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Today marks an historic step in the biggest welfare revolution in over 60 years. My government has taken bold action to make work pay, while protecting the vulnerable.
Key elements of this include:
- The 'Benefits Cap' which ensures no one can get more that £26,000 in benefits (that's the equivalent of a taxed income of £35,000)
- The 'Universal Credit' which will ensure that work always pays more than being on benefit
These reforms will change lives for the better, giving people the help they need, while backing individual responsibility so that they can escape poverty, not be trapped in it.
Past governments have talked about reform, while watching the benefits bill sky rocket and generations languish on the dole and dependency. This government is delivering it. Our new law will mark the end of the culture that said a life on benefits was an acceptable alternative to work.
While we've been putting in place a sensible, modern welfare system that protects the vulnerable, our opponents have shown they are on the side of Britain's 'something for nothing' culture.
We've stood up against the abuse that left taxpayers footing the bills for people on £30,000 or even £50,000 a year in benefits. It's a fair principle: a family out of work on benefits shouldn't be paid more than the average family in work.
This is a core part of the government's task of turning around the legacy of debt, overspending and waste we inherited.
We want money to go to people who need it, not subsidising the consequences of our broken society. By reforming welfare we will get people into fulfilling jobs, not abandon them to poverty and dependency, save billions of pounds of taxpayers' money and make sure those who really need help get it.
That's compassionate modern government in action.
It's also a huge tribute to the Secretary of State for Welfare, Iain Duncan Smith, who has worked tirelessly and with real moral purpose in tackling the blight of welfare dependency.
Follow David Cameron on Twitter: www.twitter.com/number10gov
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Sorry to state the obvious.
we are SERFS
we cannot change anything, even a Tory said today that there is no difference in the current govt and the previous
When I started work, your national insurance payment every week entiltled you to unemployment benefit when you fell upon hard times. Nowadays you dont need to pay anything into the system, If you have left school at 16 you go and sign on and pick up £50 a week or if you come from abroard sell a few big issues you can pick up housing benefit worth thousands of pounds,
I'd really like to read in his words how Universal Credit will work, and how it will be better than the current system. Don't get me wrong, it's great Cameron puts out an article here in an accessible venue for poor (working) chumps like me who can't afford to buy a paper, but please push the boat out a bit Mr Prime Minsiter!
I need more detail in your articles, otherwise they sound like insincere, sound-bite propaganda!
Come Come my dear UKLib, you should know by now that details and consequences are for poor people and plebs to bother themselves with and not for the head of Britain's glorious leader. No instead U-turns are his preserve after it becomes clear he has just wasted another fortune of tax payers money on trying to implement more unworkable unthought out policies.
However, deplorable educational failure leaving many without basic skills, very low wages, poor health and many other social issues combined with rising unemployment, vitriolic cuts in public services and a depressing ever widening void in incomes and opportunity mean that many of these families are doomed for several generations to remaining living in our worst sink estates, living on benefit and failure
Kicking the benefit stool from under them will not help them climb, it will only worsen the situation and create even more lost generations. Why not invest instead?
Why? Because it is all about the politics and not at all about the individuals concerned. Mr Cameron cares not a jot about the typical sink estate kids that will hardly register to vote let alone vote, it is all about appeasing the Daily Mail and Sun readers who think that the countries woes can all be cured if only you hammer the most disadvantaged ever harder
How about first stopping the public funding of such absurdities as the Diamond Jubilee - that's got to be equivalent to, what, 50 families receiving 50,000 a year in 'unneeded' government support? How about Bob Diamond, Barclay's CEO, accused by the HMRC of tax dodging to the tune of 500 million? That's equal to 10,000 families receiving 50,000 in annual benefits! And that's ONE man!
The 'blight' of dependency in our society (as you so vitriolically and accusingly put in astonishingly classist terms) is in these such actions. You, Mr. Cameron, are guilty of the heinous act of villifying the lowest-hanging fruit in a tree rotten foremost from the top down.
Shame, shame, shame on you Cameron. This symbolic act of yours could have had so much more substance and been truly deserving of sustained government attention had it only been targeted at the real dependency fiends in our society.
Your policies will ensure that many women that are mothers cannot work, as employers will not accept the liability of taking them on. Having said you plan to limit empoyment tribunals and U-illnesses and lower the health and safety requirements for employers, you create a situation where many more workers - those lucky to get a job - will be driven into poor health by abusibve employers. That won't make work pay in the end.
What fullfilling jobs ? potato picking.... stacking shelves in a supermarket?? Since the demise of the manufacturing industries in this country the simple fact is that are no real jobs. Youngsters with degrees who are keen to find work are finding over 100 applicants for any meaningful job. There are a few sectors with many vacancies but these are unlikely to be filled by people from deprived areas who are 2nd or 3rd generation claiments. All that screwing down benifit payments (Mr. Cameron and all the other MPs recieve their salaries from the taxpayer and so could also be classified as benifit recipients) will do is to create a deeper underculture i.e. black markets, crime etc.
However by privitising the police, it will be possible to create a few jobs for private security thugs to keep the underclasses in line...Brilliant!!!
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What is wrong with this job?
Really?
Compare and contrast with the blight of fathomless corporate greed and ineptitude.
Which has cost us more?