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Immediate restoration of national service was predictably listed among remedies offered in the wake of August's riots. For a whole generation of young men enlisted between 1947 to 1960, and forced to sacrifice two years in service of Queen and country, one salient life-long lesson was learned. Never step forward, never volunteer. Apparently, such niceties don't apply in the coalition's era of citizen service. Employment minister, Chris Grayling, needed to refute on live television claims he'd ever acceded to the request of ubiquitous work programme entrepreneur, Emma Harrison, to adopt a problem family in which three generations have never enjoyed paid employment. Under a scheme trialled in Hull, Westminster and Blackpool, mentors are encouraged to uncover entrenched patterns of social failure by asking members of such families identified as being locked into worklessness – it is claimed there are 120,000 nationwide – what action they are taking to enter the jobs market. As revealed by PM David Cameron in his post-looting press conference, these families break down into 50,000 ‘hard-core' families with multiple problems, and 70,000 second-tier households who ‘disproportionately gobble-up resources'. But the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), a veritable Jupiter in the solar system of major government spending departments, is gaining a reputation for, if not exactly gobbling up resources, then certainly encroaching on wider government programmes, ranging from economic growth, children and families to gang-crime. Impassioned interviews with Iain Duncan Smith have led to talk of establishing a Ministry for Social Justice responsible for fixing ‘broken Britain'. Education secretary, Michael Gove, would not object to divesting his department of responsibilities for children and families – the ‘cushions and soft furnishings' in the jokey acronym previously handed to the DCSF – so as to keep a sharp focus on schools. But the determination of the quiet man to impose his think-tank's prescription on gang members – outlined in the CSJ's report Dying to belong and incorporating the pioneering work of Strathclyde Police – risks a violent turf war with Home Office secretary ,Theresa May. However, it is the policy disconnect with the local economic growth agenda which should be of most concern. The Social Market Foundation forecast 22 out of 24 work programme providers will go bust due to DWP's unfeasible performance target-setting ,which will see an undershoot of 30,000 fewer job placements secured by 2014. Put your money on a bailout rather than moral hazard and provider fail. Michael Heseltine stuck his flowy locks above the parapet long enough to brand the coalition's decision to axe the regional development agencies a ‘mistake' last week. He also covertly accused the work programme as an exemplary case of Whitehall empire building. If we're back to national service, the age of empires clearly isn't over either.

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The social failure highlighted by August's riots

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