Cameron and Tories Plan to"Get Britain Working"

A "big, bold" welfare shake-up was at the heart of the Tory conference held recently in Manchester with David Cameron citing it as the means to "getting Britain working".

Mr. Cameron, speaking on The Andrew Marr Show before the conference, said that the New Deal scheme would be among those the Tories would replace with personalised help to get the jobless and those on incapacity benefit into work. The New Deal scheme, which was introduced by Labour in 1998, aims to reduce unemployment by providing the training, subsidised employment and voluntary work. Those who refuse to undertake "reasonable" employment can have their benefits withdrawn.

The initial start-up cost of the proposed change would be in the region of £600m, the Tory leader said.

Under the proposed new arrangements private training firms would be employed to prepare the unemployed for work and also to re-assess all 2.6m people currently on incapacity benefit. The Conservative party believes that around 1 in 5 of those of currently in receipt of Incapacity Benefit would be assessed as fit for work and would therefore be switched to Job Seekers Allowance.

This would mean that their weekly income would fall from £89.90, the current basic rate of long-term incapacity benefit, to £64.30, the current rate for JSA claimants aged over 25. It is estimated that cutting the amount of money going to former incapacity benefit claimants will save £600m over the three years it will take to carry out the testing programme.

Mr. Cameron said "Some of those people cannot work and must be helped, for we are a compassionate society and we must look after those people. But many people could work and there are some who, with some tailored help, could work."

Yvette Cooper, the Work and Pensions Secretary, dismissed the proposals as a rehash of Labour plans without the money required to pay for them.

She stated: "David Cameron still can't answer the big question on unemployment: how can he possibly help people into work if he wants massive cuts in investment in the middle of a recession destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs?"