Hard labour from Chancellor Brown

Gordon Brown prescribes work for all who don't and more work for those who already do

Work will set you free. Those who do not have any work must be chivvied to get it. And those already in work must work harder.

That was the message the government reiterated with Chancellor Gordon Brown's pre-budget statement.

Equality and the redistribution of wealth and power used to be the goals Labour sought power to achieve. Now it is work they want to distribute to everyone.

"Making work pay" is one of Mr Brown's favourite soundbites, and he used it more than once in the Commons during his statement.

Work is what will lift lone mothers out of poverty, tackle "social exclusion", and reassure Middle England that something is being done to tackle the "underclass" of long-term unemployed.

And increasing productivity - or working harder, to put it another way - is a constant theme of Mr Brown's recent speeches.

Labour fought the election with Welfare to Work, its flagship New deal policy to get young people off the dole, as the cornerstone of its prescription for making Britain better again.

The programme, originally aimed at the under-25s, is to be extended to the long-term unemployed across 28 areas of the UK from the end of November, the chancellor announced in his statement.

School pupils, too, are to be subject to the same exhortation to work.

Mr Brown announced in his statement - in a passage that will have cause the ears of the wary teacher trade unions to prick up - the government's intention to "meet the productivity challenge" by "bringing the world of education and the world of work into closer contact".

Businesses will get tax-breaks for seconding staff to schools and colleges.

And in-work perks and benefits are one of the chiefs ways the government has adopted as the New Labour method of redistributing wealth.

Mr Brown gave notice that in his full Budget next year he intended to "encourage the new enterprise culture of team work in which everyone contributes and everyone benefits from success ... we will make it easier for all employees - and not just a few - to become stakeholders in their company."

A small echo of the Tories' oft-declared aim during the Thatcher era of turning the UK into a "share-owning democracy" could be heard in Mr Brown's announcement of a boost to employee share ownership schemes (Esops, as their friends call them): "I want to double the number of firms in which all employees have the opportunity to own shares."

The government's policy, he said, is "pro-share ownership" - a statement that barely turns a hair on the Labour benches these days, but which within the last decade would have caused a rumpus within the party.

Mr Brown told MPs that as a result of abolishing the entry fee to National Insurance, "all employees will receive a tax cut of £66 a year".

He also announced that from next April employers will not pay National Insurance on earning below £83 a week.

Disabled people are to get their own version of the working families tax credit, the chancellor also confirmed. The disabled person's tax credit will ensure "a disabled person, with one child, moving from benefit to full-time employment, will be guaranteed a minimum income of £220 a week, with no income tax payable on income below £274 a week."

Those employed in the public sector must work harder, the chancellor also signalled. A new advisory panel comprising business and management is to be established to come up with ways of making them do so, with the aim of cutting absenteeism in the public sector.

The target is to reduce absence rates by 30% by the year 2003.

Curiously, however, despite Mr Brown's emphasis on work in his speech, except for the extension of the New Deal, there was little mention of those unable to find any: the unemployed.

The explanation may be a simple one. Economists, who seldom agree on any thing, have reached a consensus on one matter: dole queues will probably lengthen considerably over the next two years.