History
The department was created on 8 June 2001 upon the re-election of the Labour party into Government. It merged the Department of Social Security (DSS), The Employment Service and the policy groups of the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) that were involved in Employment policy and International issues, in addition to the Opportunity and Diversity group's responsibilities toward disability.
The department was initially tasked at its inception specifically with creating Jobcentre Plus and the Pensions service from the remains of the Employment service and the Benefits agency. The department is therefore responsible for welfare and pension policy. Its key aims are "to help its customers become financially independent and to help reduce child poverty."
Read more about this topic: Department For Work And Pensions
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“I feel as tall as you.”
—Ellis Meredith, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 14, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)