Blair reaffirms commitment to welfare reform

Wednesday, 16 November 2005 12:00 AM

The long-awaited green paper on reforming incapacity benefit will be published in January, Tony Blair announced today.

The prime minister said the delay was caused by the change of secretary of state at the Department for Work and Pension (DWP) following David Blunkett's resignation. John Hutton is now the fourth person to take the job within a year.

However, Tory leader Michael Howard - who raised the issue at prime minister's questions - said he was "just a little sceptical" given that such assurances had been received before.

And he questioned Labour's commitment to welfare reform, citing Mr Blair's insistence when he came to power in 1997 that it was "the key task" of his government.

"In May, we were promised the welfare green paper before summer recess; then we were told it would be published shortly; in July we were told it would be in September, and last month it was promised at some time in the autumn. Now it's mid-November," he said.

Mr Howard's comments come as the latest labour market statistics show a fall in the number of unemployed of 1,000 to 1.43 million in the three months to September.

However, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) also reveal that the number of people claiming benefits has risen for the ninth month in a row - up 12,000 on the previous month to 890,100.

New figures obtained by the Lib Dems also suggest that the proportion of people coming off jobseekers allowance into work has declined in the last six years, with just 40 per cent of people taking this route, compared to almost half in September 1999.

"We assume that people leave jobseekers allowance because they find work - however that's proving increasingly rare. If only two in five jobseekers are now moving into jobs what's happening to the rest?" asked work and pensions spokesman David Laws.

"The Tories were damaged by the realisation that people were being pushed off the unemployment roll and onto incapacity benefit to massage down the numbers. We need to look very carefully at what is going on to make sure that the same slight of hand is not now happening again."

Today in the Commons, however, Mr Blair insisted welfare reform was still a priority, and said that there were fewer people coming onto incapacity benefit than in 1997, and more than one million people had been brought back into work by the new deal.

When the green paper in incapacity benefit was published, he said he hoped it would be supported, adding: "What is necessary is to cure the situation under which, in the previous government, incapacity benefit was used to shield the true levels of unemployment."

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