In the UK there is often a perception that people of working age who are unemployed, and who claim welfare benefits, are lazy scroungers who have no interest in working and are happy to lounge about on benefits.

Iain Duncan Smith, the government minister responsible for welfare, has in a number of recent speeches and debates made reference to "families who haven't worked for three generations" to support his idea that some people are too comfortable living on benefits, and that severe cuts to welfare benefits are therefore justified because it will motivate those people to seek employment.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation set out to establish whether there was any basis in fact to the Minister's claims, since he had offered no actual evidence himself. They sent researchers into particularly deprived communities in the UK, where a higher than average proportion of the working-age population are unemployed and in receipt of welfare benefits. The researchers tried very hard to find families whose members hadn't had paid work for three generations, as Mr. Duncan Smith had claimed.

They couldn't find a single one.

What they found was that, in general, unemployed, deprived people who claim welfare benefits retain a strong work ethic and would rather work for a living than claim benefits, if only they were able to do so. They are not scroungers. They are not lazy. We need to move away from a culture where people who are out of work and struggling to support their families are branded as lazy scroungers, because as this report shows, that simply isn't the case.

http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/cultures-of-worklessness

Discuss.

Jamie I don't think people like Iain Duncan Smith and this current Tory govt represent the large majority of the British public. They are self-serving people looking after their own.
Duncan Smith, Osborne et al treat the British public like idiots.
I think that when the British public next get a chance to pass judgement on this omnishambles of a govt they will condemn Cameron and Clegg to the dustbin of history.
I am personally quite offended by their comments on people who need to claim welfare just to survive, it is inaccurate and socially divisive. Their judgement day is coming soon.

I think that the majority of the British public does hold this view - not necessarily a vast majority, and not all to an extreme, but I think you will often hear people mention the 'scroungers'. Obviously I don't think it happens (bar, perhaps, an anecdotal incident here and there), and more contraversially, I would have no problem with it if it did happen!

I would very much like to see Mr Duncan Smith respond to this report, but I expect he will instead do his best to ignore it.

Why all the hate for IDS? More so than almost any other MP of any colour he's gone out of his way to find out what life is like for the underprivileged.

I also have my doubts about this survey. "A culture of worklessness is sometimes said to be typified by people working fraudulently in jobs 'on the side'. The study found no evidence of this. " I could give you the names of half a dozen people right now who have been on job seekers for long while and do jobs "on the side". That they found no evidence of this is strong evidence that they weren't really looking.

Still, in times of high unemployment it is reasonable to assume a lot (almost certainly the majority) of job seekers are genuine. But there are real areas of entrenched "scrounging". There have, and always will be, a certain number of bone idle slobs who need a damned good kick up the back-side to make them do anything.

There is also the lingering problem of those thousands out of work for "ill health" when there's nothing wrong with them. This isn't often their fault. Labour had an evil habit of putting people on to ill-health benefit who shouldn't be there to make unemployment in the industrial north look less bad than it was. It is, however, a problem.

@Oct: "This isn't often their fault. Labour had an evil habit of putting people on to ill-health benefit who shouldn't be there to make unemployment in the industrial north look less bad than it was."

That was actually a tactic developed by the Tories when they decided to close the mines and the shipyards.

Conservative hands are hardly clean on this matter, but Labour took a bad Tory idea and ran with it.

Yes, agreed Octavious - both parties are guilty of doing this at various times, and it is a bad policy whoever is doing it.

Remember: Conservatism Works, Liberalism Fails.

Sorry Sbyvl but, erm, what's your point in the context of this thread? Can we have a reasoned argument that bears some relation to the OP, please, rather than just a pointless soundbite? Thanks in advance.

Thanks Sbyvl, for your clear and useful insight. It was totally accurate and it contributed a great deal the conversation.