Employment First Activating the British Welfare State

1 Finn has been responsible for the policy analysis and country-specific research. Schulte contributed sections assessing British activation policies from a legal perspective. 

This chapter considers the new combinations of job search assistance, obligations and programmes and make work pay reforms, introduced in Great Britain (GB) since 19972 It assesses evidence on the impacts of the strategy and the challenges faced as activation requirements are extended to workless lone parents and people with health problems and disabilities. 

The British case merits attention for several reasons. Firstly, New Labour has sought explicitly to synthesise what works from both neo-liberal and social democratic welfare traditions with some analysts discerning the emergence of an Anglo-social welfare model, incorporating and reconciling economic performance and flexibility with equality and social justice (Dixon and Pearce 2005). 

Secondly, the persistent high levels of unemployment that characterised Britain in the 1980s and early 1990s have been replaced by low levels of unemployment and high levels of labour force participation. Credit for the success of the British strategy has been attributed to labour market flexibility and adept macro economic management. This chapter more narrowly considers the particular contribution made by activation and redistribution through the tax and benefit system. 

2 The legal foundation and governance of the British welfare state 

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Employment First Activating the British Welfare State... 

However, after more than a decade of experience with work-first and workfare approaches, there is also evidence that a work first policy runs the risk of low job retention. The high share of repeaters in the United Kingdom (see the chapter Employment First" Activating the British Welfare State by Daniel Finn and Bemd Schulte) points at a rather low sustainability of workfare strategies. Hence, there may be a low-pay/low-skill trap that cannot be overcome by current work first practices but leads to repeated spells of full or partial benefit dependency. This fact points at potential limits of activation when it comes to the objective of stable employment for highly vulnerable groups. 

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