Join jobs ‘boot camp’ or lose benefits, warns minister Matthew Hancock

Last Updated: August 17, 2015By

You can bet most of them will end up on “unpaid work placements” – that’s Workfare to you and me – working for benefits while the company makes a fortune.

Jobless young adults will face losing benefits unless they take part in a “boot camp” to get them ready for the world of work, the chairman of a Government taskforce has said.

Cabinet Office minister Matthew Hancock said the measure was part of the Government’s goal of ending a “welfare culture” in some communities.

The chairman of the cross-Government “Earn or Learn” implementation taskforce said he would take a “no excuses” approach.

Under the plans, targeted at people aged 18-21, w ithin the first three weeks of claiming out-of-work benefit people will take up an Intensive Activity Programme (IAP) to help them move off benefits and into sustainable employment.

The programme – labelled a “boot camp” by officials – will take 71 hours over the first three weeks and will see claimants given help with job applications and interview techniques as well as an “extensive” search for vacancies.

A dedicated “work coach” will work with jobseekers and review what was achieved during the initial three-week course, the Cabinet Office said.

The taskforce, which includes Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith and Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, will implement measures including the requirement for y oung claimants to take a job, apprenticeship, traineeship or unpaid work experience or face losing benefits.

Source: Join jobs ‘boot camp’ or lose benefits, warns minister Matthew Hancock

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22 Comments

  1. Joanna August 17, 2015 at 1:23 pm - Reply

    Yawn!!! Old Idea new name! Talk about them all having a one track mind!!!!!!!!!!!!

    • John Gaines August 19, 2015 at 9:31 am - Reply

      The World Corporate masters have spoken, the pervert Tories obey:

      the cost of child care averages $11,600, or $972 per month. That’s like renting another apartment, or leasing a Maserati, except this payment comes with all the joys of late-night feedings, 10 to 15 different cold infections per year, and the knowledge that there’s no such thing as a cool car with a baby seat in the back. A Porsche Panamera with a baby seat is still a kid taxi, albeit a very fast one.

      While the expense of early child care is high, before this ever starts the kid has to be born.

      Twenty years ago we spent about $1,000 all-in, meaning prenatal care, sonograms, and the delivery itself.

      Today the total package costs around $8,800, and that’s if the parents have health insurance. Without coverage, the cost easily shoots past $25,000.

      And all of this is in addition to daily living.

      The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is roughly $1,000 per month, and obviously much more in high-rent, urban settings.

      In addition, the average student loan payment is $200, cell phone $100 for two, and house utilities $160. A car note runs $350, with insurance adding another $100. Then there’s health insurance, which for a young family runs about $335 per month after the subsidy.

      All in, if they live modestly, the typical young family shells out $2,245 before they eat a thing, pay for gas, or spend any money on entertainment and travel. Adding in the new youngster would kick the basic monthly up to $3,217, not including diapers, formula, pediatric visits, etc.

      Median household income is $52,000. With a 15% effective tax rate, the take-home income is $44,200, or $3,683 per month.

      That leaves our young family with a whopping $466 to use toward food, entertainment, and any emergency costs.

      If the couple is more fortunate and earns $70,000 per year, then with a 15% effective tax rate they bring home $59,500, or $4,958 per month.

      But in a broad sense, the point is clear. A young couple, even a young professional couple earning more than 65% of all U.S. households, will have a difficult time making ends meet when they start a family. That appears to be the overarching reason why so many young couples have put off having children.

      As we’ve noted many times, this might be good for the couple’s finances, but it slows down the economy.

      The Daunting Cost of Being Young

      By Rodney Johnson, Senior Editor, Economy & Markets

      Bring on the Corbyn Revolution Dragon….it will change the World.

      • Mike Sivier August 19, 2015 at 9:05 pm - Reply

        John, these are US figures, judging from the costs in dollars.

  2. Adrian Wait August 17, 2015 at 2:24 pm - Reply

    This is why it is a perverse evil to have a regime that thrives on divide and rule’ a regime that labels, categorises and dismiss the future potential of the nation, the Young to the criminalisation of ‘Boot Camps’ – Why what have they done wrong besides being young? Believe in them, encourage them, don’t label and pursue them! Let them be as free as birds for a while they will come to maturity, and be richer for it – Don’t crush dreamers, and explorers let them soar…. Encouragement – positive reinforcement not draconian ‘Boot Camps’.

  3. Ian August 17, 2015 at 2:27 pm - Reply

    No doubt this work coach will work for private company which is owned by company donating to the Tories.

  4. Ian Jd Andrews August 17, 2015 at 2:57 pm - Reply

    including the requirement for young claimants to take a job, apprenticeship, traineeship or unpaid work experience or face losing benefits…. there it is, as there are NO appreticeships or traineeships around anymore this is just workfare by a different name

    • hugosmum70 August 18, 2015 at 3:25 pm - Reply

      actually there are some “apprenticeships “around but not as we knew them. my 21yr old granddaughter starts one in September doing a beauty and hair-styling course. she has been told it’s an apprenticeship anyway. first part takes 6 months. then 2nd another 6 and there’s a 3rd part but she doesn’t know much about that yet.

  5. Ian August 17, 2015 at 3:04 pm - Reply

    Disregarding the obvious disingenuous nastiness of this, it doesn’t even make sense politically. This will drive young people to vote and those votes won’t go to the party that needlessly and baselessly harasses them.

    Then there’s the families of these kids; how will they react when their offspring cannot afford to move out and have no work to ay their at home?

    • Joanna August 17, 2015 at 6:03 pm - Reply

      Just like a lot of people thought they wouldn’t get in, in May but they did!

      Anyway there will be a lot of older people agreeing with them.

      Workfare has always existed except when it was YTS and employment training I got an extra £20 a week to pay for lunches and bus fares, even then I only had to pay the first £4, after that I could claim the rest back.

      But one big difference is that the job centre staff were pleasant and helpful, only sometimes were they rude, I complained and got an apology!

      Now they don’t care if they destroy lives, and that is really sad because it causes lots of hopelessness!!!

  6. paulrutherford8 August 17, 2015 at 3:23 pm - Reply

    I wonder what will happen to the young people in places like here in Pembrokeshire? If there’s no jobs, no apprenticeships, no [ahem], ‘voluntary’ placements, no options, etc…

    Areas like we live in here have relatively small populations, fewer businesses, and by virtue of that, fewer jobs available in any case. Quite a significant proportion of all jobs are seasonal in any case, catering mainly to the tourist trade.

    Another back of a fag packet policy I think :(

    • hayfords August 18, 2015 at 1:00 pm - Reply

      I used to own and run a software company in the City a few years ago (mainly retired now). We were asked by the Job centre to take interns. We had no need for additional staff as any vacancies would be already filled. We did take a few over a period of a couple of years. The basis was that we would give them some training, but there would be no pay. The process was a net loss for us even so as we would have to spend time with them and there was no useful work generated.

      It is easy to see the interns/trainees as free employees. This is not usually the case as their stay is often too short to be productive. Certainly, a lot of companies would not take them if they had to pay them. We took them as it seemed a reasonable thing to do in terms of society.

      One of the things that struck me when we took interns was that most of them lacked the work discipline. At least being an intern, even if unpaid, gives experience of what it is like to have a job and how you have to behave.

      • Mike Sivier August 19, 2015 at 9:11 pm - Reply

        I’m sure you would be the first to agree that the kind of work done by your company was specialised; look at the list of firms who were ‘outed’ as taking unemployed people on any of the various schemes that we put under the umbrella title of ‘workfare’, and you’ll see that most, if not all, of them were capable of taking unskilled workers, giving them simple tasks, and profiting from their work.

  7. Maria August 17, 2015 at 9:59 pm - Reply

    wait a minute they aren’t going to pay housing anyway, or council tax to that age group, that £50 a week, you’ll get more than that begging in the street. What’s the point of doing their useless courses? because I’ve done them over and over and over again, until it finally drove me mad, if you want to work don’t sign on. If you are like me, where no one can see past your disability, no one wants to give you the time of day, you have had it, your life is over now, not very much hope for the future, no matter how hard you try. How can the vulnerable compete in such a self-centred world?

  8. Thomas August 17, 2015 at 11:26 pm - Reply

    This could do anything from pushing people to steal/sell drugs/riot to making them protest to making the non-voters start voting come 2020 and not for the Conservatives. Not very intelligent of the Tories.

  9. Gary Burley August 18, 2015 at 8:36 am - Reply

    we all know this will have no effect on the next vote because of the way Cameron’s pr team have rigged it, deprived cities produce very little parliamentary seats. Cameron relies on little villages, hamlets and pockets of Tory voters who are comfortably insulated from the outside world and fed a load of bullsh*t from the papers, there won’t be any boot-camps there or jobcentres so they won’t care a bit, lets just say that 20% or less voted for the evil little t*rd, then the other 4% came from the 200,000 votes purloined by his donor friend G4S, and tactically used to steal Boroughs away from other candidates

    • Mike Sivier August 19, 2015 at 9:17 pm - Reply

      Why do you say deprived cities produce very little Parliamentary seats? The number of electors per seat is (we are told) carefully balanced to ensure that, no matter where you are, you have as much chance of influencing an election as anybody else. Cities produce more seats than rural areas.

  10. ghost whistler August 18, 2015 at 10:10 am - Reply

    More ridiculousness. Though if nothing else this is actually a tacit admission that everything the Tories have tried, all born of their hateful ideology, since 2010 has failed. Wasn’t the work programme meant to be intensive? Wasn’t the post WP service meant to be intensive? Wasn’t every aspect of signing on meant to be intensive? Wasn’t workfare meant to be intensive? Isn’t the claimant commitment and it’s 35 hour/week jobsearch (I defy anyone to use their website for 35 hours without going mad) meant to be intensive?

    This would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic and so damaging. There won’t be any intensive support; claimants will just be sanctioned at the drop of a hat as they are now. Where are these mentors going to come from; the same private sector cowboys that have run things so far? Whatever happened to Emma Harrison eh (I bet she turns up again)? Will it be the already beleaguered JC+ staff – including those jobsworths that push sanctions on to claimants without a care?

    This is just intended to play to the gallery: look it’s the Tories being tough on scroungers. Except they’ve already tried being tough. They’ve already tried asserting there’s a culture of dependency to crack…but the evidence doesn’t support the existence of such a culture. Even if there was such, threatening people with and putting people through a regime of sanctions achieves nothing. It won’t create jobs.

    There will never be full employment. There will always be more out of work, especially among the young, than in work. All this does is punish people for living in the world the Tories have created.

    • Mike Sivier August 19, 2015 at 9:14 pm - Reply

      I wouldn’t say there will always be more out of work than in work! However, you are right that there will not be full employment under current conditions because Tories need an unhappy unemployed class bubbling under those who do the actual work, in order to keep wages low.

  11. john kettle August 18, 2015 at 2:23 pm - Reply

    Has this been costed as effective? It seems to me that this is more of a vindictive exercise to disqualify this age group from receiving benefits and remove them from the unemployment statistics.

  12. mrmarcpc August 18, 2015 at 2:50 pm - Reply

    Same old dirty, big stick tactics from the right wing fascist luvvies, don’t they ever come up with something original, all this making you run around looking for work when there isn’t any, the economy under them isn’t working and recent dole figures prove that, they will go up again, though the tories will try to supress it like they usually do, pathetic, if anyone needs to be giving the big stick treatment is their lazy, posh, privileged arses!

  13. Jim Round August 18, 2015 at 7:07 pm - Reply

    Interesting story on BBC News website about fabricating sanctions stories.
    Can’t link to it as on my mobile but it is easy to find on the website.

  14. Daniel Margrain August 19, 2015 at 1:48 am - Reply

    The term “boot camp” is inappropriate but is nevertheless aimed at your typical Mail reading middle Englander voting Tory. The establishment have to be perceived as coming down hard on “benefit scroungers” for fear of losing these people’s votes. That’s the state of British politics in 2015.The poor only ever get the “stick” as opposed to the “carrot”. I coincidentally wrote about this topic in my latest blog piece. If you’ve time Mike, take a look. Cheers.

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