Universal Job Search IS to be Made Compulsory.

Jobseekers in England, Scotland and Wales will have to use a new government website that can automatically tell jobcentres about their applications – or risk losing their benefit payments.

The Welfare Secretary Iain Duncan Smith told political correspondent Ross Hawkins on Radio 4’s The World at One programme, that the new site can automatically send people vacancies – and demand explanations from them if they do not apply.

Iain Duncan Smith explained that if a job adviser thinks the reasons that you have given for not applying for a job are “specious” then “he may call you in and say I really think that you ought to be applying for these jobs.”

When asked about issuing electronic cards that would restrict claimants in spending their benefits payments, he said that “giving people cash sometimes can actually lead to further problems”.

He stressed that the scheme would only affect specific claimants.

From The BBC.

Hearing this there was a brief report on the ‘problems’ the site had faced, fake job ads and phone-sex jobs.

There was nothing about concerns about privacy and surveillance.

That in many parts of the country there is no easy access to the Internet, or if there is public access it is often (as in Suffolk) unable to work with the DWP’s site.

Nor indeed about the simple fact that many many unemployed people cannot access the site, or even if they could, would not know how to use computers well enough to use it properly.

His comments on the ‘Cash Card’ were said to apply only to specific groups, such as drug addicts.

How specific this could be was not elaborated.

Those who hold the ‘technology’ in this area have been lobbying for this.

There’s little doubt the Government  are working on something that will reward companies who live off the unemployed.