Rebecca Evans AM, Assembly Member for Mid and West Wales, has challenged Andrew RT Davies – Leader of the Opposition at the Assembly – to produce evidence to back up his wild claims about benefit claimants.
Speaking on a phone-in on BBC Radio Wales’ Jason Mohammed show (24/3/2014), Mr Davies told listeners that “sadly, some parts of our communities have people third, fourth, fifth generation on benefits. That’s not good for themselves, it’s not good for the community and we need to break that cycle of deprivation and dependency.” He also referred to an existence on benefits as a “lifestyle choice.”
Mrs Evans said: “There is no evidence whatsoever to back up Mr Davies’ claims. The truth about welfare is quite different.
“The Joseph Rowntree Foundation investigated the idea of ‘intergenerational cultures of worklessness’ in deprived neighbourhoods in Glasgow and Middlesbrough. Despite strenuous efforts, the researchers were unable to locate a single family where three – let alone five – generations have never worked. Their evidence showed that families experiencing long-term worklessness remain committed to the value of work and would prefer to be in jobs rather than on benefits.
“An analysis of data from the Office of National Statistics shows that where you have households with two generations living together, less than one per cent of those are homes are homes in which both generations have never worked.
“The Welsh Conservatives are becoming notorious for playing fast and loose with facts. Where they can’t twist a statistic to fit their argument, they will just make one up.
“It is completely irresponsible to propagate myths which depict struggling people as scroungers.
“All the evidence shows us that long-term worklessness is not a ‘lifestyle choice.’ It is the result of the impact of complex, multiple problems associated with living in deep poverty over many years. Issues include poor educational achievement, problematic drug and alcohol use, criminal victimisation, offending and imprisonment, domestic violence, and family and housing instability. Most commonly – and sometimes as an outcome of these cumulative adversities – long-term worklessness is caused by physical and mental ill-health. Does that really sound like a lifestyle choice?
“A generation is normally taken to mean 25-30 years. By my calculation, the Leader of the Welsh Conservatives is suggesting that some families have been languishing on benefits since the late 1800s – decades before the welfare state even came into existence.”
