The Government’s recent ‘Get Britain Working’ white paper was received without much enthusiasm. While it rightly highlighted the need to reduce the numbers of working-age Brits who are economically inactive, especially those on benefits, its proposals seem underwhelming.
The difficult part – restructuring the system to turn back the rising numbers on long-term benefits – has not been tackled, with vague promises of a consultation to be launched in the spring. On past form, this suggests there will be no concrete reform plans much before 2026, with legislation inevitably taking longer. Labour’s ambitious target of an 80% employment rate – considerably higher than in those distant days before Covid – seems to be receding.
The white paper’s proposals – including revamping of job centres, a ‘guarantee’ of education, training or work placement opportunities for young people, recruitment of 8,500 advisers to tackle those off work with mental health issues, and various ‘trailblazer’ local schemes to boost readiness for work, involving the Premier League and other glamorous employers – are not objectionable in themselves. They’ll quite possibly do some good.
But much of the Government’s waffle, and the opposition’s easy criticisms, seems to assume a dichotomy between the ‘deserving’ inactive (those who are genuinely unable to work because of serious disabilities) and the ‘skivers’. What is needed is a more rigorous method of distinguishing between the two, and the removal of the option of a life on benefits for those capable of work.
The distinction in people’s heads is little different from those of our 16th-century ancestors, who contrasted the ‘impotent poor’, deserving of parish relief, with ‘sturdy beggars’ for whom the treadmill was recommended.
But while there is something in this, 21st-century Britain is a complex place, and if policy is to make a real difference, it needs to be targeted where particular concentrations of workless people exist, and consider why they are in this position. The white paper seems to ignore or gloss over some important aspects of the current high levels of economic inactivity, perhaps because they are too sensitive and raise difficult cultural issues. Here are two.
The first concerns ethnicity. Note that this is not about migration as such. The worryingly high levels of small-boat migrants are a real concern, but these individuals are unrepresentative of the wider migrant population, which displays higher levels of employment than the native population.
The problem I’m pointing to is rather within some settled communities. In the 2021 census (the most recent reliable data we possess), among 16-64 year-old men, 28% of Bangladeshi, 27% of Pakistani, 29% of African and 26% of Caribbean heritage were economically inactive; this contrasts with 20% of white British men and just 18% of men of Indian heritage.
The differences for women are even more marked, quite startlingly so in some cases. Women tend anyway to have higher inactivity rates than men, quite reasonably. They are more likely to be in higher education and they withdraw from the workforce for childbirth. They are also more likely than men to take on caring roles and have tended to retire earlier, frequently because their partners are older than they are and they want to share a period of healthy retirement. So it’s not surprising that 27% of white British and 29% of Indian heritage women were economically inactive in the census.
But the inactivity rates for Bangladeshi (57%) and Pakistani (55%) heritage women were far higher. Interestingly, something which has been observed previously, Caribbean women had effectively the same inactivity rate as white British women, and a scarcely higher rate than Caribbean men.
These subtleties suggest that, though lack of opportunities and racism may have some part in ethnic differences in economic participation, cultural factors also play a significant role. And thus any serious attempt to reduce inactivity – and consequent dependence on benefits – should target particular communities in an honest and forthright manner. It’s not a question of blame, rather one of ensuring that initiatives to increase employment opportunities are targeted to those groups where inactivity is greatest. Or is this just too difficult in today’s hypersensitive Britain?
Another sensitive area is drug abuse, which is almost certainly implicated in the rising numbers – especially among young people – reporting mental health problems as a reason for inability to work.
Towns and cities reporting large numbers unfit to work through mental problems are also places reporting large numbers of drug abusers. In places such as Blackpool, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough and Liverpool, between 15 and 25 per thousand individuals report using crack cocaine or opiates. Habitual use of narcotics such as these renders conventional employment impossible to sustain.
Merseyside more widely (Wirral, Sefton, Knowsley) is a hotbed of drug abuse, and it is surely not a coincidence that around 9% of its working-age population is long-term sick.
Nor is it just the addicts who appear as inactive in official data. Large numbers of young people who may not themselves be heavy users are involved as dealers and suppliers, and few of them combine this easy money lifestyle with a career in the legitimate economy. In 2020-21, Merseyside police reported 9.2 drug offences per thousand population, a rate which was easily the highest in England and Wales and over two and a half times the national average.
It may be, as some would claim, that the drugs culture in Merseyside and other areas such as Glasgow, the South West and large parts of London, is itself a long-term consequence of industrial decline, with people turning to drugs out of hopelessness. As with ethnicity, arguing over blame is pointless.
But it is clear that seriously reducing inactivity and the associated benefits explosion requires a bit more than offers of low-level apprenticeships, refreshing job centre websites, making links with the Royal Shakespeare Company and similar reform-lite measures. It needs to start with looking at who the inactive are. Just as were their predecessors, the current Government seems to be rather too coy about some of the real issues surrounding our inactivity problems.
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