At last! A Labour policy that makes sense.

I also read that the government are looking into the way that farmers are being fleeced by supermarkets who use them as loss leaders.

What I don’t understand is how can anyone just decide not to work and claim benefits? Can someone please explain?

Skydancer

What I don’t understand is how can anyone just decide not to work and claim benefits? Can someone please explain?

Yes, I was thinking the same - how?

In my experience the dwp exert great pressure on people to work, so I too, don't understand who would be able to just opt out.

Is there anyone here who does understand?

If people claim benefits, unless they are sick, they have to show that they are actively seeking work with evidence to prove it. If they do not they will be sanctioned and benefit withheld. If they are in areas of high unemployment or if they are not deemed to be employable I suppose they can continue to receive payments if they have been applying for jobs.

I can’t see how one million youngsters aged between 16 and 24 are too unfit to go to work, or be in education. It’s the most healthy and energetic time of life for the majority of people.

Anyway I thought the last government had said that everyone between 16 and 19 (I think those were the ages) had to be in either education or work. I think they called them NEETS.Not in education or employment, but I’m not sure what the T and S stood for. Anyway if there are still one million of them not doing anything, obviously that scheme didn’t work.

Will this one work do you think?

The "Learn or Earn" is not a new title or debate, it's been going since 2014, Liz Kendall is using a phrase dating back for some time that has had different approaches. The challenge is to take it up from 18 to 21, to 18 to 24.

The 2014 report:

feweek.co.uk/looking-deeper-at-the-earn-or-learn-policy-debate/#:~:text=The%20read%20across%20between%20full%2Dtime%20education%20and,than%20every%2018%20to%2024%2Dyear%2Dold%20is%20'earning

We can't really comment until we know the details of the plan, ie are there to be new opportunities education/apprenticeship/placements/community work, if so, what.

so

Our community shop where I am a volunteer, was advertising for a café manager recently. They had 8 applications, interviewed the 6 who turned up and only 2 had anything like the qualifications necessary. A person was appointed but lasted a mere 2 months as he found the work too hard.

Some people who apply do it to show they are actively looking for work but presumably have no intention of doing any.

Not everyone is like this but it seems such a shame.

After readvertising, the post has been filled but by 3 people job sharing.

Of course they should be working.

If they start work in a job which is not what they really want to do, at least they are doing something.

I think that future employers would look more favourably on someone who is actually working.

Sarnia

Liz Kendall, the Works & Pensions Minister is planning to stop benefits in a proposal being announced on Tuesday. There are 1 million youngsters aged between 16-24 who are unemployed, not in further education or training and are able to work but instead choose to claim benefits. Labour will put in place measures for 'Earning or learning' as she puts it. Refusal to conform will result in benefits being stopped. She says working is not just the payslip but also the self esteem and improvement of mental health and satisfaction that goes with it. I hope she succeeds. Paying benefits to 1 million young people who could be working is unsustainable and should no longer be a career choice.

Work is also keeping our country on its feet.

I will believe it when I see something happening. Various governments have been rabbitting on about the NEETS for years, but nothing has actually happening.

As they say somewhere or another 'fine words butter no parsnips' and all the parnsips I see are so long unbuttered they have shrivelled and rotted.

Many of these children come from families and communities with no history of anything but unemployment, even the idea of gettigup at 7.00am(say) each morning and presenting themselves somewhere wide awake and ready to start work at 9.00am is completely beyond their capacity.

Except you are expected to work for at least 35 hours per week already, and will be sanctioned if not.

A couple across the road from us have a son/stepson who is early twenties, just finished university about a year ago. He went to live with his father apparently after university but didn’t get a job. After a good while father got fed up and told him to go to live with mum/step dad, opposite us. He didn’t work or accordingly to our neighbours, even try to get a job. Instead he bought an old van and tinkered about with that. When chatting to our neighbours, step dad was clearly extremely fed up and irritated by what he saw as a free loading, work shy young man. Mum told us he wanted to go travelling in his van. He disappeared with the van for a few weeks, apparently to Europe, and then came back.Step dad was still irritated because they were supporting him, and apparently his father was giving him money, because benefits were quite low. He’s gone again now, so I guess our neighbour is relieved.

I suppose he is what is commonly known as a NEET.

I suppose (ref the title of the post) it makes sense to our RW posters because it sounds nice and punitive...

Shouldn’t people between 16 and 24 be expected to work or be in education then? A million is rather a lot who are apparently doing neither.

You couldnt sign on as being ready and able to work from Europe, so I can only assume mummy and daddy were supporting the van tinkering lad.

It is a really intractable issue building up for a long long time. I think to welcome any successful moves in the right direction, but as I said above work/re-skilling moves take resources.

petra your young man above is different from the families who are stuck in a permanent benefit cycle and the children know no better, its probably a very individual thing for the numbers of students leaving university who cant find jobs at a level they are qualified for.

Matching jobs to skills is no longer followed, either.

Still, we will have to wait and see.
As far as I'm concerned, the dwp already have so many rules and regs in, I'm amazed that people are jobless through choice.

I am amazed that the PM doesn’t realise this is already on statute books, before he has been on his promotional interviews today.

Good luck to the employers who will be tasked with getting these young people to work and stay in it. It will take a long time for them to realise there will be no wages without work, and no benefits forthcoming. They will employ all the strategies they know to make themselves unemployable. Very easy to disrupt a work place if you don't want to be there.

GrannyGravy13

I am amazed that the PM doesn’t realise this is already on statute books, before he has been on his promotional interviews today.

It's a new initiative because it now extends the age range from age 21 to age 24 - there are other changes to be announced.

Never been a "statute"ie law as such but changes over the years /variations on a theme of benefit and education initiatives

Opps, sorry, didn't see your image GG13, it wasn't accessible when I posted.

..thought we were discussing the new benefit initiatives.