Welfare reform is an enormous task that must not be rushed

The government has launched plans for the most radical overhaul of the welfare system in decades.

Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith makes a sound case for reform that few could disagree with saying there are 'ghettos of worklessness' which affect generations of families.

Systems needs radical overhaul

We can all reel off countless examples of where the current system is failing. One of my friends is a teacher in a school where pupils tell her they cannot be bothered to learn because their father hasn't ever had a job and nor have any of the other kids' dads.

The Telegraph reports Smith says you need a maths degree to work out how to claim benefits.

That might help to explain why there are so many missed payments and overpayments, why some people can run rings around their job search advisers – or whatever they are called these days – and others struggle to get the payments they're entitled to.

One sign that Smith is really committed to reform is the admission that five million people are on out-of-work benefits, far higher than the official 2.5 million unemployment figure.

But identifying the problem is only the first step

There are numerous agencies of every political persuasion from the Policy Exchange to the Institute for Public Policy Research and then there are the other think tanks such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Institute for Fiscal Studies that have spent years looking at the role the state can play in reducing poverty.

Like Smith many of the researchers at these organisations are acutely aware that previous reform has not worked and that many people who lost their jobs in the 1980s were not helped back to work under Margaret Thatcher and have been unemployed ever since.

Smith must also have his fingers crossed that by the time his plans are finalised the private sector will be growing aggressively again. With even conservative estimates suggesting half a million public sector workers will lose their job as government cutbacks bite and most agreeing the recent fall in unemployment is temporary, he has an unenviable task ahead of him.

The overhaul must be radical

One thing I would suggest he must not do is outsource the job of finding people work to private companies. Millions are spent on contracts each year to ill-resourced, badly managed companies that charge plenty but do little to get people a permanent job.

And there needs to be a radical new approach to apprenticeships and other schemes that enable businesses to employ on a short-term basis only to replace them at some fixed date with another unemployed person.

There needs to be a commitment by firms to create permanent jobs not just state-funded internships.