Social security, employment and Incapacity Benefit: critical reflections on A new deal for welfare

Abstract

In January 2006 New Labour published a Green Paper on welfare reform, A new deal for welfare: empowering people to work. Following a consultation period the 2006 Welfare Reform Bill was published in July 2006. The main concern of the Green Paper was with Incapacity Benefit and the people who claim it. This paper critically engages with the proposals outlined in the Green Paper and the subsequent Bill. Focusing upon the social security and labour market interventions of the proposals, the paper argues that rather than empowering disabled people to work, the relationships held to exist between welfare reform and paid employment in A new deal for welfare are likely to have a limited impact. The paper discusses why this is likely to be the case by examining assumptions contained in the proposals related to the reasons why people claim Incapacity Benefit, the model of disability that structures the proposals and the relationships between disability, paid work and models of family structure that the proposals presuppose.

Notes

1. So, for instance, it was reported in the New York Times (8 June 1998) that:

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani will soon begin requiring physically and mentally disabled mothers to work for their welfare checks. … City officials say the old system, which allowed the disabled to stay at home until city doctors certified that they could work, denied job training, work experience and career counselling to people who desperately needed those services.

It was also noted how a distinction would be drawn between those ‘with disabilities severe enough to qualify for Federal disability benefits’ and those entitled to state benefits, with the former exempt from the work‐focused aspects of the new regime.

2. There are some in the Labour Party who are concerned about the authoritarian drift of policies for disabled people. This came to the fore in 2004 when the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Andrew Smith, resigned because inter alia he was reportedly ‘in dispute with No. 10 over how best to cut back the multibillion‐pound cost of incapacity benefit’ (The Guardian, 7 September 2004). It is thought that Smith was anxious about the emphasis on discipline, preferring an approach that focused upon help, advice and training (Daily Telegraph, 12 September 2004).