Purnell unveils 'can do' welfare reforms

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The government has unveiled plans to force long-term unemployed people to work for their benefits.

Work and pensions secretary James Purnell on Monday published a welfare reform green paper which called for benefit claimants to make a "fair contribution" for support.

It contains measures to force unemployed drug addicts to repay money they have obtained by lying, and would provide unemployed drug takers with a 'treatment allowance', rather than benefits.

Private companies would be used to deliver welfare targets and not be paid unless they achieve results.

There are currently 2.7 million people on incapacity benefit in Britain. And under the measures the payment would be replaced and all but the most seriously disabled expected to work.

The new single benefit will place more emphasis on conditionality and compulsory work for those receiving benefits.

Delivering a Commons statement, Purnell said every present incapacity benefit claimant will be transferred to a new system - meaning a return to work or a higher level of benefit depending on assessment - between 2010 and 2013.

It would mean the government would "look to see what people can do, not what they can't", he said.

He added that plans will "make sure a life on benefits is not an option".

"Instead, the longer people claim, the more we will expect in return," he said.

"At three months and six months, claimants will intensify their job search and have to comply with a 'back to work' action plan."

Record

Earlier Purnell told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the reforms were building on what government has done in the last decade.

"We have got the highest number of people working in this country ever," he said.

"We know that our support gets more people into work. We want to see more people take it up."

He stated that the government will be consulting people on how to enact these reforms but that the direction of the proposals is "very clear".

"It is about more support for people but also about more responsibility," the minister said.

"Helping people get back into health and back into work but also expecting people to take it up.

"We think at this stage that moving towards two benefits is a very big step forwards. And we think it is the right thing to do."

'Conversion'

Shadow work and pensions secretary Chris Grayling said the document was a "straight lift" from the Conservatives' own plans.

But welcoming the government's "Pauline conversion," he said: "Since these are Conservative proposals we will certainly support them."

And, while he claimed it was "much too late to start meaningful welfare reform in this Parliament", he told MPs that the announcement would give the next Tory government a "head start".

"We very much agree with the package of reforms the government is proposing," he said.

"It's particularly helpful that they're bringing them forward now because we always expected the reforms to take a couple of years to prepare before being ready to yield results.

"So in reality what this announcement means is that the next government will inherit a set of proposals that have been turned into action and are ready to bring about real change to our welfare state."

'Liberation'

The measures are expected to be unpopular among the Labour backbenches but are likely to be passed with support from the Conservatives.

And former welfare minister Frank Field warned that "self-liberation is totally missing from this package".

He told the BBC there was a 'get-out clause' for many benefit claimants, and they could end up unfairly receiving a higher level of benefits.

"I am in support at long last of introducing some radical welfare reform but I doubt very much whether these proposals will make that much difference.

"I have lost count of the number of times the government has published what it thinks are radical and tough proposals and for very little to happen over the last 11 years."

He said that the reforms would not work as government included faults of the old system when designing the welfare reform.

"With this specific reform, the key fault of the old system is being brought into the new system," he added.

"If you can get through the employment capacity test, you go onto a higher rate of benefits."

Calling for a single rate of benefit, he said that people on incapacity benefit should have their costs topped-up by the disability living allowance and not through the benefit system.

"We say to people, there are jobs out there. If you take a part-time job, you keep your benefit for a whole year," he said.

"Tell us about it. We will try and build that up into a full-time job."

'Simplification'

Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesman Jenny Willott called for a "radical simplification of the benefits system"

"Today's proposals completely ignore the disincentive to work that our complex benefit system has created," she said.

"The fact that over half of children living in poverty are in working households is largely ignored. Reforms must ensure that work really pays or we will see poverty levels rising in Britain."

She added: "James Purnell may think that privatising all back to work support marks out his modernising credentials but it lacks foresight.

"If recession takes hold it may not be profitable for companies to bid for welfare contracts, yet the public infrastructure will have been completely eroded.

"There needs to be more careful thought about how the market would operate in a severe downturn with rising unemployment."