Official thread: ‘Get Britain Working’ White Paper released Tuesday 26th November

Watching question time last night it was interesting to listen to the fact that one person said that the majority of pip claims are now due to mh and he wasn't convinced that we have suddenly got sicker.

Other countries have all gone back to work, but the uk hasn't and they can't really work out why.

It was then mentioned that as a country our unemployment benefits are the lowest meaning that people go on to claim the sickness in order to live. So it's those people they want to weed out.

The job centre was going to be about work and not welfare and getting everyone back in to work.

That all sounds possible and positive I guess. 2029 was mentioned and pip reforms.

My thinking on this is because it puts everyone in the same place and they have a simpler system.

However it's called limited capacity to work isn't it, not, you can't do anything at all. We will still have to wait fit the green paper, but my concern is the pip reforms, dropping the wca and bringing in the health element that I read was going to be for those on pip as a linked benefit.

If disabled and long term sick people didn't people have mh issues before claiming, they will have a a result of all the uncertainty.

It just reads as every five years they change things to try and save money, the changes must cost millions.

Thanks for explaining, bit confusing how they explained it. So who are they targeting more disabled which I fall into or long term sick ?

Apologies I say the wrong things all the time and don't realise.

Why are some unfit to work people not on the lcwra?

I am on esa and on paper will be better off on lcwra, however if they carry on merging and scrapping things that could be shortlived.

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Adam LentAdam Lent

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Three fundamental factors that all governments persistently refuse to acknowledge when developing employment policy.

1. Our economic system has always and will always create pools of unemployment particularly at times of low growth such as we are currently experiencing. Fiddling about with back-to-work schemes without wider structural changes will make only marginal differences against this reality.

2. Combining back-to-work support with the threat of benefit withdrawal makes those back-to-work schemes even less effective than they otherwise are. People need to feel supported (sometimes in very complex and challenging circumstances) to seek out work effectively, not threatened. The latter experience degrades the former. It’s a classic case of mistakenly thinking ‘do to’ can sit easily alongside ‘do with’.

3. Many of the jobs unemployed people secure are ‘lousy jobs’. They are demeaning, poorly paid, insecure and often subject to poor or exploitative management. This is a major reason people cycle in and out of work. Again, tweaking back-to-work schemes will not change this reality.

The Government is taking some very limited steps to address 3. But clearly has no serious interest in 1 apart from launching increasingly shaky efforts to stimulate growth. And, as this article makes clear, seems determined to embed the flaw identified in 2.

A serious attempt to address unemployment that took these three factors into account would inevitably be far more radical and systemic than the plans the Government is announcing.

Within the context of such an approach back-to-work schemes could play a genuinely useful role in treating people with the “dignity and respect” Starmer claims to want and finding people jobs that provide the meaningful “life chances” Kendall references.

hashtag#jobs hashtag#employment hashtag#ukpolitics hashtag#DoWith Tom Pollard

They almost have to reinvent the wheel for those that don't have good enough memories don't they.

I spoke to someone today who said young people are lazy. How unfair is that to tar everyone with the same brush.

I wasn't lazy, I did a government scheme. It was that, A levels, retake exams or college. You couldn't be unemployed until 18, I still think that's the case now.

Quite agree, mines autoimmune, genetic and the other one chronic. Why don't they focus on those who are fit but choose not too.