Jobs and welfare
The Government believes that we need to encourage responsibility and fairness in the welfare system. That means providing help for those who cannot work, training and targeted support for those looking for work, but sanctions for those who turn down reasonable offers of work or training.
- We will end all existing welfare to work programmes and create a single welfare to work programme to help all unemployed people get back into work.
- We will ensure that Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants facing the most significant barriers to work are referred to the new welfare to work programme immediately, not after 12 months as is currently the case. We will ensure that Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants aged under 25 are referred to the programme after a maximum of six months.
- We will realign contracts with welfare to work service providers to reflect more closely the results they achieve in getting people back into work.
- We will reform the funding mechanism used by government to finance welfare to work programmes to reflect the fact that initial investment delivers later savings through lower benefit expenditure, including creating an integrated work programme with outcome funding based upon the DEL/AME switch.
- We will ensure that receipt of benefits for those able to work is conditional on their willingness to work.
- We support the National Minimum Wage because of the protection it gives low-income workers and the incentives to work it provides.
- We will re-assess all current claimants of Incapacity Benefit for their readiness to work. Those assessed as fully capable for work will be moved onto Jobseeker’s Allowance.
- We will support would-be entrepreneurs through a new programme – Work for Yourself – which will give the unemployed access to business mentors and start-up loans.
- We will draw on a range of Service Academies to offer pre-employment training and work placements for unemployed people.
- We will develop local Work Clubs – places where unemployed people can gather to exchange skills, find opportunities, make contacts and provide mutual support.
- We will investigate how to simplify the benefit system in order to improve incentives to work.
Not many comments here, but does no-one realise what National Insurance and tax is supposed to cover?
Can someone here, or, even better, in government, please explain to me why the contributions I’ve paid in over 20 years as a class-1 employee and as a smoker who’s never needed the NHS’s help (so I’m guessing my contributions have been significant) now count for nothing as my youngest is 7 years old? It’s not my fault the company I worked for last decided to shaft its’ UK workforce (it’s not my fault legislation isn’t in place to prevent them either). Why does this make me a pariah or dole-bludging scrounger (for the same rules that “catch” them are also now going to very shortly catch me)?
Surely, to answer all the commenters above who believe something along the lines of “people should do something for their benefits”, I did. I paid my way you sanctimonious and never-been-in-the-position-of-needing-benefits morons. How dare you or any government tell me I don’t have the right to something I’ve contributed to.
If you have a car, and it’s insured, and something non-fault happens that renders it undriveable (and it’s completely undriveable) do you:
A) Say “Oh well” and wait ’til you can afford to buy yourself another car, or
B) Get on the phone to the insurance company that’s been taking your premiums for years and get them to deal with exactly the sort of problem you pay them for? Honest answers please..
Can you also explain why it’s OK to use an expletive-provoking quantity of the UK’s present and future income and wealth to support the very businesses that have ****ed us all, but it’s not OK to spend it on schools, hospitals, or people without jobs?
Invest in manufacturing, Britain needs to start making thigs, Biotechnology, computing, engineering, Encourage science in schools. Green technology and innovation.
Also, I haven’t had a credit card, a loan, a mortgage, a store-card, an overdraft or any other form of financial debt obligation on me in 15 years. If I haven’t got the CASH for it, I don’t get it.
Why the hell do the idiots who used to run the country, or the idiots who’re doing it now think it’s ok to saddle me with repaying debts I didn’t help to run up and certainly haven’t enjoyed the benefit from, but don’t think it’s OK to pay me any unemployment benefit unless I get off my backside?
This is one messed up country.
Why is it that some people know how to milk the benefit system receiving all types of benefit including carers allowance when they are fit enough to push their childrens prams around. One you couple with 2 children receiving over £23k and on top of this free rent /council taxfree medical and dentistry/ presrciptions ect.
When I was made redundant I applied for a crisis loan something i would have to pay back but was refused.
Not enough checks are made in this society with non payment of things like presciption charges with well of people ticking the pre-paid box without having a certificate.
I would urge the new government to opt-out of the European Working Time Directive. As a practising physician in the NHS I have seen first hand the adverse consequences of the reduction in working hours to a 48 hours week under the EWTD.
Instead of improving doctors’ work-life balance as intended, it has led to many doctors working a higher proportion of time out-of-hours hours and antisocial shift patterns. In most cases the total amount of work has not lessened, but the time in which to do it has decreased, which has resulted in unpaid overtime work. I have huge concerns about the lack of time to train good quality doctors given the reduction in working hours.
Not only has the EWTD caused problems for doctors, but patient care is adversely affected with the potential for problems to arise with extra handovers between different shifts and lack of continuity in patient care.
Having dealt with people on benefits I see how easy it is for them to lie and claim them. Many believe it is their right to everything. Education is the key – educate the parents at the same time as the offspring. We need a cultural shift – a major cultural shift – top down.
Deficit reduction has to have at its heart policies that are weighted towards cushioning the younger members of society from the worst effects of the cuts – the country’s wealth is the creativeness and energy of its young people – we have more wealth than merely that which can be measured in monetary terms – Idealistic? Yes – Everyone needs ambition to change things, – true investment invests in people’s skills, talents and above all potential.
P{lease offer support to return to the workplace. Temporary work is difficult to take if you are not sure if after doing two weeks work that your rent will still be paid or your rates. You can end up financially in a very difficult position.
Also, please support young peoople 28 – 35 years to retrain by offering professional training courses that retrain quickly and to a high standard.
Regarding welfare to work. The Liberal Democrat Manifesto had some excellent content on page 30 about pushing employers to be more flexible and improving Access to Work availabilities.
I would like to see more push to employers to be ‘reasonable’ to people who are perhaps too ‘well’ to be entitled to benefits but who struggle healthwise with workplace demands. Many employers are citing “recession” for being less reasonable with employees with poor health and high sickness rates.
I would like to see some social model of disability wording from the coalition – some respect and understanding of the very real and persistent chronic barriers to surviving in the workplace with health or disability issues. The Liberal Democrat manifesto clearly showed understanding of this, yet I’ve seen very little in the Coalition itself reflecting any of this understanding and feel let down and disappointed.
Please be careful about removing benefits from the poorest and most vulnerable in society. Assessing fitness to work is a complex process and not one which is easily done in a short medical consultation.
Why has any person, while being on benefit, the willingness to find work undermined by the state?
If one is lucky to find a part time work of about 16-20 hours/week {, which is ridicuosly considered to be FULL employment, without being able to earn a living for a family,} one is supposed to earn close to £180/week -post tax and NI- to be able to offset the reductions in the benefits received.
If one is willing to start with a few hours to show ones abilities to a prospective employer, one is permitted to earn only £260 PER YEAR { this has not been changed since 1992!!!} without facing a reduction in benefit. This despite the fact that the tax office [, which supervises these benefits,] would only ask for tax being paid, when one earns more than ~ £4500/year. or now £9200(pensioners) in a year. Is this a case of equality??
The point many people seem to completely miscomprehend is that for some disabled & ill people, every trip beyond their front door is hazardous & worsens their condition. for those of us who can & do actually WANT to recover, a chance to rest & recuperate is important not to prolong the condition from which we suffer. Forcing us into job-clubs, voluntary work, taking away benefits needed to maintain a quality of life is actually a jolly good way of making us dependant on state handouts for decades rather than years. believe it or not, we don’t choose to be in this position & actually want a meaningful life & to contribute to society. Please, afford us our dignity & stop spewing bile.
Please, please have a chat with MIND and other mental health charities about the impact of the ATOS ‘assessments’ on people like myself with non-curable ‘conditions’ such as bipolar or autism.
The current system of assessments is failing those it should be protecting to a massive degree – as evidenced by the number of successful appeals against the initial assessment decision.
We’re an easy target I know, but we’re made how we are and don’t get a choice over how these conditions impact upon our lives. Please think very carefully about the human results of your policies and review the terms of reference used to assess us. Some of us have a tenuous enough hold on this life as it is.
Provide help to those that want it in finding employment, for older workers treat on case by case basis, when I was unemployed for 3 months it wasn’t voluntary. I was queuing up with drunks and people who weren’t interesting in working. To the extent that security guards are needed in most Job Centres. 12 months unemployed puts you on the srapheap find a way to employ some on special short term contracts and probably lower wages but stop insurance companies counting that as employment, this way no gaps in the CV and not financially penalised for having taken out unemployment insurance
Don’t penalise those who are monthly paid by counting them as receiving money for the month after they have stopped working. LIke a previous comment redundancy pay should not be used to stop you claiming and artificially reducing unemployment stats.
My husband and I work and have done since we were 14. We raised on family without state help. I visit people at home for my job and 99% are unemployed. They have sky or cable, they can smoke, they can go out and socialise, their kids have the biggest trampolines, large battery powered cars that they can sit on yet they whinge about not having enough money. I am sure that a mum with a child at nursery can pick up litter in the area for an hour, something to make me feel that I don’t just work to support someones lack of morals in expecting the state to keep them. No its not a lack of jobs, these people show no interest in working and yet have the audacity to say to me “get a proper job”. I am carrying out an unpopular job with a legal connection (not police or bailliff) but why should I get harangued while I am supporting them to sit watching Jeremy Kyle? I currently pay £200 a month council tax because we worked hard to get a good house in a good area. It’s just the two of us now at home. I subsidise a family on support basically to use the extra services that their family uses that mine don’t. Why can’t I retire at 55 to allow me some time to enjoy my granchildren as I have worked for over 40 years. More economical to pay a pension to a couple to free jobs to allow a family to come fully off benefits. I feel as if I am nothing more than a work mule flogged by the state to work ever longer years before my husband and I can enjoy some free time out of work before we drop dead.