Reality behind war on welfare

Mr Osborne did not disappoint with a promise that welfare claimants will have to “work for their dole” by completing menial tasks like litter picking.

This sentiment will chime with those who believe, rightly, that unemployment is not a sustainable career vocation and who contend that there are still insufficient incentives to persuade welfare recipients to seek work, or new opportunities.

Yet, in many respects, it should not come to this. If an individual has been out of work for three years, the point at which Mr Osborne’s new policy will become applicable, that person will, frankly, have been failed by the myriad of schemes that are already in place to reduce Britain’s benefits bill.

And this is the key point. There is a growing body of evidence which suggests that training programmes run by firms like A4e are not providing value for money, despite a record number of people now being in employment after Mr Osborne steadied the 
public finances.

This point was conveniently ignored by the Chancellor in an uncharacteristically low-key speech that ended with Mr Osborne identifying “optimism” as the late Margaret Thatcher’s greatest virtue.

Yet, while the commitment to freeze planned increases in fuel duty can be construed as Mr Osborne’s response to Ed Miliband’s pledge to cap household energy bills, this was a speech that was largely bereft of optimism.

The reason is this. Despite Mr Osborne’s triumphalism of the past month, and also his portrayal of the Opposition as being anti-business, Britain’s recovery is still a fragile one and the Tories are struggling to win over new supporters ahead of the 2015 election.

That is why the Chancellor strayed onto the welfare brief of Iain Duncan Smith; an attack on the jobless is far easier to articulate, never mind implement, than new policies that nurture growth in the unemployment blackspots of the North.

The sooner Mr Osborne recognises that his own job is not complete, the better.

Cancer challenge

IT is now 10 years since the release of Calendar Girls, the Hollywood film depicting the inspiring story of those members of Rylstone Women’s Institute in North Yorkshire who chose to strip for charity in memory of Angela Baker’s husband who had died from non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 1998.

Never could they have imagined that their simple stunt would be portrayed by icons like Dame Helen Mirren and Julie Walters on the silver screen. Nor could they have imagined that their bravado would inspire a generation of fundraisers to reveal all to generate vital funds for research into all forms of cancer.

Yet, in spite of record sums being raised each year – and the Government pledging to extend the Cancer Drugs Fund until 2016 so more patients can receive life-enhancing drugs – there will be despair that this goodwill is being let down by critical gaps in research that could see more than 180,000 women die from breast cancer by 2030.

This figure needs to be put in perspective – it is four and a half times the total capacity of Elland Road, home of Leeds United, or more than 13 times greater than a 13,500 sell-out crowd at the new First Direct Arena in Leeds.

However, while it is welcome that world leaders have pledged to pool resources in order to accelerate research into dementia, it is disturbing that there are still such large gaps when it comes to the treatment of breast cancer – despite the now long-established screening programme being directly responsible for saving tens of thousands of lives. It is why there needs to be a far closer correlation between the work of medical scientists, and the measures being implemented by well-meaning politicians, to ensure that no one’s life is put at risk by the shortcomings that have now been identified.

Third time lucky?

THE Government will view the expression of interest from Eurostar and Keolis, operator of the TransPennine Express franchise, as vindication of its decision to return the East Coast main line to the private sector.

Yet a word of warning is required. Both GNER and National Express tried, and failed, to meet the Treasury’s financial expectations before the troubled line was returned to the public sector in November 2009.

As such, it is paramount that Ministers do not repeat the mistakes of the past by signing up to a bid that promises financial returns that simply cannot be honoured, even with every train operating at full capacity. They need to ensure that the successful bid passes the financial credibility test – while also including sufficient safeguards which protect the interests of passengers.

If such guarantees cannot be provided, then Ministers should not hesitate to maintain the status quo and keep the East Coast line in public control – even though it was a Conservative government that paved the way for rail privatisation two decades ago.