Inside Welfare Reform
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 October 2014
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Economist Jonathan Portes assesses how well the government has implemented its controversial welfare reforms. The government describes the programme as "the most ambitious, fundamental and radical changes to the welfare system since it began".
When the Coalition came to power in 2010, welfare - not including pensions - was costing the country nearly £100 billion a year. Iain Duncan Smith, the secretary of state for work and pensions, was given the task of making work pay and - in so doing - taking millions of people off benefit and saving the country billions.
Influential figures from parliament, the civil service and one of Iain Duncan Smith's closest advisers offer revealing accounts of what's been happening during those past 4 years.
Economist Jonathan Portes asks whether these changes are a vital strategy to stem a welfare system spiralling out of control or - as some argue - nothing short of a fiasco, which has caused genuine hardship?
Producer: Adele Armstrong.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC |
| 0:35.4 | Sounds. |
| 0:36.4 | Thanks for listening to analysis. |
| 0:38.4 | This week we've got a big and important story and I'll admit a complicated one. |
| 0:43.0 | But I think we have the right person to tell it. |
| 0:46.0 | Over to the economist Jonathan Porter's. |
| 0:48.0 | Almost four years ago, the Prime Minister set out the government's plans for welfare reform. |
| 0:57.0 | Today we launch our welfare reform bill. |
| 1:00.0 | It brings about the most ambitious, fundamental and radical changes to the welfare system since it began. |
| 1:07.0 | There was no doubting the scale of the government's ambition. |
| 1:10.0 | At the heart of this bill is a simple idea. |
| 1:13.0 | We're finally going to make work pay, especially for some of the poorest people in our society. |
| 1:20.0 | It was, David Cameron said, about improving lives, but also, of course, saving money. |
| 1:26.3 | We're going to do something that no government has done before, and that is to get to grips with |
| 1:30.6 | the cost of welfare. The end product is a bill that is |
| 1:34.4 | undeniably tough that is certainly radical but above all I would argue that it is |
| 1:39.9 | really fair. Welfare spending, not including pensions, was nearly a hundred billion pounds a year. |
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