Tony McNulty explains the government’s carrot and stick approach

UK (SANEPR.com) June 4, 2009 -- For WORLDbytes latest line up of challenging programmes, reporter Emma Grant interviews Tony McNulty MP, Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform, about the new Welfare Reform Bill currently being discussed in parliament.

With unemployment at over 2.2 million in the UK, this government bill proposes strict conditions that unemployed people must meet to access benefits. These include a ‘work for your benefit’ scheme for the long-term unemployed which will force them to volunteer in community projects or work for their benefits.

We learn that, instead of providing productive employment Tony McNulty intends to penalise people on miserly benefits with what he describes as the “carrot, carrot, stick” approach. The ‘carrot’, for ever increasing numbers of unemployed people, is yet more personalised ‘job search’ plans and the ‘stick’ is living without benefits if they don’t find work.

Yet how are people supposed to find work when there are only 455,000 job vacancies and these are declining rapidly? There are already one million unemployed under 25’s and this figure will massively increase when young people finish college this summer. As the Minister surmises, reporter Emma Grant is left “utterly unconvinced”.

WORLDbytes is an alternative on-line channel of reports and programmes created by young volunteers which aims to get behind the headlines and promote a people-first perspective on a wide-range of issues. The programme’s credo is “don’t shout at the telly, change the message on it”.

The programme is available for viewing at www.worldbytes.org/programmes/007/007_003.html

The WORLDbytes online channel is available at www.worldbytes.org

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Ceri Dingle
Email: ceridingle@btconnect.com
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Viv Regan
Email: vivregan@btconnect.com
Tel: +44 (0)7939 449 604 or +44 (0)20 8985 5435