Benefit Claimants Could Be Forced To Work

Benefit claimants could be forced into community work under new UK Government plans to get millions of the unemployed back to work.

The Welfare Green Paper is expected to include proposals to force those unemployed for more than two years to work within the community.

Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell says that the plans are "revolutionary" and the "biggest shake-up of the modern welfare state since the Beveridge Report of the 1940s".

Incapacity benefit will be abolished by 2013 and income support will also be scrapped under the proposals.

Replacing them will be Employment Support Allowance for those with medical problems and JobSeekers' Allowance for those who are fit to work.

It is reported that a leaked draft of the Green Paper revealed that ministers are aiming for a 80% employment rate – up from the current 75%.

Mr Purnell told Sky News that "the longer your claim, the more you'll be expected to do".

It is expected that all incapacity benefit claimants will undergo medical tests to determine their capacity for employment and only full-time carers and disabled people will be exempt from being expected to work.

Single parents with children aged seven or more will be expected to work.

Long term unemployed will face "work for dole" programmes requiring them to carry out useful activities to ensure they make a "fair contribution" in return for state aid.

New research launched by Anne McGuire, Minister for Disabled People, published in the run-up to the release of the Green Paper found that nine out of ten working disabled people believed their job had a "positive impact" on their life.

Experiences and Expectations of Disabled People reported that the majority of disabled people are socially active and that a minority of disabled people felt they lacked the skills to find work.

Ms McGuire said: "As the research shows, disabled people of working age can and want to work, but still face barriers in accessing and staying in jobs. We are determined to make sure we provide the support that disabled people need to make the most of the opportunities that are out there."

The Government aims to get one million people of incapacity benefit by 2015.

The Tories have accused the government of stealing their policies.

Conservative leader David Cameron said "what Mr Purnell has done is very much taken the ideas we came up with in January".

Since 2004, the Department of Work and Pensions has saved over one billion in costs.

Meanwhile, in the Irish Republic payments direct into benefits' claimant bank accounts are to be scrapped, following suspicions of widespread fraud.

The change is to tackle Irish workers who have taken jobs elsewhere and keep claiming unemployment benefit while working in another country, such as England.

See: Government To Withdraw Auto Dole Payments

(DS)