Ed Balls, a Labour leadership candidate, has branded a government plan to relocate the unemployed as “profoundly unfair” and more extreme than anything proposed under Margaret Thatcher.
Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, unveiled proposals to make the workforce “more mobile,” enabling them to find jobs outside the areas where they live.
Mr Duncan Smith said he believed millions of people are “trapped in estates where there is no work” as moving to another area meant giving up their right to a home. Under his proposals, the jobless would be able to go to the top of the housing list in another area where there are more employment opportunities.
Mr Balls accused the Coalition of an “‘on yer bike or lose your home’ policy”:
“The Tory party – just as in the 1980s - is telling people who are looking for work in our regions that they must get on their bike and shift their whole family hundreds of miles to more affluent areas.
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“Even Margaret Thatcher stopped short of telling families and pensioners living in social housing in higher employment areas that they would be expected to move out of their homes to free up space to make this policy work.”
“We should be investing in jobs and growth to boost employment in our regions, not cutting it back.”
Mr Duncan Smith’s plans echo the ideas of the former Tory minister Norman Tebbit, who was famously misquoted in 1981 as telling the unemployed to “get on your bike” and look for work. In fact, he had been discussing how his own father had got on his bike and looked for work.
“Often they are trapped in estates where there is no work near 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,” Mr Duncan Smith said in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph.
“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.”
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The coalition is believed to be looking at providing incentives for workers to relocate, rather than compelling them to move.
he coalition Government’s fierce VAT rise has had severe implications for Nick Clegg as a poll today shows almost half of Liberal Democrat supporters are threatening to desert the party.
The Liberal Democrats campaigned against VAT cuts in the general election, but Mr Clegg signed off on the Coalitions Government’s emergency budget last week, which includes a VAT rise from 17.5% to 20%.
The poll suggests that only 48% of those who backed the Liberal Democrats in the last election will back them again.