This will, of course, cause an outbreak of the screaming abdabs in certain quarters.
Benefit claimants will lose a month\’s worth of state handouts for the first job they turn down, three months\’ of payments for the second "reasonable offer" and a third employment refusal will be punished with a bar on unemployment benefits for up to three years.
It\’s going to be so much fun when the screaming starts, for it\’s actually an idea from Lord Layard, the Labour Peer. Details here.
What a waste of effort. How bureaucratic do they actually want to make these programmes? Time to scrap benefits altogether. If we must subsidise the jobless, we ought to subsidise work, not idleness. Make it a requirement that everyone has to do 40 hours a week work. If the unemployed can’t find someone to pay them, then the government will step in and pay their wages. Fix it so there is a smooth tapering off of subsidy as wages rise. No work, no pay. Much simpler and better for all concerned. I wonder if you could even allow the company to make their wages tax deductable so avoid the Social totally.
It is not that this is not a good idea, but how baroque can the system gets before it drowns in its own red tape?
The reasonableness or otherwise of the proposal rests directly on what a ‘reasonable offer’ is defined as. In particular, the definition should include the proviso that an offer can only be considered reasonable if accepting it wouldn’t result in the person being worse off than they currently are (though I accept that the benefits system should be such that any job should make someone better off than not having a job, this isn’t the case currently, aiui) .
Agreed that the worthiness of the idea (and especially the fact it was dared to be spoken aloud) is overwhelmed by its bureaucratic impositions. Roll on the CBI.