THE BRITISH Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, has promised a radical reform of the welfare system, insisting that the "forgotten class" in Britain will no longer be ignored.
In his first major policy speech since Labour's election victory last month, Mr Blair told an audience of young people on one of Europe's largest housing estates in south London that his plans for a "concrete" reform of the welfare system would see 250,000 people return to work. The scheme will be financed by a one off windfall tax on privatised utilities.
Following the announcement of the date of the first Labour budget, set for July 2nd, Mr Blair said it would be a budget of hope. The aim would be to reshape welfare to reward "hard work" and take 250,000 people off the unemployment register.
He admitted the "welfare to work" programme, which would cost £3 billion, was a "daunting" task, but the challenge was to "reconnect that workless class, to bring job skills, opportunities and ambition to all those who have been left behind by the Conservative years".
However, Mr Blair made it clear that any young people who did not take up the offer of work under the four employment schemes would face losing their welfare benefits. "There will be, and should be, no fifth option of an inactive life on benefit," he declared.
Explaining the "daunting" task ahead for the British government, Mr Blair insisted that the reforms were necessary because five million people of working age were not in employment and one million had not worked since leaving school. Mr Blair also criticised the Tories' social security spending, which he said had doubled, from 1979 until they left office, to almost £100 billion.
Continuing his assault on the Tories he said that under their administration the public had found it "morally unacceptable" that so many people had been left without a stake in society. Mr Blair insisted they had been ignored by the Tories and, warming to the Labour theme of the "stakeholder society", he denounced the Tories for creating a "divided" Britain.
"For a country famous for its sense of fair play, it was a source of national shame that visitors should see beggars on the streets and that Britain should have shot up the league tables for inequality."
While Mr Blair's speech may have been somewhat short on detail, the task of putting flesh on the bones of the policy was given to the Social Security Secretary Ms Harriet Harman, in her first Commons question session as minister. Ms Harman rejected criticism that Labour's welfare reforms would mean that single parents who did not work would be paid less than married couples in the same circumstances.
The British government knew she said, "that the best form of welfare for people of working age is work. We know lone mothers want to work." Ms Harman said the Tories' approach to welfare had been "to criticise lone mothers, to say that they were all young girls who had got pregnant in order to jump the housing queue".
Meanwhile, the Tory leadership contender, Mr Kenneth Clarke, is to issue more than 1,000 fellow MPs and MEPs with a video outlining his case for the leadership of the party. Mr Clarke will tell his potential supporters that he can win back "middle England".
The former chancellor of the exchequer treads a careful line on the issue of an EU single currency in the video. He says Britain should contemplate joining a single currency only "if it's clear that conditions would benefit us if we went in, and we would lose investment and advantages if we stayed out".