Cameron called his own welfare plans “barmy”


9:45 am - June 28th 2010

by Paul Cotterill    


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In 2008 the right-wing think-tank Policy Exchange published a report called ‘Cities Unlimited’. It stated:

If councils believe that many of the people in their area will have better life chances elsewhere, they should be allowed to assist in national job searches.

They could identify areas that are either short of labour in general, or of particular types of labour, and invite firms from those areas to visit them for job fairs. They could fund visits to other places, so that local people could get a better sense of what opportunities are available elsewhere. Such places could be within easy commuting distance, or further afield, that would imply migration. (p52)

David Cameron was swift to distance himself from it.

This report has got nothing to do with the Conservative Party, this is an independent think tank, it has charitable status, I think this report is complete rubbish.

“It is barmy,” he added.

But, in an interview with Iain Duncan Smith yesterday, the Sunday Telegraph reported:

Mr Duncan Smith, the MP for Lord Tebbit’s former parliamentary seat of Chingford, disclosed that ministers were drawing up plans to encourage jobless people living in council houses to move out of unemployment black spots to homes in other areas, perhaps hundreds of miles away.
…
“We have to look at how we get that portability, so that people can be more flexible, can look for work, can take the risk to do it.”

It is understood that the Coalition is looking at ways to provide incentives for workers to move to areas where there are jobs…. But as well as incentives, there will be tough action to cut welfare bills which may prove controversial. Mr Duncan Smith, who is responsible for finding £11 billion of the extra £32 billion in savings earmarked by the Chancellor, disclosed details of moves to tackle “under occupation” of large council homes.

Is moving people hundreds of people miles in search of work, under threat of homelessness, “barmy rubbish” now, David Cameron?

Or is it just plain old ‘daft’?

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About the author
Paul Cotterill is a regular contributor, and blogs more regularly at Though Cowards Flinch, an established leftwing blog and emergent think-tank. He currently has fingers in more pies than he has fingers, including disability caselaw, childcare social enterprise, and cricket.
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Reader comments


1. Flowerpower

Cameron never said the idea of encouraging/facilitating unemployed people to move to where the jobs are is barmy. He said that writing off entire cities as “beyond revival” was barmy. There’s a big difference.

2. Paul

Flowpower @1: Cameron said “This report is rubbish from start to finish. It certainly won’t become Conservative policy.” (http://www.politics.co.uk/news/opinion-former-index/housing-and-planning/-make-london-bigger-to-tackle-inequality-$1236142.htm)

So he seemed to think ALL of it was rubbish, including the bit I quote. Yeah,I know he hadn’t read it himself but got one of his people to do so just before he went off on a tour of Northern towns and cities who wouldn’t have appreciated him agreeing with Michael Gove’s thinktank at that point, but that’s still what he said.

ps. Alex Singleton’s Telegraph blogpost, making absolutely the same points as mine, appeared a few hours AFTER this appeared at Though Cowards Flinch. Just saying.

3. Flowerpower

Paul @ 2

rubbish from start to finish

You shouldn’t take phrases like that too literally. Cameron wouldn’t disagree, for instance, with those sections of the report saying things like:

Oxford and Cambridge are unambiguously Britain’s leading research universities outside London and both are well located
economically…

would he?

It certainly won’t become Conservative policy.

Nor has it. It is Coalition policy. And the original report’s lead author, Tim Leunig, is a LibDem and blogs at LibDem voice.

4. Bob B

It seems to have escaped notice that with the exceptions of London and West Yorkshire, conurbations in Britain have been losing population in recent decades.

“Outside London [during the 1990s], all of the large conurbations except West Yorkshire lost population. Thus while London and the other conurbations, together, showed net growth of over 200,000 people, this was almost entirely due to the large growth of London outstripping losses elsewhere.” [See esp. Table 3]
http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/cbcb/census1.pdf

OTOH London’s peak population was in 1939. From then until the late 1980s, London’s population was in steady decline.
http://www.londononline.co.uk/factfile/historical/

The Scots have been worried about the prospect of a continuing steady decline in their population:
http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/PO/releases/2005/april/index2.aspx

5. Claire

Hah! Suggesting people move from areas of high unemployment (where, presumably, housing is cheap) into areas where there’s a need for more workers (where, presumably, housing is expensive and possibly in short supply) might work against this not-very-well-thought-out plan to cap housing benefit. Wouldn’t it?

On another comment website someone suggested that ‘the poor’ who can’t afford London rents (and who definitely won’t be able to if HB is capped) should move to where housing is cheaper, like Scotland. Where he came from, because there were no jobs there. Again, not well-thought-through.

6. Jerry

Claire @ 5

Oh come off it! The cap on housing benefit is £400 a week. That’s £20,000 a year. Given that the person receiving housing benefit will be getting other benefits too, he/she would have to be earning nearly 30 grand before tax to be as well off in a job. That’s crazy.

7. Schmidt

I wonder if this will be merely a first stage, with the unemployed then being told to move to Europe or Africa or Antarctica. Following his Arbeit Macht Frei gaffe, this really shows Smith just can’t think anything through before opening his mouth. With Freud reported to have escaped his straitjacket and looking at areas he hasn’t got a clue about and George “I am a despicable ****” Osborne’s attack on the disabled, the nasty party is well and truly back and polishing its jackboots (or more likely having them polished for it at less than the minimum wage)

8. Philip

There are three kinds of policy in the world:

1. Popular Conservative policies (known as “Conservative policies”), or “dog-whistles” to the uncharitable.

2. Unpopular Coalition policies (known as “Coalition policies”), imposed upon progressive, public-spirited working-class people like Davey and George by those nasty, nasty Lib Dems.

3. Popular Lib Dem policies, used by the Lib Dems to score points off the other parties during the election campaign and now to be tossed into the long grass with as light a laugh as Vincent Cable can muster.

9. Sevillista

@jerry

£400 sounds like a lot, but it’s how much housing costs in Inner London.

80% of those claiming HB in the private rented sector in Westminster are – according to the council leader – going to be hit by the cap.

And this is issue only going to be getting worse as the Goverent clamps down in so-called welfare scoungers.

Next up is capping HB at the bottom 30th percentile of house prices, cutting 10% additional for the crime of not working as the Tories turf an additional 1.5 million on the dole, and an expansion in the size of local housing market areas used to set HB rents (driving the
poor out of the cities).

10. Schmidt

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2856&Itemid=81

11. No-named leecher

As someone who’s on long term incapacity benefit thru depression, I’m certainly concerned, as I know I’m the current scapegoat for all this wrong with this country, I seemingly could only be more to blame if I was also an illegal immigrant. It of course doesn’t help that when I’m feeling well enough to leave the house, I look perfectly fine, and there’s no sign of a wheelchair or even a limp.

I’ve tried returning to work, but just cannot do it, and sadly it was looking like I’d be returning to work under Labour who had a scheme to send me to a live in college for those with certain needs, to get a qualification and a work placement, where I’d get my regular benefits over 9 months of training and education, then 3 months of work placement (at benefit rates), which would then lead to a guaranteed good job and get me off the bottom rung of benefits and start paying in a decent level of tax. I felt like back then, that the people in charge realised that investing in people like me could produce someone who could be earning a reasonable wage instead of claiming benefits and return to contributing to society.

Unfortunately it got scrapped in a wave of cuts…knocking me back to square one, and I know I can’t return to work without some backup. Now I feel like the attitutide is ‘We dont care what you do or what’s wrong, go flip burgers or sweep some roads for minimum wage and stop leeching, you scum!’ It seems that a few fraudulent claimaints appear to be enough that almost everyone believes we’re all raking in thousands each week. I live fairly frugally in a small council flat and think I get around £60 a week housing benefit, paying around £20 in rent.

One thing I do feel is near constant crushing guilt that I’m leeching off the state when I used to be a hard working member of society, and of course the guilt I feel, and the percieved hatred of the public against ‘me and my sort’ (although mostly I know it’s not real’, really doesn’t help in aiding any recovery.

I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t do much in the way of luxury, I do have a fairly old PC, and yes the internet, but I’m paying £7 a month, as being on benefits, if anything, has taught me to shop around and be very careful with the money I receive. I don’t have SKY, flat screen TVs or a PS3 and don’t go on holidays.

Sorry for going on, but I guess I could be classed as middle class despite my current situation, and these things affect us all. I really do wish I could stop my parents reading the Daily Mail however, as I really have to suppress replying to all their ‘Why do?’ and ‘How do x get away with?’ with ‘because its all balls! Stop reading that crap!’ grrr…


Reactions: Twitter, blogs
  1. Liberal Conspiracy

    Cameron dismissed his own unemployment plans as ‘barmy’ http://bit.ly/a8ABDt

  2. yorkierosie

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  3. paulstpancras

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  5. David Cameron

    Look chaps these were ‘barmy’, but only until they became my policies! http://bit.ly/a8ABDt /via @libcon

  6. Dhirawit Pinyonattha

    RT @davecameroon: Look chaps these were ‘barmy’, but only until they became my policies! http://bit.ly/a8ABDt /via @libcon

  7. Annastasia

    RT @davecameroon: Look chaps these were ‘barmy’, but only until they became my policies! http://bit.ly/a8ABDt /via @libcon

  8. earwicga

    RT @libcon Cameron dismissed his own unemployment plans as ‘barmy’ http://bit.ly/aNiXUC

  9. Justin McKeating

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  10. BendyGirl

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  14. Tim Ireland

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  15. Dave Edwards

    Cameron adopts unemployment policy that he proclaimed to be 'barmy' http://goo.gl/BmOD (via @TomBlenkinsop)

  16. Dave Edwards

    @TomBlenkinsop Link doesn't work, try this one http://goo.gl/BmOD

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    Erm… RT @libcon Cameron dismissed his own unemployment plans as ‘barmy’ http://bit.ly/a8ABDt

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  19. Val Stevenson

    RT @davecameroon: Look chaps these were ‘barmy’, but only until they became my policies! http://bit.ly/a8ABDt /via @libcon

  20. Nemesis Republic

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  22. Cameron dismissed his own unemployment plans as 'barmy' | Liberal … | Jobless Bloggers

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  24. Frank Cook

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  25. T. De Paoli

    Cameron dismissed his own unemployment plans as 'barmy' | Liberal …: Mr Duncan Smith, the MP for Lord Tebbit's f… http://bit.ly/9eWVTl

  26. sunny hundal

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  27. barry leary

    RT @sunny_hundal: In 2008 Cameron dismissed as "barmy" the very unemployment plans his party is pushing now http://bit.ly/a8ABDt

  28. Anthony D Buckley

    RT @sunny_hundal: In 2008 Cameron dismissed as "barmy" the very unemployment plans his party is pushing now http://bit.ly/a8ABDt

  29. House Of Twits

    RT @sunny_hundal In 2008 Cameron dismissed as "barmy" the very unemployment plans his party is pushing now http://bit.ly/a8ABDt

  30. Tom Bage

    RT @sunny_hundal: In 2008 Cameron dismissed as "barmy" the very unemployment plans his party is pushing now http://bit.ly/a8ABDt

  31. Nadia

    RT @sunny_hundal: In 2008 Cameron dismissed as "barmy" the very unemployment plans his party is pushing now http://bit.ly/a8ABDt

  32. David O'Keefe

    RT @sunny_hundal: In 2008 Cameron dismissed as "barmy" the very unemployment plans his party is pushing now http://bit.ly/a8ABDt

  33. Lucia

    RT @sunny_hundal: In 2008 Cameron dismissed as "barmy" the very unemployment plans his party is pushing now http://bit.ly/a8ABDt

  34. Diane

    RT @sunny_hundal: In 2008 Cameron dismissed as "barmy" the very unemployment plans his party is pushing now http://bit.ly/a8ABDt

  35. Damian Simpson

    RT @libcon Cameron dismissed his own unemployment plans as ‘barmy’ http://bit.ly/aNiXUC





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