Thread: Brits Told To 'Move Where There Are Jobs'

Unemployed to be told 'move to parts of the country where there are jobs'

By Mail On Sunday Reporter
Last updated at 11:07 AM on 27th June 2010
Comments 469

Secretary Iain Duncan Smith will tell the unemployed to move around the UK to get work

The coalition Government is drawing up controversial plans to relocate the unemployed to areas of the country where there are jobs, it has emerged. Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said he would be bringing forward proposals to make the workforce "more mobile".

The comments, in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, echo the words of then-Tory minister Norman Tebbit in 1981 when he suggested the unemployed should "get on your bike" and look for work.

Mr Duncan Smith, the MP for Lord Tebbit's former parliamentary seat of Chingford, said ministers wanted to encourage jobless people living in council houses to move out of unemployment blackspots to homes in other areas, perhaps hundreds of miles away.

He insisted millions of people were "trapped in estates where there is no work" and could not move because they would lose their accommodation.

The proposed scheme would allow them to go to the top of the housing list in another area rather than giving up their right to a home.

'We have over the years, not us personally but successive governments, created one of the most static workforces in the western world,' Mr Duncan Smith said.

'In Britain now we have workforces that are locked to areas and the result of that is we have over five and a half million people of working age who simply don't do a job.

'Often they are trapped in estates where there is no work near there and - because they have a lifetime tenure of that house - to go to work from east London to west London, or Bristol, or whatever is too much of a risk because if you up sticks and go you will have lost your right to your house.

'The local council is going to tell you that you don't have a right to a house there, the housing association is not going to give you one.

'We have to look at how we get that portability, so that people can be more flexible, can look for work, can take the risk to do it.'

The coalition is believed to be looking at providing incentives for workers to relocate, rather than compelling them to move.

'Sometimes they may be lucky because work comes to those areas, we can reinvigorate it by regional tax reductions, so that's all right where there are old coal mines and things, but you also need to have an element of flexibility. Sometimes you just need to be able to move to the work,' Mr Duncan Smith said.

A major shake-up of housing benefit and increased health checks for disability claimants were announced last week as part of the biggest cuts in public spending for decades.

Ministers will unveil measures in the coming weeks to "make work pay", including changing the threshold at which claims are withdrawn so people who take work do not lose all their benefits.

Mr Duncan Smith said there would also be measures to tackle "under occupation" of large council homes.

'We have tons of elderly people living in houses which they cannot run and we've got queues of desperate people with families who are living in one and two-bedroom houses and flats,' he said.

Councils could be given more money in a hardship allowance to help families relocate, "to smooth this over, to encourage people to move".

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -jobs.html

This is an excellent idea and it obviates a lot of the reason for bring in the illegals or even immigrants from other EU states. The size of Britain is also fairly small and it is easy to visit their hometowns on weekends. The entire country including England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is just the size of Michigan

Yes and no. Moving to where the work is feels like slavery. You are forced to lose your pride of place. Working parents uprooting their children is very hard on them. I love Arizona. I should be able to find a job here. I don't want to move to Michigan for many reasons. It is good to have work but it is also good to have self-determination and is that getting lost?

I did not say that the distance they would have to move is like Phoenix to Michigan. I said the entire country altogether is the size of Michigan. The government can not be expected to force companies to set up business somewhere just so someone can maintain pride of place. The country we live in is not that tyranical yet.

Sorry - I chose the state because of typing quickly and it was last on my mind - not to misconstrue - even though I did. Well, yes, beggars cannot be choosers but of course if the U.S. had not had a huge For Sale sign on everything for decades we could still choose - just as in UK. I could choose a hotel or hospital cleaning job just to stay here if I decided it was worth it - for now I cannot because those jobs are taken by communities of people who exclude outsiders. Whole towns in Mexico come and service whole towns of hotels in the U.S. and citizens need not apply. The local hospital is cleaned by refugees of Iraq only and non-Iraqi need not apply.

I know that kids would rather live with next to nothing just to stay close to friends and family. Many of us at all levels of the workforce do migrate just to be able to have a job, or to accept a promotion, however some of us would prefer not to be far from our families and would willingly accept a menial job if we could still meet living expenses in exchange for being able to stay close to extended family.

However huge and costly it may seem for UK to change priorities in their council housing programme it is equally if not more burdensome in the U.S. for people to try to sell their home to move to the new location of work and unlike in the UK, I suspect there are many citizens who simply cannot make the move due to being unable to sell their home so the UK workforce will be more adaptable and ready to respond to needs of business than the U.S. workforce.

There are many businesses who have set up in border communities expressly for the purpose of encouraging Mexicans to come across the line daily to work for very low wages. I do not think that it is asking our government to become tyrannical to ask them to stop this. I don't think that it ever should have been allowed to begin with. Many citizens would prefer that the price of chicken were higher and that they had the job processing the chicken as opposed to the alternative we are currently experiencing. (Cheap chicken and no earnings to buy it with.) Some people have always had to faced that alternative. For people living in those border communities, those jobs were never available to them and they well knew it. Forcing them to leave the town of their birth because the only jobs there are for illegals is not right either.