Wanted: domestic servants for the political classes

Are politicians and top civil servants hoping to drive single mothers and disabled people into domestic servitude by cutting their benefits?

FIRST POSTED FEBRUARY 5, 2009

Are Government ministers, top-ranking civil servants and quangocrats on the look-out for pliant, underpaid and cowed domestic servants? Do they pine to put young single mothers to work in their kitchens or, better yet, use their underemployed hands to scour out their lavatory pans? Apparently so, for there can be no other explanation for the petty, pointless and ultimately vicious welfare 'reforms' announced late last year.

The overall goal of these measures is a simple one: to push single parents and disabled people off benefits and into the labour market. And those single parents are overwhelmingly women, almost invariably of little education and limited skills.

The new policy means that once their children turn 12 they will have their benefits reduced if they do not participate in 'work search activities', notably attending job centre advice sessions and going for job interviews.

Single parents now face having their benefits cut once their children turn 12 if they do not participate in 'work search activities'

Jobseekers' allowance is now about £60 a week - just over £3,000 a year - so the effect of a cut on the children in such a family is very, very harsh. Such likely consequences as truancy, disruptive pupils and a strong incentive to resort to theft have been arrogantly brushed aside. But more important are the defects in what is on offer for those who take the idea of bettering themselves seriously.

Many, if not most, of those affected lack basic skills like literacy, numeracy and IT, let alone job-specific skills. It is therefore somewhat pointless to equip them with presentational skills for interviews for jobs they cannot hope to be offered.

This is especially true right now, for whatever the circumstances were when this scheme was devised (by a banker, recruited presumably as a diversion from helping bring about the current financial catastrophe), the financial incentives offered to those

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Some good points made, but the article neglects the other side; those who have never worked and have no intention of ever working. They know the system well and exploit it constantly; single mothers who, when their oldest child reaches the age when child benefit ceases, get pregnant again to keep their income at the same rate. And 60 pounds a week doesn't take into account all the other benefits such as rent and council tax benefits which those in work on low incomes don't get. The rich may well have their own agenda, but the fact remains that there is a growing underclass for whom work is not an option or part of their reality, and children growing up in this environment assume they will never work also, and absorb the ethos and learn the tricks to survive by milking the system.

Posted by Peter Simmons at 10:40am on February 5, 2009

There have always been Cheap Nannies ,and Pa's,Dog walkers etc,but now they come from the illegals,as in the States.

Posted by derek bevan at 4:06pm on February 8, 2009

Just why is it that I should work and pay taxes to keep people perfectly able to work but don't want to because they choose to be on benefits. If we are supposed to have equality then everyone who can work should work and those that don't want to should not expect me to keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed. People choose to have children if you cannot afford them don't have them.

Posted by Philip Gosling at 9:40am on February 9, 2009

Surely it is now the time to call a halt to the baby syndrome, the let's have a child and the state will pay ethos. I'ts time to go back to your parents, to a hostel, for adoption if necessary, but not on the Child Benefit Lottery. Child benefit should stop after the second child, as it did in my day, its time to go back to the days of "if you can't afford it wait until you can". We then would not be in the mess the country is in now, no matter what happens abroad.

Posted by sidney sands at 3:49pm on February 9, 2009

Complete twaddle. You would think that the 'lone mothers' didn't get themselves into thier own predicament. There is a problem with this country and that of modern society as a whole - a general unwillingness for people to take responsibiity for their own actions. If people want to better themselves they need to put in the effort, and not expect to be subsidised by those who do. You have to start somewhere, and a paid job, no matter how menial is a start. Respect for those who get on with it despite their circumstances.

Posted by The Anti-Pawn at 10:12pm on February 9, 2009