The Department for Work and Pensions Departmental Report, 2005
Foreword from the Secretary of State
The Department for Work and Pensions drives the Government’s programme for reforming the Welfare State for the 21st Century; for tackling poverty and exclusion; and for creating opportunity and independence, based on the mutual obligations we have to each other as a society.
Since 1997, we have enabled employment to rise above record levels. We have helped 2 million more people find work. We have lifted 700,000 pensioners and 700,000 children from relative poverty compared with 1997.
Modernisation of the Welfare State and its delivery to those in need is our key aim. The Department has achieved and exceeded its target to make 85 per cent of welfare payments directly into a bank account and has reduced overpayments within the major out-of-work benefits by a third.
This Departmental Report sets out what has been achieved in this last year. Another key priority remains to protect and support people in later life. The Pensions Act in November 2004 means people no longer lose their savings for retirement if their employer goes into liquidation. As well as this, the Financial Assistance Scheme will offer support to many of those who have already lost out in recent years.
We are also determined to reduce barriers and enable disabled people to live fulfilling, independent lives. Two months ago, the Disability Discrimination Act saw the most far-reaching programme of disability rights legislation that any European Country has ever achieved.
All of our achievements have been made within the context of the efficiency challenge. It is a credit to every member of the Department that these huge achievements have been made.
The Five Year Strategy, published in February, paved the way for further reform of welfare delivery, building on significant investment in the New Deal and Jobcentre Plus, but we face major challenges, not least that of supporting an increasing proportion of people living past State Pension age. That is why we want 80 per cent of the working-age population to be in employment.
We believe that the core principle of the Welfare State is not simply to offer insurance against times of difficulty, acting as a safety net into which people fall and are expected to remain. Instead it will become a ladder to lift people permanently out of dependency and to liberate them to take control of, and make the most of, their lives for themselves and their families.
David Blunkett