Summary

Labour market and social security policies changed radically between 1971 and 1999, in ways that were often explicitly designed to influence the size of the unemployed caseload. Small-scale training and work experience schemes introduced in the 1970s were massively expanded in the 1980s, to provide surrogate employment and reduce the claimant count. For a period, some unemployed claimants were financially encouraged to leave the labour market.

Resources devoted to training were then reduced, while new measures to tighten the eligibility conditions for benefit helped to support the emphasis on flexible job search while also reducing expenditure and claimant numbers. In 1996, with the introduction of Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA), benefit receipt was made conditional on signing and following an agreement. This strategy is now complemented by the Labour government's commitment to offer quality training and work experience, obligatory for some groups, through New Deal welfare to work programmes. These policies appear to have reduced claimant unemployment in the context of a growing economy.

A radical shift in the ratio of means-tested to insurance-based support for unemployed claimants occurred as a result of policy changes and lengthening unemployment. This process was also fuelled by policies to increase rents for tenants in social housing, thereby increasing the Housing Benefit (HB) caseload.

Increased means testing focused policy attention on work incentives which, together with evidence of low pay, led to the introduction of in-work benefits for families in order, to adopt the rhetoric of the current government, ‘to make work pay’.