Disabled would lose benefits if they turned down jobs

Oct 1 2007 by David Higgerson, Liverpool Daily Post

SICK and disabled people would be stripped of incapacity benefit if they refused to take a job, under new hardline Tory plans.

Welfare-to-work programmes would also be privatised, as part of a package to offer £1,600-a-year tax breaks for couples bringing up children.

At the start of the Conservative confer-ence, Mr Cameron attacked Labour’s failure to cut significantly the 2.7m people claiming incapacity benefit (IB).

And he said: “If someone is not prepared to accept the job offered to them, then they should not get benefit. That’s completely fair and reasonable.” Insisting private companies should take over responsibility, Mr Cameron added: “The state has failed to run the benefit system properly.”

The 2.7m figure includes more than 100,000 people across Merseyside, a legacy of the huge loss of manufacturing jobs in the 1980s.

The worst blackspots are Liverpool (41,500) and Knowsley (13,700), where around 15% of the working population claim the benefit.

Mr Cameron’s proposals, yet to be fully fleshed out, go much further than the current rules, which dock a slice of IB for refusing to look for work. At present, new IB claimants, and those on the benefit for two years, are threatened with the loss of around £11 of their weekly £61-81 if they fail to turn up to interviews.

The Tory proposals claim privately-run programmes in Australia and the United States have a much better record in getting the jobless back to work.

The Australian “intensive assistance” scheme – similar to Britain’s – has a success rate of 45%.

The IB crackdown would fund the ending of the working tax credits anomaly that, the Tories say, penalises parents who stay together.