Sir George Iain Duncan Smith, often referred to by his initials IDS, is a British politician who served as Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from 2001 to 2003. He was later Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2010 to 2016. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Chingford and Woodford Green, formerly Chingford, since 1992.
The Solidarity Federation, also known by the abbreviation SolFed, is a federation of class struggle anarchists active in Britain. The organisation advocates a strategy of anarcho-syndicalism as a method of abolishing capitalism and the state, and describes itself as a "revolutionary union". In 1994 it adopted its current name, having previously been the Direct Action Movement since 1979, and before that the Syndicalist Workers' Federation since 1950.
The New Deal was a workfare programme introduced in the United Kingdom by the first New Labour government in 1998, initially funded by a one-off £5 billion windfall tax on privatised utility companies. The stated purpose was to reduce unemployment by providing training, subsidised employment and voluntary work to the unemployed. Spending on the New Deal was £1.3 billion in 2001.
Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) is an unemployment benefit paid by the Government of the United Kingdom to people who are unemployed and actively seeking work. It is part of the social security benefits system and is intended to cover living expenses while the claimant is out of work.
The workforce or labour force is the labour pool either in employment or unemployed. It is generally used to describe those working for a single company or industry, but can also apply to a geographic region like a city, state, or country. Within a company, its value can be labelled as its "Workforce in Place". The workforce of a country includes both the employed and the unemployed. The labour force participation rate, LFPR, is the ratio between the labour force and the overall size of their cohort. The term generally excludes the employers or management, and can imply those involved in manual labour. It may also mean all those who are available for work.
Jobcentre Plus is part of the Department for Work and Pensions in the United Kingdom.
DEBRA is the name of an international medical research charity dedicated to the curing of epidermolysis bullosa, with national groups in over 40 countries and growing.
Workfare is an alternative, and controversial, way of providing money to otherwise unemployed or underemployed people, who are applying for social benefits. The term was first introduced by civil rights leader James Charles Evers in 1968; however, it was popularized by Richard Nixon in a televised speech August 1969. An early model of workfare had been pioneered in 1961 by Joseph Mitchell in Newburgh, New York.
Sue Ryder is a British palliative, neurological and bereavement support charity based in the United Kingdom. Formed as The Sue Ryder Foundation in 1953 by World War II Special Operations Executive volunteer Sue Ryder, the organisation provides care and support for people living with terminal illnesses and neurological conditions, as well as individuals who are coping with a bereavement. The charity was renamed Sue Ryder Care in 1996, before adopting its current name in 2011.
Incapacity Benefit was a British social security benefit that was paid to people facing extra barriers to work because of their long-term illness or their disability. It replaced Invalidity Benefit in 1995. The government began to phase out Incapacity Benefit in 2008 by making it unavailable to new claimants, and later moved almost all the remaining long-term recipients onto Employment and Support Allowance.
Youth unemployment in the United Kingdom is the level of unemployment among young people, typically defined as those aged 18–25. A related concept is graduate unemployment which is the level of unemployment among university graduates. Statistics for June 2010 show that there are 926,000 young people under the age of 25 who are unemployed which equates to an unemployment rate of 19.6% among young people. This is the highest youth unemployment rate in 17 years. In November 2011 youth unemployment hit 1.02 million, but had fallen to 767,000 by August 2014. The high levels of youth unemployment in the United Kingdom have led some politicians and media commentators to talk of a "lost generation".
Universal Credit is a United Kingdom social security payment. It is replacing and combining six benefits for working-age people who have a low household income: income-based Employment and Support Allowance, income-based Jobseeker's Allowance, and Income Support; Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit; and Housing Benefit. Contribution-based Jobseeker's Allowance and contribution-based Employment and Support Allowance have been replaced with "new style" versions, and are not affected by Universal Credit.
Unemployment in the United Kingdom is measured by the Office for National Statistics and in the three months to May 2017 the headline unemployment rate stood at 4.5%, or 1.49 million people. This is a reduction in unemployed people of 152,000 from a year earlier, and is the lowest jobless rate since 1975. The ONS said the employment rate, or percentage of people in work for those aged between 16 and 64, was 74.9% for the three months to May. This is the highest employment rate since comparable records began in 1971. There were 32.01 million people in work, 324,000 more than a year earlier.
R v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2013] UKSC 68 is a United Kingdom constitutional law and labour law case that found the conduct of the Department for Work and Pensions "workfare" policy was unlawful. Caitlin Reilly, an unemployed geology graduate, and Jamieson Wilson, an unemployed driver, challenged the Jobcentre policy of making the unemployed work for private companies to get unemployment income. The outcome of the case affects over 3,000 claimants and entails around £130m unpaid benefits.
The Community Action Programme (CAP) also known as Support for the very long-term unemployed is a workfare programme in the United Kingdom whereby long-term unemployed people who have been unemployed for over three years must work for their benefits for six months or have them removed. It was piloted in six areas and then expanded in autumn 2012.
Mandatory Work Activity (MWA) was a workfare programme in the United Kingdom whereby individuals had to work for their benefits or risk being 'sanctioned' and losing them. MWA started in May 2011, but in November 2015 the DWP confirmed it was "not renewing" it. An academic analysis by the Department of Work and Pensions cast doubt on the effectiveness of MWA, and despite finding "little evidence" that workfare improved claimants gaining paid employment, the DWP ignored the findings of the study, and in June 2012, the scheme received a £5m expansion. A similar but little-known scheme 'Jobseeker Mandatory Activity' (JMA) was piloted by New Labour in 2006, but did not last beyond 2008. JMA targeted those claimants 25 and over, who had been unemployed for 6 months or more and made claimants liable to 'sanction' for non-compliance.
Workfare in the United Kingdom is a system of welfare regulations put into effect by UK governments at various times. Individuals subject to workfare must undertake work in return for their welfare benefit payments or risk losing them. Workfare policies are politically controversial. Supporters claim that such policies help people move off welfare and into employment whereas critics argue that they are analogous to slavery or indentured servitude and counterproductive in decreasing unemployment.
Million Jobs is a campaign group in the United Kingdom that aims to tackle youth unemployment. The group's name comes from the statistic that at the height of the post-2008 global recession over 1,000,000 people under the age of 25 were unemployed in the United Kingdom. The campaign is led by Lottie Dexter a former Comms Officer at the Centre for Social Justice.
The Day One Support for Young People Trailblazer was a compulsory workfare scheme for young unemployed 18- to 24-year-olds, that was trialled in North and South London Jobcentre Plus districts, between 26 November 2012 and 26 July 2013. The workfare scheme whereby unemployed people must work in return for state unemployment benefits was introduced during a time of particularly high youth unemployed in the United Kingdom. As a mandatory scheme, claimants were sanctioned if they failed to meet the requirements of the scheme. The scheme differed from other workfare schemes which are generally aimed at the long term unemployed as claimants were forced onto the scheme immediately or soon after making a claim for Jobseeker's Allowance if they "had not previously completed six months of paid employment since leaving full time education". Claimants were mandated to complete 30 hours of work for 13 weeks and also had to continue to "sign on" during that period.
