Any hope of ‘getting Britain working again’ must not demonise people on welfare

Sometime this autumn, the UK government is expected to publish its plan to “get Britain working again”.

The new administration certainly faces a real challenge linked to high rates of economic inactivity – 2.8 million people are estimated to be out of work as a result of long-term sickness, according to the government’s own figures.

In last month’s budget, Chancellor Rachel Reeves pledged an investment of £240 million to try new approaches to tackle what she described as “the root causes of ill-health related inactivity”. The white paper will give much more detail on what they are planning to do.

But if they are to have a chance of success, they must spend time and energy making sure they properly understand the everyday realities for families who depend on social security for all or most of their income.

As a researcher of welfare and people’s experiences of it in the UK, I worry that in their first few months in office, Labour has sometimes been too quick to use populist and punitive rhetoric about worklessness and welfare. We have seen this, for example, in pledges for action against “benefit fraudsters”, and in reports of Whitehall sources saying that welfare is no longer a “one-way street”. Reeves and Keir Starmer have also repeatedly discussed the need to help “hardworking families”. In this, some will see an implicit suggestion that those who aren’t currently in work do not need (or perhaps deserve) support.

Research shows that such rhetoric, which demonises people on benefit support and implies that they are work-shy, only serves to make people who are, in fact, very motivated to secure employment, anxious and fearful.

This is how governments of all stripes have approached benefits for years. For decades, the UK’s approach to welfare has been based on conditionality. This is when someone’s right to support is contingent on meeting certain conditions, such as seeking paid employment.

Read more: Why demonising people as 'workless' won’t solve rising economic inactivity

Claimants risk having their benefit payments stopped if they are judged not to be fulfilling the conditions. At its zenith in the 2010s, the UK’s system included a maximum three years’ benefits sanction for those who had failed to comply with certain work-related conditions on three occasions.

But this approach neglects the many other ways people who receive social security support are already contributing to society. They are often carers, parents, or take part in voluntary work and community activism.

The harm of conditionality

The relationship between benefits claimants and the state is already uneven and unequal – claimants need benefit payments to survive. As my research and that of many others has shown, making payments conditional on meeting various requirements exacerbates this problematic relationship.

It corrodes relationships between claimants and those providing employment support at job centres. It leaves millions fearful of missing an appointment or being judged not to be “doing enough”, at risk of not having sufficient income to survive.

Sanctions harm not just those directly hit with one, but those at risk of them. People at risk of being sanctioned routinely experience pervasive anxiety about the ever-present threat sanctions pose.

This approach assumes that claimants need the threat of sanctions to do the right thing: to search for work, increase their hours of work if they are already working, or undertake job-relevant training. This comes with the heavily loaded suggestion that claimants lack work aspirations, and that a sharp stick is needed to get them to enter and progress in work.

But almost all the evidence points in the other direction.

My research found that people currently out of work have very strong aspirations to enter employment. Many have worked previously, often in a variety of low-paid and insecure jobs.

Benefits claimants are motivated to secure work where it fits with their other responsibilities, and in many cases, where they can access appropriate and affordable childcare.

People can face multiple and overlapping barriers to work, which can be hard to overcome. For many, the intensive demands of single parenthood can be hard to juggle with employment, especially when employers are unwilling to offer school hours or fit around term-time-only contracts.

Is there an alternative?

The coming white paper will set out steps to support people back to work, focusing firmly on addressing the rapid growth of economic inactivity that the UK has witnessed in recent years.

There is likely to be an emphasis on devolving power to local areas to develop regionally specific employment support. We can also expect some recognition of the importance of improving the culture of job centres. These are promising ideas, but their effect will be limited if conditionality is not also reviewed and its use radically reduced.

At the height of the pandemic, the government temporarily paused welfare conditionality, meaning that no one was at risk from a benefit sanction for failing to look for work. During this time, claimants continued to seek work at just the same level as when conditionality was in place, powerful evidence that intensive conditionality is an unnecessary evil.

Labour’s new government has a big challenge ahead on welfare and economic inactivity, but they must be led by the evidence of what works and what doesn’t. This starts by overhauling conditionality and ditching the rhetoric that goes with it.

Ruth Patrick receives funding from the Nuffield Foundation, aFFT, The Robertson Trust. She is a member of the Labour Party.