Ian Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, faced a backlash from poverty campaigners today over plans to impose severe welfare penalties on people who are out of work and refuse to take up jobs
Oxfam's director of UK poverty, Kate Wareing, said: "Removing benefits and leaving people with no income will result in extreme hardship for them and their families. This sanction, and the proposals to force people to do unpaid work are based on stigma. Most people receiving benefits do want to work, and punishing them as if they are criminals repaying a debt to society is not a fair way to treat someone entitled to support."
Sally Copley, head of UK policy at Save the Children, said: "It is hard to see how Britain's poorest children are going to be helped using sanctions creating a climate of fear. It is children who will suffer when a single mum is told to take a job, but there is not suitable childcare available. It is the children who will suffer when the safety net is withdrawn for three months, living in homes where mums and dads already struggle to put a hot meal on the table or buy a winter coat. Breaking the cycle of poverty is important. Simplifying the benefits system is long overdue. But paying for this by welfare cuts for the poorest families is in no-one's interest."
Douglas Alexander, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said: "We support the underlying principle of simplifying the benefits system and providing real incentives to work. My concern is that [chancellor] George Osborne's recent actions reveal he doesn't support these principles – he has already both complicated the system and undermined incentives to work through changes such as the reduction in working tax credit. Some of the key aspects of Iain Duncan Smith's original plan already seem to have been cut and that could mean some people facing bigger barriers to getting back to work. And our overriding concern is that there is a fatal flaw at the heart of these proposals: without work they won't work."
Richard Hawkes, chief executive of disability charity Scope, said the reform effort was "encouraging" but unrealistic about the reality of people's lives. Citing the regime of sanctions planned, Hawkes said: "What about those disabled people who do play by the government's rules? Who try repeatedly to get work but are not successful? The sanctions the government is going to introduce will effectively penalise them, pushing them further into poverty, further away from work and ultimately creating more dependency on the state. The government needs to be clear in its aim of supporting genuine people today as well as introducing robust plans for the future."
The business sector warned that red tape could hamper efforts to create the new jobs required. Dr Adam Marshall, director of policy at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), said: "Business will support moves to make work pay – because UK plc cannot function efficiently and effectively with millions of people permanently outside the labour market," he said. "Yet there are challenges too that must be addressed. If private sector companies are to create the jobs needed to employ local people, the government must make it easier for small and medium-sized firms to take on staff – by stripping away burdensome employment regulation, and by ensuring that everyone has the basic skills needed to hold down a job. Businesses will take it from there, and train up the specialist workforce they need to deliver growth."
