Tag: DWP

A cozy interior scene showcases a welcoming space with a wooden table, greenery, and artistic decor. Large open doors lead to a vibrant outdoor area filled with trees and people enjoying their time, including a dog. The text overlays the image: "Imagining a somewhere to be for people to belong, and to begin."

Imagining a somewhere to be: for people to belong, and to begin

October 26, 2026 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

I didn’t think I would have anything more to write about GOV.UK on the High Street.

Then I wrote about A-level results day and why the interesting future for the GOV.UK app isn’t putting web search inside something you have to download but joining up what government knows and can do around the person whose results have just arrived.

Though as I thought about it, I wasn’t actually sure I wanted the result itself to arrive through the app. There’s something very tactile about going back into school and something very communal about receiving the results, and the mixture of support, solidarity and celebration that follows.

The administrative task is getting a result. The experience is something else.

I called the envelopes a feature, not a bug. Jeni Tennison picked up on that and started a conversation on Bluesky about ‘ritual and occasion-making’ in public services, and what we can lose. Seeing teenagers with envelopes made her think about community, peer support and shared experience. Other people in the thread talked about PhD submissions, health results, weddings, passports and driving licences. Peter Wells observed that apps have a tendency to smoosh profoundly different moments into the same notification-shaped container. And I liked Steve Messer’s suggestion that public services should honour the moment.

That returned me to this post, which I’d started after the local elections and then left sitting (and apparently then left sitting for some further months again!). If you previously read my exhaust~~ing~~ive series of posts you’re probably wondering how I could find anything more to say having already tried to worry away at the relationship between pockets, pavements and platforms. But two visits towards the end of my time at DWP, and something David Higham wrote after the local elections, had set me off on the same question.

David wrote about “the decline of the public realm and the retreat of the state as a visible force for good”. It resonated with me because it felt closer to a deeper problem than much of the post-election commentary earlier in the year.

It is inevitable that there were post-election arguments about the policy platform and its associated messaging. It also seems like there’s an almost identical narrative following any election: everything is rubbish, everyone knows everything is rubbish, and the only question is who gets to say “everything is rubbish” sufficiently well that they persuade people that their diagnosis of what’s rubbish is the one that matters (maybe this is how it has always been rather than any sort of modern malaise).

None of that is irrelevant. But I do think all of that sits above something more fundamental: what do people experience the state as? Is it present in their lives as anything tangible, useful and good? Can they meet it? Can they trust it? Can they ever, without irony, sing of its goodness?

Since then we’ve had a new Prime Minister and that former Mayor of Greater Manchester has given added energy to devolution with a promise of “good growth in every postcode“. There’s a lot of good in that. After all, as some wise people once concluded about leading digital government – don’t do everything yourself (you can’t).

But I do wonder whether devolution could repeat one of digital’s unintended and maybe unrealised consequences. Digital has made many services easier to use, and spared people from having to understand quite so much of the maze of government. But I wonder whether it has sometimes divorced the experience of a service from any sense of the government behind it. What if a more capable local state improves what happens in the place where you live while leaving Westminster, the Prime Minister and the national state still more distant, more abstract, and still struggling to recover public trust?

That’s not an argument against devolution. We live in spheres within spheres. Local labour markets are local, councils piece together things which Whitehall often separates, and neighbourhoods understand things the centre can’t possibly get close to. But I believe strongly (and have spent too much of my career working on that premise to conclude it’s no more than belief) that there are things the centre can guarantee and make common.

What we found when it came to reimagining a jobs and careers service wasn’t that different local labour markets need a fragmented local offer. It was that we could aspire to a national service capable of being more local and more personal, without ceasing to be something that everyone can expect. So I’m personally not sure devolution, for all its potential, is by itself an answer to a state-level trust gap. Better local delivery is good. So is designing for everyone to have a transformed experience.

I don’t want to go off on a tangent about devolution. But what follows is about the local, and the national, and about what happens in the space between them. And it concerns how we have lived through an enormous, worthwhile transformation in the arrival of digital but we haven’t always noticed what else was changing alongside it.

So David’s observation played to one of my priors – that in the UK, the internet era has accompanied the steady disappearance of our visible state. I quote-tweeted to say: I think “digital by default” has had wider negative consequences than the obvious issues of digital exclusion. Losing the footprint and tangible touch points of the state makes it more abstract, less available, less good. It is a mistake to focus on GOV.UK as an app and not on the High Street as well. I also included a link to the fifth part in my series about Pockets, Pavements and Platforms.

The preview card beneath that post pulled through a line from that earlier piece: trust is built in person, not just pixels. I had meant it as an argument for a physical future for GOV.UK: shared spaces, storefronts and platforms for place – somewhere to turn when the website was not enough.

And so that’s where this post starts, but where it’s going is to a pair of visits, one in London and one in Glasgow, I had the fortune to make shortly before I left DWP that left me thinking a physical future for GOV.UK is too small an idea.

The question is not only whether people have somewhere to go when the website fails. It’s whether there is somewhere to be: somewhere people can belong, and somewhere they can begin.

A man in a suit is speaking animatedly on the left, while a figure portrayed as Jesus looks on thoughtfully on the right. In the background, the iconic Big Ben clock tower and other structures from London can be seen. The text at the top reads "SUICIDAL EMPATHY?" in bold letters.

What if Robert Jenrick is talking about Jesus?

August 26, 2026 / Benjamin Welby / 1 Comment

A note before you go further: I’m conscious that this piece plays deliberately with a word that describes something devastatingly real.

Suicide is not a metaphor: around 125 people die by suicide each week in the UK, and around three quarters of them are men. Suicide is the single biggest killer of men under the age of 50 in the UK.

There are amazing organisations doing amazing work to try and change those stats including Movember every year, and CALM, which offers free, confidential support.

Robert Jenrick thinks Britain has a problem with “suicidal empathy”

He means something more than empathy being partial, or governments having to think about incentives and finite resources. His accusation is that we become so preoccupied with somebody else’s circumstances, so willing to prioritise their needs, that eventually we imperil ourselves.

And the trouble is, looked at from a certain angle, that sounds rather a lot like Jesus.

I’ve wondered before what would happen if Robert Jenrick hung out with Jesus for a bit¹. Not because I imagine Jesus quietly handing him an upgraded policy platform, but because spending time with Jesus has an awkward habit of giving us perspective when we’re adamant that we’ve got all the answers.

And now he’s made a claim that brings me back to that question.

As Reform launched proposals it claims would cut around £50 billion a year from welfare spending, including large reductions in disability benefits², Jenrick described current disability spending as “not generosity … it is suicidal empathy”.

Try it on Jesus

So what has that got to do with Jesus?

Jesus has an almost reckless tendency to come too close.

People interrupt him and he stops. He touches people everyone else has decided not to touch. He eats with the wrong people. He lets another person’s grief become his grief. He weeps. He tells stories in which the respectable people walk past and the foreigner is the one who comes near. He tells us to love enemies, to give without always expecting something back, to forgive again and then again and then again after that.

He leaves the ninety-nine to go looking for one.

This is not obviously the behaviour of somebody committed above everything else to prudent self-preservation.

And eventually it gets much worse. He goes to Jerusalem. He knows what is waiting, and he refuses the obvious routes of self-protection.

And he says this utterly upside-down thing: whoever tries to save their life loses it, and whoever loses their life finds it.

If “suicidal empathy” means allowing someone else’s predicament to become so thoroughly your concern that you willingly accept a cost you didn’t have to bear, then the accusation against Jesus is a strong one.

A dimly lit restaurant kitchen features three elegantly plated dishes on a counter, each garnished and ready for service. In the background, two chefs in white uniforms are seen working, focused on their tasks amidst the bustling kitchen setup. The atmosphere is lively, with various kitchen tools and equipment visible.

When the first plates leave the pass

June 16, 2026 / Benjamin Welby / 2 Comments

There are some jobs you leave because the evening has ended.

The plates are cleared. The conversation has run its course. Someone is stacking chairs. It was good, perhaps even brilliant, but it’s clearly time to go home.

Leaving DWP has not felt like that.

The image I’ve had has been of walking out of a busy kitchen in the middle of service. Everything simmering away nicely on the stove. The ingredients good. The chefs knowing what they are doing. The smell promising. And yet, for reasons that are right and good and exciting, and of God, leaving before dinner was served.

Except that, last Monday, the metaphor shifted slightly.

Because some of the first plates are now leaving the pass.

The Prime Minister used his London Tech Week speech to announce a new AI jobs tool to help people out of work find the right jobs, create their CVs and get back into work. He was referring to the new experimental Work Hub, with its AI work assistant, CV builder, action plan, jobs board, and support for employers.

Some of this is new. Some of it is remaking things government has had around it for a long time. Some of it is very much at the start of its life. That’s why the experimental badge is important. It’s also why it’s brave. DWP has made something visible early enough for people to use it, test it, misunderstand it, criticise it and improve it.

So have a play, test it to the limits of your amusement, and maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised, maybe you’ll learn something actively helpful.

Still, given what is being imagined for the eventual menu, this is very much the hors d’oeuvres.

But I’m no longer in the kitchen.

I’ve taken off the apron, stepped into a different kind of work, and now find myself watching the first plates appear with a strange mixture of joy, pride and longing.

A young man and an older woman look at a community noticeboard outside a local hall. The board suggests many forms of participation beyond paid work, including local groups, volunteering, learning, care, civic activity and community support.

If less work is the dream, why does it feel like a threat?

June 1, 2026 / Benjamin Welby / 2 Comments

About a year ago I wrote about Vibe Coding, Fireworks and the Mortar of Government, back when I was first getting excited by the new art of the possible. Since then I’ve had a lot of fun with these toys, at home and at work, while learning a lot along the way.

That fun left me thinking about what it all might mean for public sector product management and how we organise our work. I’m not going to spend this post re-running the argument that sets out why more members of the multidisciplinary team can now directly shape the product, or getting excitable again about what happens when the distance between intent and something runnable collapses. If you want to read that, you can do that in The Future of (Public Sector) Product Management in a Vibe Coded World.

This post finds its origins somewhere else: in a throwaway comment someone made that, by making those arguments, I seemed to be excited for the most pessimistic future of the labour market.

I’d rather think of it as being optimistic about being pessimistic. And hopefully by the end of this you’ll see what I mean.

Because this is a post that asks what follows if the argument is even half right.

I’m not here to make any kind of prediction that all office jobs will disappear by Christmas. I am not trying to join the queue of people announcing that everything has already changed.

But I think we should sit with a possibility.

What if AI doesn’t destroy work, but shrinks, thins or rearranges it enough to expose how much our social fabric relies on a particular framing of work in order for it to function?

A woman in a long, patterned skirt sits on a stone bench under a large tree, while a younger man in a light-colored outfit sits next to her. They are engaged in conversation, with the tree's lush green leaves providing shade. In the background, there is a brick built church and grassy area. The scene is peaceful and inviting.

Strong branches and good shade

May 28, 2026 / Benjamin Welby / 3 Comments

A report that should arrest us

This morning Alan Milburn launched the Young people and work interim report. I tuned in to hear his speech and the follow-up Q&A, and I’d recommend you find the time not only to read the report but to listen to him speak to it.

It is arresting stuff. Not only because of the scale of the crisis being described, though the scale is staggering, and not only because of the policy detail, though there is plenty there worth wrestling with. But what especially struck me today was the moral seriousness with which Alan spoke about young people who are quietly disappearing from participation in the life of the country.

Over the last phase of my time at DWP, I shared my time between the team supporting this review and the jobs and careers service. Mine was a small contribution in the scheme of things, but enough to see at close quarters the seriousness, care and determination Alan and his team have brought to it.

It also means I am not a wholly impartial observer. I want this report, and the final report coming later in the year, to be read carefully, argued with seriously, and met with a level of response that matches the gravity of what it describes.

Because this is a report that asks important questions:

What happens to a society when more than one million young people are outside education, employment or training?

What happens when the pathways into adulthood no longer reliably function?

What happens when institutions each hold fragments of a person’s story, but nobody holds the whole?

And perhaps most importantly: what kind of country are we becoming if we learn to normalise this?

The review’s argument is not that this requires a temporary focus or a short-term policy tweak around the edges. We’ve been here before, oscillating between panic and amnesia. We briefly notice a crisis, announce something, fund something, brand something, and then move on before anything has changed.

No, the argument is that there has been a structural break in how young people move into work, confidence, belonging and adult life, and therefore structural change has to be the response. And that means harder questions to answer about institutions, relationships, participation, and the kind of social fabric that is required for young people to flourish.

This should arrest government.

But that is the minimum we should expect from a report like this.

A graphic featuring the British flag as the background. In the foreground, a large golden key labeled "DWP" is positioned, with green upward arrows and leaves emerging from it. Below the key, the text reads: "Could DWP be the key to unlocking the growth mission?"

Could DWP be the key to unlocking the growth mission?

September 8, 2025 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

One of the first headlines I saw after Friday’s reshuffle came with a familiar and unsurprising tone. Starmer signals plan to slash benefits with tough new welfare chief. It’s probably pretty accurate. The size of the welfare budget is a serious question for any Chancellor, and it’s one that will always be a priority for the Secretary of State.

But I’m not sure the bill is what the caricature suggests. Every time it is mentioned, the same assumptions surface: that it is about idleness, about people who could work but won’t. In truth, it is much more complicated. Large numbers are still poorly after the pandemic (either because of COVID or other difficulties or delays in accessing the healthcare they need, especially that associated with mental health). Young people are struggling to enter the labour market. Carers, students, and the early retired are all folded into the same “economic inactivity” bucket. A welfare system where health-related benefits are more generous than unemployment benefits. And beneath it all, an economy that has been stagnant for years, with R&D investment consistently behind our peers.

The cost of welfare is not a story of moral weakness. It is a story about the condition of the country.

Thinking about the foundations of mission-led government

December 13, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 5 Comments

In the past week, speeches from Keir Starmer, Pat Mcfadden and Georgia Gould¹ have painted a bold vision for the work of government. The Plan for Change is ambitious, rooted in missions designed to tackle the nation’s most pressing issues—from housing and NHS waiting lists to economic inactivity.

It is really good to hear our government talk up a positive, attractive narrative about the future they want for our country. Show me someone dismissing the combined story they’re telling and I suspect you’ve found someone choosing partisan tribalism over good faith engagement although, and perhaps more likely, they may just be someone understandably browbeaten by years of disappointment, frustration and hypocrisy.

Speaking personally I want to be optimistic. I really want to believe that mission-led government can make a dent in these seemingly intractable problems. And because I’m now working in a team directly tied to one of the missions I’m closer than most people to what it means to translate these ideas into practice. But that means I can see a stark challenge: acknowledging the extent of the gulf between rhetoric and reality.

Back to work

November 19, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 2 Comments

When I left the OECD last summer, it was for several reasons (some of them implicit in this blog post). And I’m pleased that I decided to do so. This has been such a valuable slice of time – a luxury I recognise few people are able to enjoy.

I’m so lucky to have had the career I’ve had to this point and the breadth and depth of what I’ve done. But it has given me a bit of a dilemma about the shape of who I am and the role that best fits, especially in this new, post-OECD phase.

In terms of substance, the OECD was a good match and I was fortunate to have been adept at what the job required. I’m really proud of all the work I contributed to there. But it’s also true that I missed the “gnarliness” of delivery – the practical, hands-on experience without which I wouldn’t have been as good at the job. So I always knew my time focusing on the conceptual and advisory wasn’t forever – it’s testament to the team and the content that I surprised myself and ended up staying for five years.

Try it on Jesus

A report that should arrest us

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