Cameron: Help disabled people to work

The government has "written off" five million disabled people who could be working, according to Conservative leader David Cameron.

Speaking in Edinburgh, the Conservative leader said government, companies and individuals needed to do more to help disabled people "take their place in society".

Launching a policy-making website, he announced the party had signed an agreement with the charity Scope to commit it to an employment policy which welcomed applications from disabled people.

And he promised the Tories would make employing disabled people in Whitehall and across the public sector a priority if elected.

He said: "The government likes to boast that it has achieved near full employment.

"And yet the fact is that millions of people of working age are not working - but they're not categorised as unemployed either.

"In order to help government statistics, they're simply written off.

Cameron said it was a "good thing, not a bad thing" to welcome migrant workers into the labour market.

But he went on: "Real unemployment in Britain is around five million - five million people left on the scrapheap while British firms deal with the resulting labour shortage by employing migrant workers.

"That is morally wrong and economically stupid and it has to stop."

He said the two main causes of the problem were employers' unwillingness to consider hiring disabled people and the benefits system "trapping people in unemployment".

Cameron said the country should expect a more positive attitude from employers, and described the benefits system as suffering from over-complexity.

Telling his audience at Capability Scotland that the government needed to "put more trust in social enterprises and voluntary bodies", he said: "I do not believe that large state agencies, no matter how well-meaning, are the right vehicles for helping badly disadvantaged people into work."

He said disabled people needed to take personal responsibility for looking for work if they can, and non-disabled people needed to combat prejudice.

Setting out his vision of "social responsibility", which he called the "big idea of the 21st century", Cameron said: "We must always ask not just what government can do, but what society can do - individuals, families, businesses, social enterprises and community organisations."

He said in the next few weeks he would talk about "some of the biggest social challenges our country faces: an ageing population, giving hope and inspiration to young people, and the needs of carers."

Employment Minister Jim Murphy said Cameron's claim that five million more people could be working implied that every lone parent claiming income support and every incapacity benefit claimant - even those with serious disabilities - should be looking for a job.

He said Cameron had "no credibility on changing the welfare state".

"David Cameron has today shown serious misjudgement in seeking headlines by wildly inflating the unemployment figures," he said.

"He makes a major gaffe by treating as ready for work the seriously ill and lone parents whose children are only a few weeks old."