http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6191151.stm

Originally Posted by :
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell has attacked Britain's "dependency culture" and said more single parents should be seeking work.
People should be given education and a chance to help themselves, but instead millions were being trapped into living on benefits, said Sir Menzies.

He said lone parents should return to work when their youngest child is 12 - not 16 as currently.

And he said he wanted to end the "bias" against couples in the tax system.

In a speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research, Sir Menzies said his party was studying how to end the current tax incentives for couples with children to split up. Simpler benefits

Among ideas would be to introduce a "couples' premium" into the child tax credit.

He also wants to simplify the welfare system by halving the number of benefits from 50 to 25.

And he said the Liberal Democrats wanted to increase child benefit for all children, to the level of the firstborn, at a cost of £1.7bn.

"Gordon Brown's strategy of mass means-testing is undermining work, saving and families," he said.

"It is not sustainable - it risks trapping millions of people in a dependency culture.

"We should be giving people an education and a chance. Instead, we are giving them a benefit book and a 30 page claim form.

"Unless we create a society where the state assists people to improve themselves we will never be able to eliminate poverty."

'Labour heartlands'

He said questions ought to be asked about a benefit system which provided little incentive or support for lone parents to return to work, until their youngest child was 16.

In most other European countries the age was "considerably lower", he said.

Returning earlier "might discourage dependency and reduce child poverty too", Sir Menzies said.

Sir Menzies said the party must "take the fight for a fairer Britain into the mainstream of British politics and into the heartlands of the Labour Party".

Last week, Conservative leader David Cameron said couples should be "encouraged to get together and stay together", possibly with the help of changes to taxation.

This followed a report by ex-Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith which said family splits caused social problems costing £20bn.

In October Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton pledged a "new deal" for two-parent families, saying they had been largely invisible because all the help had been focused on lone parents.

Combine that with John Hutton talking about benefit cuts for people not working... and maybe there is a shift going on somewhere in the background.
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Could it be the Lib Dems and Labour are trying to move to the right of the Conservatives? (mind you, not that difficult at the moment)

It is a shame some of the stuff the lib-dems say is sensible - like calling for small bsuinesses to be able to move to cash flow accounting rather than profit accounting. Then they wade in with some ultra stupid comment or policy like bringing in the Euro and i remember why i don;t like them.
[Rep]

They'd better watch it though, that's their core vote they are ******* off.

Unless of course, the mission is to hand over to the blue puppet now. That wouldn't surprise me.
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Originally Posted by :
Combine that with John Hutton talking about benefit cuts for people not working... and maybe there is a shift going on somewhere in the background.

I doubt if anything meaningful will happen. Hutton referred to the "core" of 100,000 people. What about the millions locked into the benefits trap one way or another?

Turning off the tap of immigration is surely the first thing to do if really concerned about long-term unemployment amongst British people.
[Rep]

Originally Posted by :
They'd better watch it though, that's their core vote they are p*****g off.

Didn't stop Cameron. :wink:
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Originally Posted by Anthony Butcher:
Combine that with John Hutton talking about benefit cuts for people not working... and maybe there is a shift going on somewhere in the background.

I would like to think so but I doubt it. I doubt the bias against non single parents with regarding to housing etc will stop
[Rep]