DOES WORK WORK?

Abstract

Alan Deacon (ed.), From Welfare to Work, IEA Health & Welfare Unit, 1997, 155 pp., £8.00 paper.

Karen Gardiner, Bridges from Benefit, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, York, 1997, 60 pp., £11.95 paper.

Alex Bryson, Reuben Ford and Michael White, Making Work Pay, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, York, 1997, 89 pp., £11.95 paper.

Jane Millar, Steven Webb and Martin Kemp, Combining Work and Welfare, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, York, 1997, 59 pp., £11.95 paper.

For the new Labour government, employment is the key to the reform of welfare. While the same could be said of the first post-war Labour government, the words have a rather different meaning. It is true that Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has alluded to the concept of full employment that Keynes, Beveridge and, latterly, Attlee's government foresaw was essential to fund the development of the Welfare State. But the strategy that Brown set out in his first two budgets has a more narrow focus. Employment is to provide a route out of dependency, a mechanism for social inclusion, that enables expenditure on social security to be diverted to investment in education and health that is likely to attract a greater political dividend. More specifically, in his 1997 budget he used income generated from a windfall tax on the privatised utilities to fund the New Deal, a programme of counselling and work experience schemes with a large element of compulsion (Table 1), and supported this with a National Child Care Strategy and a commitment to introduce a minimum wage. He complemented these moves in his 1998 budget by increasing Child Benefit and announcing a Working Families Tax Credit, and one for disabled persons to replace Family Credit and Disability Working Allowance and also a Childcare Tax Credit.