubled in the institutional stigma of claiming
benefits. Many would argue that these relationships are affected by the overall
policy approach and narrative and its emphasis on welfare conditionality and
sanctions.

Emerging Issues

The policy approach to dealing with unemployment suggests that individuals

require conditions and the threat of sanctions to activate them into employment,
with the corrective lens firmly focused on individual claimants themselves. In
this way, the policy problem is located at the individual level; on the supply-side
of the labour market and the behavioural changes needed for individuals to
make the welfare-to-work transition. This approach can be characterised as an
‘individualisation of responsibility’, with the ‘problem’ of unemployment
conceptualised as an individual problem, requiring individual change.

However, research evidence shows that individuals are often frustrated in their
job searches, not by an absence of motivation or commitment to securing
employment, but by demand-side barriers such as an absence of jobs or the lack
of suitable childcare.

In May 2015, the Conservative Party won a majority in the Westminster general
election, and pledged that their government would continue the welfare reform
effort to make sure that work always pay, and that no one is able to ‘choose’
benefits as a lifestyle choice. They promised particular reforms to ensure that
young people are encouraged to make the transition from education into
employment, by extending mandatory forms of work experience and reducing
their eligibility for benefits. These reforms further extend the policy emphasis on
conditionality and reductions in social welfare provision, and will need to be
closely monitored.
Critics of the approach taken by recent UK governments argue that focusing on
paid employment as the primary duty of the individual citizen is inherently
exclusive, and serves to neglect the various forms of contribution in which so
many of the economically ‘inactive’ are engaged. These include volunteering,
caring, parenting work, and the informal care ad support that is so often
provided in low-income communities.

Defending the approach taken, the incoming 2015 Conservative government, like
its Coalition and Labour predecessors, focus on the transformative rewards
offered by paid employment and their objective to share these rewards with
more of the working-age population.

There are particular concerns here about the recent growth in insecure,
temporary, low-paid and inflexible employment, given evidence that engagement
in these forms of work can have very negative consequences, particularly for
mental health and well-being.

Those who are critical of the government’s approach argue that its emphasis on
the ‘problem’ of ‘welfare dependency’ and proposed solution of ‘work’ is based
on a simplistic and superficial analysis of the policy issues. This approach implies
that ‘welfare dependency’ is always and inevitably negative, and neglects
consideration of the ways in which we are all dependent on the state and each
other. The giving and receiving of care is an intrinsic part of what it is to be
human, and dependency is not necessarily and inevitably a negative
characteristic. If we understand ‘welfare’ more broadly to include not just social
welfare provided to out-of-work claimants, but the various forms of state
support on which we all depend, such as education, healthcare and tax relief,
then our understanding of who is welfare-dependent changes.

However, the current policy approach shows little sign of changing, with all the
main political parties committed to a continued prioritising of welfare conditions
and measures to activate the ‘inactive’.