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Iain Duncan Smith courted controversy this weekend by suggesting that jobseekers should move to areas with higher employment rates - even if it means travelling hundreds of miles. The reason, he told Sky News, was that "under the last government, we have created almost ghettos of poverty where people are static, unable to get work because there isn't any work there."
The plans tie in with the slated shake-up of housing benefits and incentives are expected to include changes to benefit thresholds to negate the 'gamble' effect of moving for work. Plans are also in place to move single people living in larger social housing to make room for families. However, critics have been quick to point out the similarities between Duncan Smith's new plan and Norman Tebbit's 1980s call for jobseekers to "get on their bikes" and look for work, suggesting that the UK faces a return to Thatcherite politics. Ed Miliband, former Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said:
What he is saying to whole parts of the country is: 'We have no hope as a government of getting work into your area so you are going to have to move out of your communities.' That is frankly disgraceful.
However, Chancellor George Osborne defended Ducan Smith's proposal. He said "we want to help people in social housing be able to move," and continued, "we want to give people freedom of choice and we want to give that freedom of choice to people in social housing." In the long run, though, it seems that such a plan may serve to actually limit options. By abandoning areas of low employment there is a real risk of creating ghost towns with a significantly diminished chance of regenerating in future. Over time, this reduces the number of areas in which jobseekers stand a chance of finding employment - thus perpetuating the problem the government is setting out to solve.
Better, then, and certainly more condusive to facilitating real freedom of choice, would be an effort to encourage new businesses into areas of low employment. Incentivising such an initiative may prove more costly at the outset, but it is surely a worthwhile investment to ensure that we don't simply allow swathes of the country to fall into neglect.
What has been proposed is an administrative tool for making the housing system more flexible. Any tool can be used to good purpose or bad. What seems to have been overlooked in the debate is the supportive nature of family, friends and the communities which social housing is supposed to protect in areas of housing shortage. The financial value of housing has also grown disproportionately to appreciation of functional need. Knowledge of an area, its biological and material heritage, and the people who live there, is surely of value to a knowledge economy? If people who have no knowledge of this kind are worth more money, we must ask the question "why?" in the nation's interest. It makes no sense to treat people (after nurturing in families or care and decades of expensive compulsory and publicly broadcast education which must surely make everyone of economic value?) as though they are inanimate, disconnected machine parts which are either utilized or written off. Housing Associations are not best used as a means of manipulating the unemployment statistics through mobilizing the unemployed according to market forces. However, neither are they intended to be prisons, holding people captive in places where they are not best placed. If it helps people return to their families, friends and communities, enabling them to make contributions to improving the economy in the places that they know best, have been taught about and care about, then greater flexibility must surely be a good thing. Whether the unemployed then set up new businesses, find a job, or still remain unemployed, they will be in a positiotn to contribute in hidden, unmeasured ways such as reminding people that they are human, known, loved and belong. There are other special institutions for supporting people who wish to give up their families, friends and possessions in order to take on new identities in the service of strangers - perhaps more flexibility needs to be introduced to these so that suitable unemployed people may join these too.
I wholeheartedly agree. I also think you highlight another unspoken issue, which is the welfare of the individual. At a time when the UK economy is under considerable pressure, a great deal of importance is placed on what we can get out of the population in terms of economic value. You mention the contributions people can make to their local economy, but what must not be forgotten in the midst of this is the fact that this population is made up of thinking, feeling individuals and not "inanimate, disconnected machine parts" as you rightly say. It shouldn't be taboo to acknowledge that they need to take something back from their environment, too. People invariably have more ties to a location than simply work or, indeed, the whim of their local Housing Association. The focus of these proposals seems to be on families - how many families will happily relocate their children mid-schooling; breaking up routines, friendships and educational development? It's a huge ask and, while debate seems to be focusing on the ethics of moving jobseekers, the wider implications haven't yet been touched upon. This plan is dangerous for the future of some UK regions, yes, but it's also potentially damaging to personal welfare and happiness and we shouldn't be afraid to raise this.
better still pay indigenous people with the qualifications to travel into the area with a car loan, season travel ticket and accomodation in the job area. I am fed up of saying I will relocate for the right job, when employers still insist on recruiting locals (esp in the London area, where most are migrants, illegally favoured for work in public sector and LA jobs by employers and agents; allowing standards to slip as they are from impoverished, standardless and corrupt countries/cultures themselves).
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