§ One third of all public spending goes on social security. Our social security system is there to provide an income when people cannot earn because of sickness, disability, unemployment, caring for relatives or old age. People on the left and the right of politics continue to search for a radically different and better way of meeting those needs in our wealthy nation. I have studied many of their proposals closely and so far, I am afraid, nobody has yet come up with anything remotely sensible or practicable.
Until people come up with a radical alternative, if they ever do, our welfare safety net must remain affordable. We must not allow the welfare state to damage the incentives of individuals or businesses in the private sector, because it is the wealth-creating enterprise economy that sustains our entire social security system.
In the post-war period social security has grown in real terms by around 5 per cent. each year. In recent Budgets we have taken action to bring that growth under control. We now expect future growth of 1½ per cent. a year—well below the growth of the economy.
162 Year after year, this Government have also vigorously attacked fraud and reformed benefits to target them on those in genuine need. The measures that I now propose in this Budget intensify those efforts yet again.
We plan a further move to align the benefits paid to lone parents and couples with children, because both care for children. From April 1998, new awards of family premium and child benefit will be the same in value for lone parents as for couples. We are introducing a number of measures on housing benefit and council tax benefit to ensure that those on benefits do not have a more comfortable life style than some of those who are supporting themselves on modest incomes. The contrary would be unfair and unwise. Full details will be made available later today by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security who, with your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will speak later in the Budget debate.
In my Budget two years ago, I announced a whole package of measures to help the unemployed get back to work—from improvements to the family credit system to national insurance holidays for employers taking on long-term unemployed people. Those are contributing to the steadily improving jobs position.
In this Budget I am providing another £100 million worth of new money for new measures mainly targeted on people who have been unemployed for two years or more. First, they will be required to attend a compulsory programme of interviews with the Employment Service to give them a helping hand to compete in our ever improving market for jobs.
We are expanding Project Work pilots to a further 28 areas. That will create tip to 100,000 new opportunities, on a programme with a good track record for getting long-term unemployed people back to work. The pilots have been successful.
I can also announce pilots for a new scheme called Contract for Work. Private contractors will help people to find work. Those firms will be paid by results. As with Project Work, if the scheme works better than the existing approach, we will expand it. We have drawn on some American experience. We will adapt it to Britain and, if it works, we will widen its application. We must tackle the problem.
Dependency on welfare impoverishes us all. The welfare system should provide a safety net. It must provide the support that a caring society wants to give to our less fortunate fellow citizens. But the welfare system must never be allowed to become a way of life. We do not want our social security system to be undermined by resentment.
We have to take these careful measures. We must move people from dependency to responsibility for themselves and their families, because we are serious about protecting those in genuine need and we want to go on delivering that protection for the future.