Here are some excerpts from the Guardian article with my comments:

As leader, the former Scots Guards officer was introduced to searing levels of poverty, and the cycle that is often impossible to escape, when he visited the Easterhouse estate on the eastern outskirts of Glasgow. His experience prompted Duncan Smith to establish the Centre for Social Justice, ...

It is always interesting to hear of the 'road to Damascus' moments that lead people to develop or change their ideas.

"The purpose of my life here is to improve the quality of life of the worst off in society." he says. "If somebody tells me I have to do something different then I won't be here any longer. Tattooed across my heart is that I didn't come here in any shape or form simply as a cheeseparer. What I have come to do is look root and branch at how we deliver welfare which is aimed at groups at the bottom end of society who need help and support, either because they can't work or because they can but they are unable to get back to work, or because they are disabled."

This sounds like a warning to Cameron that if he is not given the upfront money he needs to do the changes he wants, he will resign. He knows that it would be extremely damaging for Cameron to have a senior minister resign so early in his premiership. But he gives the warning because he passionately believes in what he is doing and does not want to spend his time at the job doing something else..'cheeseparing'.

Duncan Smith believes that two of his recent predecessors as work and pensions secretary – the Blairites James Purnell and John Hutton – embarked on the right journey, but found themselves thwarted by Gordon Brown. This was to shake up the bias in the benefits system, which "parks" people capable of work on incapacity benefit; to impose tough sanctions on claimants for other benefits, such as the jobseeker's allowance, who do not accept offers of work; and to take a hard-hearted approach to welfare by ending programmes which fail to place the unemployed back in work. This will involve a greater involvement for voluntary groups and private companies that will be paid by results.

It is interesting that he should give credit to these former Labour ministers and that he blames Gordon Brown for thwarting them. This all rings true. While not a fan of the Labour party in general, I regret that Purnell has left frontline Labour politics.

A former acolyte of Margaret Thatcher, Duncan Smith is honest about how her government attempted to massage down the unemployment numbers by placing reasonably healthy people on incapacity benefit. "Over the years IB was, to some degree, used as a way of slightly getting out of the unemployment figures and not being overly honest. Conservatives and Labour have signed up to that. Being bold about trying to change it is also about saying we may be putting more people on the unemployment list shortly because that is where they should be rather than sitting on IB. But [we then] work with them intensively to get them back into work."

I have still to see any good evidence that the Thatcher administration ever deliberately used Incapacity Benefit for this purpose. It still seems to me it was a politically useful but not a calculated result. Be that as it may, Duncan Smith is absolutely right that tightening up Incapacity Benefit could easily have the effect of increasing the numbers who are shifted onto Jobseekers' Allowance. So the numbers who appear to be unemployed could easily go up, though in fact the numbers actually unemployed do not. I once suggested to a junior minister years ago - could it have been William Hague? - that the unemployed and the Incapacity Benefit claimants should be put together in one official figure as this would give a more accurate impression of changes in unemployment. Of course many people who are on incapacity benefit are genuinely incapable of work. But that number does not change much. So the change in the figure is an indicator of changes in those who are not incapable - in other words of unemployment.

The new work and pensions secretary echoes this language as he says: "Lots of different hard-headed politicians have come into this job saying they're going to do something different and walked out with the bills of social failure still rising. I'm determined that we take this once- in-a-generation chance to tie two parties together, and possibly elements of the third, to get the job done."

This could indeed be a great opportunity. It is the first time I can remember of a man becoming the secretary of state who has spent a number of years beforehand getting to understand how welfare can cause damage and thinking how to improve matters. It is interesting that he thinks he can get the Liberal Democrats on board. If he can, that would greatly increase the chances of the reforms going through.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Reform • Welfare benefits

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