PRIME Minister Gordon Brown appears to be planning to remove the last vestiges of welfare factor from his country’s economy and complete in his remaining term of three years, the job that was started in the 1980s by Conservative Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher, the milk snatcher as she was’ lovingly’ called.

His predecessor, Prime Minister Tony Blair had claimed that he had re-invented Labour and called it New Labour as he gave up championing the public sector and actively promoted the cause of public-private partnership.

Now Mr Brown seems all set to further re-invent his party by making the private sector the real engine of growth and the arbiter of social welfare in his country much on the lines of the US.

Giving what is seen by many Britons who grew up on welfare as a self-serving spin to his plans, Mr Brown told an audience of British businessmen at the Confederation of British Industries (CBI) last Monday that his government was redefining the Britain welfare state for a wholly new world --- “to give people skills through transferring resources from welfare to education, not leaving them dependent, reliant on benefit without the opportunity to improve their skills and prospects.

“Playing on the universal fear that most countries will be losers in the globalisation process, he said he had a winning formula for Britain based on what he called firm fundamentals - open markets, free trade and flexibility – “and action plans for equipping us in infrastructure, science, education and employment that we can now progress.”

Listing the new principles for welfare that will guide his Party’s new approach across the whole of government, he said welfare is no longer the benefits you have today but the skills you gain for tomorrow and therefore the inactive should, wherever possible, be preparing and training to get back into work.

“So when someone signs on as unemployed, they sign up for a skills review, be given access to skills advice and training if that is what is needed, and this could be taken into account in their benefit entitlement. In the same vein, we should not deny people who are looking for work the chance to better their skills,” he said.

He promised to help people not just get work but get on at work - helping them move up the jobs ladder.

According to the prime minister, this change-over from cash-in-hand to job security in future through skill improvement would be a seamless transition from out-of-work training to in-work skills development and - a new adult careers and advancement service will be created to help people in work improve their skills or change their career: a commitment not just to one-off learning but to life-long learning.

He also talked about rights and responsibilities and said there would be ‘compulsion’, a word unheard so far in what has come be known as one of the finest examples of egalitarian societies in the world but held out at the same time the carrot of new incentives.

In this new welfare state of Mr Brown there is perhaps going to be no place for trade unionism, the very concept on which the Labour Party was founded as he said: ”In return for new rights to training and help to get into work, we will demand more responsibility.

“He explained that unlike in the old days when the government ran the whole welfare system through separate job centres and benefit offices, in the new world Jobcentre Plus will ask private sector agencies and charities to play a central role.

He said, he wants to transfer resources from welfare to education and move claimants from passive recipients of welfare benefit to active job and skill seekers to put Britain right in the forefront of the higher paying, highly skilled economy of the future. His justification for what is seen to be New Labour economy reads more like rhetorical spin.

“ For most of the past half century we have had a Keynesian paradigm - either you are in work or you are on welfare. And in the old days it was the economy that had to create work - what prevented full employment was lack of jobs. Now we need a new and very different paradigm. If in the old days the problem was unemployment, in the new world it is employability. If in the old days lack of jobs demanded priority action, in the new world it is lack of skills.

“While in the old days we could assume that if a teenager left education with no qualifications he could get unskilled work. In the new world the unqualified and unskilled teenager will, in future, have to acquire a skill to be easily employable.

“While in the old days only a limited number of apprenticeships were available for a far larger number of highly qualified teenagers, in the new world it makes economic sense to expand apprenticeships to make use of all the skills of all who have them.

“While in the old days it was seen as the duty of government to create work for the inactive, in the new world there has to be both a duty on the government to help the inactive become employable and a duty on the inactive to take up those opportunities.

“Indeed while in the old days the obligation was on the unemployed to find a job, in the new world the obligation on the unemployed should be not just to seek work but to train for work.

“In the old days we could leave lone parents on benefit until their children left school. Now if they are to go to work sooner, they must train earlier and be ready for work when they can take it up.

“In the old days when incapacity benefit was introduced the focus was on disabilities preventing work. Today in the interests of claimants and in the economy the focus must be on their capabilities and the opportunities for new skills for work.

“In the old world you had colleges for everything that happened after school. Now we need a new focus on 16-19 year olds in sixth form centres ---- and a similar focus on community colleges with state of the art training facilities that increasingly specialise in adult vocational excellence.

“Quite simply the old system does not fit the aspirational society the Britain of the future needs to be. The new idea is the development of all the talents of all our people.”