Labour has declared ‘war on benefits’. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing

Everyone agrees on one thing – we need to ‘Get Britain Working‘. The number of young Brits not in employment, education or training now stands at just shy of a million, having increased by more than 74,000 (872,000 in June to 946,000 in September) in the previous quarter alone. This week (26 November) Labour laid out their plan for these ‘NEETs’, as they are termed, in a new white paper titled ‘Get Britain Working’.

• Benefit claimants need enough money to buy food if Labour wants to ‘get Britain working again’
• Labour warned against ‘scare tactics’ after revealing Jobcentres reform plan to ‘get Britain working’

We wholeheartedly support the government’s aspiration for everyone to have a chance to be earning or learning. Many of the reforms they’ve put forward have the potential to boost the skillsets of young people and set them off on a meaningful, empowered path to work. But this is a path they should walk without fear of having their benefits pulled from beneath their feet, and the government’s scare tactics risk becoming the very barrier to work they are trying to remove.

As is the way with these things, these reforms have been much trailed in the media, including by the prime minister himself, with Keir Starmer “declaring war on benefit Britain” in a Mail on Sunday piece over the weekend. His promise of a “zero-tolerance approach” to dealing with benefit “criminals” was exactly the kind of headline-grabbing scare tactic that will keep those very NEETs out of Jobcentres and workplaces.

We know that the steep rise in anxiety and mental health problems in young people has had a direct impact on their ability to find and retain good jobs. The Youth Futures Foundation recently found that 85% of young people who report having a mental health condition believe it affects their ability to either find work, or to function in a professional environment. It’s no coincidence that 20% more young people are classified ‘NEET’ now than before the brutal pandemic that saw their schooling and socialisation curbed for over a year by the tightest restrictions in all our lifetimes.

Ultimately, lack of employment is often both a cause and a consequence of young people’s poor mental health. Being “declared war on” by the prime minister will not help this vicious cycle. Worse still will be the new looming threat of having their benefits axed should they fail to summon the mental strength to accept work or training, as announced by work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall in recent weeks.

Reform is needed. Credit where it’s due, Liz Kendall does seem to have identified a big part of the problem – Jobcentres. As she told The Observer over the weekend: “We need to see change in our Jobcentres from a one-size-fits-all benefit administration service to a genuine public employment service. It’s not fit for purpose and it has to change.” Here we couldn’t agree more. Jobcentres have become a bureaucrat’s dream, a place where paperwork is prioritised over meaningful job searching, skill boosting or confidence building. The same Observer article reported that less than a third of people would even step foot in a Jobcentre as a starting point on their employment journey.

We urge Liz Kendall to look to Big Issue Recruit as a template for her reform. Our job coaches get results with our candidates who, like many of the NEETs the government want to reach, face various barriers to work. They spend time understanding each individual’s needs and goals, building confidence, skills and resilience by supporting them through the selection process and crucially, maintaining contact with candidates for the first six months after starting work. It’s ethical, empathetic, end-to-end employment support that actually works. A whopping 90% of our candidates are still in their jobs one year on.

The best way to bring more people into the job market is a more comprehensive understanding of their needs and barriers to work. This approach will take us beyond the ‘benefit wars’ narrative and into a more positive dialogue between those needing income – and the dignity that comes with employment – and those seeking to guide them towards it.

Time and time again we see the same barrier in candidates that come to Big Issue Recruit – a crippling lack of self-confidence created by years battling a system that does not meet their needs. These latest reforms, and the damaging rhetoric that accompanies them, risk continuing that bitter cycle. We’ve seen this before from the previous Conservative government and we all saw how their attempts to Get Britain Working, well, didn’t work.

Catherine Parsons is managing director of Big Issue Changing Lives CIC, a social enterprise which provides services to help people in poverty earn, learn and thrive. One of these services is Big Issue Recruit, which supports people experiencing barriers to work to find sustainable employment.

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