From The Church Times-
THE Archbishop of Canterbury has said he is “very anxious” about the Government’s spending cuts, and that politicians “have not really thought through” aspects of the Big Society programme. He was speak ing after a private meeting with the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street last week.
In a radio interview on BBC West Midlands on Sunday, during a visit to the Lichfield diocese, Dr Williams said that he had “a lot of worries” about plans to force the long-term unemployed to work unpaid in order to receive benefits. “I don’t immediately think it’s fair,” he said.
Ex-offenders, for example, needed “a period of adjustment, a period of care” when they came out of prison: “they don’t need too much pressure to get to work straight away.” If pressure of this kind was exerted, people “who are struggling to find work [can be] driven into a sort of downward spiral of uncertainty, even despair”.
Dr Williams also expressed concern about plans to cap the level of housing benefit at £400 a week. This “could lead to a kind of social zoning: middle-class areas get more middle-class, and other people are pushed out on to the edge”.
Writing in the Daily Mail on Tuesday, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, disagreed “that people who have been out of work for a long time would be driven to despair by changes to the welfare system”.
More here-
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=103639
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