By Daniel Hunter
The TaxPayers' Alliance has given a warm welcome to George Osborne's announcement that the long-term unemployed will be required to do unpaid full-time work or job seeking or lose their benefits.
It comes just three weeks after the TaxPayers' Alliance published Work for the Dole: A proposal to fix welfare dependency, which called for mandatory participation in community work and training in return for the continued payment of benefits payments.
The TaxPayers' Alliance report, written by award-winning entrepreneur Chris Philp and published on 4 September, provides the most comprehensive analysis of how a Work for the Dole scheme along the lines of those adopted in Australia and the US could be successfully introduced here in the UK.
Chris Philp will be explaining his research and the background to the proposal at a fringe meeting today at the Conservative Party Conference at 2.45pm at the Freedom Zone, Bridgewater Hall, Lower Mosley Street, Manchester, M2 3WS. Also on the panel will be Rt Hon Peter Lilley MP, former Secretary of State for Social Security.
"The welfare system should support those facing hard times but for too many it has remained an alternative to work. Some of the Government's recent reforms have improved the incentive to work, but it was clear that further changes were needed to get more people off benefits and onto the job ladder," Matthew Sinclair, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said.
"The TaxPayers' Alliance proposed a 'Work for the Dole' scheme as the next stage of welfare reform precisely because it's not fair on taxpayers that some claimants subsist on benefits for years on end without giving something back. There is plenty of international evidence from countries such as Australia, Canada and the US that this type of scheme is not only fairer on those footing the welfare bill, but also gets people back into work.
"Ministers must insist that claimants work for the dole, with tougher sanctions for those who refuse, to ensure a better deal for taxpayers and change the lives for the better of people who have been abandoned to welfare dependency for far too long."
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