Welfare-to-work key, says Rhodri as he defends political leadership

Apr 17 2008 by David Williamson, Western Mail

GETTING people off benefits and into work must be a key objective of a left-of-centre government, First Minister Rhodri Morgan will say today.

In a major speech in the Welsh capital the Labour leader, pictured, will argue that it is through work that prosperity is distributed throughout the population.

He will defend controversial measures such as free prescriptions and free school meals as important instruments in persuading people they will not be worse off in the workforce.

In a speech which will be seen as a defence of his political philosophy and leadership, he will hold up the goal of “redistribution of opportunity”. The nation is in a new era, he will claim, in which “work is the best form of welfare”.

He is expected to say: “A life on benefit is also a life outside the rising living standards which others have come to expect and enjoy.”

Official unemployment in Wales has slumped in recent years but many people still do not have a job.

The number of people of working age who are unemployed fell from 94,000 to 68,000 between January 2000 and January 2008.

However, during this time the ranks of the “economically inactive” outside the workforce grew from 441,000 to 448,000.

Many of these people will be carers and students, but others will be on incapacity benefit. There are 197,060 such claimants in Wales.

Recent statistics showed that in one area of western Rhyl 68% of people are out of work. There are three communities in Swansea where more than half the population receive some form of out-of-work benefit.

Mr Morgan will tell today’s Welfare to Work Wales Convention that people were encouraged to go on benefits “to hide bad unemployment headlines 15 years ago”.

Defending efforts to encourage people back into employment, he will say: “Once public policymakers admit that people were tricked to a degree into accepting a life on incapacity benefit because everyone had lost faith in full employment ever coming back on the horizon, then it is far easier to understand that welfare to work is not ideologically a right-wing agenda at all.”

He will add: “Employment brings with it a series of other, wider, social benefits. Employment brings better health.

“It strengthens social networks. It validates our sense of ourselves as people with a standing in the world, and a contribution to make to others as well as to ourselves.”

In defending policies such as free prescriptions and free school breakfasts, he will strongly deny he has led a “give-away government”.

The First Minister’s policies on prescriptions and free parking at hospitals have this week drawn fire from opposition parties. Tory Assembly leader Nick Bourne said yesterday: “If we could genuinely give people medicine without any cost that would be wonderful but somebody’s having to pay for it. Is it right that a millionaire gets a free prescription?”

Lib-Dem AM Jenny Randerson said: “We all love our free prescriptions and free hospital car-parking, but there comes a point when you say, ‘Is this the best use of our very scarce resources?” She predicted that hospital treatments would have to be scaled back to cover the costs.