Related Research Articles
George Iain Duncan Smith, often referred to by his initials IDS, is a British politician. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2010 to 2016, he was previously the Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from 2001 to 2003. He was first elected to Parliament at the 1992 general election as the MP for Chingford – which he represented until the constituency's abolition in 1997 – and he has since represented its successor constituency of Chingford and Woodford Green.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is the largest government department in the United Kingdom, and is responsible for welfare and pension policy.
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.
Atos is a French multinational information technology (IT) service and consulting company headquartered in Bezons, France and offices worldwide. It specialises in hi-tech transactional services, unified communications, cloud, big data and cybersecurity services. Atos operates worldwide under the brands Atos, Atos-Syntel, Atos Consulting, Atos Healthcare, Atos Worldgrid, Bull, Canopy, Unify and Worldline.
Mark James Harper is a British Conservative Party politician. Harper was born in Swindon and studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Brasenose College, Oxford. He was a chartered accountant before becoming the Member of Parliament for the Forest of Dean constituency in 2005.
Benefit fraud is a form of welfare fraud as found within the system of government benefits paid to individuals by the welfare state in the United Kingdom.
Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) is a United Kingdom welfare payment for adults younger than the State Pension age who are having difficulty finding work because of their long-term medical condition or a disability. It is a basic income-replacement benefit paid in lieu of wages. It is currently being phased out and replaced with Universal Credit.
Thomas Lawrence Knight, usually credited as Tommy Knight, is an English actor best known for playing Luke Smith in The Sarah Jane Adventures and Doctor Who, Kevin Chalk in Waterloo Road, murder victim Caleb "Cal" Bray in Glue and Brodie in Victoria.
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.
Boycott Workfare is a British campaign group that has opposed "workfare" policies in the United Kingdom. The group's campaigning has been very successful in making companies and charities pull out of "workfare". In January 2014 the group lodged freedom of information requests to investigate the use of workfare by local government. This led to responses from 271 councils, and the results were 62% of them had used unpaid workers during the past two years. This amounted to more than half a million hours of unpaid labour. As of August 2016, more than 50 organisations have ended their involvement in workfare, because of negative publicity.
In the United Kingdom, "workfare" refers to government workfare policies whereby individuals must undertake work in return for their 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.
The Work Programme was a UK government welfare-to-work programme introduced in Great Britain in June 2011. It was the flagship welfare-to-work scheme of the 2010-2015 UK coalition government. Under the Work Programme the task of getting the long-term unemployed into work was outsourced to a range of public sector, private sector and third sector organisations. The scheme replaced a range of schemes which existed under previous New Labour governments including Employment Zones, New Deal, Flexible New Deal and the now abolished Future Jobs Fund scheme which aimed to tackle youth unemployment. Despite being the flagship welfare-to-work scheme of the Conservative-led coalition government, and then the incumbent Conservative government from May 2015, the DWP announced, in November 2015, that it was replacing the Work Programme and Work Choice with a new Work and Health Programme for the longer-term unemployed and those with health conditions. The DWP also announced that it would not be renewing Mandatory Work Activity and Help to Work which included Community Work Placements.
Personal Independence Payment is a welfare benefit in the United Kingdom that is intended to help adults with the extra costs of living with a long-term health condition or a disability.
Universal Jobmatch was a British website for finding job vacancies. The site was developed by Monster.
The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), also known unofficially as the "Nudge Unit", is an organisation that was set up to apply nudge theory to try to improve government policy and services as well as to save the UK government money.
The Work Capability Assessment (WCA) is the test used by the British Government's Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to decide whether welfare claimants are entitled to Employment Support Allowance (ESA), or more recently, the limited capacity for work component of Universal Credit (UC).
Help to Work was a government workfare scheme in the United Kingdom for individuals who had not found work after two years on the Work Programme. Help to Work was the overall name for 'Community Work Placements' and other intensified 'activation' measures, and was launched at the start of 2014, but it was announced in November 2015, that the DWP was "not renewing" it.
Paul Litchfield CBE FRCP FFOM is a British physician who was Chief Medical Officer for BT Group plc from 2001 to 2018. He reviewed the Work Capability Assessment run by Atos for the Department for Work and Pensions in 2013 and 2014 and he is an advisor to the UK government on the relationship between mental ill-health, absence from work and the take up of out-of-work sickness benefits.
Mayank Prakash is a business leader and a techy who is currently the Director General for Digital, Data, Technology and Security of Department for Work and Pensions. Computer Weekly magazine described him as "the most influential person in UK IT" in their 2017 awards.
Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment, used by the Department for Work and Pensions in the United Kingdom, to assess and reassess claimants of Employment and Support Allowance or enhanced rate Universal Credit, has been wide-ranging, from the procedure itself, to the financial cost of using both Atos and Maximus to assess claimants. Other criticisms discuss the level of deaths, suicides and high overturn rates at tribunals that the WCA has caused.
References
- ↑ "Community Work Placements - ESF". Dwp.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 2013-12-22. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
- ↑ "Department for Work and Pensions' settlement at the Spending Review". DWP. 2015-12-25.
- ↑ Shiv Malik (3 November 2014). "DWP orders man to work without pay for company that let him go". The Guardian.
- ↑ Kevin Curley (20 May 2014). "Kevin Curley: Community work placements are offensive - not to mention unworkable". Third Sector.
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